Shocking Discovery: Water Still Wet!

News articles like this one have been popping up all over the place.

The gist of it is that Al Qaeda isn't ready to make nice yet even though we elected Barack Obama who totally has a Muslim name and isn't white and is handsome and funny and erudite and not a boob. What a shocker.

Also the second in command at Al Qaeda used an ethnic slur.

Here's the thing. Al Qaeda is, literally, an evil terrorist organization bent on our destruction. We've laughed at George Bush and the conservatives for tarring all its enemies with that black-and-white designation, but for Al Qaeda it fits. Al Qaeda murders people. Its stated aims are both ludicrous and horrible. It's a bunch of bad bad fellows (and ladies.)

So why is it news that Al Qaeda doesn't like Barack Obama? The right wing may have accused him of palling around with terrorists, but they weren't radical Muslim terrorists, and only the truly insane thought he had anything but animus towards Al Qaeda. Barack Obama has stated that he will make it a priority for the U.S. to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, leader of Al Qaeda. Of course they aren't going to like him.

What's the news here? The ethnic slur? Al Qaeda is a group of unrepentant murderous terrorists. They murder as a matter of course. Is it really shocking that they use nasty language? Especially considering that in the part of the world from which they hail there's a lot less political correctness than there is in the West. They still won't let women drive in Saudi Arabia, and Al Qaeda hates the Saudi government because it's not fundamentalist ENOUGH.

Now I realize that Al Qaeda is our enemy and any big statement from them needs to be covered as legitimate news, but what I don't get is the tone of a lot of these pieces, implying that it's noteworthy that Al Qaeda would use an ethnic slur and that there was any other possible reaction they might have to Obama. Is the implication that Obama is so wonderful that he might win over Al Qaeda even though he openly talks about his desire to arrest or kill the group's leader? Seems unlikely. Are we offended by the term "House Negro" used by those responsible for the blowing up of buildings and ships and trains? It seems like a fairly minor crime in comparison.

Zawahiri's statement is a very minor news event, especially in a time when major important stories are not in short supply. Al Qaeda still hates America. Obama isn't getting a Christmas card from the world's premier terrorist group, nor will they offer him any suggestions about the type of puppy he should pick out for his daughters. In other news water is still wet and Glenn Beck remains batshit crazy. Nothing to see here.

In The Future Every Writer Will Be Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck is mad that his brilliant Elmo metaphor didn't make the financial crisis clear enough to everyone that it would be solved by now. So, using the magic of his scrambled brains, he's traveled to the future to see what the results of this ignorance will be.

Like, for serious.

Happy 300th Birthday!

Holy crap I'm old!

It's 2076 and we've just invented the time-fax machine.

Congratulations. Though wouldn't time e-mail be a little more useful? Or even just time mail? Do people still use fax machines in 2076? Is this a fax? How am I getting it? If you dial the wrong number on the time fax machine do I pick up the phone and hear that horrible explosion of beeps and boops?

(Actually, "we" didn't invent the time-fax machine,

You liar! Why did you tell me that you did. I have half a mind not to believe that you're actually faxing me from the future.

the State did -- they pretty much control everything now.)

Michael Ian Black and company? Do they rule with an iron fist constructed out of detached hipster irony? No? Oh. Dystopian. Got it. Delicious.

I'm faxing this

Seriously? You're still gonna go with faxing here? Not like projecting a hologram or something? Faxing? Okay. Alright.

back to you in 2008 because that seems to be the year we had the best chance to reverse our course and get back to the vision laid out by our founding fathers

Sweet. Of course, you know, might not have hurt to fax us in, say, 2006 or 2007 and give us a bit of time to prepare for this momentous year. October seems a little late to me. What do I know. Maybe it's really expensive to send a time fax more than 68 years into the past.

-- a vision that didn't include the government being in the insurance business.

Right. Because that was the primary causes belli behind the American revolution. Insurance. Remember the 8th amendment? "The government shall stay out of the insurance business under all circumstances." No wait, that was cruel and unusual punishment. I always get them confused.

I don't have a lot of time (the State only gives us one 30-minute break per day)

How long does it take to send a time fax? Also, I'm sorry, but I keep imagining a world ruled by Michael Ian Black, and it horrifies me.

so let me give you some advice: Stop worrying so much about who runs the country and start worrying about who runs your towns, your states, and your Congress.

Okay. Although, your problem seems to be with centralized government, not some crazy mayor or governor. Also, how is the congress different than who runs the country? Has there been a change in the structure of government. Is it actually a Michael Ian Black tyranny. Does he force you to laugh at his VH1 "I love the 2050's" specials?

I know you're all distracted by the presidential election,

Distracted from what?

but for all the money and time poured into it, the truth is that you're choosing between two roads that will lead you to the same destination.

So not only do you get the sweet time fax machine but you can see into alternate futures as well? Nice. Is there any combinations of possible actions that would end with me having sex with Jessica Biel while Alfred Molina watches? Because I would really like to know if such a combination exists.

Sure, one may be the Autobahn and the other a two-lane highway, but you'll end up at the same place either way.

That seems kind of important actually, how long it will take to get to the place. If it is a good place I want to get there fast. If it is a bad place I'd like to take the scenic route.

Decades of Republicans and Democrats alike have all chipped in to lead you to where you are today.

Inwood?

Believing that one person, from either party, can change that by themselves is a big mistake.

Yeah. If the last 8 years have taught us anything it's that one man cannot make a difference. One man can bring neither glory or disaster.

Presidents are like captains of a large ship: They can map out a course and shout out orders, but without the trust and hard work of the people who actually move the rudders, their commands mean nothing.

Future Glenn Beck you are a master of metaphor. Only, I'm not sure that big ships have actual people moving the rudder at this point. I kind of think most of that stuff is automated. Maybe in the future it's not.

In retrospect, the lack of trust and confidence you now have in your leaders was really the root cause of everything that's happened since.

Do you know David Brooks?

While our founding fathers designed a brilliant system of checks and balances, separation of powers and democratic elections, trust was the one thing they couldn't mandate in the Constitution.

What about love? Could they make us love them?

Looking back now, it's pretty obvious that our trust in government declined at about the same rate as our partisanship increased. People became so concerned about getting their party into power at any cost that the truth didn't even seem to matter anymore.

On the contrary. FAIR AND BALANCED. FAIR AND BALANCED

That's probably one of the reasons why George Washington hated the idea of political parties so much. Here's what he said about them in his 1796 farewell speech:

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."

Incredibly prescient! It's almost like George Washington is time faxing us from the past!

I know that George had a habit for using big words, so allow me to translate into 2008 English: Political parties that put their own success over that of the country's will be the death of America.

Sorry Glenn, but your 2008 English translation program must be on the fritz, because what you just said is a vast oversimplification of what George Washington was actually saying. Fortunately for you Washington's statement stands on its own and doesn't need translation.

If you don't believe him yet, just wait a few more years...you're about to see firsthand how right he was.

I hope the answer is "Not very."

After all, if power corrupts, then the kind of absolute power gained by political parties (and feared by Washington) corrupts absolutely.

First of all, "If power corrupts then the kind of absolute power gained by political parties corrupts absolutely" is not a logically sound statement. It's only true if power corrupts in proportion to its absoluteness. Also, umm, the kind of absolute power gained by political parties is not absolute at all. Fortunately we don't need them to have absolute power or be absolutely corrupt to bring ruin on us.

Question: Why the conditional statement? You're from the future. You know what happens.

The best advice I can give you is to stop thinking in terms of left and right and start thinking in terms of right and wrong.

The best advice you can give us is a meaningless platitude? Seriously? Umm can I get a time fax from the future Dear Abbey, because you suck at this whole advice thing.

Demand the best leaders possible, and then demand the best out of them.

Thanks. Is there lead paint in the future or have you eaten it all?

Believe me, when you see what's coming your way, you'll realize how little the donkey and the elephant really ever mattered.

What about the libertarians? The green party? The whigs? Any of them matter? What does matter then, besides the bland "Demand the best of the best" advice?

Oh and while we're on politics, one quick thing that I'm sure you're curious about:

Has there been another world war? How did the whole global warming thing turn out? Who are the major economic and military world powers? Have we reached Mars yet?

Yes, Robert Byrd is still in the Senate. He's 159, but doesn't look a day over 91.

Taking pot shots at Robert Byrd. That's what matters. Not partisan politics. Not who is going to be our next president. Nope. It's all about personal insults against old people. On the plus side, I guess we just learned that life expectancy is much greater (at least for a few) in the future. That's good.

Now, let's talk about the economy.

A'ight

Let me see if I have this right: Money and power made people greedy, so you decided to hand over a bunch of money and power to greedy politicians instead.

No you don't. People are naturally greedy and so they decided to pursue money and power at great risk, failed, were bit in the ass, and we had to surrender money and power to the politicians in a last ditch effort to prevent the rest of us from getting swamped by the tidal wave of bad debt the greedy people created. Also, it wasn't really our decision, 'cause the country's a Republic.

Smart!

Future sarcasm. Nasty.

After using that money to nationalize a bunch of banks, mortgage companies and insurance companies, they moved on to bigger things.

What could be bigger than the insurance companies? The founding fathers specifically warned against the government owning one in the sixth amendment. Oh wait. That's speedy trial. Darn.

The airlines came first -- we just couldn't live without them. Then it was the automakers (Detroit would've died), health care (they said they could manage it better), and eventually, the oil companies (I'm not sure where all of those "windfall profits" have gone).

That's a lot of bang for our 700 billion bucks. Looks like the socialized health care thing worked out well though, since Robert Byrd is over 150 years old and still well enough to be in the senate. Strom Thurmond only made it to 135.

The idea behind it all (an idea that was eventually turned into law with the passage of the Securities Exchange Act of 2011)

How do you turn an idea into a law? Seriously. How? you can base a law on an idea, but you can't take an idea and make it law.

was to "socialize losses" by spreading them out among all taxpayers. The pain, our leaders argued, would be minimal that way.

That seems like a horrible argument? Really. They didn't go with "Socialize profits, we'll all be rich and happy!" They went with "Socialize losses?" We elected some stupid leaders.

They were right.

WOOHOO!


At least until the bills came due.

I see what you did there.

See, we didn't actually have any of the money we were promising everyone; we were borrowing it.

It didn't take long before so many of our tax dollars were going toward interest payments that we couldn't fund even the most basic of government programs without massive tax increases on everyone. People now work most of the year just to pay Uncle Sam (or, as we now call him, "Comrade Sam").

Free health care, free air travel, free cars, it seems like we did okay by this deal.

I hear the State censors coming, so let me leave you with a few other quick things:

You wrote a lot in half an hour. And you got it time faxed. Seems like things are running pretty efficiently

• Good call on not worrying about protecting our borders. That works out really well for you in 2019.

Is that more future sarcasm? Glenn Beck you are keeping me on my toes.

You might want to spend a little less time worrying about carbon and a little more time worrying about Iran. We're now in a new mini-Ice Age but, believe me, Iran isn't using their nukes to warm any homes. (PS The International Atomic Energy Agency just revealed to you that Iran appears to be refitting their long-range missiles to carry nuclear payloads. Did you think they were joking or were you just too busy with lipsticks and pigs to notice?)

Holy shit. The melting of the ice caps disrupted ocean currents enough to put us in an ice age in just 68 years? I'm not sure stopping worrying about carbon is really the best plan here, especially since we have like 68 years of peace with the Iranian menace, which is about how long it's been from the start of the Cold War to now. So how about we worry about carbon AND Iran and stop worrying about Paris Hilton and Brangelina? Deal?

• The currency of the future is energy.

That seems hard to carry around in a wallet, but on the plus side I guess all that dollar denominated debt is pretty meaningless. So, that's nice.

Those who have it are thriving and those who don't -- well, let's just leave it at that. Drill for all the oil you can, but you also better start seriously looking for some other options.

Which other options worked out? How about some advice?

In closing, remember this golden rule and you should be fine: Your Constitution will never fail you, but your leaders will. Be wary of anyone who tries to convince you that it's the other way around.

Right. We should definitely be wary of all those guys who are anti-constitution. Oh wait. A little late for that.

Best wishes (you're going to need them),

Worker 2744A

PS It's not all socialist doom and gloom here in the future. We just thawed Ted Williams' cryogenically frozen body and he hit 87 home runs for the North Team!

Wow. Way to slip that "Oh yeah, we can bring back the dead" thing in there. Why wasn't your advice "Get yourself cryogenically frozen, IN THE FUTURE WE CAN BRING YOU BACK!" Also, what happened to Ted Williams' head?

Tickle Me Glenn

We all know somebody like Glenn Beck. He’s the pill-addicted uncle who you have to watch around the wine at Thanksgiving. He’s the school crossing guard who, if you have the misfortune to be waiting for the light with him, regales you with conspiracy theories and alarmingly racist statements about passing Arabs. He’s the mattress salesman who stands a little too close to you, sweats profusely, and makes inappropriate jokes about the things you’ll be doing in the bed he desperately wants to sell you.

But Beck’s not a crossing guard or a mattress salesman. He’s a talk show host for CNN/Headline News. Sometimes he fills in for Larry King on the main channel. And sometimes Glenn Beck pens columns for CNN.com, offering invaluable insight into what the guy at the bus stop who creeps your girlfriend out by staring at her all the time thinks about the issues of the day. In his latest column Beck:

A) Manages to make the recent U.S. financial meltdown even more confusing and
B) Reaffirms his support of torture by torturing a metaphor to the point where it will tell him whatever he wants it to say so long as he promises to stop hurting it.

Let’s have a look:

"Greed is good."

At least, that's what Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko claimed in the movie Wall Street.

In case you’re wondering, Glenn Beck isn’t one of those pinko commie fag lovers who’s destroying America. He loves business and the free market and oil companies and apple pie.

But, just like Gekko, the modern-day companies that followed that motto now find themselves wondering how everything could collapse so fast.

Except when things go bad.

Beck goes on to talk about Wall Street for a little while and relate some of its history, as only Glenn Beck can.

Lehman was founded in 1844 when Henry Lehman, a German immigrant, opened a small shop in Montgomery, Alabama. His brothers joined him six years later and, by 1858 they were busy turning cotton provided by local farmers into a cash crop -- a business that didn't have anything to do with helping low-income families afford 27-bedroom McMansions.

That’s true. There weren’t any McMansions in Alabama in the mid-1800s. All the big houses there were in the middle of beautiful fields of flowing cotton, worked by happy singing employees who all shared one thing in common. They were slaves. Glenn Beck is chiding Lehman Brothers for getting out of the lucrative slave-harvested cotton business and into the risky and immoral mortgages for low-income family business.

Bear Stearns' story is eerily similar. Founded in 1923. Survived every crisis. Never posted a quarterly loss until last year. Gone without a trace.

Two companies in the same industry both did well until they both went under during a crisis that rocked that industry. They're also both pretty old. Eerie.

So how did 235 years of rock-solid American finance disappear virtually overnight? Well, it's not as complicated as you think. If you replace all of the acronyms invented by the brainiacs on Wall Street with references to things that Main Street understands, it becomes a lot easier to see how it all happened. Here's a quick story I invented that does just that.

Glenn Beck is going to put this crisis into terms that Main Street understands. And what does Main Street understand?

It's just before Christmas,1996, and as you watch overeager parents trample each other to buy Tickle Me Elmo dolls for their kids, you see an opportunity.

Tickle Me Elmo.

Not the iPhone not the Nintendo Wii not even those commie hybrid cars with the long waiting lists.

Tickle Me Elmo.

Topical, relevant, and a perfect analogy for complex mortgage derivatives laundered through even more complicated ratings procedures and repackaged as...

Tickle Me Elmo.

This isn't a Tickle Me Elmo bubble," you think to yourself, "this is a long-term trend. Every person in America will soon own a Tickle Me Elmo, maybe even two. It's the American dream."

Glenn Beck you have crawled into my brain circa 1996, captured the exact thoughts I had at the time, and now, 12 years later, you’ve put them out there for the world to see. Bravo sir. Bravo.

You approach your local banker about a loan and, naturally, he loves your idea.

This would happen. If you lived on Sesame Street. And your banker was Cookie Monster. C is for cookie. That's good enough for him. Oscar the Grouch would want to see a long term business plan.

In fact, he loves it so much that for every $1 you have in your account, he's willing to lend you $34. Great deal, you think, as you max out your credit line and buy as many Tickle Me Elmos as you possibly can.

Sales are easy at first. People are lining up to buy your dolls and the prices are going far higher than you ever thought. The only person happier than you is your banker.

Because he's high on chocolaty baked goods.

But the following year something unexpected happens: Kids stop asking for Tickle Me Elmos.

Didn't see that coming. It's only happened with every other fad toy in the history of toy sales. What are the chances it would happen again?

You try to cut the price, but no buyers show up. You cut the price more, but your store remains empty.

Okay. Well presumably I’m prepared for this, since I’ve been selling them like crazy for a year now and presumably I’ve noticed the trending down of demand during the Summer and Autumn months, so I’m prepared, right? I'm cool and relaxed 'cause I've got this covered.

Panic sets in.

Oh.

You're pretty sure that this downturn is just temporary (after all, who wouldn't want a Tickle Me Elmo?) but you're quickly running out of cash. Your only option is to buy time and hope that Tickle Me Elmos start flying off your shelves again.

That doesn’t seem like a very good option.

You visit every bank in town and, using your piles of Tickle Me Elmo dolls as collateral (which, of course, you purchased with money you didn't have) you get as much new capital as possible.

So this bank really is on Sesame Street. Now that I have this capital what am I going to do with it? Invest it in a diversified group of new toys so I’m not so dependent on Elmo demand swings? Put it all towards the new hot toy?

Soon that money is also gone. Even your friends and family refuse to give you any more loans.

What about The Count? He's got some swanky digs. Can he spare a few bucks? One? Two? Three?

At the end of your rope, you go to your town council, which gives you a "bridge loan" to get you through the next few months (something that makes your Furby-selling competitors extremely upset).

I used all my new capital to bribe town council members. Nice. But if I get through the next few months won’t I have bypassed the Christmas sales season altogether and still be stuck with all these Elmos?

Unfortunately, no matter how much you borrow, there's still one nagging little problem: No one wants to buy your stupid Tickle Me Elmo dolls anymore.

Stupid Elmo. It's all your fault!

The longer you wait, the less they're worth. You sell some for pennies on the dollar, but pretty soon you can't even do that. Then things get even worse: News breaks that China is poisoning some Tickle Me Elmos before shipping them to the United States. Now your dolls are not just out of favor, they're toxic. You literally can't even give them away.

CHINA! Those red bastards. Fortunately I can sue the Chinese company that’s poisoning my Elmos, thus saving me from bankruptcy. Right?

Now at this point the Elmo metaphor has been waterboarded, beaten with rubber hoses, and had holes drilled in its joints. It is begging for a swift and merciful end. It’s not even clear whether the Elmos are houses or mortgages or mortgage backed securities or whether Glenn Beck has just forgotten the whole ‘metaphor’ thing and is literally telling the sad story of a simple Tickle Me Elmo salesman who fell on hard times and was preyed upon by malignant Chinese Elmo manufacturers. The Metaphor wants to die. But Glenn Beck doesn’t believe in swift and merciful deaths. He believes in torture.

Soon the rest of your money dries up, as do the people who are willing to lend you any more of it. Now you're out of cash; out of a job, and, if not for the pile of poisonous Tickle Me Elmo dolls in your basement, completely alone -- which sounds kind of like the CEOs of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.

Right. Except that the CEOs of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns are still extremely rich men whose basements contain gold bullion and a spanking bench for naughty hookers. Maybe the Elmos represent the gold. Or the spanking bench. Or the hookers?

Believe it or not, this ridiculous story may be far from reality,

Believe it.

but it's not that far off from describing what these financial and mortgage companies did to themselves.

No. It's very far.

just replace the Tickle Me Elmo references with the once popular, then discounted, now completely toxic subprime mortgages and you're pretty much there.

Sir, you are still on Sesame Street. The actual process of the meltdown has been explained excellently in a number of publications, and it has to do a lot more with bad incentives, dishonest ratings on mortgage backed bonds, low rates of returns on government securities, a swollen supply of investment capital, myths about the housing market, and deregulation than it does with making bad bets on trendy products and Chinese malfeasance. Sorry. Let's get back to Mr. Beck.

When you cut through all the noise about "bridge loans" and "discount windows," what you're left with is the fact that too many companies still own way too many Tickle Me Elmos that no one wants to buy.

So the Elmos are the defaulted mortgages? Or the mortgage backed securities that are now worthless?

Giving those companies more money doesn't solve anything, it just buys time. Unless and until the underlying problem is fixed, no real turnaround can happen.

Right. The underlying problem. The public’s cruel spurning of those delightful Tickle Me Elmo toys. I guess the real culprit isn’t China after all. It’s Japan and its goddamned Pokemons.

But we all know that investors (and elected leaders worried about their careers this November) aren't all that patient.

As opposed to Glenn Beck’s readers, who are willing to slog through pages of babble about Tickle Me Elmo to get to something that looks sort of pointish.

That's why the new chorus you're likely to soon hear will be from people arguing that the only way out of this mess is for the federal government to step in and purchase all of the toxic mortgages themselves.

A) This has already begun, with the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
B) I’m not sure what this has to do with impatience. It’s more about aversion to pain. These problems were not going to work themselves out except through the extremely painful collapse of American financial companies, leading to almost certain recession and possible depression.
C) What happened to Elmo? Why are we talking about mortgages all of a sudden? How did the Chinese sneak poison into our mortgages? Those sneaky fucking Asians.

That would allow the companies with eyes bigger than their balance sheets to start over, with barely any repercussions whatsoever and without ever taking responsibility for their mistakes.

Except that all the shareholders have been wiped out and the companies sold off. I guess that doesn’t count as a repercussion on Sesame Street. Perhaps Beck would have preferred a stern lecture from Big Bird?

Come to think of it, maybe greed isn't so bad after all.


Would the government actually consider that idea? They already are.

You know who likes pronoun/noun agreement? Chinese communists. That's whom.

In fact, the only thing stopping politicians from "rewarding" us with a new government agency that will put billions more of our tax dollars at stake is, ironically enough, the election of new politicians.

I don’t understand this sentence. How would our tax dollars be at stake? Isn’t Beck saying they’d just be given away? And how is electing new politicians stopping them from making bad decisions? And why is it ironic?


Disclaimer: Tickle Me Elmo is still an extremely popular, non-toxic product and, to the best of my knowledge, is not responsible for the credit crisis.

Thanks for clearing that up.

(Note to any Wall Street executives who might be reading this: I know this simple little story isn't perfect,

What? Glenn, don’t be so modest.

but let's remember that you're the ones who tried to make everything complicated

Yeah, you TRIED to make everything complicated, but Glenn Beck just cut through all your math and legal verbiage and eggheadedness with a simple, perfect, metaphor. Your turn, Richard Fuld.

and I'm the one who still has a job.)

Burn. Glenn Beck still has his job. So, Richard Fuld, while you’re relaxing in your mansion with your tens of millions of dollars, know that Glenn Beck is still going to work every day, rain or shine, explaining your misdeeds to the masses in bafflingly incoherent ways, and making sure that angry white men have a voice on CNN, now matter how weird or off the mark that voice may be. Tickle that, Mr. Fuld. Tickle that.