I saw this link at BTC News, and it’s a hoot. My comment was:

The Dostum website is pretty interesting. If I didn’t know better, I would think he is running for the U.S. Senate from, say, Texas, or somewhere like that. He isn’t … is he?

The child prostitution industry has a lobbying group.

Obama proposes record budget, record debt. Howls of outrage erupt all over the place.
Lemme see, lemme see. Dubya inherits a surplus of some $230 billion. He then, by varied and wondrous means, launches an SST of debt. The passengers wonder why they seem to be headed for outer space, and there is some muted grumbling, soon forgotten. Obama is elected and begins to wrestle with the balky controls. All of a sudden, panic in the aisles. Alarums and excursions on the airwaves and in the papers. Stay tuned.
Um, what became of the librul MSM, anyway?

Some Good Christian types from Idaho are driving a bus and are stopped bus at the Haiti’s-Dominican Republic border. Authorities there find the bus full of undocumented Haitian children. The Good Christians – 10 of them – go to the slams. The children – 33 of them – are whisked off to a safe place.
The prisoners first tell authorities the children are orphans for whom they are caring, and this gospel is spread across the homeland by the infallible MSM. Then the story becomes, Oh, we thought we had all the proper papers; which changes into – their spokeswoman actually said this all over the teevee the other night – But, we have all these papers and everybody told us everything would be fine. Even the Dominican people said it is legal. A Dominican rules on American adoption of Haitian children. The mind reels.
Today: We couldn’t get papers in Port-au-Prince because it was wrecked and the families are waiting to adopt these poor orphans, and we have to get them to the states before it’s too late.
Then fortune began to really frown on these Good Christians. About half the orphans aren’t orphans at all. Some, we’re told by MSM, were sold by their parents in hopes of a better life for family and child, but we are not told how many. So some were sold, some could be orphans, some could be separated by the disaster. Some could be stolen.

What I hope to learn in future reports:

Who are these Good Christians? I got no sense of them at all in the teevee video from Idaho.
What are they doing in the adoption business? All rationalizations aside, adoption for hire is a sleazy occupation.
Why the haste? It wouldn’t do for one to be confronted with buyer’s remorse while one is on the doorstep with babe in arms, a reasonable person might surmise.

It is entirely possible they speak what they believe to be the truth, their hearts are pure, they act in the best interests of the children. In which case, they are too dumb to be allowed outdoors without adult supervision, never mind in a foreign country under any circumstances.
So the story bugs me still. But I do think those Good Christians should do a stretch in a Haitian hoosegow, maybe teach them some manners.

There is much sound and fury these days over the gazillion-dollar budget deficit. Few would disagree it is too high and drastic steps must be taken to reduce it. It might be worth a look at what the spending does.
We have, to date, poured more than $700 billion into the Iraq swamp of despond, with no end in realistic sight. That is money down the toilet, never to be seen again. Afghanistan is burning cash at about the same rate, with the same fiscal result. A single Navy project – the development of an electromagnetic catapult to launch carrier aircraft – is already in delay and $1 billion over budget. One project. The military cannot seem to get a job done on time and on or under budget, so we have waste in defense spending that escapes the imagination. And even though wages and salaries in defense industries are the envy of most of the rest of us, the return to the economy on investment in national defense is infinitesimal. This is not to say defense spending is folly. Waste is folly. Prosecuting unnecessary wars and nation building with borrowed money are waste on a scale too difficult to grasp.
But what if we borrow scads of money to better the lot of our own people through job creation, whatever form that may take? More people with jobs means more tax revenue. There are more consumers of goods and services, generating still more tax revenue. The tax revenue pays down the loan. Surplus revenue pays for national defense (and much else in our governing schema). There could even be money left over (gasp) for rainy days. Progress. This actually occurred just before our latest belligerent excursions.
Now as it happens, there used to be a group of people who called themselves Democrats. When a great economic calamity befell us, they applied this notion of borrowing money to put people to work. It was a success for a time, but their leadership got nervous about how big the loan had become, so they quit spending on jobs and the calamity resumed.
Others, calling themselves Republicans, wanted only to invest in their corporate masters, an early manifestation of Trickle Down Dementia, so they opposed the Democrats’ efforts to help ordinary people.
Then a great war came along and all the haggling became moot because the war had to be won no matter the cost.
Today, we still have Republicans, and their illness has grown so acute that they make things up, and enlist media outlets to spread their lies.
We still have Democrats who try to better the lives of the people, but their numbers have dwindled to near invisibility.
And, new under the sun, we have Republicrats, insects who call themselves Democrats but who are just as in thrall to the corporations as the Republicans, but even more vile because of their deceit and quackery.
So what to do, what to do.
As for me, I pester Barbara Boxer, who is on our side and is gracious to pests. I don’t bother with my Congressperson; he’s a Republican backbencher, another voice in the chorus of “No,” and a carpetbagger to boot. Dianne Feinstein is another dead loss, a lower-form insect, a procurer for her husband’s investment interests. She loves wars and votes for them always.
Anyway, I make noise when and where I think it might do some good. I hope you do the same.
And my apologies to the ghost of John Maynard Keynes.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission sure set the DFH blog pot aboil, kind of amusing, really, given that the Congress is already wholly owned by the corporate planet. Anyway, John Medaille over at Front Porch has a good read on the whole steaming pile. Check it out.
www.frontporchrepublic.com/2010/01/welcome-to-the-plutocracy/

I missed the broadcast of the president’s State of the Union speech – went to dinner with a friend instead. Got up this morning and checked out the chatter – all very predictable and boring – then read the text, also mostly predictable and boring, but for a couple of things. I thought the call-out of the corporate poodles on the SCOTUS was pretty cool; it sure got the chimpy contingent and the Villagers stirred up.
Then there was some stuff about smothering the spread of nuclear arms, followed by (or was it the other way around?) a call for new nuclear energy development in the U.S. Now, Barack, dude, WTF? Maybe you plum forgot about Three Mile Island, that diverting little meltdown in Pennsylvania. That happened in 1979, so I guess you were maybe chasing girls or something and the incident escaped your notice. Chernobyl, a nuke that made a glowing, smoking hole in the Ukraine countryside, is still killing people to this day, nearly 24 years later. Surely you remember that. Finally, we don’t know what to do with the spent fuel we have laying around now, given that it is deadly, lasts forever and scares the snot out of everybody. Now you want to make more of the stuff? More of an attractive nuisance for foreign and domestic loonies who would do us harm? Dude! No! You ought to fire the half-wit who put that in your speech, have a beer or two, and think up some other way to put Joe the Plumber to work, like solarize the cities, maybe. Jeez.

It’s been a bad stretch for writers. Segal, Parker, Zinn, Auchincloss, and now J.D. Salinger. Stop, already.

My sainted grandmother often said that bad things come in threes. I’ve heard the same thing from many others over the years, but I heard it from her first, so she must have coined the adage. Lately, I’ve had cause to wonder whether she meant the common, ordinary, everyday “3″ or the superscript 3, as in cubed.
First, it was the crash of the trusty Acer. Then came a wicked network crash, a nasty cold, a broken tooth, El Nino’s wrath for four days, and a host of other setbacks in a cascade of woes – too many and too boring to elaborate here. Anyhow, press on regardless.
And RIP Robert B. Parker. You will be missed.

Most writers just hate their editors, get published, then praise their editors to the heavens. Why is that?
Editors save writers from error. Not always, mind you, but lots of times.
Editors are cranky and pissy and unbending about spelling and sources and accuracy. Think about this. If you are inaccurate in any detail, you have damaged your credibility.
Editors are always curious, so they read a lot. If you are not well read and write some stupid shit, an editor will call you on it before you disgrace yourself. Take it upon yourself to be as well read and knowledgeable about your subject as the person who is going to pass or fail you on the story.
Editors have failed you if they have not made you bring your readers into the story. To be an effective and influential reporter of news, you must put your reader on the ground, in your subject’s shoes, in your reader’s mind. The one thing I have found about this lesson is the reluctance of new reporters to get dirty. What is it? You think you can do it all over the fucking phone?
Editors are not stupid – well, shit, a lot of them are – but you are well advised to accept your editor’s advice, then check it out. I always believe everything anyone tells me, then I check it out. ALWAYS check it out. It always amazes me what arises out of a simple inquiry.
Editors want you to succeed, probably more than you want to succeed yourself, because your success reflects on them. This is no shit. Editors are ALWAYS behind the scenes and share no glory when their reporters are acknowledged as worthy of accolades by their peers.
Editors do not seek the limelight. This is not universally so, but close enough in my experience to be true. Most editors worthy of the appellation stay in the background and let their writers write.