• About
  • Contact
  • Editorial
  • Policies
  • Archives
Angry Bear
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
  • US/Global Economics
  • Taxes/regulation
  • Healthcare
  • Law
  • Politics
  • Climate Change
  • Social Security
  • Hot Topics
« Back

Open thread March 10, 2017

Dan Crawford | March 10, 2017 9:10 am

Tags: open thread Comments (4) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
4 Comments
  • ilsm says:
    March 11, 2017 at 6:52 am

    Steven King twitter something about strawberries from Caine Muiny.

    So I figured maybe the press and the disloyal insurgent party are like those mutineers in the Wouk novel.

    Lt. Barney Greenwald Jose Ferrar JAG defender) : Well, well, well! The officers of the Caine in happy celebration!

    Lt. Steve Maryk: What are you, Barney, kind of tight?

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: Sure. I got a guilty conscience. I defended you, Steve, because I found the wrong man was on trial.
    [pours himself a glass of wine]

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: So, I torpedoed Queeg for you. I *had* to torpedo him. And I feel sick about it.

    [drinks wine]

    Lt. Steve Maryk: Okay, Barney, take it easy.

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: You know something… When I was studying law, and Mr. Keefer here was writing his stories, and you, Willie, were tearing up the playing fields of dear old Princeton, who was standing guard over this fat, dumb, happy country of ours, eh? Not us. Oh, no, we knew you couldn’t make any money in the service. So who did the dirty work for us? Queeg did! And a lot of other guys. Tough, sharp guys who didn’t crack up like Queeg.

    Ensign Willie Keith: But no matter what, Captain Queeg endangered the ship and the lives of the men.

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: He didn’t endanger anybody’s life, you did, *all* of you! You’re a fine bunch of officers.

    Lt. JG H. Paynter Jr.: You said yourself he cracked.

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: I’m glad you brought that up, Mr. Paynter, because that’s a very pretty point. You know, I left out one detail in the court martial. It wouldn’t have helped our case any.

    [to Maryk]

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: Tell me, Steve, after the Yellowstain business, Queeg came to you guys for help and you turned him down, didn’t you?
    Lt. Steve Maryk: [hesitant] Yes, we did.

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: [to Paynter] You didn’t approve of his conduct as an officer. He wasn’t worthy of your loyalty. So you turned on him. You ragged him. You made up songs about him. If you’d given Queeg the loyalty he needed, do you suppose the whole issue would have come up in the typhoon?

    [to Maryk]

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: You’re an honest man, Steve, I’m asking you. You think it would’ve been necessary for you to take over?

    Lt. Steve Maryk: [hesitant] It probably wouldn’t have been necessary.

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: [muttering slightly] Yeah.

    Ensign Willie Keith: If that’s true, then we *were* guilty.

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: Ah, you’re learning, Willie! You’re learning that you don’t work with a captain because you like the way he parts his hair. You work with him because he’s got the job or you’re no good! Well, the case is over. You’re all safe. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
    [long pause; strides toward Keefer]

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: And now we come to the man who *should’ve* stood trial. The Caine’s favorite author. The Shakespeare whose testimony nearly sunk us all. Tell ’em, Keefer!

    Lieutenant Tom Keefer: [stiff and overcome with guilt] No, you go ahead. You’re telling it better.

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: You ought to read his testimony. He never even heard of Captain Queeg!

    Lt. Steve Maryk: Let’s forget it, Barney!

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: Queeg was sick, he couldn’t help himself. But you, you’re *real* healthy. Only you didn’t have one tenth the guts that he had.

    Lieutenant Tom Keefer: Except I never fooled myself, Mr. Greenwald.

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: I’m gonna drink a toast to you, Mr. Keefer.
    [pours wine in a glass]

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: From the beginning you hated the Navy. And then you thought up this whole idea. And you managed to keep your skirts nice, and starched, and clean, even in the court martial. Steve Maryk will always be remembered as a mutineer. But you, you’ll publish your novel, you’ll make a million bucks, you’ll marry a big movie star, and for the rest of your life you’ll live with your conscience, if you have any. Now here’s to the *real* author of “The Caine Mutiny.” Here’s to you, Mr. Keefer.

    [splashes wine in Keefer’s face]

    Lt. Barney Greenwald: If you wanna do anything about it, I’ll be outside. I’m a lot drunker than you are, so it’ll be a fair fight.

    The White House is not the USSCaine, Trump is not Queeg, and the Obama’s insurgents are not half as smart as the Caine mutineers.

  • EMichael says:
    March 11, 2017 at 11:14 am

    “A little-noticed bill moving through Congress would allow companies to require employees to undergo genetic testing or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars, and would let employers see that genetic and other health information.

    Giving employers such power is now prohibited by legislation including the 2008 genetic privacy and nondiscrimination law known as GINA. The new bill gets around that landmark law by stating explicitly that GINA and other protections do not apply when genetic tests are part of a “workplace wellness” program.”

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/gop-bill-would-let-your-boss-demand-to-see-your-genes.html

    Gop has probably nicknamed this the “Yellow Star Law”.

  • Denis Drew says:
    March 11, 2017 at 1:36 pm

    “Giving employers such power is now … ”

    Whopee! One more thing to wake Americans up to the indispensability of labor unions.

    Working on this — on putting two “psychological” thoughts together — should probably wait a week until I fully digest it and regurgitate it in better form:

    Last week I considered that everybody talks about the Eruo debacle and about the wrongheaded austerity cure — because they were done at a specific moment in time and by deliberate decision. In contrast I lamented that nobody talks about the de-unionization of America because it happened so one small bit at a time over such a long length of time (generations, plural) that nobody noticed the gigantic changeover as a gigantic changeover.

    This week while mulling over the usual 45% now forced to live on 10% of overall income — down from 20% — and the 1% living it up on 20% — up from 10% — it occurred to me that this harshest of horrors is usually neglected in favor of the endless repetitions of how most of the workforce is missing out on the growth of overall income.

    Not that I ever made the connection myself while listening to usual chants.

    But the share existing income is overwhelmingly more important than the share of growth. As with de-unionization, the existing share is just (literally thoughtlessly) taken as the fixed condition of a steady state universe, didn’t happen with a big bang. [gotta say that’s a pretty cool metaphor]

    I’m trying to figure out how to juxtapose these two insights (side-by-side) into what should be the biggest pathology in our observable societal universe — the de-unionization of America.

    Hopefully, anyone who reads this little think piece will never again be able to think about income inequality without automatically thinking that to unionize or not to unionize the end-all/be-all-question.

  • Joel says:
    March 11, 2017 at 6:49 pm

    This book looks short enough to share with your climate-denialist friends, and pitched to their education level as well.

    https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2017/03/global-warming-primer.html#more

Featured Stories

Extending Capital to Nature, Reducing Nature to Capital

Peter Dorman

Trump and the debt ceiling

Eric Kramer

And the King of Coincident Indicators rolls over

NewDealdemocrat

Job Market’s 2.6 Million Missing People

run75441

Contributors

Dan Crawford
Robert Waldmann
Barkley Rosser
Eric Kramer
ProGrowth Liberal
Daniel Becker
Ken Houghton
Linda Beale
Mike Kimel
Steve Roth
Michael Smith
Bill Haskell
NewDealdemocrat
Ken Melvin
Sandwichman
Peter Dorman
Kenneth Thomas
Bruce Webb
Rebecca Wilder
Spencer England
Beverly Mann
Joel Eissenberg

Subscribe

Blogs of note

    • Naked Capitalism
    • Atrios (Eschaton)
    • Crooks and Liars
    • Wash. Monthly
    • CEPR
    • Econospeak
    • EPI
    • Hullabaloo
    • Talking Points
    • Calculated Risk
    • Infidel753
    • ACA Signups
    • The one-handed economist
Angry Bear
Copyright © 2023 Angry Bear Blog

Topics

  • US/Global Economics
  • Taxes/regulation
  • Healthcare
  • Law
  • Politics
  • Climate Change
  • Social Security
  • Hot Topics
  • US/Global Economics
  • Taxes/regulation
  • Healthcare
  • Law
  • Politics
  • Climate Change
  • Social Security
  • Hot Topics

Pages

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial
  • Policies
  • Archives