CELEBRITY NEWS!

I just got done glancing through a couple of popular magazines that cover celebrities.  Call them "WEEPLE." Some celebrity news from the pages of WEEPLE:

• Two voluptuous sisters are both disappointed in their wealthy but disinterested male consorts, one a basketball player, the other a rapper.  One of sisters, with a new baby, is having trouble with her weight.

Volptuous sister and disinterested consort.

• One 20-year old starlet has been exposing herself in public lately.  She is apparently crushed over a boy-friend who recently left her, and she has decided that public lasciviousness is the way to get over her heartbreak.

Working through issues.

• A not-so-famous former TV star has announced that, at age 50, he is ready to meet "Mrs. Right," get married and have children.

• The 18-year old half-sister of an alcoholic, drug-addicted and criminal 20-something starlet has just had extensive plastic surgery to look more like her troubled, beautiful half-sister.  Their father has ditched both of their mothers.

I want to be like my sister.

• A TV star wore a dress so low-cut that one of her breasts popped out unexpectedly during a formal event.

• A 50-year old movie star was angered to meet her 35-year old ex-husband, accompanied by his new 30-year old girlfriend, at a Kabbalah function.  She introduced him to Kabbalah.

People wonder why I follow Christ. I think from now on I will start by having them read WEEPLE.  That should explain it.

WEEPLE expresses a deep truth about human beings - we are sad and have a hard time fulfilling our needs. I think we read WEEPLE because it makes us feel good, since we are not THAT messed up, but what's with that?   I know my heart.  If I had the money and the lack of boundaries that money brings, I could easily be on the cover of WEEPLE.

Easily.

I thank God for my lack of money and good looks.

ARAB SPROING

Some time ago Eternal Optimist commented on a nasty op-ed article in the NY Times in which the author lacerated Israel for casting aspersions on Egypt's democratic aspirations, and generally ranted that Israel needs to make peace.  Read the comment here.

This was before Morsi's ham-handed grab for totalitarian power in Egypt.  Which mushroomed into a military coup. Perhaps the op-ed writer is less outraged over Israel's cynicism about the new, and now newly toppled, Egyptian government.

The Israelis seem to have gotten things about right, and the Times op-ed writer about perfectly wrong.  The Arab Spring turned into the Arab Sprang.  It is now the Arab Putsch and headed toward the Arab Train Wreck.  Let's call it the "Arab Sproing," since "sproing" is the sound your car makes when that metal thingie that holds everything together breaks and flies past your ear, just before the engine throws a rod.

Egypt

The Times is the voice of Colonel Klink on public policy.  Study the Times on any public policy issue, and you will at least know what not to do.  Whenever you are about to listen to the Times, remember that it bought the Boston Globe for about 1 billion and just sold it for 73 million.  That's a loss of about 900 million dollars. Careful there.

Colonel Klink: Dependably Wrong

At least the Times has a great sports section.  (That is irony, for anyone who has not read the Times Sports Section: "Proletarians View A-Rod as Tragic Victim of Capitalism").

Egyptians voted in droves for the Muslim Brotherhood, whose rhetoric on the Jews is Hitler's.  No wonder Israel was less than enthused about the Arab Sproing.  However the Arab Sproing works out for the Egyptians, it looked like a continued cold winter for Israel, surrounded by people who forthrightly declare their urgent need to kill all the Jews.  I'm sure that Egypt's military is not favorably inclined toward Israel, but they appear to be less eager to actively kill Israelis than are the Muslim Brothers.

So by Israel's lights maybe this is an improvement.

Having dealt with genocidal fascists in Europe, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Israelis are understandably suspicious of such folk.  That's why they formed the state of Israel, saying "never again."  I cannot imagine any constructive dialogue with Hamas, which controls Gaza, or a government in Egypt that is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.  The only question that Muslim fascists in Palestine and Egypt want to discuss with Israel is how quickly Israel can wind up its affairs and disappear.  And by disappear they mean "die."

So here's to more snotty pieces in the Times, which keep us both entertained and oriented, in a negative kind of way. And here's to Israel: 65 years of democratic success in a sea of fascist Muslim failure.

"DISCHANGEFULNESS"

Eternal Optimist was feeling forlorn, long ago, toward the beginning of Mr. Obama's first term:

Now, I am quite willing – and even eager – for someone to point me toward an example where sustained deficit spending worked out well.

See, this is where things get scary, because I can’t think of any. So help me out here. Maybe someone knows an example where this worked. Or maybe even if there is no good example, you can help me understand how buying up toxic mortgages, and nationalizing banks and the health care industry are going to allow us to pay off the piles of debt we are racking up. Even if it is just a theory. Because for the life of me I can’t even figure out a theory, much less recite an example, of how it works.

So let me know if you have some great examples of chronic deficit spending success stories. I could use the encouragement.

I haven't had any response on this one.  Anyone got any encouraging stories yet?  It's been 5 years.  Greece?  Portugal?  Spain?  Illinois?  California?

Detroit?

Detroit: Suffering From Poor Self Esteem

I heard Cleveland has a great new marketing slogan, "We're Not Detroit!"  Watch the video here.

Cleveland: 'Murcan for "Schadenfreude"

The idea seems to be that America is different.  Somehow we are immune to all that.  Just like the junk bond bubble in the 80s, the tech bubble in the late 90s, and the housing bubble in the mid-00s.  Just like economists told us the debt-propelled stock bubble in the late 1920s was "different," and could go on indefinitely.
 
I have a new investment strategy.  Whenever economists and politicians begin telling you how this particular debt-propelled binge is different, and can go on indefinitely, begin selling whatever is currently blowing up. Because the reason they are saying this is that they have run out of other explanations, and people are getting nervous, since the situation doesn't make sense.

Here is a new word for our current condition: dischangefulness: the state of depriving yourself of change for the better.