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schrodinger's cat - January 10, 2011 | 9:23 am · Link

I wonder what grades Bobo got. He seems to be very well paid for writing such drivel.

Svensker - January 10, 2011 | 9:24 am · Link

Thank you for this, DougJ. It was exactly the comedic relief necessary after a rough weekend. I’m crying here.

mistermix - January 10, 2011 | 9:25 am · Link

Thanks for mentioning it though, because I had to go read it out of prurient interest.

It’s good to see Brooks keeping his marriage alive by sublimating his urges via his writing.

burnspbesq - January 10, 2011 | 9:25 am · Link

Longtime partners at a handful of top-tier law firms can actually accumulate wealth if they don’t live like their hedge-fund clients. That’s probably less than a thousand people at any point in time.

Bobo incoherent again. Quell surprise.

Morbo - January 10, 2011 | 9:28 am · Link

(you can thank me for not excerpting the weird sexual second paragraph)

Dammit, man, if you had just not mentioned it I wouldn’t have had to go read it… Do we have a profile for Senator thigh-toucher now though?

superking - January 10, 2011 | 9:29 am · Link

Screw that, Doug, I think people need to read it:

You can see a paragon of the Composure Class having an al-fresco lunch at some bistro in Aspen or Jackson Hole. He’s just back from China and stopping by for a corporate board meeting on his way to a five-hundred-mile bike-a-thon to support the fight against lactose intolerance. He is asexually handsome, with a little less body fat than Michelangelo’s David. As he crosses his legs, you observe that they are immeasurably long and slender. He doesn’t really have thighs. Each leg is just one elegant calf on top of another. His voice is so calm and measured that he makes Barack Obama sound like Sam Kinison. He met his wife at the Clinton Global Initiative, where they happened to be wearing the same Doctors Without Borders support bracelets. They are a wonderfully matched pair; the only tension between them involves their workout routines. For some reason, today’s high-status men do a lot of running and biking and so only really work on the muscles in the lower half of their bodies. High-status women, on the other hand, pay ferocious attention to their torsos, biceps, and forearms so they can wear sleeveless dresses all summer and crush rocks with their bare hands.

scav - January 10, 2011 | 9:31 am · Link

One can rather see him on the ground, quivering desparately, pleading “pet me! pet me! take me home wid you” while attempting his best stab at cute puppuh dog eyes.

yeaggehh

OT, but BP’s got some more leakage going on too, in absolute amts possibly small but in taking out a pipeline, nicely located for maximum effect. I prefer the Guardians take for certain details but here’s the NYT version too.

ETA: Oh great, now I’m stuck with the image of his quivering lapping at handout bowls of cream beneath slender and elegantly formed calfs to deal with. Not to mention his pleadings to be crushed like a rock.

J - January 10, 2011 | 9:32 am · Link

The second paragraph is well worth a glance—Bobo is backing down from his famous observation about Michelle Obama’s biceps.

TR - January 10, 2011 | 9:33 am · Link

Is David Brooks still a virgin? He sure as shit writes like one.

Violet - January 10, 2011 | 9:35 am · Link

@scav:

One can rather see him on the ground, quivering desparately, pleading “pet me! pet me! take me home wid you” while attempting his best stab at cute puppuh dog eyes.

So true.

This is laughably ridiculous. Well, it would be if David Brooks weren’t someone held in esteem for his insights and thoughtfulness. How can that even be possible?

Paris - January 10, 2011 | 9:37 am · Link

Maybe he meant to submit this to Penthouse Country Club Forum and it ended up in the New Yorker on accident.

guster - January 10, 2011 | 9:37 am · Link

Heaved her chest into view.

Punchy - January 10, 2011 | 9:37 am · Link

Never heard of “head cant” before.

Violet - January 10, 2011 | 9:38 am · Link

@scav:

Oh great, now I’m stuck with the image of his quivering lapping at handout bowls of cream beneath slender and elegantly formed calfs to deal with.

From the first page of the article:

As a newborn, Harold, like all babies, was connecting with his mother. He gazed at her. He mimicked. His brain was wired by her love (the more a rat pup is licked and groomed by its mother, the more synaptic connections it has).

Bobo’s all about the licking.

Shudder.

dr. bloor - January 10, 2011 | 9:38 am · Link

Just once, I wish Bobo would follow up one of these “Brooks was here” specials by, you know, actually hanging himself.

What an odd man.

danimal - January 10, 2011 | 9:39 am · Link

It’s funny how many of us felt the crushing need to read that second paragraph just because it was withheld from us.

DougJ, did you want to drive up Bobo’s hit count?

Superluminar - January 10, 2011 | 9:39 am · Link

Erica, anticipating this, chose an appetizer that could be easily forked

some people sure do have weird preferences…

mike - January 10, 2011 | 9:40 am · Link

I didn’t read the article (too soon after breakfast) but let me guess: It’s accompanied by a picture of a virile young man with massive calves, wavy hair and chiseled features. He’s ripping the the low-cut top off of the ample bosom of a beautiful woman with a thick mane of red/blonde hair cascading over her shoulders.

scav - January 10, 2011 | 9:41 am · Link

@Punchy: probably cant as leaning, no? ETA Yup

superking - January 10, 2011 | 9:41 am · Link

I get the feeling that Bobo had to throw that “asexually” in before “handsome” in order to hide some feelings from himself.

Athenae - January 10, 2011 | 9:42 am · Link

Wealth settled down upon them gradually, like a gentle snow.

See, it was NICE. Rich people are so nice. Unlike those filthy poor people, who don’t merit pages of bloviation in the New Yorker.

Rich people. Shapely. Want to pet them.

HE IS SUCH AN ASSHOLE I CAN’T STAND IT SOMETIMES.

A.

WereBear - January 10, 2011 | 9:43 am · Link

Is it me, or is poor Bobo perhaps a gay man driven so deeply into the closet he might not even know it?

No straight guy describes another guy’s legs like that, methinks.

And all his women observations are… off.

nancydarling - January 10, 2011 | 9:43 am · Link

This entire thread is making me laugh out loud.

dmsilev - January 10, 2011 | 9:44 am · Link

I got as far as this:

In the evenings, they will traipse through resort-community pedestrian malls licking interesting gelatos, while passersby burst into spontaneous applause.

before my gag reflex kicked in.

I propose “licking interesting gelatos” as this year’s replacement for “hiking the Appalachian Trail”.

dms

cmorenc - January 10, 2011 | 9:44 am · Link

If you didn’t know from his other writings that Bobo is trying hard here to mainly make serious analytical points, you might presume he wrote this piece while serving as fellow NYT columnist Gail Collins’ understudy. This piece is the kind of material Collins regularly hits out of the park for home runs, except her hyperbolic portraits of people are much cleverer.

Actually, Bobo is deliberately attempting to humorously draw light caricatures of today’s hyper-successful striving professional class (the “concerned”)...it’s just that you can tell he also takes his caricatures as seriously accurate portraits worthy of serious sociological analysis, rather than the sort of analysis-by ridiculous caricature that pokes devastatingly accurate holes in people’s hyper-inflated balloons which Gail Collins is so brilliant at.

Superluminar - January 10, 2011 | 9:45 am · Link

@ dr bloor

Just once, I wish Bobo would follow up one of these “Brooks was here” specials by, you know, actually hanging himself.

not only are you hereby nominated for a Moore Award, you also prove that, in the case of political violence, both sides are just as responsible.

Xenos - January 10, 2011 | 9:47 am · Link

A few top lawyers, doctors, accountants and so on can clear more than a million a year for 20 years or so. After taxes, and the cost of living a very upper-middle class lifestyle they can retire with 5-10 million $ and a nice pension if they save well and and are lucky with their investments. This is tremendously successful, but in a day when certain bankers can clear 3-15 million bonuses in a single year, it is obvious that they are not the seriously wealthy among us.

And Brooks is perfectly aware of this. Tool.

uila - January 10, 2011 | 9:47 am · Link

Somebody is jealous of all the attention to Chunky Bobo. Very well, I dub thee “Asexual Douthat”.

DougJarvus Green-Ellis - January 10, 2011 | 9:47 am · Link

@WereBear:

I agree. He always makes his men more beautiful and alluring than his women. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

guster - January 10, 2011 | 9:48 am · Link

@WereBear: I dunno about gay, but I agree that his observations of women are bizarrely off. His descriptions reminded me of nothing so much as the scene in 40-Year-Old Virgin, where the Carell character says, “You know how when you grab a woman’s breast, it feels like … a bag of sand.”

mr. whipple - January 10, 2011 | 9:49 am · Link

Wealth settled down upon them gradually, like a gentle snow.

Non-wealth settles on me like a gentle golden shower.

peach flavored shampoo - January 10, 2011 | 9:50 am · Link

But Harold went for a salad

That he tossed, natch.

WereBear - January 10, 2011 | 9:52 am · Link

@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

There isn’t.

And really, it would make more sense if he were gay. If he’s not, then it’s twisted.

ilaçlama - January 10, 2011 | 9:52 am · Link

Brooks keeping his marriage alive by sublimating his urges via his writing. It’s good!

ilaçlama - January 10, 2011 | 9:52 am · Link

Brooks keeping his marriage alive by sublimating his urges via his writing. It’s good!

Phyllis - January 10, 2011 | 9:53 am · Link

This may be tmi, but I wear a G-cup bra and I have never once ‘heaved my bosom’ into view. Never had to-the damn thing makes itself apparent with little help from me.

policomic - January 10, 2011 | 9:54 am · Link

@WereBear: Reading this makes me think of Arrested Development’s Tobias talking about not being able to hear over the “clatter” of his wife’s breasts while he was “busy making sweet love on her.”

scav - January 10, 2011 | 9:54 am · Link

That shit just reeks of voyeur rather than anything resembling actual practice: male, female, lettuce, he’s on with the licking dressing.

Short Bus Bully - January 10, 2011 | 9:56 am · Link

I had to go read the whole thing. WTF IS HE WRITING ABOUT?

The only thing this article does is creep me the fuck out about what David Brooks fantasizes about when he rubs one out. This is the worst porno I have ever read. The punditocracy is failing badly. David Brooks needs to be heavily medicated.

On the other hand this thread is full of winsauce.

PeakVT - January 10, 2011 | 9:57 am · Link

Wealth settled down upon them gradually, like a gentle snow.

Quoted for total, complete bizarreness.

Phyllis - January 10, 2011 | 10:00 am · Link

A few times a year, members of this class head to a mountain resort, carrying only a Council on Foreign Relations tote bag (when you have your own plane, you don’t need luggage that actually closes).

So do the rest of their necessities get tossed into brown paper grocery sacks? My parents’ luggage of choice for years, btw.

dr. bloor - January 10, 2011 | 10:03 am · Link

@Phyllis:

This may be tmi, but I wear a G-cup bra

Heh. Douhat is now dialing 1-900-CONFESSMYSINS and Bobo is trying very hard to think about mens legs.

ornery curmudgeon - January 10, 2011 | 10:03 am · Link

?

Short Bus Bully - January 10, 2011 | 10:04 am · Link

@mr. whipple:

You win.

Barb (formerly Gex) - January 10, 2011 | 10:05 am · Link

@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: It could be simply misogyny. There are plenty of men who despise women but aren’t gay. It works okay if you can convince your woman that she’s supposed to just make babies and submit to you.

Omnes Omnibus - January 10, 2011 | 10:05 am · Link

@superking: Dude has issues. I’m just sayin’.

DougJarvus Green-Ellis - January 10, 2011 | 10:07 am · Link

@Barb (formerly Gex):

But how many of these men also rhapsodize about Mitt Romney’s shoulders, John Thune’s sun-chapped prairie good looks, and random Composure Class guy’s low body fat?

Barb (formerly Gex) - January 10, 2011 | 10:07 am · Link

@mr. whipple: Excellent summary of trickle down economics. Kudos!

Ailuridae - January 10, 2011 | 10:07 am · Link

@PeakVT:

That needs to be worked into a tag line.

Barb (formerly Gex) - January 10, 2011 | 10:09 am · Link

@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: That’s true. So basically what I am beginning to suspect is that if a bunch of homos on the right weren’t so fucked up about it, we’d be dealing with a completely different GOP. Every issue gets viewed through the lens of manly-manliness for them.

Short Bus Bully - January 10, 2011 | 10:10 am · Link

@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:

Yeah, this is kind of freaking me the fuck out. Like in a “it rubs the lotion on its skin” sort of way.

AuldBlackJack - January 10, 2011 | 10:15 am · Link

(when you have your own plane, you don’t need luggage that actually closes).

Bobo, in sucking-up mode again, displaying his ignorance.

Just as with “Applebees salad bar” personal private jet ownership at the level he suggests exist only in his imagination.

Private jets are frequently chartered.

Private jets access can be purchased in (roughly) 25 hour increments (small metal starting at about $125K).

Private jets are available as 1/16th shares.($250K+ annually)

Private jets are purchased and maintained by some corporations as required by insurance companies assigning policies on their CEOs against kidnapping (think Big Pharma).

But the idea that people who simply “got good grades in school, established solid social connections, joined fine companies, medical practices, and law firms” fly like this all the time is a joke.

Redshift - January 10, 2011 | 10:18 am · Link

The paragraph you omitted is just bizarre, DougJ, but honestly, the one you excerpted creeps me out even more.

negative 1 - January 10, 2011 | 10:22 am · Link

Has anyone checked to see if his editor is still alive? Maybe Bobo tied him up and stuffed him in his closet? BTW this is seriously screaming out for an intervention. I know Taibbi has claimed he’s on sabbatical on ripping apart pundits, but maybe he could take this one on for the good of the country…

Gene in Princeton - January 10, 2011 | 10:23 am · Link

@Short Bus Bully: You nailed it!

Ross Hershberger - January 10, 2011 | 10:29 am · Link

Ick. Where does writing like this come from, and how can we get it to stay there forever?

RobertB - January 10, 2011 | 10:29 am · Link

Put me in the ‘strangest goddamned thing I’ve ever read’ category. I stopped after the first page – I like myself too much to want to read the next five.

Ross Hershberger - January 10, 2011 | 10:31 am · Link

BTW, the rest of the headline quote is revealing:

Portia:

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Phyllis - January 10, 2011 | 10:32 am · Link

@dr. bloor: I don’t think he has to try all that hard. I’m sure ‘boobies’ make him go ewww.

scav - January 10, 2011 | 10:38 am · Link

@negative 1: There’s certainly no evidence of editorial control because the abject cringing fetishizing detail has nothing whatsoever to contribute to the purported topic of the piece. Or is that what the New Yorker has become? but one half-pennyworth of subject to this intolerable deal of suckuptitude!

WarMunchkin - January 10, 2011 | 10:42 am · Link

My gut hurts from laughing so hard. And to think. This guy has a column at the New York Times.

PeakVT - January 10, 2011 | 10:44 am · Link

@negative 1: Do op-ed writers get checked for content? I was under the impression that they weren’t (and not just because the content of most op-ed pieces).

miwome - January 10, 2011 | 10:47 am · Link

I gotta say, I read most of that—at least before the first section break—as deliberately comedic. I mean, there’s no way this:

A few times a year, members of this class head to a mountain resort, carrying only a Council on Foreign Relations tote bag (when you have your own plane, you don’t need luggage that actually closes). Once there, they play with hundred-and-sixty-pound dogs, for it has become fashionable to have canines a third as tall as the height of your ceilings. They will reflect on the genetic miracle they have achieved. (Their grandmothers looked like Gertrude Stein, but their granddaughters look like Uma Thurman.) In the evenings, they will traipse through resort-community pedestrian malls licking interesting gelatos, while passersby burst into spontaneous applause.

Can be written in all seriousness. Spontaneous applause? Come on.

scav - January 10, 2011 | 10:49 am · Link

@PeakVT: Bind your jaw to prevent self-harm: this is all from a piece pretending to be on “How the new sciences of human nature can help make sense of a life.”

georgia pig - January 10, 2011 | 10:50 am · Link

He is asexually handsome, with a little less body fat than Michelangelo’s David. As he crosses his legs, you observe that they are immeasurably long and slender. He doesn’t really have thighs. Each leg is just one elegant calf on top of another.

It seems that Bobo’s self conscious about his cottage-cheese thighs and spare tire – I do notice that he goes for the slimming effect of pinstripes, but the suits he wears still make his butt look big. Maybe this is just a veiled cry for help with his body image issues. Call Oprah.

Short Bus Bully - January 10, 2011 | 10:52 am · Link

Let’s see:

1) Flaming latent homosexuality. CHECK

2) Fapping over wealth and status (especially as it relates to latent homosexuality). CHECK

3) Egregious and nonsensical segueways between pseudo-science and fapping over Don Draper imaginings and wealth fetishism. CHECK

Is this really the checklist Bobo goes through for his articles?

mrmcd - January 10, 2011 | 10:53 am · Link

Related Links- Ask the Author: Join a live chat with David Brooks about the composure class on Thursday, January 13th, at noon E.T.

I’m torn between wanting to sign-on and laugh at the awkwardness of this, and not wanting to be eye raped on through my computer screen by David Brooks on my lunch break.

DougJarvus Green-Ellis - January 10, 2011 | 10:58 am · Link

@miwome:

I have to say, that part bothered me. I don’t like that much emphasis placed on women’s physical appearance or the idea this is a genetic miracle.

gypsy howell - January 10, 2011 | 11:01 am · Link

I started reading it, but couldn’t make much sense f it by the time I got to the bottom of the page, and then I realized with horror that there were 5 more pages of whatever the fuck it is he was trying to make a point of.

My main question—was there a reason the New Yorker felt the need to publish this? Didn’t they used to be a good magazine?

Omnes Omnibus - January 10, 2011 | 11:01 am · Link

@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: The whole thing bothered me. It is hard to pick out any particular detail as more disturbing than the others.

superking - January 10, 2011 | 11:16 am · Link

@Short Bus Bully:

Yes, that’s his checklist, but you forgot

4) inventing people and events to make a point.

After the first page, the article is all about a person he makes up and names “Harold.”

This is really David Brooks at his peak. It is almost the perfect embodiment of a David Brooks article. It may be missing a part where he takes a small issue and blows it up into a philosophical turning point that Burke would disapprove of. I say “may,” because I couldn’t keep reading it.

RobertB - January 10, 2011 | 11:17 am · Link

I guess I don’t like myself after all, and I read the next five pages. I’m not sure what Bobo is driving at here. If it’s satire, it’s too subtle for me. But it can’t be dead serious either.

That quote on page 5 is pretty good – he must’ve stolen it.

jinxtigr - January 10, 2011 | 11:22 am · Link

What the hell is the matter with him? Was there a point? It’s not really twisted enough to be Burroughs unless the people started eating each other, or eating some Vietnamese busboy O_O

NobodySpecial - January 10, 2011 | 11:42 am · Link

@jinxtigr: Maybe the busboy was named ‘Interesting Gelatos’.

JohnR - January 10, 2011 | 11:59 am · Link

@superking:

Womanly men and manly women. Isn’t there some sort of psych write-up on that sort of thing? Bobo’s drifting into deep waters and starting to list badly.

Kat - January 10, 2011 | 12:28 pm · Link

My take: These are the types of shallow “insights” and bizarrely-inappropriate examples you get when a relatively high-functioning sociopath tries to write an article about human nature.

He can’t even manage to contain his contempt for the subject.

How to spot signs and symptoms of serial bullies, sociopaths and psychopaths including the sociopathic behaviour of the industrial psychopath and the corporate psychopath

http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial.htm

After reading a bit about the characteristics, scroll to the bottom for links to several very good news articles on the subject.

I’m a psychopath! BBC presenter Michael Mosley’s shocking discovery thanks to a revolutionary brain scan.

Tonybrown74 - January 10, 2011 | 12:35 pm · Link

Who the hell describes eating Gelato as “licking” it?

Pat - January 10, 2011 | 12:38 pm · Link

Oy!

sukabi - January 10, 2011 | 12:57 pm · Link

@dmsilev: that’s how far I got… jesus has anyone thought of checking this loon into a “rehab*” center…

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

*Mental hospital.

RP - January 10, 2011 | 1:06 pm · Link

@NobodySpecial: Genius.

SFAW - January 10, 2011 | 1:22 pm · Link

1) Youse guys [sic] got it all wrong – he’s gunning for the Bulwer-Lytton Prize (since they won’t nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature). In fact, if the judges read this, they may declare him the winner on the spot.

2) mr. whipple: After your comment, I went looking for “Your Majesty is like a stream of bat’s piss” in Brooksie’s ramblings. So, damn you for getting me to read more than what DougJ excerpted!

3) Somewhere, I hope, Pinch is reading this and going “WTF?”, and then calling his business manager to see if Matt Taibbi would be willing to write a column for the NYT.

4) I wonder if EJ Dionne will mention this the next time they’re on NPR’s )mumble mumble( show . That, as Shakespeare doubtless said, “would be cool”.

I have a pretty strong stomach, but this thing really skeeved me out.

Citizen_X - January 10, 2011 | 1:23 pm · Link

@mr. whipple:

Non-wealth settles on me like a gentle golden shower.

LUCKY BASTARD!

Because non-wealth “settles” on most of us in a more, uh, scatalogical way.

fes - January 10, 2011 | 1:25 pm · Link

comments have made my day

fes - January 10, 2011 | 1:25 pm · Link

comments have made my day

jake the snake - January 10, 2011 | 1:35 pm · Link

@uila:

Somebody is jealous of all the attention to Chunky Bobo. Very well, I dub thee “Asexual Douthat”.

I agree. I think Bobo must have finally ready Douthat’s chunkier Reese Witherspoon piece and decided he needed

to write something ever more creepily misogynist.

sukabi - January 10, 2011 | 1:40 pm · Link

@miwome: he’s writing soft-core wealth-porn for the poor little rich kids… and his “wealth-envy” is pathological.

RobertB - January 10, 2011 | 1:57 pm · Link

I don’t know if that piece is misogynist so much as it is weird as hell. About 3/4s of it looks like it was written by a Martian.

asiangrrlMN - January 10, 2011 | 2:23 pm · Link

@Phyllis: Right there with you, sister. I have a pretty large rack myself, and believe me, I do no heaving of the bosoms. Yet, still, they get noticed. So, if there are bosoms heaving, the bosoms must not be so big in the first place.

I can’t read the whole piece. Just reading the excerpts makes me want to take a shower. Ew.

Phyllis - January 10, 2011 | 3:27 pm · Link

@asiangrrlMN: I did tell a guy on an elevator one time that as far as I knew, the ‘72 dolphins season was not playing in a continuous loop across my chest and to stop being a creepy bastard by staring at it. He fled at the first opportunity.

Topic: Bobo doesn’t have issues, he has major subscriptions.

Hann1bal - January 10, 2011 | 3:35 pm · Link

Alright, this had to be said: I, for one, welcome our new composed overlords.

(Also, too: Can Asexual Douthat get any more ridiculous than this? I was literally LOLing while reading it, particularly the “spontaneous applause” part. I just hope he doesn’t take my question as some kind of challenge.)

HyperIon - January 10, 2011 | 4:38 pm · Link

@mrmcd:

I’m torn between wanting to sign-on and laugh at the awkwardness of this, and not wanting to be eye raped on through my computer screen by David Brooks on my lunch break.

don’t worry. DougJ will prolly sign on.

Hullabaloo

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Dots

by digby

The perverse effect of Tucson continue to amaze me. "The left" is now on the defensive and the right is empowered. Surprise. And even though the media is delicately discussing some aspects of right wing rhetoric, they aren't connecting any dots.

Here's a big old dot, courtesy of David Neiwert:
There's another infamous shooting of a nine-year-old girl that is making headlines this week in Tucson. This time, we wonder if the rest of the media will bother to cover it.

The little girl's name was Brisenia Flores. She lived near the border with her parents and sister outside the town of Arivaca, Arizona. On May 30 of 2009, a woman named Shawna Forde, who led an offshoot unit of Minutemen who ran armed border patrols for patriotic "fun". Forde's gang had decided to go "operational," which meant they concocted a scheme to raid drug smugglers and take their money and drugs and use it to finance a border race war and "start a revolution against the government". They targeted the Flores home, which had neither money nor drugs, based on dubious information. They convinced Flores to let them in by claiming to be law-enforcement officers seeking fugitives, then shot him point-blank in the head when he questioned them and wounded his wife, Gina Gonzalez. And then, while she pleaded for her life, they shot Brisenia in cold blood in the head. (Her sister, fortunately, was sleeping over at a friend's.)

Neiwert has been following this story from the beginning and notes that the trial should reveal some very important details of the inner working of the Minutemen. Evidently, the most famous leader of the movement, Jim Gilchrist, is involved in this case --- he and Shawna Forde were very close.

My friend Scott North at the Everett Herald recently published a riveting account of just how deeply Gilchrist and Forde were intertwined. Indeed, he was working to help promote her "work" on the border intensely during the two weeks between the murders and Forde's arrest -- and may have tipped her off that she was being sought by federal SWAT teams:

Jim Gilchrist counts himself among those fooled by Forde.

He stuck with her when some questioned her methods. He stood by her through the blood and tumult in Everett that started last December. He remained her ally right up until the day she was arrested in connection with the two murders in Arivaca, Ariz.

"If she hadn't been able to use me she would have used somebody else," Gilchrist said. "It is so unfortunate because I really thought this person, in spite of her checkered past had, in lieu of a better term, 'found Jesus' and really wanted to be a do-gooder."

Gilchrist said he was oblivious to the behind-the-scenes drama at his 2007 speech in Everett. He'd never met Forde before she e-mailed to arrange his travel. He was impressed by her and her fledgling Minutemen operation and donated the money he was paid to cover his travel expenses to Everett -- cash that actually came from Parris.

Gilchrist gave that money to Forde.

Forde arrived in Gilchrist's life at a time when his running feud with Simcox and other Minutemen leaders left him in need of allies.

He communicated with Forde largely by e-mail, telling her he admired her dedication. Forde praised Gilchrist for being controversial.

"You are a powerful man when in name only you can stir a state," Forde wrote. "I just am amazed sometimes. I've never been attacked so much for a associate. But you are my friend and I'm proud to be associated with you so (expletive) 'em!!"

By early 2008 Gilchrist had made Forde the Minuteman Project's border patrol coordinator. He sent volunteers her way, telling them she "is one tough lady." Forde's role in bringing Gilchrist to Everett was noted in a profile of Minutemen figures around the country prepared by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a high-profile Alabama-based civil-rights watchdog group.

Gilchrist now says his only concerns about Forde revolved around her claims that she was using "undercover" tactics to infiltrate border-area drug traffickers.

"I really thought that she was getting into the wrong crowd and was going to end up murdered," he said.

Gilchrist stood by Forde when her ex-husband was shot, after her reported rape and after her mysterious shooting, when she was wounded in the arm. When The Herald in February revealed Forde's history of childhood felonies and teenage prostitution, Gilchrist said what mattered more was her ability to overcome a troubled past.

"She is no whiner," he wrote at the time. "She is a stoic struggler who has chosen to put country, community and a yearning for a civilized society ahead of avarice and self-glorifying ego."

Gilchrist remained in touch with Forde after she left Everett without giving detectives a chance to question her closely about the attempted murder of her ex-husband.

On the Minuteman Project Web site, Gilchrist continued to post press releases and Forde's dispatches detailing her Arizona border exploits.

One of the last arrived on May 31, just hours after the Arivaca killings.

Forde reported that she and her group had been in "boots on the ground" patrols of the border for eight days and had observed thousands of pounds of dope being smuggled into the country.

"A (sic) American family was murdered 2 days ago including a 9 year old girl," Forde wrote. "Territory issue's (sic) are now spilling over like fire on the US side and leaving Americans so afraid they will not even allow their names to be printed in any press releases."

In a few days Gilchrist began receiving e-mails from a Minuteman in Tucson who had previously let Forde's teenage daughter live at his home. The man asked Gilchrist why a SWAT team had shown up at his door looking for Forde.

"I called her," Gilchrist said. "She was as calm as can be."

Forde told him there was no cause for worry. The man, she said, was a disgruntled former member of her group.

At the same time, though, she was sending out a list of 17 people around the country she wanted contacted if she was arrested or killed. After her arrest, Gilchrist learned he was 10th on her list.

He and Steve Eichler, executive director of the Minuteman Project, almost certainly were among the last people Forde e-mailed before her June 12 arrest. They talked about adding her and her officers to their Web site's list of national Minutemen leaders.

"The border is going to be HOT. Good things to come my brother," Forde wrote Eichler that morning. She was in police handcuffs later that day.

Gilchrist has since scrubbed references to Forde from his Web site. He says she appears to have cloaked her true self behind the Minutemen movement.

Far be it from me to suggest that this might make an interesting story in light of the passage of AB70 and the Tucson shooting. (I won't even bring up the fact that the State Senate president is a neo-Nazi.)But I imagine it might make some conservatives unhappy, so I suppose we shouldn't make trouble.

And speaking of connecting the dots, check out this map.

.

digby 1/22/2011 11:00:00 AM

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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

foreclosure victims

According to the Treasury Department’s schedule, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan met with “leaders of unions, civil rights and minority advocacy groups to discuss the Administration’s foreclosure prevention efforts.” So far, I haven’t found one person active in the foreclosure fraud crisis who even knew about this meeting before this announcement.

But I guess it’s not too surprising, as the crisis is reaching a turning point. Not because repossessions topped 1 million for the first time ever in 2010; that’s not seen as a crisis in political circles, I fear. No, it’s the Ibanez case, and the potential implications for courts across the country, that has everyone’s wheels turning. All of a sudden, Third Way introduces a proposal, aimed at limiting the due process of foreclosure victims, to “solve” a problem they refused to identify previously. Similarly, corporate lawyers at K&L Gates came out with their own spin document. The defenders of the banks keep relying on a very thin reed in the Ibanez decision, where one judge wrote “[w]here a pool of mortgages is assigned to a securitized trust, the executed agreement that assigns the pool of mortgages, with a schedule of the pooled mortgage loans that clearly and specifically identifies the mortgage at issue as among those assigned, may suffice to establish the trustee as the mortgage holder.” They always neglect the next sentence, which reads “However, there must be proof that the assignment was made by a party that itself held the mortgage.” In other words, the banks are flipping forward to assume they can fill in the gaps in recording in between the trades from the originator to the trustee, but they still have to own the loan at some point, and to date in many cases, the banks cannot even establish that minimal requirement. In essence, that’s why we’re all here.

The banks are right to be worried, as evidenced by this flurry of activity. Homeowners and investors alike are getting smarter about the scams that the banks have tried to use in recent years. They are engaged in a more public strategy to identify criminal fraud and dictate the terms of an acceptable settlement. They have studied the games the banks play and know how to point them out to a judge. This is a good example of that.

Ibanez set off the alarm bells among the corporatist sources. But the unlikely allies – foreclosure victims, public interest lawyers, academics, investors – have been ready for this for a while.

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Ken Hoagland, chairman of Restore America’s Voice said, “We have terminated the services of 949 Media after we saw a web report last night detailing prior complaints involving its participation in certain mortgage relief marketing activities.” Hoagland said that 949 Media was a subcontracting vendor “responsible for web consulting but was never tasked with any management or leadership role” within the growing national campaign, as originally reported. “We were unaware of the seriousness of the past issues with this vendor and we have taken immediate action to terminate the relationship. No public official working with us to repeal the healthcare act had any knowledge of nor relationship with any vendor or subcontractor,” said Hoagland.

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Source:http://removeripoffreports.net/

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He and several other high-ranking officials in the organization, including GM Jeff Ireland, seemingly traveled cross country because they felt a sense of urgency with talks between Harbaugh and the 49ers becoming serious.

The Dolphins are going to be a tough franchise to battle for the 49ers. They have some of the deepest pockets in the league. People can say whatever they want about the character of a man or what they might do. It's a lot different when a team is offering you more money than most see in a lifetime.

Even if the 49ers can compete with the Dolphins' offer, which was something to the tune of $7 million, Jed York can't compete in a bidding war with Ross, who is in the top 70 richest people in the world.

The 49ers could give Harbaugh the keys to the franchise. They can remind him he is a superstar in the Bay Area. They can feed him lines about the new stadium, where the franchise is headed, the talent, how much they need him, but he's likely to go with whoever pays him.

The sense of urgency has already allowed Harbaugh to see a salary he might not have even dreamed would come his way. Why wouldn't he just sit back and watch the price tag go up. His best bargaining chip right now is that he is a hot commodity.

Forcing teams to feel like they have to give more and more to reel him in is making them do just that. Nobody is backing off yet, and until teams stop throwing incentives at Harbaugh, he should make everyone believe he is highly interested in everyone.

Until teams start to pull back the reigns, the ball is 100 percent in Harbaugh's court. This will be a fun week for Harbaugh, and he shouldn't cut it short by prematurely signing any deals. The Dolphins looked past the fact they have yet to fire head coach Tony Sparano and throwing record money at him before he coaches one professional game. Other teams may come knocking, and even if they don't, Harbaugh is going to be living comfortably, as one of the league's wealthiest and most powerful coaches.

The privatization argument reveals one problem: even though it would pretty well fix the current SS system, you’d still be left with an unconstitutional mandatory savings program. Even if it were something you could opt out from, it would still be something the federal government shouldn’t administer.

theperfecteconomist on January 11, 2011 at 3:47 PM

Is it really “constitutional” to force taxes on the young to pay retirement benefits to the elderly? Apparently, that question was already answered “yes” in 1935, so there shouldn’t be a constitutional problem. There are also Federal limits on how much a person can deduct from taxable income for investment in an IRA or 401k, and penalties for early withdrawal. The Government regulations incentivize saving for retirement, without actually mandating it.

Payroll taxes for Social Security are already mandatory, so that allowing a person to divert some of the money into a personal account regulated but not managed by the Federal Government would actually increase people’s freedom to choose their retirement.

If there is some concern over the Government’s ability to pay current and near-future retirees, the program could have a limit on the fraction of payroll taxes the person could divert to private accounts, with the limit being higher for younger workers than older workers. This would allow a “phased-in” privatization that would keep current retirees funded, while incentivizing private saving for younger workers. Although this might not seem “fair” favoring the young over the old, this problem has been 75 years in the making, and needs to be phased out gradually in order to avoid hurting any one age group too harshly.

There would be no “mandate” to save, but a CHOICE–where the person could choose how much tax money to invest in private accounts (up to the limit mentioned above) and how much to keep in the Government system. This is a CHOICE not currently available to low-income workers who can’t afford to contribute their own money to IRA’s and 401k’s.

Of course, there needs to be a downside risk: the person’s eventual benefits from the Government program are proportional to the amount of money contributed to it, so that the person forgoes some Government benefits by contributing to the private account, but the person might come out ahead by investing wisely and getting a better return on investment than the Government, with the risk of losing part of the private account if it is invested unwisely.

If enough young workers “opt out” of the Social Security system for private accounts, the eventual debts of the system will be lessened, while billions of new dollars pour into the stock market, thereby stimulating the economy and creating new jobs, with more people financing their own retirement. Over the course of decades, most workers would probably prefer the private accounts, and the mandatory contribution to the Government program could be gradually reduced to only cover those retirees without private savings.

Yeah, this does sound like what Bush wanted to do in 2005, and Democrats “saved” Social Security by doing nothing. Or did they?

Hey America, do you miss Bush yet? The ol’ dumb oil-gushin’ cowboy did have a few good ideas under his Stetson, didn’t he?

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