Das Lied zum Sonntag

High Places - Jump In

If you never take the first step,
You cannot go too far.
I'm sure you know that!
You strike me as a smart kid
And you've got big plans,
And big dreams,
And big big goals.
So get a move on
Jump in

Hey
We're jumpin' in
Today
It begins

And oooh I'm so impressed
'Cause you have done your best
And we will get so much done
Before this day is done

If we never take the first step,
We cannot go too far.
Let's get a move on
Jump in

[very effectively used in the sixth episode of British teen drama "Skins"]

But who watches the Watchers?

So yesterday I went out to see "Watchmen". What I though about the movie was immediatly copied to cellar door, although there is still some uncertainty on my part whether this is more on the "The Incredible Four" or "The Dark Knight" (it just seemed very much removed from all the things concerning us in the 21st Century, very much unlike "V for Vendetta") - but I got a chance to see the trailer for JJ Abrams Star Trek movie. Now, in some previous post either here or over at cellar door I mentioned that as a Deep Space Nine fan, watching a movie about the early adult years of the classic crew is kind of hard, since I would rather see what happens to Sisko, Kira, Odo, Ezri Dax and the rest, but we Trekkies cope with such small betrayals. Seeing the trailer for a Star Trek movie for what I think is the first time EVER felt kind of great. I felt about as giddy as I did when I was the only one laughing (among the ten or so people with us, "Watchmen doesn't to so well box-office-wise) when "All Along the Watchtower" played. I am a geek. And Gabriel Gray in "Star Trek" is kinda awesome, I have to admit, so maybe I'll just adapt. Holding a grudge after ten years of potential coping is kinda stupid anyways. So, these are two movies I totally look forward to:

Star Trek XI



Harry Potter - The Half-Blood Prince

Good acting is when you are nothing like your character

I know, no politics. Just one small thing: AIG is now AIU, so I guess the economy is saved and we can go happily into a shiny future. The "U" stands for "Underwriters". A very good choice. My first association was "The Undertaker" - who, back when I actually did watch Wrestling at 11 or 12, was the really bad guy.

What I meant to say was: The Guardian has a very nice interview with actress Catherine Keener. Read this paragraph and tell me if you can picture the very cold and reserved Maxine from Spike Jonze's "Being John Malkovich". I couldn't for the life of me, and that makes her an amazing actress that deserves leading roles.

"Sure enough, five minutes into our interview, Keener takes three sachets of sugar, meant for her coffee, and tips them into her soup. "Oh my god, I just poured all my sugar into my lunch! Fuck! I am such a klutz!" She leans over to one side until her head is almost on the table, and laughs a rich, dirty laugh; her eyes narrow and there's that giant wraparound smile so familiar from her movies."

Guardian: "I found my spot", March 26, 2009

This fits perfectly with the second thing that came up this week: Portia deRossi tends to play very, very cold and occasionally wacky characters (like Nelle in "Ally McBeal" and Lindsay in "Arrested Development"). Here she finally comes clean about how sorry she is for causing all those horrible inconveniences for homophobic nutjobs. And that one poor dog.

A couple of new releases by well-established artists for Spring.

Sorry for the missing Watchlist - it will be back next week, I just haven't gotten around to make one on the weekend.

I got a chance to listen to the new Thermals-record already, and... it is amazing. It carried me through the day, or rather, pushed me like that one good friend you have that always tells you to finally get up and get your shit together. For some reason I was really afraid that "Now We Can See" would disappoint me, especially since the previous record was so good, but it did not. You can listen to the title-giving song "Now We Can See" on several music blogs (for example here on Stereogum). There is a big chance that this will be my personal record of the year, and yeah, I'm willing to say that in March.

PJ Harvey's new record is called "A Woman A Man Walked By". It will come out tomorrow or the day after, and there is already a video out for the first single, featuring an inflatable bouncing castle.

PJ Harvey & John Parish - Black Hearted Love



And finally a surprise. I like the Decemberists, but not enthusiastically. On their previous record "The Crane Wife", Colin Meloy was joined by Laura Veirs to sing a ballad about a dead soldier during the Civil War - and seriously, Veirs might as well have sung the contents of some catalogue, the voice alone makes me tune in, but I love songs that tell a story, and The Decemberists are the masters of storytelling. On their new record, "The Hazards of Love", they tell a rather long, complicated one, that has a murderous husband, a frightening Queen (the part is sung by Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond), and a shapeshifting lover. The song below reminded me of a terrifying Violent Femmes-song called "The Country Death Song", also a first-person narrative about a murderous father. PopMatters goes as far as comparing the record to "Mulholland Drive".

The Decemberists - The Rake's Song

Some Thoughts About the AIG-Bonus-Outrage

"Administration aides know this outrage can go too far. If the president stokes too much outrage, he'll have a tougher time asking for more tax money for future bailouts of banks and other industries. But, as it was explained to me by an administration adviser, it is impossible for the president not to show that he's outraged. If he didn't, he'd lose credibility, which would eventually hurt his ability to sell future bailouts and his budget."

Slate: Anger Management, March 18, 2009

I've considered why I did not blog about the financial crisis this week. Usually, there is some tiny bit of information I find in the news which seems worthwile to add to this little collection of messages of doom. This week, all I found were articles written about the 165 million dollar bonuses paid to AIG managers, which I did, as everybody else, find shocking, but after considering the incredibly high bonuses paid to people who worked on Wall Street during that time of doom, I was neither surprised, nor, for that matter, considered this a matter that would really decide whether or not the current US policies to fight the crisis worked or not
After AIG (American International Group) found itself faced with the liquidity crisis back in September, it was bailed out by the Federal Reserve, in exchange for a 77,9 % equity stake. Now, according to yesterday's Planet Money Podcast, this doesn't exactly mean that the goverment owns almost 80 % of AIG, and can therefore do whatever it pleases with the company. Instead, those 77,9 % belong to a trust that is run by three trustees.

"Their compensation was disclosed today in the trust agreement released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The trustees, selected last week, will make all decisions about how to manage taxpayers’ 77.9% equity stake and decide when to sell the government’s shares, which the U.S. received in mid-September for bailing out the insurance giant.
The three trustees are Jill Considine, former chairman of Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.; Chester Feldberg, former chairman of Barclays Americas; and Douglas Foshee, chief executive of El Paso Corp. While they won’t sit on AIG’s board, they will have all rights of AIG shareholders — including decisions about corporate governance to represent the equity stake."

WSJ, January 22, 2009

Now, it is argued that the bonuses are a contractual requirement - which naturally raises the question of why it can be an contractual obligation to pay bonuses to manager who have failed on such a spectacularly high level - but a contract is a contract, right? I understand the public outrage. There is even an argument to be made that all these public hearings serve a purpose - I guess it's supposed to be some kind of cartharsis for enraged citizens - but on the other hand, it is also kind of troubling that the entire Obama-administration just spent one week of very, very valuable time explaining 165 million dollar bonuses and trying to find ways to get them back. After all, what about those 400 billion dollars (the first part of the TARP money paid out before Obama came into office) that seem to have gone into a very black hole? What about the auto industry?
So, on the one hand, this is important because it points out one of the basic reason for the entire crisis: what happens when an entire system run by greed and irresponsibility is not sufficiently controlled, not by government agencies or the personal responsibility of the actors involved - but on the other hand, it seems like one big distraction from the real, enormous problems the Obama administration faces.

NY Times: House Approves 90% Tax on Bonuses After Bailouts, March 19, 2009
NY Times: Many in Government Knew Weeks Ago About A.I.G. Bonuses, March 19, 2009
Economist: Cranking up the outrage-o-meter, March 19, 2009
Financial Times: AIG chief urges staff to return bonuses, March 18, 2009
New Yorker: The A.I.G. Bonuses and Altruistic Punishment, March 18, 2009

Jetz kömma sehn

I believe that I mentioned the new Thermals record, which will be out on April 7 -it is called "Now We Can See" and I can barely wait, since their last release is still one of my favourite records in my collection. They just played a couple of songs at the South by Southwest Festival which I mentioned in an earlier post, and here are a couple of lines written about that performance:

"But everything jumped up a notch with the Thermals, a Portland trio that demonstrated that elemental three-piece rock, accompanied by proper conviction, can approach majesty, or at least bliss under a metal roof. An incantatory “Now We Can See” included chanting from the bassist Kathy Foster, whose vigorous playing and a bouncing rock-fro were performance art in the best sense of the term."

New York Times Arts Blog, March 19, 2009

According to the "All Songs Considered" Podcast that is currently covering the festival, singer Hutch Harris performed in his underwear, with the word "slut" written over his chest. That, of course, is a reference to "Arrested Development", and therefore makes one of my favourite bands even more awesome than I already thought them to be [even better, naturally, would have been "virgin" across the forehead, but I guess that reference would be too British teenager for a Portland-band].

[oh, and if you were wondering what I did while my wisdom tooth was amost killing me: I watched tons of old Buffy-episodes, because I've never really obsessively regarded every detail of the first four seasons before. Just one more thing I can check on that list I have.]

...

Whee, vanilla icecream.
Anyway, I totally wronged my poor dentist in the last post. The tooth is getting better each day, I can almost open my mouth all the way again, and yay, I'll have one more potential tooth at 90, should I ever reach that age.
I promise that there will be more actual real content-filled posts next week. Stuff happened, and stuff.

...

Wenn der Zahnarzt Sachen sagt wie "da müssen Sie sich durchbeißen" und dann extra keine Schmerzmittel verschreibt, obwohl ich den verdammten Weisheitszahn einfach nur raus haben wollte, wurscht ob ich dankbar für seine Existenz sein werde wenn ich 90 und beinahe zahnlos bin, ist das wieder ein weiterer Beweis für meine Unfähigkeit, zu sagen, was ich will. Jetzt zum Beispiel jemanden, der mir erklärt, wie ich essen soll, wenn ich den Mund nur noch 1/3 aufkriege. GAAAAAAH.

Das Lied zum Sonntag

Portishead - Roads


[live recording from the Roseland, NYC concert in 1997, available on record and on DVD]

Oh, can't anybody see,
We've got a war to fight,
Never found our way,
Regardless of what they say.
How can it feel, this wrong,
From this moment,
How can it feel, this wrong.

Storm,
In the morning light,
I feel,
No more can I say,
Frozen to myself.
I got nobody on my side,
And surely that ain't right,
Surely that ain't right.

Oh, can't anybody see,
We've got a war to fight,
Never found our way,
Regardless of what they say.
How can it feel, this wrong,
From this moment,
How can it feel, this wrong.
How can it feel this wrong,
From this moment,
How can it feel, this wrong.

Oh, can't anybody see,
We've got a war to fight,
Never found our way,
Regardless of what they say.
How can it feel, this wrong,
From this moment,
How can it feel, this wrong.

[on "Dummy", 1994]

...

Today there was a postcard in the mailbox from a place that is about as close to the North Pole as you can get while still being on solid ground rather than ice.
It's pretty cool.
And it reminded me of the fact that no matter how bad the economy gets, how much politics anger me and make me afraid, there is always something to fall back to, something that makes my heart beat just a bit faster.
And that is the most amazing thing in the world.
That is all.

Cheerful prospects

"Some observers, such as Emmanuel Todd, a French sociologist, are predicting the end of democracy, or at least its significant erosion, as populist rightwing leaders including Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy become increasingly demagogic and authoritarian. Others forecast a reversion to nationalism and protectionism as countries abandon the European ideal and look to defend their own.
In this view, the EU may increasingly be seen as part of the problem rather than the solution, the “Trojan horse of globalisation” in the words of Mr Sarkozy. Along with other national leaders, he has been spearheading the response to the crisis, leaving Brussels bureaucrats to fret about infringements to state aid and competition rules and the trashing of the eurozone’s fiscal rules."

Financial Times: Agitation as middle-class Europe struggles to cope, March 11, 2009

The Financial Times now has a section called "The Future of Capitalism". I just fought my way through a very interesting SWP-paper titled "Globale Ordnungspolitik am Scheideweg", more than 100 pages long and focusing on how the crisis affects some countries (US, European Union, China, India, Russia, Brasil, Mexico, the Gulf States, South Africa) and on some policy fields that might be essential (a new financial system, energy, the prospect of a food crisis especially in Africa, climate change). I highly recommend it, but it's in German.
One of the main points of the paper is that the countries least hit by the crisis (especially China) are in that position because there economy is mostly dependent on their home market, the banks have a legal obligation to a high rate of capital resources (Eigenkapital?), diverse exports and not just raw materials (which is Russia's problem), a small number of foreign capital credits and they were not involved in the financial schemes and the US housing market.

Also, the elves were bothering them a bit

One of the more fascinating points Michael Lewis makes in his fascinating story about Iceland after the crash (which I mentioned yesterday) is how closely connected the willingness to take risks is to the fact that the risk taking part of financing industry was mostly dominated by men. Apparantly, men are more confident in their ability to make rational choices, and they make riskier decisions the less women are actually involved. Consequently, Iceland now has its first lesbian prime minister (I'll just let that stand there like that, since I always feel like laughing out loud whenever an article written by a guy indicates that this is going to be the solution to the problem...)
Anyway. Apart from being written as if the author had been to the zoo and witnessed a very particular species of men, one more aggressive and primal than the average American, this is a very good explanation of what might have happened in Iceland in 2003.
This is one aspect of the crisis I have avoided so far. Of course it is an individual problem: people spending money they will never earn. And this is not just an American problem: I could pick people from my circle of friends and take them as a perfect example for this, and then just assume that this applies to the system at large as well as the individual. How come that countries such as China have enormous excess amount of money in their budget (I bet there is a better way to translate "Budgetüberschuss" - any ideas?) and therefore the ability to finance entire wars, while the standard of living in so-called developed nations increased and increases? Naturally, as a political scientist it is easier for me to suggest policies or to critisize approaches attempted by governments than to point out the underlying problem of the crisis.
I believe that the government is able to fix faults in a system. I don't believe that it can, at least not in a short-term, fix problems located in every single one of their citizens. Try to imagine being in Iceland right now: your currency is worth about one third of what it used to be worth, it's likely that it won't even exist in a couple of months, your country's debt is at about 850 % of the GDP, and the economy is based on an idea that has just lost any validity. And only half a year ago, you were the best-ranked country on the Human Development Index. So what the frack happened?
In his article, Lewis draws a parallel between the Icelandic fishing business, where taking risks is essential to success, and what later happened in the financial industry, when the very same people who had previously stood on the decks of ships to catch fish all of a sudden were traders. I felt alienated by the way he occasionally described these people like a foreign species, but on the other hand, this is exactly the way everybody who still works on Wall Street seems to me - the arrogance involved in demanding more bail-out money and then going to Vegas, or buying private jets, or getting bonuses. In short - I do not understand this crisis on the individual level, or I don't want to understand how people can become like this. And probably this would feel differently if it was more women involved in this, female Madoffs, so that it would be more difficult to link this to some kind of evolutionary male behaviour of aggressive competion and ruthlesness (although I believe that if we looked at the language previously used to describe exactly this group of high-risk traders, it would turn out to be a narrative of male domination and competitiveness). Or, as Rachel Maddow puts it: I need some talking down here.

It's well-argued but I think I'll still run with the greed-theory

Richard M. Salsman says that the welfare state and a socialist banking system are to blame for the financial crisis, and that blaming human greed is plainly wrong. Not to be ironic here, but does altruism really explain Madoff, or rather, is what Madoff did OK because his customers should have known better and it was his very right to make other people's stupidity his business plan (oh, and here is the widely read and praised article about Iceland's meltdown by Michael Lewis, in Vanity Fair. It tries to explain how tiny Iceland became a financial center and then, well, crashed)?

"From a state monopoly on money, to state guarantees of bank liabilities, to state sponsorship of mortgages, to state ownership of banks—the progression in the past century has been to move away from free markets toward socialist banking. Why? The fundamental answer is: altruism. The fitful, halting lurches toward ever greater government intervention in American finance follow logically from the altruistic premise that permeates our culture and resounds throughout the halls of power—the premise that being moral consists in self-sacrificially serving those in need. The welfare state and its main financier, the Federal Reserve, are ultimately “justified” on the grounds that the government has a moral duty to provide the needy with goods and services—from education to health insurance to mortgages."

The Objective Standard, Spring 2009 Edition

A couple of bands for Spring

After another fantastic podcast provided by All Songs Considered, once again featuring former Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein, I've discovered a couple of fantastic new bands. The show was about the upcoming SXSW (South by Southwest) music festival in Austin, Texas, an annual music and film festival, one of the largest of its kind in the United States. The official website of this year's event is here.

The first band is a group of nine from Albany, New York. They're called Sgt Dunbar & the Hobo Banned. One of the tracks of their MySpace-page has a genius title: "A March Through Charles Mingus' Garbage Pile"

Sgt Dunbar & the Hobo Banned - Weight



This is a band called Explode Into Colors, a self declared Dub/Punk trio from Portland, Oregon.



Finally from the acts I discovered on All Songs Considered yesterday, The Entrance Band from California. This sounds like it came straight from the Sixties.

The Entrance Band - Grim Reaper Blues



In other news (though also mentioned in the podcast, but I knew this before), one of my favourite singers, Mirah, has released a new record called "(a)spera". She came out with a collection of previously unreleased songs last year ("The Old Days Feeling") but this is new material. The newly layouted Pitchfork reviewed it yesterday and uses the phrase "deftly placed vocal harmonies that recall early Cat Power". Because this is the way its going to be from now on: there is a clear distinction between the early and the current Cat Power, one that might be almost impossible to bridge.

Cursive, a band I discovered because they were on the same lable as Bright Eyes (Saddle Creek) back in 2003 but who have actually been active since 1995, released a new record called "Mama, I'm Swollen". It's a follow-up to their 2006 album "Happy Hollow" which I enjoyed, although the angry criticism of religious dogmatism wasn't quite a match to The Thermals geniusly unsettling portrait of a fictional religious fascist state on "The Body, The Blood, The Machine". I enjoyed the record when I first listened to it but it doesn't quite live up to previous ones, especially "Domestica" and their masterpiece "The Ugly Organ". My favourite song is "Mama, I'm Satan" - with the lines "The world was built on ego, was built on slaves, was built on a tickle between our legs / come on you big strong men, you wouldn't have it any other way".

And, to round it up, an accidental discovery: Jeffrey Lewis' Quick Biography of Barack Obama.

Das Lied zum Sonntag

Stop wasting life on meaningless things! Oh, and careful, this one is pretty loud.

Le Tigre - The The Empty


[unofficial video]

The stars are getting in and out of automobiles
And we keep wondering when we're gonna feel something real
Keep waiting for a Santa that will never come
A real party not just people who're faking fun
But everything gets erased before it's even said
And all that glitters isn't gold when inside it's dead

All that glitter is not gold
All that glitter is not gold
All that glitter is not gold
All that glitter is not gold

I went to your concert and I didn't feel anything
I went to your concert and I didn't hear anything
I went to your concert and I didn't feel anything
I went to your concert and I didn't see anything

(Oh Baby) Why won't you talk to me?
(Oh Baby) You just want me empty!
(Oh Baby) You don't say anything!
(Oh Baby) Why won't you answer me?

All that glitter is not gold
All that glitter is not gold
All that glitter is not gold
All that glitter is not gold

I sat through your movie but I didn't see anything.
I went to your comedy club and didn't laugh at all.
I went to your movie and I didn't hear anything.
I went to your concert and there was nothing going on.
You don't say
You don't say
You don't say anything.......

[on "Le Tigre", 1999]

About Guinea-Bissau - A Fourth Attempt

"Army troops shot and killed the president of the tiny West African country of Guinea-Bissau early Monday, apparently in reprisal for a bomb attack that killed the army chief of staff the night before, according to diplomats in the region.Guinea-Bissau is one of Africa’s poorest countries.
The president, João Bernardo Vieira, was killed around 5 a.m. in an attack outside his house. Army troops blamed him for the death of the army chief, Gen. Batista Tagme Na Wai, in an explosion on Sunday night, diplomats said.
“Nobody knows who is in charge,” said one diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under customary diplomatic rules. “Nobody knows what the army will do.”

NY Times: Soldiers Kill Guinea-Bissau’s President After Death of Army Chief, Diplomats Say, March 2, 2009

Guinea-Bissau gained independency from Portugal in 1974. It has an estimated population of 1.586 million, is bordered by Guinea and Senegal. There was a civil war in 1998 and 1999, a military coup in 2003 followed by parliamentary and presidential elections in the following years, that brought to power recently assassinated president Viera.
Guinea-Bissau is one of the poorest African countries: 2/3rds of the population live in poverty, a per capita GDP of 484 Dollars (I'll introduce a new term now: the "Purchasing Power Parity" is the GDP corrected by equalizing the purchasing power, or shorter and simply, taking into account the prize level of the country in estimating the GDP - and therefore providing better data for comparing the standard of living) and ranks 171 among the 179 countries on the Human Development Index list. In July 2009, the International Crisis Group released a report predicting that it might soon become a so-called "narc state" - since the trade of heroin (as a transit point between Latin America and Europe) undermines the power of the state and might make it a haven for terrorism. The report is very interesting to read: it blames the lack of administrative structure built during Portuguese rule.

"Consequently, the country’s infrastructure, bureaucracy, administration, political institutions and human- and social-development indexes remain largely unaltered since the first years of independence."

It calls for a reform of the military structures of the country: in a way already predicting what happened in March 2009. As reported by African newspapers, speaker of Parliament Pereira has assumed the role of interim President. Both assassinations (of the President and the Army Chief of Staff) were condemned by both the African Union and the UN Security Council. The statement of the latter mentions the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission, an avisory body founded to assure that countries emerging from war or civil war do not slide back into chaos.

Afrik: Guinea-Bissau: Military chief killed, President follows suit, March 2, 2009
Afrol News: Bissau’s interim president affirms democratic rule, March 4, 2009

The germ-metaphor ends here.

One show I have never mentioned before is "IT Crowd", a British sitcom. Sadly, embedding is disabled for the clips but here are two dealing with the internet (which, by the way, "doesn't weigh anything", duh)

Friendface.
The Black Box.

It is a bit like "The Big Bang Theory", with the premise that some people are so painfully awkwardly geeky that they are unable to lead a life anywhere outside the physics department or the underground IT offices.
You can watch clips of the show and possibly entire episodes (I am no sure about that and too lazy to try it out, sorry) here.
Also, I am starting to get into teen comedy/drama series "Skins", because just like the sadly discontinued "Sugar Rush", for some ominous reason British depictions of growing up are much more truthful and edgy than the American family-friendly version (or rather, drugs and sex are not issues, but part of the everyday life, and there isn't a Public Service Announcement sticker on every freaking things, since you figure out that some things might not be such a good idea entirely on your own). Also, a show that has songs by Electrelane and Cat Power really can't be bad, right? I might be a bit less afraid of the future if more people got into this than "OC California". I would be even happier if, at some point in the future, something like this could happen in Austria. But then, there is no tradition in making good tv shows in this country, and the ORF certainly won't go there now, unless it can make this happen with about the same amount of money I spend weekly on groceries (considering that the closest they got recently is "Tschuschenpower", a five-parter that was delayed until March 30, this isn't even a bad thing).
This feels like an odd argument to make: that European shows can actually risk more and be more edgy in their depiction than American ones when everything is different here (I had the same problem when considering the effects of the Proposition 8 debacle - because even repealing gay marriage is already one step further than we ever got here) .

The Neocons are going to love that one

"President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday
The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles."

NY Times: Obama Offered Deal to Russia in Secret Letter, March 2, 2009

This is one of the first definite signs that the State Department is going to carry more weigh in foreign policy, after eight years of being the the small shadow of the Defense Department. Remember her first day, when she was greeted like a liberator after a long period of tyranny?



I wonder what the Russian reaction will be. This doesn't really fit the "it's an anarchy out there and nobody is profiting from cooperation" frame of mind (dubbed, for some odd reason, "realism").
Ah, and just for the fun of it: a couple of days ago Rachel Maddow noted that everything has happened before, on "The West Wing" (she was referring to Peter Orszag's, the geek overlord of the budget, attempt to light a fire in a blocked fireplace, which is what Sam and Josh attempted with similar results). Well, back on "The West Wing", the defense shield was the pet project of the poster-child realist (Leo McGarry, then Chief of Staff). And it absolutely did not work, which is why consequently, the President was hesitant to fund it with billions of more dollars. It's costly, it does not solve any of the underlying problems, and it might not even work.

"Die Zeit der Heuchler ist vorbei, und ihrer Tyrannei", wait, what?

"Kärnten hat gewählt, Hochrechnungen wurden bereits veröffentlicht, jetzt ist das Endergebnis da. Demnach erreicht das BZÖ hat [sic] bei der Landtagswahl 45,48 Prozent der Stimmen und steht damit als klarer Wahlsieger fest. Die SPÖ, die sich Hoffnungen auf die Nummer eins im Lande gemacht hat, ist abgestürzt und hat nur noch 28,59 Prozent. Zweiter Sieger neben den Orangen ist die ÖVP, die auf 16,50 Prozent zugelegt hat. Die Grünen sind vorläufig aus dem Landtag geflogen, die FPÖ ist gescheitert."

DerStandard: Erdrutschsieg für BZÖ, Debakel für SPÖ, FPÖ und Grüne raus, 1. März 2009

Zynisch würde man zu dem Ergebnis meinen, dass 45,48 % der Kärntner der Meinung sind, dass die einzig guten Politiker verstorbene sind. Aber keine Sorge: Gerüchteweise ist es anderswo sowieso schöner, und heutzutage muss man flexibel sein, was den Wohnort betrifft. Time to hit the road!