Basically, the political class is waiting for the civil population to come back to the church of the free market and get over the fact that its cardinals walk in public with no clothes on.

You’re starting to see weird forms of acting-out, neurotic displacement activities. Fetishes, even. Sarah Palin, for instance. I could go on about that woman every day. And so can everybody else, which is why they do.

Genocide has much more proven shelf-appeal than any of these hokum Rube Goldberg geo-schemes. It’s by no means easy to kill off half of everybody, but we’ve already invented a wide variety of ingenious ways to attempt that, and almost all of ‘em are much simpler, more rugged and more plausible than putting the North Pole under a tinfoil hat.

Bruce Sterling’s State of the World 2010

File under: Too long for twitter, too fun to edit

euphoria is a four letter word

Even now, having had time to calm down, I am overwhelmingly pleased that Obama won. Despite early misgivings, the Obama campaign has eventually won me over. Especially this video interview with Joe Biden and some of Obamas later speeches. The sense is there, that this might actually have been an election where it was possible to vote for somebody rather than against somebody else.

prediction is hard. especially about the future

What I would like to do here is to give a brief idea of what Obama would need to do in order to keep this faith. At least as far as I’m concerned. As I see it, there are four major problems facing him at the moment:

1. The way the US is viewed in the rest of the world
2. Keeping the still almost 50% of the US population that didn’t vote for him happy
3. The economy
4. The rest of our problems

plans are easy

Obama has to address all of these things to keep the undeniable momentum he has, and the faith that people have put in him. There are obviously countless ways that these things could be addressed, but I my agenda would be the following:

To get a US led mission out of Iraq as soon as possible. By which I mean within months. Keep troops there, but relinquish all strategic control to the UN. This would go an incredibly long way towards restoring America’s world standing. Especially if it was done in a quick and humble manner.

To push through with the house gains that the democrats have made and the good feeling towards them, a vastly extended universal healthcare program. There will be massive objection to this from the ‘interest’ of the medicine industry, but should he manage to push it through in such a way that benefited the average American, I cannot believe that once it was in operation it would have any other outcome than to consolidate the moderates he has won over, and also quite possibly to win new voters of the disillusioned republican variety.

To commit America to more renewable energy and reductions in greenhouse gasses than is currently thought possible. This would also be a hugely positive move in terms of world opinion and establishing America in the position that she seems to want to take. America is a hugely inventive and highly developed (technologically speaking) country. If anyone will rise to the challenge, it will be them, and for the first time they have a leader with enough political capital and enough of a mandate to make it happen.

And then comes the task of sorting the economy. For which I have no solid propositions to offer with regards to how it can be ’sorted’. Possibly, if you were committed to radical green policies as above then you could begin to operate a New New Deal type program whereby you partially state-sponsored both research into the development & deployment of green technologies, and also the improvement of existing practices. As an industry, if backed by serious tax breaks, the energy efficiency industry could be massive.

[cynicism]

In truth I suspect that very few if any of these things will happy in a way that I will be able to endorse wholeheartedly & without strong reservations. Just for the minute though, I am still happy to hope.

love regards etc

April 24, 1961

Dear Mr Goodman :

I received the first annual report of the Franklin Corporation and though I am not an expert at reading balance sheets, my financial advisor, (who, I assure you, knows nothing) nodded his head in satisfaction.

You wrote that you hope I am not one of those borscht circuit stockholders who get a few points’ profit and hastily scrams for the hills. For your information, I bought Alleghany Preferred eleven years ago and am just now going through the process of disposing of it.

As a brand new member of your family, strategically you made a ghastly mistake in sending me individual pictures of the Board of Directors. Mr Roth, Chairman of the Board, merely looks sinister. You, the president, look like a hard worker with not too much on the ball. No one named Prosswimmer can possibly be a success. As for Samuel A. Goldblith, Ph.D., head of Food Technology at M.I.T., he looks as though he had eaten too much of the wrong kind of fodder.

At this point I would like to stop and ask you a question about Marion Harper Jr. To begin with, I immediately distrust any man who has the same name as his mother. But the thing that most disturbs me about Junior is that I don’t know what the hell he’s laughing at. Is it because he sucked me into this Corporation? This is not the kind of face that inspires confidence in a nervous and jittery stockholder.

George S. Sperti, I dismiss instantly. Any man who is the President of an outfit called Institutum Divi Thomae will certainly bear watching. Is he trying to imopress stockholders with his knowledge of Latin? If so, why doesn’t he read, “Winnie ille Pu”? James J. Sullivan, I am convinced, is Paul E. Prosswimmer photographed from a different angle.

Offhand, I would say that I have summed up your group fairly accurately. I hope, for my sake, that I am mistaken.

In closing, I warn you, go easy with my money. i am in an extremely precarious profession whose livelihood depends upon a fickle public.

Sincerely yours,
Groucho Marx
(temporarialy at liberty)

This letter is found in The Groucho Letters which are excellent, and moreover the only truly sound investment I can think of in these Troubled Times. [non-affiliatelinkage]

Should anyone have/find copies of the photographs in question, I would be fascinated. My searches have been fruitles.

Love, regards, etc