You're the man now dog!

America's craziest octogenarian senator is back making history.(fn1)

This time he's insisting that he "hasn't been convicted of anything" because, despite the jury voting to convict him on seven counts of corruption, he isn't technically convicted until the judge enters final sentence. That's... wow. Just... wow.

Even better he calls the guilty verdict a "temporary situation."(fn2) You know what else is a temporary situation? Your being a member of the Senate, Senator. How can I be so sure? Because the leader of your party's senate delegation has said there is a 100% chance the Senate will vote to expel you if you get re-elected. Just to be clear, that's the captain of your team telling you to screw off.

But man, what I wouldn't give to have one of the t-shirts his supporters printed up to greet him upon his return to Alaska: "F**k the Feds, Vote for Ted!" Awesome.(fn3)

(fn1) It is perhaps indicative of a general decline in our political system that there are actually enough crazy octogenarian senators that this is a contest. You might not think it's a contest but then you didn't spend a month one summer sitting on the floor of the Senate listening to Senator Byrd (D. - Crazy) give about a 20 part lecture on ancient Roman battles and politics. (fn4) Not, keep in mind, because it related to any pending business of the senate in particular but just because you are allowed to talk about whatever you want during "Morning Business" in the Senate and the man loves his antiquity. Possibly because he was there.

(fn2) How can one let the phrase "temporary situation" slide by without reference to the classic Parliament song about DC "Chocolate City" in which appears the line "they still call it the White House but that's a temporary situation C.C."? One cannot.

(fn3) Awesome as this shirt is, it must be considered only the second most awesome political shirt I've ever seen. Number one? That would be the shirt sported by the young lad sitting opposite my girl and me as we journeyed down to DC by train one St. Patrick's day. The shirt was green and had "I (shamrock) Bob" on it. Apparently it was the St. P's day wear for some congressional hopeful named Bob.

(fn4) Complete with elaborate visual aids that had been printed up. Your tax dollars at work. Not that this was even close to the most extravagant waste of tax dollars ever perpetrated by the esteemed Sen. Byrd. But still.

Anticipation!

Almost 3:00! Can't wait to find out which way those crazy, crazy traders are going to jump today!

Here's Mr. Tom Petty giving a voice to current market conditions.

Music soothes...

Recently I've been listening to two albums almost exclusively.

One is the debut from Vampire Weekend, a band of Columbia grads.

They've apparently been described as "the whitest band" by Stuff White People Like author Christian Lander as well as "trust-fund frat rock" by other musicians.

This is probably true. It is difficult to imagine over-estimating the snobby eliteness of a band with songs named for obscure punctuation terminology (the excellent "Oxford Comma"), bizarre architectural details (the also excellent "Mansard Roof") or that uses African pop-music influences to construct a song about WASPY summertime activities (the very excellent "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa").

They've also got a song called "M79" about taking the crosstown bus to meet up with your lady. I've been lucky to always date within my side of the city but being a man-of-the-people, I've taken various crosstown buses -- including the M79 -- many, many times. (fn1)

The songs "A-Punk" and "Campus" are also very good.

The other album I've been listening to, though perhaps somewhat less than Vampire Weekend, is "Under the Blacklight" by Rilo Kiley.

Rilo Kiley is an LA band whose lead singer, Jenny Lewis, was the female lead in the childhood advertising classic The Wizard.

My favorite songs on the Rilo Kiley album are "The Moneymaker" (fn2), the jaunty "Smoke Detector"(fn3), and "15". (fn4)

The songs "Close Call" and "Breakin' Up" are also pretty decent, though you kind of have to be in the mood for them. (fn5)

Both of these albums are many months old, of course, since I am now middle-aged and thus hopelessly behind the times. Such is life.

(fn1) Note that bus-taking is not Stuff White People Like, as evidenced by a friend of mine who is the George Wallace of anti-bus-bigotry and who gets upset when I reference stuff we've talked about without referencing his name. So: WFA. There.

(fn2) The video for which features real, live pornstars! Just to keep the blog's prostitution vibe going...

(fn3) A song that sounds like a slightly dirtied-up early 60's dance tune.

(fn4) The subject matter of which is fairly wrong. And by "fairly", I mean "very". Especially considering that it was penned by a female former child-star.

(fn5) But then again, I suppose that's kind of true for all music, to some degree. Does the song exist that you appreciate hearing regardless of current mental state? I would posit that it does not. There are many songs which have tremendous power to alter mental state, but I would think that even those require certain baseline mental states to be effective. That is, you're not going to go to pieces for "Danny Boy" if you're in the middle of a murderous rage. (fn6)

(fn6) Or ever, if you're me, as I use that song mostly to humorously jibe my friend Danny. (fn7)

(fn7) Wow, I've really kind of gone nuts with the footnotes this time out, huh? Perhaps I'll join a group.

New Guns for Criminals Program

Caught a story on NY1 last night about the expansion to Manhattan of a gun buyback program that has apparently been running in Brooklyn for a little while.

I'd just like to point out that gun buyback programs are indisputably stupid. They are a classic example of having good intentions and designing a government program that seems to straightforwardly advance those intentions but actually works precisely to undermine them.

When you buy guns you are enlarging the demand for guns. This increases the value of guns. This will increase the amount of guns supplied. Period.

Imagine it for any other non-gun thing and you will immediately see that it's true. In this excellent post an economist makes exactly this point using sneakers as the example. If the government decided to buy back sneakers, would we expect to see fewer people wearing sneakers afterwards? Or would we expect people to take the chance to sell their old, crappy sneakers and use the money to buy new, nice sneakers?

Why would we expect the same program targeting guns to have any different result?

The best part is that the success of this lunacy is judged based on how many guns they manage to buy. Awesome. You are tallying up the number of people who like to buy guns to whom you have given money to upgrade their gun. Well done.

Tee-hee

I think I was at this same wedding... (fn1)
(fn1) Fun Fact about me that you might not know: I love advice columns. Love 'em. I only have two that I read regularly now but that has gone as high as five at various points when I find ones I like.

Line of the Day

George Will today:

The almost erotic pleasure of spending money that others have earned and saved is one reason people put up with the tiresome aspects of political life.

True.

One, two, three o'clock... three o'clock rock?

So the Dow took a nosedive right at 3:00 again today. There seems to be a definite pattern of enormous volatility -- usually a price drop -- popping up right at 3:00.

I have no idea what's driving that, just that it's weird.

In other, happy news, I promise to have some more posts soon. I realize I've been light lately.

What can I say, the realization that my blog's readership is up 300% has left me with a bit of performance anxiety...

That said, I've got at least one longish, serious-ish post I'm noodling. And when I get some time to read the NY Times you just know there'll be something to kvetch about. It's the nature of the beast.