Ann Coulter is being treated like a real intellectual. Several universities, including Kansas University and Vanderbilt University, invited her to speak, as if Republican Barbie on Crack were a deep thinker.

You can call Ann Coulter a lot of things, but you certainly cannot call her an intellectual. A writer who constantly bungles her research and who thinks that quantity trumps quality in the matter of footnotes is not an intellectual. Big diff.

At least some students at KU and Vanderbilt weren't fooled. The folks at Sadly, No! covered the Ann Coulter's Kansas Bonanza. Coulter, one of the loudest chickenhawks before the war in Iraq, felt so threatened by hecklers that she asked, "Could 10 of the largest College Republicans start walking up and down the aisles and start removing anyone shouting ... Otherwise, this lecture is over."

Sadly No! responded by posting images of KU's finest Young Republicans. In short, even if these gents came to her defense, Weak Lil' Ann was on her own.

At Vanderbilt, Republican Barbie on Crack probably wanted protection from her speaking partner. The organizers paired her with Al Sharpton. Sharpton is by no means an intellectual, but he has a wit that rivals Dorothy Parker and Oscar Wilde.

In short, Ann got her ass whupped.

The Nashville Scene described the audience's shock that Ann wasn't ... well ... more intellectual and more prepared to spar with Sharpton. One audience member who is a proud George II supporter said, "I voted Bush and I can support Bush, but the mean-spiritedness that came out of Ann Coulter was just shocking ... When Al Sharpton starts making the most sense, that gets scary."

Does the comment from the George II supporter mean - is there a hope? - that Coulter is alienating her audience?

The Scene compared Coulter to Tony Clifton, one of Andy Kaufman's most annoying, most unfunny personas. (Sadly, No! would agree because they think Ann is really Dan after a bad sex change.) She's not even a good comedian! Vanderbilt and KU would have had greater intellectual content and better jokes if they called in Carrot Top.

Posted by Pepper at 07:16 PM | Permalink

Terri Schiavo died this morning. It's shameful that her body was dragged out before the public for people to debate. Ideally, the entire nation - including her parents - should let her memory rest along with her body.

Out of respect, Daily Pepper is dropping the subject of poor Terri effective immediately, but we won't drop the issues the Schiavo case raised - which indicates that our current government values some lives more than others.

Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, who usually spends most of his column space debating himself, came through with a summary of questions that must be answered before the religious right tries to choose who should live and who should die. Here's what he had to say:

"... the president said that the government 'ought to err on the side of life.' Fine, but whose life? The inmate who might not be guilty? The poor people across the country denied organ transplants (and thus life) because Medicaid - increasingly under the Bush budget knife - won't cover them? The poor people across the world starving to death because we won't go along with Tony Blair when it comes to addressing global poverty?"

He's not done. Very few people are talking about the next case he brings up.

"Or how about Sun Hudson? On March 14, Sun, a 6-month-old baby with a fatal form of dwarfism, was allowed to die in a Texas hospital over his mother Wanda's objections. Under a 1999 law signed by Bush, who was then governor, cost-conscious hospitals are empowered to decide when care is 'futile.' The Hudson case is the first time ever that a court has allowed bean counters to override the wishes of parents. 'They gave up in six months,' Wanda Hudson told the Houston Chronicle. 'They made a terrible mistake.' Wanda apparently was not 'cable ready,' as they say in the television world (Alter neglected to mention that the baby was black - and for that matter, where was Jesse Jackson when Wanda Hudson's baby was taken off life support?), and she failed to get Randall Terry and the radical anti-abortionists on her side. Tom DeLay never called."

Posted by Pepper at 08:26 AM | Permalink

Anybody out there remember the Future Problem Solving Team?

If it doesn't ring a bell, some high schools participated in the weirdly practical sport of "future problem solving." Four teens received a ream of research material about large subjects, including censorship of music lyrics, rainforest damage, savage pitbulls, whatnot. After reading the material, said teens were locked in a room for two hours and had to emerge with a reasonable solution to said problem.

Winners would receive a ribbon and a fresh opportunity to be called "loser" by the popular kids.

No joke! The other night, after a few beers, we at the Pepper had four people in Ye Olde Pepper Salon, and we played a round of Future Problem Solving, as the massacre in Red Lake got us to thinking about gun control.

Dr. Pepper's brother came up with two solutions that would give the NRA Nutjobs their precious guns while making we civilized folk breathe a little easier.

Solution Number One: Ok, if you want your precious gun, you can have it. But if a crime is ever committed with that gun, you're guilty, and you're going to jail. (Solves the problem of parents/guardians keeping guns in the house while thinking the "little angels" won't use them.)

Solution Number Two: If you want a gun, then you must enroll yourself in the Army, National Guard, or police department first. If you want to play soldier, then you must be willing to take on the responsibilities involved.

Of course, these solutions have weaknesses due to technicalities and technology, but, either way, having a gun is a tremendous responsibility - and very few people are up to the test.

Posted by Pepper at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Wonkette's posted a photo of Das Guv, Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, that will horrify you.

Wonkette argues that Das Guv is growing more - ahem - "Clintonesque," but it is more likely that he is getting in touch with his Inner Hick and distancing himself from his European origins.

As I'm an honorary member of Austrians Against Arnold, I'm sure that the mere image of Das Guv is giving the Austrian Embassy a serious hissy fit.

Posted by Pepper at 11:16 AM | Permalink

... I guess ...

Patricia, your unnecessary opinions regarding poor Terri Schiavo have given the Daily Pepper an unexpected burst o' traffic.

When Dr. Pepper and I were in Hawaii, Anthony over at Remove Republicans posted about Patricia Heaton, who is positive that Terri Schiavo is 100% alive even though her only qualification for knowing that is that she might play a doctor on television.

She played a doctor on an episode of the obscure "dramedy" Thirtysomething. That's just like having an MD in her book.

So, yeah, Mrs. Romano and Albertson's spokesmodel, thank you so much. MSN shows Daily Pepper in the top ten search results for Patricia Heaton. This might be a dubious distinction, but it's also the spoils of blogging about semi-celebs.

Oh, and non-California readers, take note - Albertson's was famed in Oakland for having the stinkiest meat department in all of California's East Bay. No matter how charming and motherly you find Ms. Heaton, don't pick up your rump roast there.

Posted by Pepper at 08:36 AM | Permalink

World o' Crap has found a new female wingnut who's going around telling the rest of us ladies that we need to wake up, buy some mascara, and watch Ice Princess.

Like heck we will.

Debbie Schlussel says she's a member of MENSA, but don't buy it. WoC accurately calls her "critique" of Ice Princess, which is just another disposable teen flick that Pepper had to watch part of at work, downright silly. Here's WoC's summary:

"At first one thinks that Debbie is claiming that Disney's "princess" movies offer poor lessons to our daughters, which isn't all that wingnutty a position to take. But no, Debbie's position is that the movie is proof that girls want just to wear skimpy clothes and flirt with zamboni drivers (not get tenured positions in Harvard's math department), because that's what Mother Nature designed them to do, thus vindicating Larry."

A self-proclaimed member of MENSA thinks that a teen flick offers ample proof that Larry "If we tell women they're stupid, they won't compete for our jobs" Summers was right.

Um, it's a movie. It's a movie that has made $13,342,028 at the box office, indicating that it wasn't exactly a hot ticket. It's a movie with Kim Cattrall for crying out loud! Of course, Schlussel tries to exaggerate the importance of the film: ' 'Ice Princess' was the weekend’s fourth place box office finisher overall, but it was the number one movie for pre-teen and early teen girls, the ultimate end-users in the Summers vs. militant chick profs debate."

Woo-freaking-hoo. Does that mean that watching 'Law and Order' will make all viewers take the LSAT? Or that watching 'ER' will make you be a doctor?

However, Schlussel gains points for the name of her syndicated column, which is "Debbie Does Politics." Isn't that what these famed conservative female pundits do - sell out to the highest bidder?

Posted by Pepper at 01:51 PM | Permalink

If your brains were working overtime to grasp all the contradictions inherent in the Terri Schiavo case, look at this graphic posted by Suburban Guerilla, which boggles the mind with the following set of facts:

1. Terri Schiavo's care was funded by the spoils ($2 million dollars' worth) of a medical malpractice case.
2. Given the new tort reform laws, Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers would never have received that money.
3. Terri would have been taken off that feeding tube long before this debate ever fired up, further proving that the Court of George II only wishes to save lives that it deems valuable enough to save.

Posted by Pepper at 09:44 PM | Permalink

You didn't think a hyper-lib blogger would say that, did you? SURPRISE!

Amanda at Pandagon asks a darn good question:

"It seems to me that there's an effort going on to convince Americans that the number of us that are Crazy Christians is bigger than it really is. But why?"

Here's an idea. The Court of George II benefits greatly from a deeply divided nation. These images of "crazy Christians" creates and us-against-them feeling. The images of the nutjobs hounding poor Terri and blocking other people at the hospice from seeing their family members (yes, other people are dying at that hospice!) are geared to disgust "liberals."

Folks like us start thinking that all Christians are nutjobs; therefore, we'll go on Air America and on our blogs and proceed to lash out at all Christians.

Not only will this offend Christians who are NOT members of the religious right - and we at the Pepper know a good many Christian Democrats, thank you, but it will also enable the Court of George II and Fox News to paint themselves as victims yet again.

Watch for it. Next election cycle, when Dems attack them for the Schiavo matter, they will grovel and cry, "Look at what those big mean donkeys did to us! They kicked us in the behind because we were only doing what was right!"

And some voters will buy it - 'cause they bought it last time - and will sympathize with the Court. It is a brilliant move.

Posted by Pepper at 02:41 PM | Permalink

Do us a favor ...

Keep your darn SUVs and minivans the heck off this street.

Dr. Pepper and I took a visitor over to San Francisco's famed, twisty Lombard Street for the very first time. Even though we live in San Francisco (yeah, that's what makes us such Commies, right?), we've never been to Lombard Street.

The best part of visiting Lombard Street is the view. The second-best part is laughing at the tourists trying to take their big honking cars down the hill. I stood there and listed the types of cars in my head as they passed: SUV, SUV, Escalade, Hyundai, minivan, SUV, Escalade, Escalade.

Needless to say, the Hyundai was the most successful at weaving its way down the street. The Escalades would get stuck in the curves like hairballs clogging up the bathtub drain. And then the SUVs in the back would start honking, and the kids in the minivans would get to crying. And we would start laughing.

Why is it that so many people get these big-ass cars and try to fit them in the same small-ass places? Folks who drive big cars, we aren't going to expand Lombard Street for you.

So, San Francisco visitors, do yourselves a favor and rent a small car. You'll look a lot less stupid. Thank you.

Posted by Pepper at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

George II interrupted one of his many vacations and got up from bed to attempt to rescue Terri Schiavo from death. But he didn't sweat too much over the fact that a teenager mowed down several of his fellow students, a security guard, and a teacher in the worst school-shooting rampage since Columbine.

Indian reservations aren't exactly big contributors to the Bush campaign. And, the massacre didn't take place in Florida.

But we'll play the Glad Game, just like Pollyanna.

When Bush's approval ratings sink, he moves. Especially when tribal leaders like Clyde Bellecourt are quoted as saying, "He does not have any problems flying in to restore the feeding tube to Terri Schiavo. I'm sure if this happened in some school in Texas and a bunch of white kids were shot down, he would have been there, too."

Conservatives are the first to protest such statements, crying that it's playing the race card. Whatever. Those people were fully alive when they were killed.

But, since his poll numbers are dropping (and they were never high to begin with), he FINALLY spoke out today. The shooting happened on Monday.

Let's be optimists - our puppet prince moved when public opinion slammed the Court. Perhaps, if more people expressed their disgust at how the Court treats ordinary people (and poor Terri Schiavo is no longer ordinary - she's a celebrity), then maybe he would treat them with the respect they deserve.

Posted by Pepper at 01:40 PM | Permalink

As discussed yesterday, conservative groups - not to mention CNN and company - have done their darnedest to shoehorn the sad tale of Terri Schiavo into a white-woman-in-danger narrative. They would probably cry that Terry should let down her hair, if she had any.

Self-styled champions of the masses like Randall Terry may not realize it, but they've following the fairy-tale narrative, with Michael Schiavo as the bad guy and George II and Duke Jeb as the knights in shining armor who will save her.

They might be overdoing it, as some ordinary schmos want to be in on the knight moves. A guy named Michael Mitchell has already robbed a gun store in pursuit of saving Terri. And the debate is becoming increasingly violent in general, as state senators have received death threats, including phone calls hoping that some of them would die slowly from stomach cancer.

Wait. Hold on. Pro-life groups making death threats. Uhhh ...

Again, this supports the theory that these conservatives get weepy over Terri specifically because they see some lives as more valuable than others. Controlling the body of a white, middle-class woman - especially one who cannot speak for herself - says volumes more about gender and race in this country than life or death. As Wolcott said, "Fostering a 'culture of life' is just another way of trying to control women's bodies."

We cannot forget that Terri Schiavo was once a human being who made her own decisions - and not all her decisions were good ones - but she was human. Now, she's been emptied out and filled with whoever political parties on all sides want her to be.

Posted by Pepper at 04:40 PM | Permalink

When the whole fight over Terri Schiavo began brewing, the cause of the heart attack that left her in a "vegetative state" was never clear.

Finally, finally someone decided to push the fact of Terri Schiavo's bulimia to a headline. In an editorial published through the Scripps Howard News Service, Paul Campos wondered why no one ever talked about Schiavo's bulimia.

Little girls, mostly middle-class girls, starve themselves mercilessly. Terri had the ultimate bourgeois disease. And, yes, bulimia is bourgeois because it is the disease of middle-class girls who get pressured by their parents to look good all the time. Lower-class girls eat because food isn't always abundant in their households. Upper-class girls get lipo. As a result, poor Terri fits the role of middle-class victim - the perfect distraction for our conservative leaders. Now that the Peterson trial is over, Terri can take Laci's place with the notable distinction that some people think they can rescue her from death.

But does Terri fit that role of victim as perfectly as DeLay, Fristy, major media outlets, and their families think?

Michael Schiavo and Terri's parents were always unwilling to believe that Terri - or they - had been at fault for her own bulimia. Back when they weren't fighting, Michael and the parents sued Terri's gynecologist for not noticing the problem in time to get her to stop, and they won $2 million dollars in a malpractice case.

Note what the St. Petersburg Times reported in 1992: "The jury agreed partly with the defense. They originally awarded the Schiavos more than $ 6-million but found that she was 70 percent at fault. So they subtracted her liability from the award, bringing it down to $ 2-million, her attorneys said."

70 percent at fault. Isn't it awful that a woman who spent her short conscious life despising her body can't be freed from that body?

Why is it that so many people are racing down to Florida to engage in a classic "bourgeois riot" for what is, essentially, a family matter? And a messy division of the spoils from a malpractice suit? These people don't know Terri and her family. No one posting on this site knows anything about that family. And Tom DeLay and Bill Frist (who has utterly befouled the Hippocratic Oath) sure as heck don't know that family.

Let's face it. No one will ever know what Terri Schiavo wanted, except that she was willing to do anything to be thin. We know what everyone else around her wants. We know that major news outlets are covering Schiavo because she's yet another middle-class white woman in peril - with a twist. There's no murderer and there's no crime, no matter how hard people try to convict her husband. No matter how hard congressional leaders try to make her fit in their storylines, she won't follow. And we must remember that she is a human being who deserves to die with dignity.

Posted by Pepper at 01:19 PM | Permalink

Many thanks to Anthony and Matt, Matt and Anthony, guest bloggers extraordinaire, for their admirable Pepper upkeep.

So much happened over the span of a few days - Tom De Lay is sticking his nose where it doesn't belong in the case of Terri Schiavo, Hollywood is getting involved (when do you want to bet that they'll crank out a tee-vee movie?), and a crazed teen opened fire on his classmates. Matt and Anthony covered it all, and we've kicked off a rousing discussion about privatizing Social Security.

On the lighter side, the NCAA bracket is chock-full of upsets, somebody found a finger in a local Wendy's, and Whitney's in rehab. Good gravy.

Posted by Pepper at 08:30 AM | Permalink

It appears as though the Terri Schiavo case is finally nearing its end, but that isn't stopping Hollywood's right-wing kooks from coming out of the cracks.

"Everybody Loves Raymond" star and staunch Republican Patricia Heaton (who knew?) actually called Mr. and Mrs. Schindler, telling the press later, "This deliberate and painful destruction of a woman's life cannot be justified or tolerated." Aside from the fact that she has no idea how "painful" the procedure is and that Schivao's life was destroyed 15 years ago, doesn't everybody also love an Albertson's pitchwoman who knows when to butt out?

Unlicensed family counselor Mel Gibson insisted that "Terri's husband should sign the care of his wife over to her parents so she can be properly cared for." I'm not sure what is more tortuous, his view of the case or sitting through "The Passion of the Christ" one more time.

But maybe these stars just can't help themselves. After all, many of our elected officials are pushing the case pretty hard. Republican Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, an actual M.D., said: "You look at the videos of her. She follows commands, she smiles...As a physician, when I viewed the video footage of the mother leaning forward and this woman, Terri Schiavo, developing a look of recognition on her face and smiling and then trying to vocalize...That to me, clinically, is not a persistent vegetative state."

This isn't even diagnosis by proxy, it's diagnosis by Sony. Does Frist's M.D. stand for "Malleable Diatribe"?

Perhaps we should all heed the words of Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott of Washington State, a psychiatrist who called this unwarranted involvement in a private family matter "legislative malpractice."

Bad form, indeed.

Posted by anthony at 02:38 PM | Permalink

I was going to discuss the two-year anniversary of the retarded war in Iraq (and the often ill-informed/annoying demonstrators in San Francisco), but I can't ignore the news out of Minnesota. If you haven't looked at a news source today (I hadn't until ten minutes ago), a kid went crazy and killed ten people, including his granparents, six students, a teacher and a security guard.

When did someone declare March "Mass Murderer Month"? We've had the judge-related killings in Chicago and Atlanta , the church killings in Wisconsin, and now this. Which brings us to the eternal, Bowling for Columbine question - why is the United States so violent?

Well, we've got a lot of guns. But, as Mikey Moore points out, so does Canada, and most other countries outside of Europe, and besides there've been studies that draw the deeply counterintuitive conclusion that more guns, once we have any at all, actually make society safer. We've got violent video games and movies - but so do they. What's the difference?

The media is one possibility. If there's no news, they make it, and local violence (a la Scott "who the hell cares about this loser" Peterson) is always an attention-getter. Actually, I agree in part with what the much-maligned Charlton Heston said at the end of the movie - it's something in the American character. Think about it - we're people who go to extremes, follow our dreams, and leave the old land for new opportunities. By virtue of living here (and leaving elsewhere), we're genetically self-selected as an ambitious, often rambunctious breed. Sadly, sometimes our ambitions and dreams include killing lots of people, which means we've got to give these kids something better to dream about.

Most of all, as with everything, it starts with the parenting. Americans work a lot, but I believe that most of them make an effort to know their kids and bring them up well. Most of them reinforce that violence is bad, that games are just games, that guns are not toys, that life is precious.

But not all of them, and that's when tragedies like this happen.

Posted by matt at 07:58 PM | Permalink

Guest poster #2 here while the Queen is away, and let's quickly begin with a civics lesson: The United States Constitution explicitly prohibits bills of attainder, which are legislative acts that single out a specific person or group for punishment without a fair trial. This weekend, at the crack of dawn and just at the beginning of Easter recess, Congress put together some wordage aimed at keeping Terri Schiavo alive while the matter gets sent to federal court. President Bush flew back from Texas specifically to sign this piece of legislation.

Regardless of where you stand on the issues of euthanasia, assisted suicide, living wills, pulling the plug, and tube removal (this guest blogger is in favor of all of them), Congress simply does not have the authority to do what it did.

After Terri Schiavo turned 18, she was no longer the ward of her parents. And after she got married, her spouse became her legal guardian in the event of an inability to make major decisions such as this.

Do you believe that Terri Schiavo once told her husband that she never wanted to be kept alive artificially? (I happen to.) It doesn't really matter. Legally speaking, her parents have no legal footing to declare anything on her behalf. A number of court decisions have already come down on the side of her husband, Michael. And this is where Congress unethically (and I would say illegally) stepped in to hamper the rights of one person: Michael Schiavo, who is no longer in control of the fate of his wife.

Perhaps Congress would only have the authority to do what it did if there was some sort of glaring circumstance that required immediate action -- money was involved or there was some consipracy to kill Terri (see how far-fetched this is?). But as we all know, the Schiavo legal fees will almost certainly supersede the bank account, and Michael has repeatedly turned down million-dollar offers to keep his wife alive. What this amounts to, as he put it in a press conference this weekend, is Republican "thuggery." Do you want the hacks in Washington making personal medical decisions for you?

Posted by anthony at 07:23 AM | Permalink

As regular readers may or may not know, the Queen of Pepperdom is taking a semi-vacation for her annual venture into direct sunlight. As a temporary stand in, I (not the royal We the Pepper so monarchically prefers) pledge to rein in the Pepper from its collision course with Trotskyism and push things backs towards a little place folks outside of San Francisco are familiar with - reality.

Today's topic: Social Security. George Bush wants people to be able to invest a portion of their money in the stock market rather than let it sit in the bank and pull in negligible interest that doesn't even beat inflation.

I want Social Security around when I retire as much as the next guy, but I'm extremely skeptical. Why? Because the dumbass federales are running the program and I'm confident they'll find a way to blow it. Anybody who's worked for the Feds know that the government is a slow, unfeeling machine that doesn't care about anything other than covering its ass.

On the other hand, the Dow Jones has an average annual return of something like 10%. There are fluctuations (late 90s v. early 2000s), but overall that's pretty darn good. Millions of people have their pensions tied up in the stock market - and have made out like bandits. What's wrong with making some of my money work for me?

I recently signed up for a Roth IRA that shifts the majority of my portfolio from volatile stocks while I'm younger to safe bonds when I'm older and need the security. Why can't they set up something like that for Social Security? Plus, the infusion of capital into the market would likely jack up the economy, and help people invest in the future.

If the Queen were here, this would be the section where we'd rant about King George throwing money to his friends on Wall Street. It's possible and there should be safeguards to prevent that - but every program in the universe runs the risk of being corrupt. That's not a good enough reason to prevent further analysis.

The Queen would also probably object that smarty-pants who went to college like me know how to manage their money responsibly, while undereducated Midwesterners would blow their investments on burritos and David Allen Coe CDs. Two responses to this. 1) The program should be set up as to offer limited options (mutual funds with experienced managers) and not allow individual stock trading for exactly that reason. 2) Trust people to make their lives better, to take the initiative. Americans are go-getters. Give them the tools to go and get! I disagree with Bush on a lot, but I do think he's good at creating the image that he thinks Americans are smart and they trust us to do the right thing with our cash, whereas Democrats give off the vibe that we're all dumb and need the government to do everything for us. That's bad.

What I object to is Bush claiming there's a Social Security crisis. There's no crisis...he just wants to change the program. His contention is a lie, and it's part of an effective Republican strategy to scare Americans into accepting major action (a la the monumental miscalculation in Iraq). Fortunately, Americans aren't buying this one - and they shouldn't.

Even so, I'd rather put my money in the stock market under my control than let the uncaring Feds do it for me and possibly raid it for stupid wars...wouldn't you?

Posted by matt at 02:47 PM | Permalink

How about live nude gay Republicans?

Raw Story lets loose on the recent GQ article outing Ken Mehlman. Naturally, denial of Mehlman's alleged sexual preference abounds. Many thanks to Matt for the link!

We at the Pepper admit that just because a man is single at age 38 doesn't automatically make him gay. Not all of us buy into the idea that marriage is the end-all, be-all of human existence.

BUT whether or not the Mehl likes the Men doesn't matter. Where there's smoke, there's fire, and the GQ piece is filled with smoke.

What shocks us about the piece is the admission that many Republicans who don't care if a person is gay or not vote against gay rights to please their constituents. And that includes George Bush, who said in interviews recorded by Doug Wead, that he wouldn't "kick gays."

Gee, don't his votes kick gays in the face?

And the Republicans who accept having gay friends, family, and coworkers yet spout off against gay rights fail all possible ethical standards. They sell gays out, and they sell themselves out, just to please a bunch of hicks who have probably never even met a gay person. (We know that was mean. This issue riles us up.)

What's worse are these gay Republicans themselves. Maybe Mehlman, maybe not. But definitely Mary Cheney and Daniel Gurley, a former field director for the RNC. Is it self-hate? Is it spinelessness? Is it self-interest? What drives these people to vote against their interests and to support those who vote against their interests? These people are sad and an embarrassment to gay people and those who support any form of civil rights.

As for the "constituents who must be pleased," they need a wake-up call. They need to be told they are wrong to discriminate against gay people. This isn't the segregated South. This isn't Victorian Britain. This is 21st century America, and they need to get over their hang-ups. And that includes these cowardly gay Republican masochists.

Posted by Pepper at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, we at the Pepper are going out of town. Not just the "royal we," but both us us, Pepper and Dr. Pepper. We're going to Hawaii for the first time!

In our absence, we have two guests staying at the Daily Pepper Inn - Anthony of Remove Republicans and Matt of SuperMattalica - A Festival of Life.

Expect lots of fun and peppery debate. Check out their sites to see what they're up to. As you can guess, Anthony's up to removing Republicans, and Matt is up to anything and everything. Both of them are up to speed on the financial shenanigans of the Court of King George II - Matt has commented several times about my (ooh ... the first-person snuck in there, you know a vacation is coming on!) ragings about the bankruptcy bill. So keep checking in for fun and surprises at the Daily Pepper!

Posted by Pepper at 08:32 AM | Permalink

Subverting the dominant link paradigm really does work to spread the wealth among the blogging population. Feministe listed some fascinating posts, and our eyes were immediately drawn to one titled "Class, Trash and Passing in the Middle."

How could we resist? Kim posts her own story of growing up poor and hiding it. She convincingly compares the feeling to "passing," or what happens when blacks masquerade as white.

Very few people admit to the existence of class in America, much less having to move among classes. Kim describes a time when a college professor rudely assumed that everyone in the class was from the "middle-class."

Why was this rude? Well, unlike race and gender - and it isn't always true in those cases, no one should assume someone else's social class by his or her appearance. Kim's economic background was "dirt-ass poor," but she was smart, and she figured out quickly how to mimic the middle-class so she could move in college circles.

The "class pass" works for those aiming higher and lower, usually to one's financial and professional benefit. When a person performs a "class pass," they gain access to a world completely unknown to them previously, one in which all sorts of mysterious privileges are granted upon them.

For example, if a young person comes from an upper-class background, they have access to better schooling, a better college, and a better career. And, if the economy takes a hard hit, or the boss is a jerk, that young person has more freedom to find a job that suits them. It's a better life than the options that exist for a lower-class person who has no benefits and no vacation but who must feed themselves and their families. Heck, it's also a better life than that of the middle-class "wage slave" who must play it safe because he or she must make the mortgage payment.

The higher the class you are, the more freedom you have in the USA. You even have the freedom to descend! The Court of George II can gain a "class pass," mingling among the lowers for their own benefit.

The lesson learned - don't assume the person sitting next to you on the bus is the same class because they are drinking a Starbucks latte or wearing White Stag or Lacoste or whatever. They might be more or less "free" because of their economic class background, and you can't determine class background from labels.

Oh, and we're not all middle-class. There's a serious, unexpressed anxiety about "class slippage," and, judging from political rhetoric, you'd think we're all middle class. No, we're not.

Posted by Pepper at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Don't be alarmed.

Posted by matt at 12:12 PM | Permalink

Posted by anthony at 12:08 PM | Permalink

His story was the kind of rags-to-riches tale that would make Horatio Alger proud. An ordinary Canadian milkman with a knack for basketball heard the words 'Go South, Young Man.' In theory, he would have played a while, and then he would have returned to coach high-school basketball. Instead, he wound up hatching a billion-dollar idea in Mississippi.

American business is infatuated with integration and synergy, the merging of style and substance, form and content. The more that can be held under one umbrella, the better. And Mr. Bernie Ebbers understood. He built WorldCom through the purchase of long-distance carriers until he and his cronies could own one of the major carriers, MCI.

Even better, Ebbers made money off of an item that can't be touched - information transmitted through the ether.

But he made one mistake that he will regret for his remaining years in the clink - cutting the company coffee service to save $4 million.

The mere fact that Ebbers considered the coffee service too lavish suggests that he should have been able to follow the financial shenanigans that battered the entire economy for nearly a year. The Washington Post writes, "Once on the stand, Ebbers was put into the position of repeatedly having to explain how he could have missed $800 million swings in a key expense area at a time he was canceling the company coffee service to save $4 million."

The let-them-drink-Starbucks error will haunt Ebbers because it leaves suspicious, vengeful employees in its wake. A Jackson, Mississippi, paper devoted an entire section of its "Trial Notebook" to Ebbers' coffee catastrophe.

It also provides insight into the corporate mind. Even though Ebbers was of humble origins, somewhere he picked up the belief that he was entitled to the loans that he received from WorldCom, that he "earned" these vast sums as he laid off employees.

Let that be a lesson to you potential gazillionaires. Always treat the little guy right.

Posted by Pepper at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

How many times must we gripe after reading all this commentary that there aren't enough "lady bloggers" and "lady op-ed writers"? We're not a bunch of Lana Turners sitting at the soda counter or middle-class wage slaves waiting to be promoted.

Steven Levy at Newsweek devotes almost a full page to the "lady blogger" question, again making it seem as if bloggers who aren't white guys don't exist. Click on the Progressive Women's Blog Ring link to the left to check out some excellent bloggers who aren't linked to by Atrios, Kos, or some other kind of -os.

Instead of waiting for major outlets like Newsweek to note the existence of a problem and misdiagnose it, Trish Wilson provided links to several sites that have lists of female bloggers a mile long. If Levy had dug a little deeper or even Googled a little, he might have discovered the list.

We at the Pepper give Levy the same treatment that we gave Dowd. Thanks for noticing the lack of female op-ed input, whether online or in print. But the content is there - all you have to do is look.

Posted by Pepper at 09:52 PM | Permalink

Oh, hooray! Just when we thought that DVD collections were getting ridiculous - really, did we need all the Police Academy films? wouldn't the first four suffice? - we at the Pepper are thrilled to announce the impending release of the Controversial Classics Collection from Warner Brothers.

A friend tipped us off after he heard us talking about James Wolcott's review of The Americanization of Emily - one of the few films to admit the existence of cowardice in war. Wolcott fervently wished the film would come out on DVD, and what do you know?

We at the Pepper are also happy because the collection includes Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, starring Andy Griffith as an ordinary schmuck whose charisma drags him to the top, much to his bewilderment and eventual corruption. Does that sound familiar? It should. Heather Joslyn writes:

"There are echoes of Elvis Presley, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and just about every TV pundit and celebrity flavor-of-the-month in Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a no-account hillbilly singer who becomes a radio star, then a TV star, then a national folk hero, then a political figure, and eventually a monster. Face is also one of the very first films to seriously explore the affect TV has on society—a Hollywood trend that wouldn't really take hold until the late 1990s."

We at the Pepper only heard of this film because it featured Mayberry Andy on the warpath, but it's become well-known in the Berkeley English Department circles, and we've marked our calendars.

Also in the collection is Advise and Consent, Bad Day at Black Rock, Blackboard Jungle, Fury, and I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang. Police Academy: The Laughs, the Love or Porky's: Meat Unleashed it ain't.

Posted by Pepper at 07:45 PM | Permalink

"When I need to work up my nerve to write a tough column, I try to think of myself as Emma Peel in a black leather catsuit, giving a kung fu kick to any diabolical mastermind who merits it."

Well, that's what Maureen Dowd does, anyway. For kicks, imagine this lady in a catsuit.

Mee-ow!

When we at the Pepper need to work up our nerves to write a tough column, we ... knock back a cold one and get to writing! Frankly, there's enough out there to get mad about, why do we need to "work up nerve"? Why do we need to consult with higher-ups (in Dowd's case, the dubious Howell Raines) and "renowned folklorist" dudes to keep on churning out a column?

We at the Pepper don't want to leap all over Dowd - she's done a service by reminding her readers that there are very few female op-ed writers. But then she goes and undoes all that good by writing about all the advice she's gotten from men and closing with the following line:

"But I have no doubt there are plenty of brilliant women who would bring grace and guts to our nation's op-ed pages, just as, Lawrence Summers notwithstanding, there are plenty of brilliant women out there who are great at math and science. We just need to find and nurture them."

If we at the Pepper hear the word "nurture" uttered in another column remotely relating to women, we are going to hurl. Vulgarity intended.

Dowd's editorial doesn't merit one of our "Knuckle-Dragger Awards," but we're tired of the constant implication that women need permission to do anything. That's like admitting women are part of a lower class until a sturdy man pulls them up.

Plenty of women writers aren't waiting around for the New York Times to anoint them "the latest lady columnist." Today was Trish Wilson's birthday, and she linked to a whole bunch of "lady bloggers" (including us - thank you!). Amanda at Mouse Words never, ever disappoints, and she isn't sitting around waiting to be "nurtured." Pinko Feminist Hellcat is exactly what her name would imply - you should check out what she has to say about the bankruptcy bill!

We all need to remember that we can't rely on the decaying op-ed pages to represent intellectual thought - especially not intellectual feminist thought!

Posted by Pepper at 09:39 PM | Permalink

Much ado has been made about the NYT's report on canned news, especially since the government has developed a sweet tooth for propaganda. However, we at the Pepper would like to remind you that canned news is in itself an old story.

We at the Pepper blame the government, but we're not going to spare the news outlets that accept this "news," repurpose it, and then don't bother telling their viewers that it is, in fact, government propaganda. Of course, the State Department, et cetera, tried to push all the blame on news outlets, but both parties are responsible.

In the interest of helping the public, we would like to list the telltale signs of fake news:

1. Absence of local neighborhoods. According to Grade the News, one of the best Bay Area media watchdogs, one "canned news" company called NewsProNet actively eliminates all regional features and doesn't mention the hometowns of interviewees. Gee, we know of another "news organization" that does that. The Weekly World News.
2. Globe-trotting reporters. One of the State Department propaganda pieces sussed out by the NYT featured a voice-over from a local Memphis newscaster. Do you really think a piddly Memphis station would send a reporter to Afghanistan?
3. Unnatural names. One of the names used by an ag department reporter was "Pat O'Leary." They may as well have gone with "I.P. Freely."
4. Lack of details. If "thousands" of people are up to something, then you should know how many thousands. One thousand? Ten thousand? A bunch of lemmings?
5. A member of the government - Democrat or Republican - who looks pleased as punch to be interviewed. If you see a government employee looking comfy on camera, don't buy what they are selling!

Posted by Pepper at 05:45 PM | Permalink

We at the Pepper always love to report on those who manage to opt out of the class system - yes, that class system that few Americans admit exists. Paul Fussell called them the X class.

A good friend of ours is a Teamster, and he's tough, and he is the kind of guy you would want on your side in a bar brawl.

Today, he ordered a latte from the coffee bar. And he didn't apologize, and he didn't joke about it - even if we did. And he enjoyed that latte. He has worked his blue-collar gig for a long time and loves it, and he reads Harper's and the Atlantic and attends book clubs. Our friend doesn't fit any stereotype. Thank goodness. Seems like everyone else does.

Our comment seems decidedly Bobo-ish, but really, to read Brooks and his ilk, you'd think that our choice in coffee drinks determines who we are as people. It doesn't at all - and it is sad that seeing a Teamster drinking a latte makes us think, "What a relief that not everyone fits so neatly into society's slots!"

Paul Fussell wrote, "X people are independent-minded, free of anxious regard for popular shibboleths, loose in carriage and demeanor. They adore the work they do, and they do it until they are finally carried out, 'retirement' being a concept meaningful only to hired personnel or wage slaves who despise their work. Being an X person is like having much of the freedom and some of the power of a top-out-of-sight person or upper-class person, but without the money. X category is a sort of unmonied aristocracy."

An argument against our friend as a member of the X class would be: "Well, this Teamster who likes lattes obviously has a straight job, so he is indeed somebody's man."

And that might be true, but what marks true members of the X class is that they cannot be classified, identified, and put under a microscope. They are the true independents. We at the Pepper would love to be in this class someday, and we tip our hats to them.

Posted by Pepper at 04:13 PM | Permalink

And, for the teens in the audience, put down your bongs and pay attention. The brand-new SAT was unveiled today, making test-prep more lucrative than ever - and giving the families who can afford it a tremendous advantage.

We at the Pepper have taught test-prep, and we worked for one of the best places in the business. We aren't here to advertise our services (although we did get kids into Harvard and Berkeley, thank you very much), but we will say this - test prep is pricey.

At first, it seems like the SAT is the great equalizer. Students from public and private schools and from all geographic regions take the same test at the same time in the same conditions.

However, some students are more prepared than others, and that's because they can afford test prep. Setting aside the accusations of racial and gender bias, the real bias for the SAT is class.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution profiles students taking the brand-new SAT, including a kid from a magnet who took test-prep and a kid from a charter school who sees the test as a "grudge match."

The magnet kid complains about how long the test is, but he's got a good shot. He writes for his school paper and has already worked with a tutor. He dreams of Oberlin, which indicates that he is middle-class or higher. Kids who go to the magnets should be grateful because not all cities have them, and this kid will get what he wants.

It's obvious to us that the author of the article satirizes the kid from the charter school, who does Tae Kwon Do workouts before the test and who isn't satisfied with a near-perfect 1530 out of 1600. (Translation to those of you for whom it's been a while - he will go to an Ivy, not necessarily Harvard, but UPenn ain't chopped liver.) The writer gets a good chuckle-line in: "He knows his opponent well. He has studied the changes in the math and verbal sections. His father, an architect, has scored his practice essay tests. Things could get tricky. But he is ready to fight." Oh, it will be hard on him, all right. Walton is public, but in a well-off area. Only 1% of the kids are on the free lunch program.

Some school systems are actually helping lower-income students by offering free practice tests. One test-prep company hires SAT instructors to teach classes at some of the worst schools, including Macateer in San Francisco, which was so bad it was closed. The college board waives fees if a student qualifies. But all of these solutions follow the bad practice of relying on corporate charity.

The Chicago Sun-Times has an excellent interview with a guidance counselor at University of Chicago Laboratory High School. Will Dix admits that "rich kids have an unfair advantage," and he references a survey at his upper-class school that shows some students "had spent up to $3,500 preparing for the test."

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Lyn Jutronich, director of the La Jolla branch of The Princeton Review, said a 14-class session with practice tests costs $999 and private tutoring packages start at $1,999. At Kaplan, test-preparation packages range from $999 for 36 hours of class time to $4,199 for 32 hours of private instruction."

We at the Pepper appreciate that so many parents are willing to pay for test-prep, but we also feel the need to say that the SAT separates by social class as much as it does by intellect.

Posted by Pepper at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Do you want to know how to look young and fresh into your old age? Stop running and eating healthy. Just be rich - and the absence of worry will smooth those wrinkles away.

Thomas Geoghegan over at Slate gave the main reason why the upcoming Social Security reforms will damage - and age - any class beyond the American Aristocracy.

"I've already got enough to do."

We at the Pepper can hear the standard middle-class conservative argument against Geoghegan, including "No one believes in personal responsibility anymore," "They expect 'us' to do all the hard work for them," and "If they are so lazy, they don't deserve their Social Security accounts."

If conservative leaders want workers to die off early, then they're doing a good job. Maintaining privatized Social Security and health care and a family and a regular job or several regular jobs is enough to make anyone sick. Oh, and if you're poor, worrying about the violence in your neighborhood! It's ridiculous in a first-world nation with so many resources.

Perhaps the bourgeoisie should take a good, hard look at what all their hard work will get them. Wouldn't their lives be a tad easier if they, like George II, had personal money managers? Geoghegan writes, "Look at all the freedom that George W. Bush had because Bill DeWitt Jr. and Mercer Reynolds handled all his investments ... And he came into the White House with his brow unlined."

George II and wifey look pretty good for their ages, don't they? If Social Security reform is supposed to reward hard work and intelligent financial planning, then George II shouldn't get a dime.

In case you haven't realized by now, it's really easy to manage a Social Security account if you can hire someone to do it for you. No one seems to realize that the senators and talk-show hosts and the Court of George II, which preaches self-reliance, have a phalanx of secretaries and money managers and guaranteed health care - and maybe facialists, but we would be making that up.

Soon, it will take three people to manage one person's life - only one person will be stuck with all the duties as these wealthy conservatives, who seem to stay the same inteterminate middle age, chant that we're not working hard enough.

Posted by Pepper at 07:24 PM | Permalink

On tonight's Daily Show, Paul Krugman took the viewers to bankruptcy school and eloquently stating the class divide the freshly passed bill reinforces.

Krugman: There wasn't enough publicity on it. The bankruptcy bill ... it's horrible. Bankruptcy is the last refuge. You can at least get a fresh start. There are people who go bankrupt and do it deliberately. They are malefactors of great wealth, they are corporate executives ... they go bankrupt to avoid the suits.
Pepper: Ever noticed how those who go broke in a big way are always friends or sympathizers of the Court of King George II? Did Ken Lay ever have to worry about losing his home? We bet all those who lost their jobs after Enron folded did. But we're dirty populists.

***

They said that states like Florida - now who is the governor of Florida? [adorable scratch of head] - anyway, states like Florida where you can keep your house ... the bill did not do anything about that ... things like asset trust funds, too technical, which is another way out.
Pepper: References to nepotism are always helpful when proving the re-emergence of aristocracy. Maybe we should move to Florida. We like alligators.

***

I don't think people will make the connection. I think the guy who loses his job and has a medical emergency and is forced into bankruptcy and ends up being a peon to the credit card company, he won't understand that this ... he'll just think this is all the fault of those gay married terrorists.
Pepper: It is starting to occur to us that this bill comes at a time when public education has reached its nadir. Instead of an economic problem having economic causes, conservative politicians just blame everything on dudes making out. Chicks making out appears to be okay.

Oh, and this says it all about our decline into aristocracy:
Krugman: "[George II's] experience is that whenever you make a really bad business decision, Daddy's friends bail you out."

Posted by Pepper at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The bankers rejoiced at the manna raining down on their heads, falling from the hands of Orrin Hatch and Joe Biden and all those courageous Senators who overcame partisanship to join hands. They overcame dirty populists like Ted Kennedy to help the poor, suffering bankers and credit card companies who made the mistake of extending credit and giving loans to people who clearly couldn't manage their money ...

The bankruptcy bill passed. After a little research, we at the Pepper learned that business interests have been trying to get the bill through for eight years. Now, maybe the bill didn't go through, and maybe Clinton vetoed it because IT WAS A BAD IDEA.

In yesterday's Congressional Record, Orrin Hatch griped about how it took eight years to get the bill passed. He also made it seem that the Republicans were the picture of compromise in that time: "We held our first meeting on this in a Judiciary subcommittee in 1998. I want to make sure everyone heard that right: 1998. Early on, the good-faith compromises began ... We prevented creditors from demanding repayment for debts incurred through predatory lending practices [oh, yeah? when?] ... All of these were amendments from my Democratic colleagues. I could go through dozens of others. "

Leave it to a Republican to paint villains as victims. So the credit card companies had to wait eight years to get their stinking bill. Cry me a river, Hatch.

Let's translate Hatch, shall we? What he said above boils down to "you are lucky it wasn't worse. We could have been rough on you!"

Yet again, the masses should be grateful that the senate threw them a few bones. Oh, please, more crumbs, Senator Hatch!

Posted by Pepper at 07:30 PM | Permalink

We at the Pepper were ready to do it ourselves, but South Knox Bubba beat us to listing the cowardly, sheepish Diet Democrats who voted for cloture for that bloody Bankruptcy Bill.

Here's the list, which we at the Pepper repeat if only to etch it into your memories:

Sen. Joe Biden, Delaware
Sen. Robert Byrd, West Virginia
Sen. Tom Carper, Delaware
Sen. Kent Conrad, North Dakota
Sen. Tim Johnson, South Dakota
Sen. Herb Kohl, Wisconsin
Sen. Mary Landrieu, Louisiana
Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut
Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Arkansas
Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida
Sen. Ben Nelson, Nebraska
Sen. Mark Pryor, Arkansas
Sen. Ken Salazar, Colorado
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan

If you live in their states, vote these Diet Democrats out! We at the Pepper ran a lil' ol' site called Presidential Candy that categorized the 2004 Democratic Presidential Candidates, and we will summarize what we had to say about Diet Democrats like Lieberman - look at what happened to Richard Gephardt.

The Gepper tried to compromise on everything. He bent over backwards to give a little, expecting that the Republicans would give a little in return. What did he get? A one-way ticket back to the MO. A note to the list above, with the possible exception of Byrd, who is more of an institution than anything else: What happened to Gephardt will happen to you.

Daily Kos said these senators voted the way they did because they needed the cash for political survival. (Uh, did the Gepper survive?) We at the Pepper responded, "We always thought that political survival required the support of one's constituents." We asked where were the constituents, and someone kindly informed us that the constituents were in fact calling the Dems like crazy.

So, either our respondents lied to us and the constituents don't care, or worse - and more likely - the constituents called the senators and the senators didn't care.

Great representative democracy we have going, eh? Well, we're still working on how we can open up an asset protection trust in Nevada ... 'cause it looks like we're on our own.

Posted by Pepper at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

That They're Poor?

We at the Pepper happened to hear that on Air America's "Morning Sedition," and we realized that's the key obstacle to reaching the elusive middle class.

Democrats and liberals talk about the squeeze on the middle class, but the middle class as a whole rarely responds to the call - "Yes, we're getting squeezed!"

If they admit to being squeezed, then they are admitting that they are in danger of falling out of the middle class. Despite the persistent sham that America is a class-free meritocracy, we at the Pepper argue that the fear of dropping down a class by expressing similarities with a lower class is what keeps this middle class good and quiet as the Court of King George II robs them blind.

All aristocracies depend on the classes knowing their place. Disgruntled or not, the classes know where they are in the system - and America's middle class knows where they are all too well.

Posted by Pepper at 08:15 AM | Permalink

The Senate voted down two bills to raise the minimum wage. One of them actually raised the minimum wage. It was traditionally Democratic, and it bears the imprint of Ted Kennedy. The other bill raised the minimum wage a little less - and still asked the masses to pay for it. Naturally, that was Republican, and it was backed by Rick "Rumplestiltskin" Santorum.

Santorum's bill included the disgusting idea of "flex time," in which the firstborn child, or the 40-hour work week, would be converted to 80 hours spread over two weeks ANY WAY A BOSS WANTS IT. Depending on the boss's need or whim, an employee could work 50 hours one week and 30 hours the next. And that's an ideal situation. Under Santorum's plan, the employee would not receive overtime for the extra 10 hours because it all falls under the 80-hour plan. Thank goodness that one got voted down; otherwise, employees could conceivably work 80 hours in one week - a backbreaking, insane schedule - without a cent of overtime pay.

In logic that would have flunked in any basic philosophy class, some Republican senators don't want to raise the minimum wage because they don't want those with low job skills to "suffer." Mike Enzi, from Wyoming, said, "Wages do not cause sales. Sales are needed to provide wages. Wages do not cause revenue. Revenue drives wages."

Huh? Yo, Enzi - a) How can people buy - generating the 'sales' of which you speak - if they aren't getting paid? b) And how can a dude from Wyoming talk about revenue? What do YOU know about it?

Republicans also claim they don't want small businesses to suffer. But the notion of "flex time" would also benefit companies like Wal-Mart, who could push workers over holiday sales seasons and not have to shell out overtime. And if a small business needs to abuse its employees to make a profit - and we at the Pepper once worked at that kind of place, by the by - maybe its business model isn't sound enough to start with!

Minimum wage hasn't changed since 1996. 1996! Almost 10 years! And the dot-com boom took place during that time, when people might have been feeling flush enough to agitate for more. Perhaps employers should be THANKING THEIR LUCKY STARS that raising the minimum wage didn't even come up until now.

Until there's a robot who doesn't eat or have to go to the bathroom, then bosses will have to pony up for the minimum wage. Period.

Posted by Pepper at 10:46 PM | Permalink

We at the Pepper have a suggestion for another amendment to the bankruptcy law. If corporations and the wealthy want to stash their cash in a domestic asset protection trust, then they should have to LIVE in Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, Rhode Island or Utah. We think that would put a stop to asset protection trusts mighty quick!

Posted by Pepper at 02:09 PM | Permalink

We at the Pepper thought that we would perform a public service - explaining to people how they could escape their creditors, just like the wealthy can with the loophole in the bankruptcy bill.

Three words: asset protection trust. This won't help out anyone stricken by illness or calamity - not that the bankruptcy "protection" act cares about them. BUT, we at the Pepper thought that we could stash aside a little extra dough in one of these "asset protection trusts" because if we declare bankruptcy, a creditor can't touch it. If it is good enough for Congress to allow with this new bankruptcy bill, it is good enough for us.

An asset protection trust works like an offshore bank account, sealing off assets from creditors. Best of all, you don't even have to go to the Bahamas - you can open an asset protection trust in Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, Rhode Island and Utah. And you don't even have to live in those states!

But not so fast. Before you start Googling "banks in Delaware," know that you, o measly middle-classer or prole, are not the kind of customer they want.

According to an enlightening Bloomberg article, "Delaware trusts are also considerably cheaper to establish than their offshore counterparts. Setting up an offshore trust typically costs about $18,000 in legal fees. [Nix the Bahamas right there! - Ed.] On top of that, annual trustee fees run between $1,500 and $4,000. Establishing a Delaware trust, by contrast, costs about $5,000 in legal fees; annual trustee fees run between $1,500 and $3,000."

Delaware trusts are cheaper to the wealthy, but not to us! Ordinary schmos can't afford those kinds of fees. Maybe doctors can - that's why they are given as the prime example of those who use asset protection trusts. Doctors can seal off their cash in anticipation of a malpractice suit. However, corporate types can ride the doctors' coattails, protecting their cash from angry investors. Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay have probably kept the asset protection trust business in Utah flush for years!

Posted by Pepper at 01:55 PM | Permalink

Redneck and lonely? Never fear. This weekend, CNN reported on the new website www.redneckandsingle.com and profiled some of the users who are looking for that special someone to sit in the passenger seat of the pickup truck.

Our curiosity got the better of us, and we at the Pepper visited www.redneckandsingle.com. If we were rednecks, we would find plenty of Northern California companions.

We decided to test the system's limits as well. We said we were a redneck man looking for a redneck man - and we got results! Besides, who could resist a buff redneck in tight-fitting jeans? Sadly, there weren't too many profiles with pictures.

We also decided to register to see exactly what these lonely redneckers were looking for. Well, if you're not white, your options are limited - under race, you can choose "Redneck and White" or "Redneck and Other." BUT they have quite a sense of humor when it comes to religion! The religion dropdown lists five flavors of Baptist, Methodist, Christian, and "Other." (If you find a Jewish redneck, y'all tell us - we at the Pepper want to know!)

Of course, we can link these shenanigans to class stratification in the United States. Creating a sense of community amongst poor white Southerners - and those in other parts of the nation who identify with poor white Southerners - helps divert their anger away from the big-business interests who leave them unemployed.

It ain't a theory. It's true. Plenty of these folks thought Bush cared about them, and now he's implementing policies that are hurting them, as the governor of Montana so eloquently pointed out.

The more "Redneck Pride" we see, the more we can laugh, but we also need to realize that this culture - which the Court of King George II and the REAL rich people wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole - is gaining some serious power. Many states that identify as redneck are suffering from brain drains, and we latte-sipping libs are getting the sense that if we move there, we might get our tails kicked. "Redneck Pride" is funny, but it is divisive at its core.

Go to sites run by progressive Southerners, like Facing South or South Knox Bubba, to remind yourself that just because it's in the South doesn't mean it is redneck. To politicians, whoever can cross the divide between the rednecked and the latte-lipped is going to be the big winner.

Oh, and we at the Pepper thought an enterprising liberal would automatically register www.liberalandsingle.com, but it hasn't happened yet. We also looked up www.liberalsingles.com and www.ilovelattes.com, but no one's bit.

Then we realized that the site where disgruntled Americans can meet Canadians is the REAL liberal dating site!

Posted by Pepper at 05:12 PM | Permalink

Well, we're not Communists, but we have visions of ourselves all puffed up and waving a gun like Tyler Perry's Madea. Whee!

Thanks to our gainful employment, we at the Pepper saw perhaps 75% of "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" before it came out, along with lengthy interviews of Tyler Perry and Kimberly Elise. Every clip we saw had us laughing because we just love to watch men in drag get sassy. It's not high art, but it's funny.

Last weekend, Oscar weekend, this movie - which earned a "rotten" rating of 16% at Rotten Tomatoes - was number-one at the box office. Suddenly, we at the Pepper noticed a flood of articles with tastemakers cinematic and otherwise scratching their heads about its success.

"The 'Black Woman' Who Ate Hollywood" (The New York Post, who else?)
"Mad Props: How 'Diary of a Mad Black Woman' became an underdog movie hit" (Entertainment Weekly)
"Mad Black Woman Shocks Hollywood, Not Its Maker" (Reuters)
"Critics Called It a Turkey - But Watch It Fly" (Reuters)

What's the fuss?

May we at the Pepper say "duh"? First of all, film studios segregate their audiences by making movies that say "black" or "white" as soon as they are released. Or they cast Will Smith.

That's not to say that blacks didn't see "The Aviator" or that whites didn't see "White Chicks" (we did!), but marketing does what marketing does best - find a target group and hurl promotion at it. If the target group turns out, everyone's happy.

So why all the 'shock' that "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" was such a success? The target audience did indeed show up. Are critics creeped out that SO MANY black people went to see the movie? Are they worried they'll have to watch "Soul Plane 2"?

There wasn't this much fuss over "Meet the Fockers," which made oodles of cash and was slammed by critics. Was it that all the movie critics these days are OLD and from the era where - sorry, we're gonna go there - Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro were still relevant? (We love Hoffman and DeNiro, but they just don' t mean as much to contemporary moviegoers. We have DiCaprio now.)

The argument that critics are out of touch with the masses is an old one. No one can define what a "good movie" is, but the critical shock of Madea's success has seeped out of the entertainment pages and into the general news.

We at the Pepper wonder if a) Perry's movie was a lot better than critics gave it credit for - which we think since we've seen much of it in bits and bytes and b) people still don't take black entertainment seriously as a force in the mainstream media.

Posted by Pepper at 04:57 PM | Permalink

Not to be all Us Weekly or anything, but we at the Pepper just saw San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein at an acoustic-female-guitarist shindig at the Hotel Utah.

We didn't know what to do ... uh, he's not really famous, but he was married to someone famous, and we weren't one hundred percent sure it was him because he had on a motorcycle jacket. But he was standing next to a nubile rocker who had the nubile blond Sharon Stone thing going on, and that tipped us off.

We asked ourselves, "What should we say in the face of minor celebrity?" Several options raced through our heads, including
a. Dude, how's your toe?
b. Hey, say hi to Sharon for us!
c. You laid off our friend, you merger-minded pinhead!
d. Nothing

As we had knocked back pear ciders, we got all middle-class and safe and chose "d." After all, the less you care, the higher you are on the social pole. He stared back at us with an admirable "What you lookin' at?" face. He was probably steeling himself for "a."

Posted by Pepper at 12:37 AM | Permalink

The number of US troops killed in Iraq has reached 1,500.

Here is General John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command in the Middle East on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer":

JIM LEHRER: A magazine called American Scholar ... made the point that those 1500 young Americans who are dying, the 11,000 who have been wounded are not from the elite families of America; they're from families that are out there.

There are no senators' sons; there are no CEO's sons; all of that kind of milieu that used to be part of the U.S. Military. Does that concern you?

GEN. JOHN ABIZAID: Well, I can't speak for the senators, and I can't speak for anybody else. I can only speak for the three four-star generals that were testifying in front of the committee today. And every one of us had very, very close relatives personally involved in fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan at one point or another.

And if you think we're not connected, if you think the American people are not connected, it might be true that portions of the elite are not connected, but the rest of us are; I believe that very deep down.

***

Abizaid's son and son-in-law really are in the military, so he has made a sacrifice. But his deflection of Lehrer's question was masterful. He didn't lie. Take note of that wording. He "can't speak for the senators."

We at the Pepper did a little digging, and we'll speak for the Senate AND the House. The Senate and House websites are not helpful. Visitors can find out which senator served at the same time as his brother (wow), but they don't post who has a kid in the military.

We at the Pepper found a great article about California Rep. Duncan Hunter in the San Diego Union-Tribune that lists members of congress with family in Iraq, and we also found a brief article in USA Today. So, we were able to compile a list of Senators and Reps with family in Iraq:

Senators
Tim Johnson, D-S.D., son in Army, served in Iraq
Christopher Bond, R-Mo., son in Marines, in Iraq
Joseph Biden, D-Del., son in National Guard
All three of these senators voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq in 2002.

Representatives
Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., son in Marines, served in Iraq*
Todd Akin, R-Mo., son in Marines, in Iraq, and son in the Naval Academy*
Ike Skelton, D-Mo., son in Navy*
Joe Wilson, R-S.C., has three sons - one Army in Iraq, one Navy, one Army National Guard*
Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., son in Navy*
John Kline, R-Minn., son in Army, may be sent to Iraq
Jim Saxton, R-NJ, nephew in Marines, returned from Iraq
All of these representatvies voted yes to authorize force, except for Kline and Musgrave, who were not in the House at the time.

Whenever we at the Pepper criticize the Court of George II for sending the children of the lower classes into war, we omit these ten from criticism. You guys followed your words with your deeds - fair enough. We don't agree with any of you for voting yes to the resolution that got us into trouble, but you were willing to make the sacrifice.

However, that's ONLY TEN members of Congress with close relatives in the military - all of whom have been in Iraq, are in Iraq, or might be sent. Even though people castigated Michael Moore for saying Senator Johnson was the only member of Congress with a child in Iraq, ten isn't a number that merits boasting. If Moore gave the right number, he would have had the same impact.

It seems to us that the vast majority of our leadership doesn't understand the cost of war - while a disproportionate number of individuals in lower social classes understand all too well. We at the Pepper respect the members of Congress who willingly sent their family members to war. If we missed anyone, let us know. We don't want to be wrong - we want to give credit where credit is due.

However, we don't want anyone to think that some lives are more valuable than others - that, if Jenna Bush went to Iraq (hardy har), her life would be worth more than another soldier's. We at the Pepper want to point out that in war ALL LIVES ARE EQUAL. AND EQUALLY VALUABLE. No matter who gets sent, everyone takes the same risk. And all Americans should remember those who have died for our country - no matter the cause.

Posted by Pepper at 12:06 PM | Permalink

The latest Commie Alert is raging at the Democrats' attempts to soften the bankruptcy bill that will make it even more difficult for individuals to escape their debts.

Bama man Jeff Sessions said of the Democrats' amendments: "We have class warfare rhetoric going on, like the credit card companies ought to be blamed for providing money to people who don't pay it back," Sessions said.

Uh, since when were the credit card companies benevolent patrons? Credit cards are handy in tough months, but credit card companies try to lure people into debt so they will make more money.

There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong with making the credit card companies seem generous.

We at the Pepper wonder why Republicans in particular want to wipe away the protection filing for bankruptcy can provide. Think about it - spending beyond our means saved our lagging economy during its rough patch after September 11 and the dot-com collapse. (Hear that? A class-conscious liberal admitting that wild spending helps the economy?)

Harsher bankruptcy rules might actually DISCOURAGE the adventurous investments that free-market fans so adore.

Maybe the credit card companies should be blamed for not explaining how credit cards work. The Democrats wanted to add an amendment that tells those who don't know better what happens when you pay the minimum - you end up paying more. The Republicans voted that down - it's better to keep the great unwashed in the dark! It's easier to rob people if they can't see their pocketbooks.

So we at the Pepper can help. If you pay only the minimum, then the credit card companies charge money on what you owe. That's called interest. Dig? You pay for the privilege of paying in installments or paying back a loan when you have more money. That's what people should have learned in high school - or college for that matter - and requiring credit card companies to explain it is a mere matter of education. When ordinary people are armed with this knowledge, they might not run up debts ... which means the credit card companies won't make as much money when they break your kneecaps.

If narrowing the gap between rich and poor is "class warfare," then let the rumble begin! If Sessions and his pals really want to impress, maybe they should hire another 9-year-old to wax eloquent about interest rates and balance transfers.

Posted by Pepper at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When the Court of King George II doesn't get its way in the War Against Social Security, it breaks out the last card in the deck, the big guns, the heavy artillery ...

A 9-year-old moppet named Noah McCullough, with a face like Ralphie from "A Christmas Story" and the heart of Tom DeLay.

Oh, you think we're being mean and nasty to a 9-year-old. He can take care of himself just fine - this little presidential-trivia buff has agreed to relinquish some nap time and go on tour in support of the War Against Social Security.

The only way they could have topped themselves was by getting Gary Coleman. The masses love sweet, cherubic, sassy kids who call Democrats "meanies" and are just plumb cute when they say that Tom DeLay is "so smart."

The Christian Science Monitor put it best: "Yes, we've come to the point where what is arguably the biggest domestic policy debate in the past 50 years is being handled by a child trivia-champ."

Furthermore, the Court of George II is treating the War Against Social Security like an ad campaign for a breakfast cereal - slap a kid's face on the box, and anyone will eat it. Even if it tastes like crap.

More on his parents if you click below ...

At first, we at the Pepper wondered, "What kind of parents would turn their child into such a rabid Republican? Is this kid's dad like the dad who scrawled 'W' on his baby's head with a magic marker?"

Actually, no. His parents are as befuddled as we are. According to the Houston Chronicle, his dad doesn't take sides, and his mother is a Democrat. They just like