Be sure to join me tonight for my Saturday edition of Dark Voices Radio at 9:00 p.m. EST. Note that the time has been changed to one hour earlier than before: air time is, again, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time, not 10:00 p.m. as it used to be.

High on the agenda tonight is a speaker-melting rant about the arrest of a 12-year-old girl in New York City. Her crime? Making two little doodles on her desk expressing her love for her two best friends. She did it in erasable marker, no less.

Zero tolerance? You haven't heard about zero tolerance until you hear my flaming condemnation of this madness and the people ramming it down kids' throats like New York City Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and his buddy, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. God! but I'm looking forward to tearing into those fiends this evening.

In other minor matters, readers may recall my January 2 article, "Personal Journey and Red Velvet Cake," which I began with a rather long-winded exposition on my personal revelation that, if I am going to bitch about other people's moral hypocrisy — Sarah Palin and a whole bunch of other Republicans come to mind, but so do some of Obama's disgraceful appointees, as well — I had best start working on cleaning up my own slothful life, first. On the physical side, my personal journey has included putting my health in order by losing weight, eating better, and dispensing with the woe-is-my-sorry-life attitude. I am not at all sure how the reparation of my mortal soul is going. On the bright side, in the next few months I will be formally announcing that I have at least secured a deal with a mainstream publisher for my first book. On the health side, I feel better now than I have in many, many years. As far as weight is concerned, from 190-some pounds, I now weigh 138 pounds.

Does that sound too low? Click here to see for yourselves. No, that isn't a Photoshop job. Photoshop was used, but only to render the original photograph black and white and to add graininess and more light gradient for artistic effect. Getting to this point wasn't easy, and remaining here never will be.

I cannot change the world, but I do presume to offer some advice, if perhaps only to an unusual breed of progressives: Republicans on the modern political stage of theatre and folly will not change; they are wholly committed to hypocrisy in their own lives and madness in their public discourse. Trying to reason with them is no more productive than accommodating their core of meanness. Stop wasting time. Find their weaknesses and feed them to the dogs of mainstream media's obsession with drool and scandal. More Republicans of the same ilk will come; they are locusts. Just keep wrecking their leading lights. They'll make it pretty easy for you; but you must have the guts to take glee not only in watching their self-immolation, but also in finding the accelerants of their demise.

But as much as you should rightfully take no quarter in wrecking any and every Republican, even those who pretend to some form or other of moderation, you are wasting every bit as much time hoping most Democrats who pretend to the call of leadership are anything other than craven shills for one or another parochial interest. Stop wasting your time thinking the salvation of this once-promising Republic is in the hands of Barack Obama or virtually any Democrat now in Congress. It is not, and the sooner you understand that, the more quickly you will look to truly progressive leaders waiting to be heard, to be elected, and to be trusted.

Tell me I am wrong, and I will tell you exactly what I think of anyone who continues to support a party that wants health care "reform" that includes fining me and putting me in prison because I will not be forced to buy the defective products of market-distorting, failed oligopolists. Neither will I support a President who feigns to competence by appointing and retaining demonstrably failed men and women.

Contrary to what millions believed in November of 2008, change begins within. Once it takes hold there, a person starts losing his or her fear of bad leaders, no matter how big their fist, no matter how attractive their promises.

Trust me on this. No matter how much the world around us needs to be reformed, change starts inside. From there, the rest might not be easy, but the road ahead is fairly clear.

So, too, are the roads that will lead to nowhere.

On a well-known social networking forum, I was just asked the question that is the title of this post: "How's School Going This Year?" My correspondent was a student of mine some years ago. I decided to answer her here:

Teaching is always a pleasure and a frustration: I am passing to my students shards and evidence of civilization, along with the ability to sustain it through the development of learning and other cognitives faculties; but I know the students are becoming less and less capable not only of learning, but more importantly of caring. The modern "solutions"—like "No Child Left Behind," "Zero-Tolerance" school policies, and even "Abstinence-Only" sex education—are worsening the situation. Failed generations are trying to craft policies and prescriptions to rectify failures magnificently evident in their own lives. All too easy is the noble task of repairing others compared to the tedious work of reforming ourselves.

I must stipulate that the lament of youthful ignorance, indolence, and sloth is as old as time, and few are the generations that can honestly claim their own moral, intellectual, or spiritual superiority over generations that followed. We are swift to condemn those whose youth reminds us of our own that we have lost, and we are even quicker to the judgment that we would do better if only we were once again young yet endowed with the wisdom of long lives, even if poorly managed as they have been.

Still, I see the end of America as empire of knowledge, craft, ambition, and abiding intellectual curiosity. If I am right, I must acknowledge that I have no one to blame but myself—not because I am a failed professor, though, because I am, in all honesty, a fine college teacher, one of the best of a vanishing breed of face-to-face lecturers with fiery oratory and unrelenting interest in his many disciplines of specialty. The blame I carry is that I am undeniably a member of a generation that failed, both in its whole and in far too many of its constituents. We failed in the leaders we chose, the policies we pursued, the self-indulgence we embraced, and the paths to rectitude we feigned.

Now, I must fail far too many students in my classes.

To that extent, I am, if nothing else, consistent.

Click on the graphic above to go to the showpage for the Saturday, January 23, 2010 live broadcast of Dark Voices Radio tonight at 10:00 p.m. EST. Politics, economics, and all manner of other troubling, infuriating, fabulous topics are always on the agenda. Listen to your host, the Dark Wraith, once again go into his trademark rant overdrive. Call in if you dare to join the howl-fest.

This is progressive radio the way it should be: fierce, intellectual, populist, uncompromising. This is Dark Voices Radio!


Click on the link above to launch the one-minute audio file in your computer's default media player or use the shockwave player below to play it.

It is very cold outside.

Oh, stop it with the "How cold is it?" comeback. I'll tell you how cold it is.

It's cold enough to make me grouse. Never mind that there's nothing unusual about something making me grouse. Today, I groused about a driver in front of me who spun her car 360 degrees or so. She looked pretty shaken when she came to a rather sudden stop on the road where there wasn't any ice, so I decided not to share my annoyance with her.

Normally—and this is especially true if it's a younger, male driver—I'd go around the person and yell out the window, "Is that yer momma's car?!" I cut this lady slack, though. She didn't look too well after rotating in a big metal object that, I'm pretty sure, had never before so utterly disobeyed her.

I was grousing about my fellow shoppers in Walmart, too, today. It was the people who were on cell phones, completely oblivious to their random, meandering paths and the fact that they were slowing down to almost a stop as they engaged in what were not crucial conversations with their phone raconteurs.

I want one of those air horns, the ones that make an unexpected and thoroughly rude honk that snaps the heads of unwary people within 50 feet.

And that reminds me: have I mentioned lately how annoying those Website ads have become? First, it was the blinking, jerking, twitching ads trying to get my attention; those were bad enough. Now, it's that whole thing with those Flash ads that have something race into the picture, then slowly float around, then race back out of the picture. There are all kinds of variations on this, and they're all just infuriating. I've taken to the habit of simply leaving a Website where these ads are posted.

I go to a Website for content, not to see some ad embedded in the code by a hard-up Webmaster who actually believes he or she will make some money distracting visitors from the real reason they went to the site in the first place.

Hardly anyone in the normal cyber-universe makes money off Web ads. The few who do generally start talking about porn ads. That's really irritating because I won't post porn ads. The closest I've come is having affiliate status with Playboy and its sister company, Playboy Bunny, which sells degradingly skimpy women's apparel. I don't want to sell thongs and bust-lifting bras. They make me hurt just thinking about what they do to tender parts.

See? I can't even bring myself to post barely naughty ads.

Maybe I should sell posters of myself. Yes, that's going to sell like hotcakes.

Not.

So what ads do I run? Amazon.com, for one. And I try not to think about why on Earth anyone would click through to Amazon.com from any of my Websites when just about everyone knows how to get to Amazon.com without going to my sorry sites to do so.

"Oh, I'd better go to The Dark Wraith Forums today so I can click through and buy what I need at Amazon.com." Sure. That's going to happen.

Grr.

Now I've forgotten why I even bothered to start this article because I'm fully out on the tangent about Websites, ads, and revenue therefrom. This is where I get to mention my supreme annoyance with the people who actually do monetize their Websites.

Did you ever wonder how the guy who's behind Wikipedia is so filthy rich, even though there seem to be no prominent ads on Wikipedia pages? Did it ever make you wonder how those first-tier bloggers have gotten rich, even though the ads they post aren't really all that different from the ads you'd see on some loser's site?

You know how those people get all their money? Well, I do, and if you ever figure it out, you might be pretty bothered. Unless, of course, you're a blind Republican or an equally blind Democrat, in which case reality is a thing of beauty crafted from the whole cloth of fevered opinion without the complication of noticing that far too many of the leaders of the Right and the Left are nothing but sell-outs to the very institutions and people you loathe.

Most of you aren't stupid, though. I'll bet you're just tired: tired of the liars who sucker you into voting for them only to find out that your lives aren't getting any better, your rights—especially your rights to be left alone and not to be watched like you're a criminal waiting to happen—aren't coming back, and, even worse, this country isn't going to get any better. The Right-wing mobs cry for policies that benefit the rich even though the members of these mobs are working-class stiffs who are considered nothing but trash to the elite; and the Leftists still cheer Barack Obama even though he has demonstrated his willingness to continue prosecuting unwinnable wars, even though he caves to corporate and Right-wing interests, and even though he retains the services of failed and venal men like Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Robert Gates, Arne Duncan, and Robert Mueller.

Look hard into that darkening twilight: the sun is setting behind you.

No, big city Main Street and corporate media newsrooms aren't the only places where the commerce starts with a wink and ends with a meeting of minds and parts south in the company of ugly strangers and their fat wallets.

I've been pretty sure it wasn't always this way, but I'm beginning to suspect I've been wrong about that.

Yes, I'm just being overly cynical, though. It's not like that at all.

The world is good. First-tier, liberal bloggers are straight shooters. The government isn't still spying on you, and it deleted of all the databases you were in that were created during the Bush II era. Conspiracy theories are nonsense. The Democrats care about you instead of K Street lobbyists. The courts side squarely with the rights of the citizens over the claims of police and the privileges of corporations, and that promise of health care reform is about to be realized beyond your wildest hopes.

It's all good.

It's the 21st Century, we have a progressive—nay, a veritable liberal—in the White House, and our nation is at peace.

Yes, it's all good.

I was in such decline.

I had become old before I should have, I was fat, and I was depressed. My health was poor. I was planning for my untimely death. Notwithstanding my defiant denials to the contrary, I was scared, scared of the world around me, scared of myself, what I had become, and where I was headed.

Not a person around me, even among those who might have cared, few as they are or should be, saw how bad off I was.

This is nothing new. It's been going on like this, off and on, back and forth, my whole adult life. With occasional bursts of vowed rectitude, I could always imagine that the side trips were the main road, but they weren't. The highway I was really traveling was big, wide, compelling, and most obvious if I hadn't been too blinded by self-excuses, fantastic voyages of delusion, and attempts at judgmentalism that didn't even fit my rather more live-and-let-live personality.

You've heard the terms, I am sure: "manic depression," "bipolar disorder," "obsessive-compulsive disorder."

I have a better one: "me."

How do I reach into the world of prominent people to make accusations of greed, hatefulness, and self-interest when I cannot bring my own house to persistent and self-evident order? The hypocrisy I see as others' glaring flaw parades in front of me as nothing other than the reflection of my own magnificently obvious defect.

I have lashed out in literary fury at people like George W. Bush; Richard Cheney; Sarah Palin; Al Gore; Paul Krugman; and now, with increasing frequency, Barack Obama. Their hypocrisy stuns me; yet, from what moral ground do I stand to cut through their false representations about themselves, their political positions, and their decisions?

This chasm between the desirable and the desired carves a broad scar through me every bit as much as it does them. We have our ideals that we wish for everybody, even for ourselves, but we cannot help but act out our lives at some lesser or greater difference from our expectations.

I am not sure of how much personal, emotional injury this causes any individual, although I suspect that I am not alone in suffering greatly inside for this hypocrisy; but I am most certain that the way we conduct our own lives at odds with our public expressions is of great harm to those who must suffer and fight their own battles in the shadow of social disapproval, laws, and other devices that project the desirable upon those acting for their own part on their desires.

Surrendering to license is no answer; I still have the call to a better nature in myself. Others do, too; but vows to be a better person, to live a cleaner, more genuine life are just so much talk in the few hours when the ill effects of living hedonistically become too obvious to ignore.

In some old languages, so-called "state of being" (or "copulative") verbs could be used in such a way that they became something like "action" verbs. In English, the classic state-of-being verb is "to be" since what comes after the verb is nothing but a description of what was put before the verb. "I am hungry," merely gives a description ("hungry") to the subject ("I"). Imagine how a verb like this could be made to convey a sense of action. It's not easy for speakers of languages that strongly distinguish what the subject is from what the subject does; but that's what could be done in some old languages. Translating into modern English what an ancient person had said when using this tense would be quite difficult and probably wouldn't be attempted at all. Most likely, the subtlety of that old sense of a copulative verb in active mood would be simplistically translated as some weakly related action verb.

Consider that when you hear the rather famous young rabbi from several millennia ago quoted as saying, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

"Go"? Try thinking of the quote instead using a state of being verb with the directive to action as that state. It helps bridge the chasm between the desirable and the desired. Whatever I intend to preach, the scar is first, foremost, and always in me, not in those whose hypocrisy is a parade that runs over my life.

The men and women who have inspired religions, sects, and cults have their moments, some more than others. Given that they have died, even they have passed the time of their actions, and only their lives matter much, if at all. State of being is, in itself and without even so much as the quality of animating life of the person, the entire action.

That's how it is with everyone, so I should get down to work. The world is becoming less free in the countries that preen themselves on their dedication to freedom. No matter what we do, this age of authoritarianism is pressing forward. From the Right, it wields the fist of ever-mounting, increasingly oppressive laws to replace individual choice with the fear of state violence through fines, imprisonment, and even death to ensure security against real, falsely magnified, and imagined enemies. From the Left, it wields that same fist of ever-mounting, increasingly oppressive laws to replace individual choice with the fear of state violence through fines, imprisonment, and even death to ensure compliance with group norms established beyond the counsel of individual conscience.

Nevertheless, my long walk to war with modernity must be from the inside out. That large highway of self-decline is so easy to use, but it leads — at least for me — to nowhere I need to go and to be.

A few months ago, I got rattled by several personal events that happened in short succession. I am hopeful that I am mature enough, now, to have seized those painful opportunities to put myself better and more permanently on a road that is good. What I know is that, with each cycle like this through which I have gone, I have stayed longer and found my way back more quickly when I drifted perilously away.

I have resolutely set aside my eating habits that had really been at the heart of some of the worst of my health problems. Instead of running to the medical establishment for promises wrapped in pills, procedures, and surgeries, I am eating well, in small portions, and without the obsessive glee of stuffing myself almost exclusively with meat until I am in sick pain.

I am still working on my addiction to nicotine, but in this cycle, I have brought it down to an allocation of nine ultra-light, short cigarettes a day. I will get it down further in the months ahead.

Instead of the random, miserable bursts of grueling exercise, I'm doing a moderate, 20-minute workout every day.

Within, rather than trying to will myself to stop obsessing about matters of loneliness, want for abiding and lasting love, greed for things, and want for expressed sexuality, I am thinking about creative ideas and the ways I can make them happen more consistently than I have in the past.

What is the payoff? As of today, I've lost 36 pounds. Gastrointestinal problems that had literally torn me up for years — for decades, in fact — have all but disappeared. Terrifying spells of what might be described as "silent heart attacks" that had been gripping me almost every day (at their worst, sometimes several in short succession) for the past three years have completely disappeared. My hair has gone from an old and elderly, lifeless look of almost gray to something much better, and my face looks noticeably better. You can see for yourself with this picture I took last week. (Those who know how my recipe posts work can click to see another at the end of this article.)

How long will all this last? Permanently, I hope. I'm sure I'll have setbacks, but it feels so good to feel better that I don't think the alternatives are all that attractive anymore. I still have so much work to do, though; but that's part of the journey, and this is the kind of road that is best because it is as long as the life lived traveling it.

It's almost time to start writing with fury, again. Readers will see that soon enough, but you will also see other kinds of writing, too. Only very rarely did I publish works of fiction, here, but I'll do more of that from now on. I like metaphorical narrative. I also like humor, and I will write more that is not so serious. I will also write more short articles, especially ones involving political and economic analysis. No normal person can frequently endure my detailed, gruelingly long-winded economic expositions, and I promise not to do those very often from now on.

I'll also be publishing some video work. Editorials, mostly, but I cannot promise that I won't try to get creative in a medium that is still quite new to me. Be patient; if the first couple aren't particularly good, that doesn't mean they won't get better as I master the craft and its technologies.

I've bleated long enough. It's time for the cake recipe.

Although I can usually remember all the details of how I make something, given that I had not made a red velvet cake in years, I had to go to one of my old recipe magazines to jog my memory. I have a nice little collection of recipe publications, mostly the ones you see on the shelves near checkout lines at grocery stores. I don't buy them there, though, because they used to show up all the time at flea markets, used bookstores, and places like that. They're not worth much to anyone else, but my collection is an invaluable resource, even though I have few opportunities to cook ambitiously.

This red velvet cake recipe, modified as I recalled from my version, comes from the November 30, 2004, magazine, Southern Living: Our Best Recipes (Birmingham, Alabama: Oxmoor House Special Editions). While the magazine version might take a little more than half-an-hour, rest assured that, unless you are a very efficient cook, the total preparation time will be more like an hour. In my case, the time is somewhat longer than that because I clean pans, dishes, and utensils as I go along so there's no big mess to clean up at the end of the food preparation phase of the project.

Here's what you'll need for this recipe.

Cake:

• 1 stick (½ cup) of softened butter
• 1½ cups of sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 2½ cups of cake flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• ½ of salt
• 2 tablespoons of cocoa
• 1 cup of buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar
• 1 ounce of red food coloring
• 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
• 2 greased, 9-inch round baking dishes

Frosting:

• 1 cup of milk
• 1/3 cup of regular flour
• 1 cup of softened butter
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract

For those of you who are not familiar with ingredients for making food from scratch, let me tell you a couple of things about the ingredients, above. First, cake flour is not the same as what is commonly called "all-purpose flour." In the first part of the recipe, notice that you'll be using cake flour; in the second part, for the frosting, you'll be using all-purpose flour. Your cake will be a little sorry if you use all-purpose flour in that part of the recipe.

Second, when I write "softened butter," that means you should take the butter out of the refrigerator and let it set for about an hour so it warms up and mixes well with the other ingredients. No, leaving butter out of the refrigerator for that long will not endanger your health as long as the butter was good when you put it in the fridge. When I was growing up, butter was left out for much longer, and I don't recall any of my people dying from gastrointestinal upset.

Third, you might have noticed the two greased, round baking dishes in the ingredients. Yes, you can grease the dishes with that spray-on stuff if you like, but I won't do it like that. For one thing, I like to use butter; for another, I have this thing against inhaling aerosolized, fake grease into my lungs, where it will form a nice seal against efficient transport of oxygen to my bloodstream. (But that's just me.) The way I do it is to take a stick of butter and run the end side of it back and forth all over the inside of the baking dish. I do this until I see the dish become somewhat opaque from the layer of butter laid down. Later, not only will the cake come out of the dish intact, but the surface of the cake will be smoother and easier to frost.

Fourth, when I tell you to use "pure vanilla extract," I mean don't go using imitation vanilla. Just don't, okay? You're making good food; avoid using phony chemicals unless you must.

Fifth, when you buy sugar, buy cane sugar. Make sure it says that on the package; otherwise, you might be buying beet sugar. That's right, sugar can come from beets, but that doesn't mean you have to abide the nonsense.

Sixth, "baking soda" is not the same as "baking powder." Baking soda comes in those yellow Arm & Hammer boxes that people used to put in the backs of their refrigerators to absorb bad smells. It's used in recipes, too, like the one here. Baking powder is used in recipes, as well, but not the one here. You will be most disappointed if you use baking powder when a recipe calls for baking soda.

Finally, a word about using salt in recipes. I have to avoid salt as much as possible, and I would love to encourage you to do the same. I cannot eat even small amounts of fast food anymore because the salt content is so high that I will become incapacitated from swilling water starting about an hour after I've eaten the fare at McDonald's, Wendy's, Arby's, Burger King, and any other fast food restaurant. Sometime in the past couple of years, some grocery stores started selling their "fresh meats" laced with salt. The salt is ostensibly being put in as a "natural" preservative, but it has the effect, at least on me, of making the meats inedible unless I soak out the salt before cooking the food. Again, my aversion to salt is far greater than most people's, but you might be surprised at how good food tastes once you've stopped using salt to burn microscopic fissures into your taste buds to cut through the desensitization caused by all the previous salt you've run through your mouth. Try it sometime.

This recipe calls for some salt, and that's not unusual in cakes and pastries. I use it quite sparingly. Although I don't think it's necessary, salt added to batters is old, old tradition, and I'm not the kind of person who dispenses with an ingredient when I don't understand exactly why the tradition of using it first came about and then endured so tenaciously. Hence, in this recipe, I add half-a-teaspoon of salt. Why? Obviously, it's because that's how it's always been done, alright? (That's why I shall never be a liberal, even though most of my readers are, and I love you all more than I care for just about any conservative. But me? a liberal? Never. Progressive? Sure. Liberal? No. Life is too random as it is. Mostly, I blame quantum mechanics.)

Where was I? Oh, yes: making a cake.

The Cake Batter

Cake Batter Step 0
Preheat the oven to 350°

Cake Batter Step 1
Once the stick of butter is nice and soft, combine it with that half-cup of sugar and beat at medium speed. When those two ingredients are blended together, add one of the three eggs and keep beating until that egg is blended in nicely. Add the second egg and beat until you again have a smooth mixture. Add the third egg and beat until what's in the bowl has a nice, creamy look to it. This whole process shouldn't take more than five minutes. Once this step is finished, set the mixture off to the side while you get Step 2 finished. You might as well leave this in the mixing bowl with the mixer because you'll be running it again in just a few minutes.



Cake Batter Step 2
Take the two-and-a-half cups of cake flour, the baking soda, salt, and cocoa, and stir these dry ingredients together in a bowl. Use a big spoon to do this; it works well to lift and gather the separate ingredients.



Cake Batter Step 3
In another bowl or pan, pour in that cup of buttermilk, along with the tablespoon of distilled white vinegar, the red food coloring, and the two teaspoons of vanilla extract.



Cake Batter Step 4
This is where we bring everything together. You'll start with that mixture in the mixing bowl from Step 1. Put in a portion (maybe a third or a fourth) of the dry ingredients from Step 2, then run the mixer at low speed just long enough to get the dry ingredients cut in. Stop the mixer, put in maybe a third of the wet ingredients from Step 3, and run the mixer again just long enough to cut these ingredients through. Stop the mixer, put in some more of the dry ingredients, and run the mixer again (always on low speed) just long enough to get what you've just put in cut through. Stop the mixer and put in some more of the wet ingredients and then run the mixer just long enough to get it blended through. You should do this alternating addition and blending until everything from Steps 1 and 2 has gone into the mixing bowl. Make sure you begin and end with the dry ingredients from Step 2. Four additions with the dry and three with the wet is plenty. You will notice with each addition that what's in the mixing bowl gets redder and redder, but the resulting mixture looks more and more like an actual cake batter. By the time you've gotten everything mixed together, the batter will be quite red and fairly thick.



Cake Batter Step 5
Pour the batter into the two greased baking dishes, making every effort possible to get equal amounts in each because you're about to put them in the oven, and the baking time will be dependent upon the volume of batter in the dish, and you want the two, separate dishes to be done at the same time.



Cake Batter Step 6
Put the batter-filled baking dishes in the oven. Give them 18 minutes before you start checking to see if they're done. Put a toothpick in each, and when it comes out clean (it can look greasy, but no batter and no sticky cake should be on it), take the dishes out. My experience is that they'll need about 23 minutes, but this is highly dependent upon the oven and somewhat dependent upon the type of baking dishes (clear or colored) that you're using. Overcooking will be as bad for your results as under-cooking, so be diligent in this step.



Cake Batter Step 7
Once out of the oven, put each dish on a cooling rack for ten to fifteen minutes. At that time, take a butter knife and run it around the inside edge of each dish several times, pushing slightly in at the bottom to detach the cake at the edges of the underside. Once you've done that, put each rack on top of its dish and flip the contraption over. Pat the cake until it lets go onto the rack. Allow the cakes to finish cooling bare on the racks like that.



The Frosting

Frosting Step 1
In a smallish sauce pan, put the one cup of milk and the third of a cup of all-purpose flour. Using a whisk, stir the flour thoroughly into the milk. With the pan on a stove burner set to medium, keep whisking the mixture until it gets quite thick. It will get to the consistency of mashed potatoes as it approaches boiling. Take it off the burner before it actually boils and put it in the refrigerator to cool. It should take maybe 45 minutes for it to get properly chilly. You don't want it cold, just chilled.



Frosting Step 2
When the mixture from Frosting Step 1, above, is getting to just about the right temperature, put the two sticks of softened butter into the mixing bowl with the cup of sugar and the teaspoon of vanilla extract, and run the mixer on high until the ingredients have a nice, creamy consistency. Stop the mixer and put in that cooled mixture from Frosting Step 1. Run the mixer on high, but only long enough to get the ingredients well mixed. Avoid over-beating.



Put the Cake All Together

Put one of the cake layers, both of which should now be cooled to room temperature, onto your cake dish. This layer should be flat side up (in other words, the side that was at the bottom of its baking dish should be up). Spread the top and sides of this layer with frosting from the mixing bowl.

Now, put the other layer, flat side down on top of the layer you've just frosted. Spread the top and sides of this layer with the rest of your frosting, making sure to generously cover the seam between the layers with frosting.



You have now finished your cake, and it is ready to serve.



Be sure to cover and refrigerate whatever is left over of this cake from the first helpings. You can warm it up to eat some later, but be aware that this cake won't keep very well, so you should eat it all within 48 hours or so of preparation.



It also tastes better if served by the cook; so, for those of you familiar with the tradition of these recipes offered here at The Dark Wraith Forums, you may click here to see the proper serving manner of the gentleman who has made this wonderful, colorful dessert for you.

Enjoy your cake, good readers.

A December 12, 2009, article at Big Brass Blog, an online property of Dark Wraith Publishing, detailed a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives to overhaul the regulatory structure that oversees the financial services industry. Below I republish in expanded form my responding comments to that article.

While meaningful, penetrating financial reform is desperately needed, and has been needed for over a decade, given my deeply cynical tendencies, I am most decidedly not impressed by the work of the current Congress in this matter. Any attempt at "reform" that does not address the causes of the near-collapse that has led to the recognition of such need is doomed to failure. Far too much emphasis is being placed upon the failures of the private sector financial institutions and their principals, while far too little attention is being given to the public sector institutions and people who had within their power the means and authority to responsibly carry out their duties but did not.

First, members of Congress demonstrate no courage when, instead of first addressing the irresponsible policies of their own chambers, they pose to lead a populist mob against the private sector. This is not to say in any way that those financial institutions and their principals were not, in their own right, deeply flawed in their activities that led to the crisis. They were, and they rightly deserve a much firmer, far less accommodating grip of oversight; but that brings us to a deeper problem that regulatory reform refuses to address, and this is my second point.

To imagine that the benefits of a so-called "free market" are not tied to the power of a fiercely competitive industry structure is sheer folly. We have now and always have had a bias in public policy toward a substantial amount of freedom in enterprise. Regulations of all kinds are actually the primary evidence of this: containing the excesses, negative externalities, and other unfortunate consequences of market activity through legislation enforced by regulatory agencies is a means by which to give license to a free market environment while merely circumscribing its actions, but not prohibiting pursuit of profit gained for risks taken.

At what point the scale of individual companies within an industry becomes significant in terms of so-called "market power" is a matter of enduring debate, but it certainly depends upon the industry. To the extent that the prospect of scale economies encourages growth of individual companies, market concentration would seem to be favorable to cost efficiency in production and, theoretically, therefore to final prices of goods and services. Against this well-embraced argument, however, are the risks associated with big companies dominating an industry and a subtler possibility that those scale economies are gained at the expense of opportunity costs incurred by factor input markets, consumers, and prospective competitors facing prohibitive barriers to entry.

The first and most apparent risk of market concentration is that of failure of one or more of the huge firms. At some scale, a single firm falling apart can have not just microeconomic impact, but also macroeconomic consequences. A casual look at the financial services industry during last autumn's crisis gives evidence of a cascade effect, where the fall of several industry leaders induced destructive consequences upon other financial institutions and, in fact, upon firms beyond the industry. In current news, the potential default on debt of Dubai World, one of the largest holding companies on the planet, would have staggering consequences on countless large and small financial intermediaries and their stakeholders across the globe.

We cannot have a free market that remains in the grip of fiercely competitive firms that can succeed and fail inconsequentially to the macroeconomy while allowing that freedom to cabin scale that most decidedly can be consequential to the macroeconomy.

A second and more pernicious risk of big companies dominating an industry is the political power they can come to exert. When our government in all three of its branches considers the voices, expertise, and opinions of industry leaders to be co-equal with that of citizens — ignorant or informed as they may be — the concept of democracy has taken a gravely radical turn from any sense it might have had among the ancient Greeks to whom we so scrupulous refer when constructing our own ideals of what a democracy is or should be.

The current President, who campaigned on a platform of change, nevertheless draws to his inner counsel men and women from companies of scale and, in some cases, disrepute.

Members of Congress allow their votes to be influenced by lobbyists paid by powerful corporate interests.

The judiciary deems the concept of "personhood" to encompass both people of flesh and blood as well as business entities, recognizing for each group a certain set of rights as well as responsibilities, never resolutely establishing definitive judgment upon the problem of how natural law could possibly inhere to innate, conceptual constructs like corporations, partnerships, and limited liability companies. (See my article, "Plain Language," for an overview of natural law and inherent rights.)

Returning finally to the matter of why the current posture of regulatory reform for the financial services industry is largely worthless in my judgment, I have no reservation in that assessment, again, because the failures of public sector institutions and personnel are being hidden behind the parade of righteous indignation and resolutions aimed at the private sector, altogether deserving of unrelentingly harsh criticism as it is.

From at least 2004 until around the time of the beginning of the noticeable part of the financial crisis last year, the largest monetary aggregate, M3, was spiraling upward at an annual rate that finally reached nearly 20 percent. The Federal Reserve, which has sole responsibility for the money supply, dealt with this by suspending publication of the M3 data. (See, for example, my May 11, 2008, article, "The Gospel of Impending Doom.")

At the same time this was happening, the monetary aggregate called M1 was barely growing.

Now, M1 is money that includes cash and checking account funds. M3 includes M1, but also includes highly illiquid (that is, not immediately usable) money like massive time deposits, Eurodollars, and the like. (Read about monetary aggregates in Part Three of my series, "The Economics of Wreckage.")

The growth rate of M1 was not sufficient to keep up with the real growth rate of the economy, which meant that a slow, choking throttle was being applied to the economy that uses cash and checking account funds. That's the economy of everyday people and businesses.

The rapid growth rate of M3 was flooding the financial system with a kind of money that the institutions comprising that system could not use directly. So, what does a rational economic agent do when it has an enormous amount of value that it cannot use but little in the way of cash that it actually needs? It will do what quite a few rational individuals in that position would do: it will pledge the highly illiquid assets against instruments that produce meager amounts of immediate money.

That's what people do when they have huge value tied up in a home but don't have money for their day-to-day expenditures. They'll use their homes as backing for lines of credit and other instruments. If that's not enough, they'll pledge the hard assets on bets that are sure things at first but become less and less so the farther out on a limb they go. If you have an investment that will pay off in six months, if you've got lots of wealth but little immediate income, you'll go long against your illiquid assets to buy in on the fast money makers. That's not "human nature": it's rational survival behavior, personal and institutional. (And save me the talk about how "responsible" people don't behave that way. Put just about anyone in the right circumstances, and responsibility goes from fiduciary to personal in no time flat.)

Hence, in the financial industry, we saw credit and other derivatives coming on line as financial intermediaries and other financial institutions utilized vast oceans of M3 money to squeeze out small amounts of liquid cash.

In retrospect, that's extraordinarily risky, of course, but retrospective wisdom is always in unlimited supply, and I dare say that a whole lot of liberal I-told-you-so types did not know beans about what was going on at the time, and they certainly weren't in the mood to knock off their Hey-Hey-Ho-Ho-George-Bush-Must-Go chants long enough to read the articles I was writing and publishing about what was going on and where it was going to lead.

Forward-thinking risk analysis is never particularly easy to come by, and that's why we have a regulator like the Federal Reserve. Whereas no one pays me to write about impending doom, the men and women at the Fed get paid very well at least to try a little bit of objective thinking once in a great while, like when the U.S. financial system is on a run-away freight train to a cliff.

The unfortunate part, though, is that the Fed could do nothing about the soaring M3 without the Chairman of the Board of Governors, Ben Bernanke, going to Congress during the Bush Administration and telling those Representatives and Senators, so many of them full of hubris and bereft of any knowledge of financial systems and economics, that the M3 money supply was spiraling upward out of control and all proportion, and the result was a financial system that was living on borrowed time and madly leveraged non-Tier 1 assets.

Were the Representatives and Senators to have asked how this looming M3 apocalyptic flood was happening, Mr. Bernanke — were he to have the guts, which neither he nor his addled, pathetically partisan predecessor, Alan Greenspan, did — would have explained that it was directly and inescapably the fault of the Congress and the Bush Administration because they were all keeping the U.S. economy going by leveraging off wildly huge trade deficits that were filling the coffers of foreign central banks with American dollars that those foreign central banks were then lending back to the United States government to finance its irresponsibly low taxes and irresponsibly high spending. (See, for example, articles I have written including Part 4 of my series, "The Economics of Wreckage," as well my prior articles about U.S. trade deficits, like "Foreign Trade and Debt," "Seven Principles of Macroeconomics," and "Exchange Rate Regimes," among others published over the past five years here at The Dark Wraith Forums.)

And why were those trade deficits so ridiculously high?

Was it greed of corporations moving their operations overseas?

Was it expensive, slothful American union labor?

Was it ignorant American consumers who wouldn't just "Buy American"?

No, unfortunately for the finger-pointers on the Left and on the Right, it was considerably simpler: China, India, and several other countries were pegging their currencies at staggeringly low, out-of-line exchange rates against the dollar. (Nobel-Prize winning liberal economist Paul Krugman thinks this is just fine, which is why Dr. Krugman is on my all-time Lowest-of-the-Low list of liberals, right beside venture capitalist rich boy PowerPointer Al Gore.)

They, especially the Chinese, were bleeding us dry, wiping out tens of millions of American jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars of our industrial base, all while lending us back the money they were getting from us by virtue of selling their products at to us at artificially low prices that made the Blue Light Special at K-Mart pale by comparison.

Hence, the U.S. government (along with the private sector) lived beyond its means, M3 spiraled, M1 was being crushed by the Federal Reserve in a ludicrously inadequate attempt to counter-balance the spiral of the larger monetary aggregate, and the financial system was swelling like a balloon with illiquid money that it used as the backing for derivative swaps off which its member institutions could make what seemed like a fast buck until the leverage became so great that even a small pull on the fulcrum (as happened on about September 15, 2008) sent the whole teeter-totter into a great big flop off that flimsy fulcrum of trust in the system.

Mr. Obama and his Democratic allies spend like there's no tomorrow while they talk about reforming the tax system but do nothing whatsoever that would come even within a trillion dollars a year of closing our federal budget deficits, and they rely for an economic recovery on unemployment staying high so worker productivity will go up to pull us into a growth phase just like Keynesians for the past seven decades have been doing. (Part Three, linked above, of my series, "The Economics of Wreckage," explains the theory, and my recent articles, "Recession to Recovery: The Rough and Narrow Road Ahead" and "Favorable Signs of a Sustainable Economic Recovery," show how this theory is playing out in the real world of the current economic recovery.)

Financial reform does not impress me.

When the government (at all levels) stops spying on its citizens like every one of us is a criminal waiting to be caught, when the Obama Administration starts prosecuting Bush Administration officials from the top down, and when the members of Congress start educating themselves about economics and finance and stop drooling to every pathetic interest from AIPAC to the healthcare industry to the banks to the military and its failed commanders like Petraeus and McChrystal, then I'll be on board the reform efforts.

In other words, I shall remain now and permanently a cynic.

The Dark Wraith has spoken.

After a week of writing, reviewing, revising, and finally printing final exams for my classes, the four days of administering the exams is now upon my students.

Grading exams is a lot like work, even though I've been doing it for almost 30 years, now, but the grading is not the part I dislike; it's the issuing of final grades. To some extent, I can make that part mechanical: just calculate final percentages, attach the grades, and be done with it. That's a little too easy for my taste, though.

I'll tell you a secret, but you cannot EVER tell anyone I told you this. In fact, I'm going to tell you more than one secret, tonight, and I expect you never to tell a living soul any of this.

Are we clear on that?

Okay, here goes, then.

I bump a grade every now and then.

That's right, a few times every semester, I'll edge a grade up a notch above where the numbers tell me. I do it if a student has been getting better and better grades as the course went along, and I'll do it if one test is way out of line from the rest.

I'll do it if I see past the foolish young person in front of me to the adult who will someday be more amazing than he or she knows. I've taught long enough to know how to see the future.

I see it every day. After all, I'm not just a writer; I'm a teacher.

I never cut slack because of a student's plea for a better grade, and those pleas are timeless, repetitive, and altogether tedious to me. Here's a sample, along with my thought-response to each, so you will first understand that I am most decidedly not a merciful professor:

"I just HAVE to get at LEAST a 'C' in this class."
(There's a way to do that: it's called studying, but by now it's too late. You cannot learn the body of an entire semester's coursework in a couple of all-nighters, especially considering you're not going to do that, anyway, are you?)

"I won't graduate unless I pass."
(You should have waited until you had graduated to slack off, then. That, or you shouldn't have waited until the last semester to take the course you knew was harder than anything in that fluff major of yours.)

"Can I meet with you to go over what I need to know to pass the final?"
(First, I reviewed for the final the last day of class. You weren't there. Second, I held a special review session. You weren't there. I have office hours. You've never been there. Now, you want extra special spoon-feeding through an entire course. I'm not there.)

"This is the ONLY class that's threatening my perfect GPA."
(Yes, I can see why many professors would be impressed with your intelligence, your go-to attitude, and your leadership qualities; unfortunately, none of those have worked in my class.)

"Do you have any extra-credit assignments I can do, like a paper or something?"
(I gave every student, including you, a syllabus on the first day, and I read the high points aloud in class. Recall that I emphatically noted both in that syllabus and orally that I do not give extra credit assignments. If I have a learning objective for you, it's the same learning objective I have for every student, and every student should have an equal chance of meeting it in the regular course of the class.)

"I study and study for your exams, but I still don't get good grades on your tests."
(In three decades of teaching, I have met only a handful of students who actually studied diligently but still couldn't do well on the exams. You are not one of those students. Either you aren't studying, which is most likely the case, or what you think qualifies as studying isn't even in the same universe with the real deal. This is college: we leave children behind.)

"I think you're a great teacher, and I just wish I could do better."
(Don't blow smoke up my butt and tell me it's a fancy barbecue you're hosting in my honor.)

"I need to know how many points I have to get on the final to pass this class."
(More points than are on the final.)

"What are you going to ask on the final?"
(Questions.)

"Does anyone, like, actually PASS your class?"
(Quite a few; you're just special. Perhaps you should change you name to Ed.)

Okay, that's enough. No, I don't actually say those things I wrote parenthetically. Yes, all of those quotes, though, are things I hear all the time.

Now, I'll bet some of you are wondering if I held back.

No, I mean it: a few of you men (a few, and it's the men who would be thinking this) are wondering if I have ever been offered sex for a grade.

Just once. She had aced every exam I threw at her. She came in to my office late the evening after her final. It was storming outside, and I thought I had the night all to myself to get grades finished up. She walked into my office. She was wearing a raincoat and patent leather, calf-high boots. As it turned out, that was all.

Before things got out of hand, I told her that she had gotten a near-perfect score on the final, and I had already posted an "A" for her in the course.

Thank God, the door at the end of the hallway opened. It was one of the night security guards. He came into my office and started chatting. The girl left.

Here's the truth of the matter: students trading sex for grades are extraordinarily rare. It happens, but it's wildly unusual, especially anymore. Back until maybe 10 or 15 years ago, the college environment was different; but these days, most professors avoid interacting with students as much as possible, and students are carrying into their early adult years a general aversion to older men, even when the men are teachers.

For my part, I don't hold office hours in an isolated office. I do my student contact in the coffee shop on the lower level, or I hit another open, public place.

I take the caution thing further than most male professors, but that's because they're a little on the dense side. Most seem to think they're above reproach, which they're not.

Are there professors who would like to get it on with a student or two every now and then? Sure. They've always been around. Some get by with their weirdness for years and years; others are quietly removed. The last one with whom I had the misfortune of sharing faculty status was a woman at an elite, private college. Her target was freshmen coeds taking her Women's Studies class. Every Fall Semester, she would select a couple of the slender, pretty girls and call them after they'd turned in their first assignment. She would berate them; then, once they were in tears, she would invite them to meet with her so she could mentor them to better performance in her class. Her routine was so well-worn that it was a running, sick joke among the sorority girls on campus. She was tenured, and no administrator in his or her right mind was going to deal with the problem. To my knowledge, she's still at that school, and she's still doing her schtick.

Before that fairly nauseating piece of work, I had run into other prof-predators, almost always male, during my career. They were quite rare, at least the ones who were aggressive enough to get a reputation.

Interestingly, many of them were activists with public reputations for outspoken views and works. Leaders, if you will.

But, again, they've been rare in my experience.

Girls wanting to have sex with professors are rare, too. Believe it or not, and notwithstanding the Girls Gone Wild for Old Dudes myth, the reality is that the females who would get an active, expressed crush on a prof are almost always among the smartest, if maybe the most unusual, students on campus.

That's what I've seen in my personal experience, anyway. They're not looking for a grade or anything like that; they're just strange.

The last one who ever bothered me — this was maybe four years ago — was my best student that semester. She sent me e-mail messages telling me when she was going to get into her shower at her apartment. I didn't respond to any of her messages; but one night, out of the blue, she sent me a message demanding to know who I had told about "us."

I thought about killing myself right there, but my computer is a laptop, and beating myself to death with a lightweight machine that's mostly made of plastic wasn't appealing.

Before that, all the young coeds who conveyed to me an interest in a relationship — every last one of them — were extraordinarily smart and extraordinarily not ordinary.

There was this first-quarter freshman. She looked like a little girl, complete with the most cherubic face I had every seen on an 18-year-old. That young lady was Hell-bent on losing her virginity to the male authority figure who was not "boring" and "distant" like her dad.

There was the bisexual girl with genius-level IQ and an obsession for older men. As she, herself, got a few years of college under her belt, she went from 30-something profs to 60-something near-retirees.

Want more?

You're not getting any more. You've read enough, and I've told you more than you needed to know.

Okay, one more story.

It's not just girls.

Back in the day, I'd meet with students at a local, somewhat up-scale bar after I'd submitted grades. I don't drink, but my students do, and I liked to have some kind of closure to a semester where everyone could loosen up a little.

At the end of the autumn semester (actually, they were on the quarter system at that big university), after a few nice hugs from students as they left the bar, one of my male students — a muscular, gorgeous Black man — came up to me to say he had to leave before the snow coming down got any worse.

I reached out to give him the manly-man hand shake. He took my hand firmly and pulled me right up to his face. As he shook my hand, in a low, rumbling voice he said into my ear, "Call me if you ever want a Black snowstorm to come right to your door."

Uncharacteristically, I was absolutely at a loss for verbosity. As I recall, I said, "K."

For hours after that, I ran the gamut of feelings. "Objectified" comes to mind as I think back. "Flattered" does, too. "Oh! Oh! JEEEZUS, I wasn't expecting anything like that tonight!" stands out in retrospect.

Life has been quiet for the past couple of years. Nothing unusual since the cute, skinny lady with the shower fetish and the voices in her head.

Okay, there was that leggy, beautiful blond coed with the South Beach tan from last semester who wanted to be my Facebook friend, but that was just random nonsense. She says the talk about her on Juicy Campus (now defunct for obvious reasons) all came from some bitch who doesn't like her.

I rarely accept friends on Facebook. It's just a thing of mine: I don't need friends. I have two cats.


That's enough writing. I have to grade final exams.

I'll bet you weren't expecting this article to take the turn it did. You promised to keep this a secret, and I'm holding you to that promise. I'm feeling fragile right now, so I'm sharing some pretty dark stuff with you.

I trust you. You're my friends.

Wait a minute. I don't have friends.

Forget what you read, above.


This is an open thread. Write what you want. Surely you have more interesting stuff than I do.

Rock on, fellow travelers. The Dark Wraith has pulled the night train out of the station.

As usual, this graphic may be republished with attribute. Under the circumstances, however, be advised that, if the Vicar of Christ is on solid theological ground, you will burn in Hell for doing so.

Two weeks ago, I went to a Borders bookstore on a mission to buy myself a little treat. I really shouldn't spend money foolishly, but every now and then I like to buy a how-to magazine on something about digital graphics art. Usually, it's some Photoshop techniques magazine, but this time, it was a guide for developing Flash applications. The magazines are published in the UK, and they're pretty expensive — anywhere from $15 to $30 — so I might buy no more than two or three a year.

For the most part, I just sit in the magazines section at a bookstore and read what interests me; but when it gets to three or more articles in a single magazine, I can't remember all the steps and the logic behind them, so that's when I decide it's time to waste some money.

I really shouldn't go to Borders, anyway. Several years ago, one of the so-called "affiliate" programs with which I had associated my Websites had Borders as one of its advertising clients. I applied for affiliate status to display Borders ads on my sites, but my application was rejected. It was the usual excuse about how my Websites didn't fit in with their overall marketing ambiance, or something like that.

In all fairness, PBS rejected my application, too, as did a number of other reputable establishments. Interestingly, Microsoft was glad to accept my application, as was Apple iTunes, although the latter company has since kicked me out because I never sold a dime of their merchandise. Amazon.com still keeps me, but it's really all just a favor they're doing for me: Heaven knows, I give them free ad space on sites that have total numbers of visitors in the hundreds of thousands every year, but it's their game. Why should they pay for what they get free? After all, that ad money has to go to reputable, first-tier blogs, TV and radio stations, and ad companies that plaster signs along highways.

(For those unfamiliar with gaming terminology, I just "leveled up" with that last paragraph. By the end of the campaign that is this article, I will reach a level where I can then go on to the next campaign, where I take on one or more very mean "bosses," who have to be fought with very high hit strength, lots of healing potion, serious armor, and cool weapons that make big things go, "Ouch!")

I wasn't too annoyed by Borders' rejection. The whole "affiliate" marketing routine is such a scam, anyway. In order to make any money, you have to get accepted by an advertiser; then you have to put their ads on your site; then a visitor to your site has to click on an ad and buy something from the advertiser. The likelihood of a "click-through" is ridiculously low, and the likelihood of a buy after a click-through is low, too, so the probability of getting from the click-through to the sale is exceedingly small. Besides that, a lot of people have software that kills or at least warns them about advertisers' cookies, which are the only way the advertiser would be able to tell if someone had come from a specific affiliate.

Yes, I still have a few ads up, but none anymore from Commission Junction, which is where Borders' affiliate program can be found, and none from the oldest of my original advertisers' affiliate platforms, a marketing company that used to be called Performics. Some of the very first advertisers who accepted The Dark Wraith Forums as an affiliate site were there, but unfortunately, Performics was bought for $3.1 billion by Google, and I want nothing to do with that market monopolizer this nation's Federal Trade Commission is too cowardly to take on in a long-overdue, desperately needed trust-busting crack-down. It's bad enough that I still promote Microsoft, an enterprise founded by a man who should have gone to prison for his antitrust activities.

It was just this past October 27 that Google sent me a final notice that I had until the end of the month to log in and hand over all my information in order to become part of the Google Affiliate Network and keep my old advertisers. I ignored the e-mail message. Why? That's easy: Google can bite me, that's why.

(Level up, again.)

I'll let other people use Google, its affiliate network, its one-stop shopping check-out service, and all its other wonderful features; and I'll let others wave the banner of "Net Neutrality" on behalf of Google and its massive, energy-swilling server farms that burn fire every last time someone too lazy to do real research decides to do a search for some intensely banal thing.

So, you get the idea: the writer of this article is not just a charming, articulate individual; he's also attained a level of acidic curmudgeonliness that makes him undesirable company anywhere outside of the old geezers' bench at the local diner, and even there the more amiable of the crabby patrons prefer the company of the young, tarty waitress with the ever-available coffee refill.

Go figure. I'm not that old, mind you, so you can imagine how lonely I'll be if I really do make it to my impoverished, irregular Golden Years. On the bright side, the current crop of old men at the diner will be gone, and that tarty waitress will be long in the tooth and still short on the nuances of figuring tax on a two dollar cup of joe. To her credit, she'll still probably be bitching about her latest boyfriend, the funny noise her car's brakes are making, and the phone company shutting off her service.

Anyway, back to the story.

I don't like Borders because Borders doesn't like me, but those periodicals don't usually show up at the local Barnes and Noble. Borders sends me coupons via e-mail, but those are phony: first, they never apply to "periodicals"; and, second, when I try to buy a book or DVD with one of those coupons, I get this routine about how the coupon applies to the original price, not the discount price that's showing on the book or DVD.

I know how all the routines go: Borders doesn't want to be associated with my writings, Borders hands out coupons that don't really have any use to me, and Borders charges high prices for certain periodicals because they have spatial monopoly in the sale of those particular items. If I go there and buy something, I have no one else to blame but myself. I am, in fact, "free to choose," to quote that late, Right-wing, free market shill, Milton Friedman.

Still, the injury of my own weakness for how-to magazines got multiplied by insult on my last visit to Borders several weeks ago.

When I went up to the counter to check out, the nice lady cheerfully asked me if I'd like to register for their sweepstakes deal. Every week, the winners get the book of the week, and this week's registrants had the chance to win their very own copy of — are you ready for this? — Sarah Palin's Going Rogue.

That's right: I would be first in line to get one of those monuments to literary excellence that was to come out on November 17. Only a fool would turn down a chance like that.

Well, I did.

Not only did I say, "Absolutely not!" but I then launched into a short, stern lecture. That poor lady had to listen to me tell her that Borders was supporting a race-bating, hypocritical, semi-literate failure of a parent and public figure.

The young dweeb manning the check-out register right beside her found some excuse to scurry away, and the poor lady taking the brunt of my lecture then had to stand there all alone, trying her best to be firm. She started: "It's about free speech..."

I interrupted her: "Free speech does not include a free megaphone, and that's what you and a whole lot of people who know better are giving that divisive hate-hawker and all her miserable kind."

The cashier then broke rank and simpered something about how she'd been glued to her TV set the evening before watching the House of Representatives health care reform debate on C-SPAN. In other words, I was preaching to the church choir.

Yes, I'm sure I was; but I was preaching to the church choir at their annual fundraiser sing-along for the renovation project at the Demon Hall Daycare Center.

(Serious level up.)

The lady asked me if I had a Borders Reward card, and I said, "Yes, I do." She scanned it so I could get some Borders Bucks credits for my holiday shopping.

We parted amicably. The dweeb at the next register never did show his face again before I left.

I went back a few days later to get a photograph of the huge sign in the front window advertising Going Rogue, but the giant ad was gone. It had been replaced by a smaller poster plastered on an interior door of the entrance way. I walked in and took my shot. Looking at me from the other side of the glass was Dweeb Boy. I pointed the camera at him and, sure enough, he whirled around and found something compellingly interesting to look at 180 degrees from my lens.

It was only when I got home and downloaded the photo of the poster that I actually grasped that the banner stamp was announcing "40% Off" on Going Rogue. The picture of Sarah Palin on the poster would have led me to believe that 100 percent off her rocker would have been closer to truth in advertising. I must stipulate, of course, that walking through the front doors of a retail establishment while carrying a digital single lens reflex Nikon sporting a big, muscular lens is not exactly a point of departure for exemplary prudence. Nevertheless, declaring that Sarah Palin is "40% Off" is charitability on stilts, if you ask me.

(Nearing Level 100. Just about time to face that Winking Zombie boss with the trollop hairdo and the "You Betcha Spell of Doom.")

Those who have read my writings know I can go on some pretty fierce rants from time to time. Those who have listened to my Internet talk radio show, Dark Voices Radio, know I can kick without much warning into fiery diatribes that border on righteous rage.

You have not seen anything, yet. The ascendance of Palin has finally set me free of decorum. I am about to go into hyperdrive about that Right-wing hypocritical failure and the entire publishing industry that has just furthered her nasty train bound for the White House. Into that maelstrom I plan to take the entertainment industry with its pathetic swill mongers like Oprah Winfrey, who is apparently so desperate to stay in the stew that she'll take a race-bater like Palin and treat her like a celebrity. I'll also be taking a swipe at all the mainstream info-tainment tripe passing as "news" that vaulted that loser from Alaska past her checkered, corruption-riddled, trailer-mentality roots and into the spotlight. While I'm at it, I'll have a go at all the publishers out there who pound out slop like Going Rogue but hide behind sham "literary agents" and their nasty "reading fees" that never seem to be a roadblock for literary slobs like Palin, Glenn Beck, and their addled ilk on the Right, along with Paul Krugman, David Sirota, Naomi Klein, and their equally slovenly ilk on the Left.

Along the way, I shall have my say about an entire culture too morally bankrupt to stand up to failed parents and their under-aged, alcohol-drinking, sexually promiscuous children, their never-at-home lifestyles, and their do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do hypocrisy. That conversation will include heavy artillery aimed at the weakling Left and its "Let's talk about responsible hedonism, okee-dokee?" way of dealing with their own quicksand of moral failure.

I might not have any readers left when I'm finished, but that's okay: nobody sits near me at the old geezers' bench at the diner, either, except for that tarty waitress when she takes a break to count her tips.

I should give her more than a quarter the next time I'm there. At least she never invoked the sacred right of free speech to defend a sweepstakes promoting the swill of an opportunistic extremist.

Coming up next: Dark Wraith meets the Winking Zombie boss and her Legion of Demons.

I've got level, I've got armor, I've got healing potion, I've got weapons.

Now, where's that church choir?


This won't be pretty. Then again, neither am I.

Congress has now authorized President Obama, at the discretion of his Administration, to prohibit release of photographs taken between 2002 and 2009 showing American soldiers, contractors, and agency personnel violently abusing foreign detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. This effectively ends a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court in which the American Civil Liberties Union had sought the release of 21 such photos under the Freedom of Information Act. Lower courts, including the influential 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, had ruled against the government's efforts to hide the pictures, but with new authority granted by Congress, which came in a budget bill to fund the Homeland Security Department, Defense Secretary Robert Gates moved quickly to block judicial review of the ACLU case.

Gates went further to block an additional 23 pictures that are rumored to show more abuses contrary to American law and international treaties to which the United States is a signatory.

Among the acts clearly evident in the photos is at least one of a prisoner apparently being sodomized by an American soldier using a broom handle. Other rape or simulated rape photos — along with various alternate demonstrations of brutality, degradation, and violence against prisoners, including mock executions — are said to be in the now-sequestered images.

In signing the bill to keep the photographs of what some allege are American war crimes from being released, President Obama defended the Administration's successful thwarting of the Freedom of Information Act by saying that allowing the pictures to be seen by the public would "further inflame anti-American opinion" and "put our troops in greater danger."

Obama's stance on the evidence of war crimes committed by Americans involved in foreign conflicts flies directly in the face of his declarations and directives on his first full day in office, when he said, "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government."

More Blackouts to Come?
Rumors cannot be confirmed, but insiders say that Mr. Obama is seriously considering asking Congress to give him the authority to classify a whole series of photos showing other abuses committed by Americans.

High on the agenda would be any photographs showing extra-judicial lynchings of African-Americans by Whites. Although historians and civil rights advocates argue that the photographs are invaluable evidence of past racism in American, President Obama is leaning toward the argument that the horrific photos "further inflame anti-White opinion" in African-American communities and "put White people in greater danger of being called 'cracker' when walking through less-cultured neighborhoods."

Also on the agenda would be photographs from the Holocaust in Europe showing dead, dying, and abused Jews. Again, while historians and many others argue that the photographs are part of a crucial, on-going lesson in the need to control the unspeakably monstrous impulses of societies gone awry, President Obama is receptive to the argument that Holocaust photos "further inflame anti-fascist opinion" and "put hate-mongers like Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and certain Ron Paul fans in greater danger of being called freak-show crackpots they actually are."

Decisions on these extensions of the Obama Obstruction of Justice Doctrine have not been finalized, but leading Right-wing legal minds are excited, nonetheless. What liberals thought was going to be a progressive President is transforming before their eyes into a unitary executive with high aspirations to alter the very reality of what citizens see of America when it is doing the noble work of the Empire that will not abide a rule of law that includes accountability for the Empire, itself, and its violent, criminally culpable, failed leaders.

The flag and her warriors are with you.

Even in the stormy night, we will not leave you.

As you are the Nation to which we pledged our blood, we will not fail you.

Not ever.

Not even through that stormy night.

The Baltimore Sun has a writer who publishes "Jay Hancock's Blog," and Mr. Hancock's entry for November 6, 2009, is entitled, "Profiles in wimpiness," briefly citing several leading voices calling for approval of pending health care reform legislation.

Mr. Hancock first quotes Paul Krugman, a fellow whom I have harshly criticized, both in writing and on my Internet talk radio show. Even the most meritorious of ideas will have its share of oafs littering the parade route, and Dr. Krugman's unconscionable intellectual prostitution for countries that massively undervalue their currencies against the U.S. dollar qualifies for the blue ribbon parade award for the Float That Should Be Shot, notwithstanding his Nobel Prize in economics this year (a prize previously granted to the very epitome of oafishness on the speaking tour parade, the late Right-wing extremist and howlingly lackluster "intellectual," Milton Friedman).

One comment, written by someone using the pseudonym "MrRational," on Mr. Hancock's article struck me:

I still remain opposed to the entire scheme.

Corporate and Government are two sides of the same nannyism coin. Neither can be expected to solve anything for us.

But to the degree that either is allowed a brief or responsibility...
make it a narrowly focused one.

there are three basic levels/categories of care:
1) the 80% that constitutes everyone's day to day uses which should be paid for out of pocket (by most of us) on a fee for service basis to the provider we choose. (and yes, people with some conditions can expect to pay more for that basic care than people who don't have those conditions.)

2) the 10 % that will occasionally crop up beyond those routine year to year expenses that we can mitigate the budget impact of by having some back stop insurance (or an HSA) which we also pay for on our own and most will use very similarly to how we use our homeowner or auto insurance.

3) The 10% that NO ONE can reasonably expect to afford or in most instance to even insure against privately. These catastrophic and traumatic bankrupting expenses are the perfect category for and reasonable limit to a government plan with a tax supported 100% actuarial base.

If we are willing to be truly honest we can add a fourth category:
4) Stop pretending that anyone gets out alive by refusing to flog and abuse our elderly loved ones and call it medicine.

We can make it more complicated but there is no reason to.

I have not had much success in recent years with getting my comments I write published at reputable Websites. The Leftist site truthout.org — persistently begging for donations while doing little more than republishing other sites' content — will not post any comment I write, The Huffington Post only rarely lets one of my comments through, and the same goes for CNN.com; hence, I no longer bother visiting these sites much. Long-time readers here at The Dark Wraith Forums know very well that my style of writing does not include the use of profanity or unrealistically hyperbolic literary imagery unless in the service of occasional satire.

Okay, I did use an obscenity, a profanity, and several vulgarities in writing about Paris Hilton's early release from incarceration; in my own weak defense, however, once in a blue moon, the mockery of uniform rule of law that is the American justice system bunches my boxers. As a broad principle, however, I write what could be published just about anywhere children would not be a target audience.

Still, I get censored. My short-lived gig writing for OpEdNews is over: one of the sneering, Leftist editors there got appallingly nasty in rejecting an article I subsequently published here to the usual, decent number of hits. The Institutional Liberal Manual of Style seems to be widely available to dwarfs at places like truthout.org and other caves on the Left Bank of the American river of ideological polarization. (As an aside, in a few days I shall republish excerpts from that article because those sentiments I expressed there are every bit as timely now as they were in the late Winter when I first wrote them.)

With all of the above as admittedly somewhat unshaped background, I nevertheless offered a follow-on comment at Jay Hancock's Blog. To my surprise, it was published this morning in unedited form.

I am herewith offering it to my own readers here at my online properties of Dark Wraith Publishing to the purpose of providing one more means by which I may speak to the debate over health care reform.

The comment by "MrRational" is worthwhile, although I have no particular use for the idea that we cannot take care of the poor, especially the children in this condition, who need basic medical services but who cannot afford to have them on a readily available basis. As a quite affluent society, we can surely afford to take care of people whose earnings make keeping body and soul together a challenge, and those people will number in the many millions, even in an industrialized society such as ours so long as we choose a form of economic organization where there are winners and losers, as well as stark differences in the long-term, even inter-generational fortunes of those two groups.

It is most unfortunate that a "progressively conservative" approach to reform was never in the cards for the debate in Washington; however, as a purely academic exercise, I note three major points that are missing in Mr. Rational's comment.

First and foremost is the matter of price transparency. Doctors, medical centers, and hospitals all hide their prices, which thwarts the very foundation of competition that would cabin those prices within an envelope formed by profitability and affordability. As a professor, I make a big issue of this. Price transparency is crucial if the demand and supply sides are to discover prices that clear markets efficiently; but no serious federal or state proposals have been fielded to mandate publicly available price disclosures for a standard list of medical services and treatments.

Second — and this point goes far, far beyond the health care industry — we are using antitrust laws written in the first half of the 20th Century to deal with markets of the 21st Century and the market power of concentrated industries in an age where "deregulation" has allowed the argument for scale economies to sway regulatory oversight despite overwhelmingly larger, social and economic interests that are harmed by compacted industries. The Federal Trade Commission frets about "unfair and deceptive" advertising, it uses antiquated metrics like the HHI to measure market concentration, and it chases market concentrators after they've become too large to bust (as in the case of Microsoft, and as in the case now of Google).

Third, and finally, the rampant lack of education in basics of economics and business allows far too many people to get by with no understanding of such concepts as "moral hazard" and "adverse selection." This ensures a debate where only Right-wing conservatives bring up these ideas, and usually in offensive ways, making the underlying concepts as loathsome as everything else Right-wing conservatives talk about. If we are to have a truly informed debate, it would be so much better if the dancing, naked clowns of the Right (as I've called them in my writings) would shut up so the legitimate points they are mimicking could be brought up by people who aren't dancing, naked clowns.

Unfortunately, as it now stands, the only health care "reform" being discussed is really just health care repair, and it's sloppy repair done by self-serving politicians. Some things never change.

That's politics.

For the record, I am opposed to the health care reform bill in the form that the U.S. House of Representatives has just passed. I will sharpen my attack as time goes on, but I can assure readers here that those Right-wing clowns in the entertainment industry, along with their Republican sidekicks in Congress, will never be outside the scope of my criticism, either. Nothing irritates me more than intellectual fools and entertainment industry charlatans. They make legitimate debate next to impossible, so I hold them in particular contempt, even as I do the same for the Democrats in Congress who don't have the guts to write a genuine health care reform bill, much less a real, comprehensive overhaul of this country's miserably failed antitrust, financial services, and privacy laws.

I shall write what is on my mind and leave to the Democrats such ideals as compromise and accommodation, which those same Democrats over the past decade have turned into rank, disgraceful appeasement by another name.


The Dark Wraith is officially on yet another roll.

I took this photograph with a Nikon 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S DX Nikkor lens mounted on a Nikon D60 body. Regular visitors here might recognize this picture: it served as the background for my Hallowe'en 2009 Graphic #1 here at The Dark Wraith Forums. The shot is nice all on its own, so I am herewith sharing it with you.

Autumn is sad. Soon, the land will be still. Many things once alive and beautiful will die.

Spring will come, though; and we'll get to see the most incredible of all possible miracles: death is not really forever.

Believing that does not require faith; just patience.

I hope you like the picture.

Finally, on this last night of October, herewith is the second and final Hallowe'en graphic for 2009, following as it does my Hallowe'en 2009 Graphic #1, and continuing the tradition of my Hallowe'en graphics from years past, which include Hallowe'en Politics Graphic #1, Halloween Politics Graphic #2, and Hallowe'en Politics Graphic #3. In 2007, I created and published Hallowe'en 2007 Graphic #1, Halloween 2007 Graphic #2, and Hallowe'en 2007 Graphic #3. The 2008 round featured Hallowe'en 2008 Graphic #1 and Halloween 2008 Graphic #2.

And to complete this night of haunted horrors, readers might be wondering what would be something that would scare a person known on the Internet as the "Dark Wraith." That is a fair question, and I shall now share with you a partial list of things that give me, an economist, cause for nightmares.

Here we go: a list of things that go bump in the night, frustrating my fitfil bouts of unrestful slumber.

• The Federal Reserve announces in a press release that accommodative monetary policy will end immediately because of the looming threat of inflation. The notification explains that consumers and businesses should expect to see "aggressively" rising interest rates over the coming months. Cryptically, the communiqué from the Fed ends with the one-line paragraph, "All hail Cthulu."

• The U.S. Mint announces that the "In God We Trust" statement on the back of American currency will soon be replaced with "Pull my finger!"

• The entire staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers is arrested in a raid on an illegal off-track betting parlor on the south side of Toledo. The President's chief economic adviser, instead of keeping quiet during his arraignment, hollers to the judge, "Hey, we hadn't been paid in two months! What were we supposed to do?"

• In a strange twist on one of those conservative teabagger demonstrations, the entire crowd — including everyone in the liberal counter-demonstration — spontaneously, and all at once, starts singing Kumbaya, while they hold hands and sway in unison.

• The Chinese start importing bags of dollar bills to be sold at Walmart at low-low prices even the competition can't beat.

• Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, in an interview aired on 60 Minutes, appears to be inebriated and blurts out, "I want to have Sarah Palin's love child."

• In a bold move intended to stop antitrust actions being taken against Microsoft by the European Union, Bill Gates buys the European Union.

• After finalizing his purchase of the EU, Gates releases European Union 2.0. It immediately crashes all of Western Europe.

• Hackers crack into the central computers of the nation's largest banks; they then transfer all Tier 1 capital into start-up company Happy Weed Transgenics, Inc. (The company's IPO goes quite well the next day.)

• Congress taxes sex. When proceeds from the tax prove disappointing, Congress amends the legislation to tax only boring sex. Revenues skyrocket.

• On-the-scene security cameras at the New York Stock Exchange capture footage of Warren Buffet running across the floor of the Exchange screaming, "Sell! SELL! They're COMING!" The video goes viral on YouTube.

• The Treasury Dept. has increasing difficulties borrowing money, so it hires Hannah Montana to sell Treasury securities to kids in select, up-scale urban markets.

• Not to be outdone, the underwriting arm of Goldman Sachs hires Whitney Houston as the Featured Performer on digital versions of prospectuses.

• The Senate, in a desperate attempt to stave off bankruptcy, partners with a leading fast-food chain and renames the Senate chambers the "Taco Bell Senate Bowl."

• Not to be outdone, the House of Representatives partners with a well-known restaurant chain and renames its chambers the "Cracker Barrel House." Citizens across the country agree.

• Independent investigative reporters capture a grainy video of what appears to be President Barack Obama and executives of FOX News in a secret, late-night meeting at a Denny's on the outskirts of Peoria, where the audio seems to indicate details of their continuing operation of saying things that drive each other's followers bonkers, just so the apparent enemies can keep their respective ratings high. Rumors run rampant that the video also seems to show that the "waitress" serving them was none other than former Vice President Dick Cheney in drag, trying to figure out what the group was up to.

Okay, that's enough of my nightmares for one Halloween. I trust that you find these horror stories every bit as terrifying as I do.

Pleasant dreams, fellow lurkers in the night of Empire.