Outstanding!

Funny, I’m reading that book too. Kindle edition, downloaded onto your computer (Kindle for the PC) minutes from when you first decide you want to read it, which to me is an advance on the order of the printing press or penicillin, but without the ink stains or mass extinction of digestive flora.

I’m getting to like those book salons very much also, and I can’t think of a better host. Two of the funniest writers of political-social-excrement commentary around.

Another great read right here. Destined to have an honored place in anyones library.

Excellent!

OT, Joe “Face Murkin” Miller (Teatard-AK) is claiming foul play in the Senate election. In other surprising news, water is wet and the sun rises in the east.

Hell, yeah. I’ve got a looong plane ride ahead of me tomorrow, and I do believe Mr. Taibbi may go a long way towards alleviating the pain & humiliation about to be doled out by United Amalgamated Cattle Cars In The Sky and the elite squad of TSA rejectsand their ludicrous “Sir, while you strip naked and try to squeeze your laptop into this mandatory zip lock condom, we’re going to spread-eagle your pre-teen daughter in front of this here transmogrifier and zap her ovaries into attention, all for your personal homeland security, Sir” routine.

Bleargh.

Taibbi and TBogg — two great tastes that grate all the right dickwads!

That combo should make it worth setting the alarm for.

You just know Matt Taibbi is really good, because Megan McAddled can’t stand him.

I love Matt Taibbi’s work. I just wish that when he has no idea what he is talking about, he would shut the hell up, rather than making an awkward public. Of course, in this exchange he looks good to people who have no knowledge of matters financial or economic. But sounding plausible to the ignorant is a rather low hurdle for a journalist to set himself.

I added the bold, to ask the question, “Project much, Megan?”

Also too, for extra added bonus fun, here is Megan “proving” that Matt Taibbi is just like Sarah Palin. No, really — read it for yourself.

Anyway, it sounds like a hoot, so I’ll be there if I can, TBogg (if that’s actually your real name).

Taibbi responds to her critiques in this book I’m reading, albeit in a less pointed way than her and only in passing, as a typical example of a certain type:

If Goldman Sachs really was, as we’d described, little more than an upscale version of a boiler-room pump-and-dump operation, then that definitely was an indictment of the financial press, which almost universally praised the bank as a pillar of economic genius. If financial journalists like the Charlie Gasparinos and the Megan McCardles out there took it that way, good– I meant it that way. But when the uproar continued for more than a month — an eternity in news cycle time — it was clear that there was something else at work.

When I see McCardle devoting entire columns to Taibbi’s work while to him she’s relegated to one of the plural “Megan McCardles” out there, it makes me think of Gandhi’s fourth Koan:

First they ignore you
then they laugh at you
then they fight you
then you win.

Going by the above I figure Matt is just about on step four now. And heading for step five.

I hope step five is

then they just wither away and die.

thingwarbler@5

I have a plane trip coming up, thank G-d from and to smallish airports. Don’t think the x-ray machines have been installed yet. Even so, we’re about a half step from universal strip searches I’m sure. Think of the people who’ll apply for that job…

Better yet, they realize the error of their scribblings and, overcome with a massive wave of shame, try to commit seppuki with a feather quill pen and giggle themselves into oblivion.

.

I’ve missed you but have hoped you were properly absorbed in post-season soccer and beautiful daughter and beautiful wife. Relax and enjoy.

Mmmmmmmatt Taibbi & TBogg! Hot-n-smart. That’s how I like the mens!

Pray tell, what is this book salon of which you speak? Is this televised, radioed, blogged? How do we tune in?

I like Matt’s impertinent language. I like that he calls vampires “vampire” and squids “squid”.

Taibbi used to be a regular guest on Real Time but he hasn’t been on for a long time.

Just for the record, that Gandhi quote is not even remotely a koan. A koan is a question or other seemingly grammatical structure designed to precipitate a philosophical realization, even though, if you really understand them, and therefore know you don’t, you know they are at best merely sometimes useful keys to a gateless gate. I, like most, ain’t gonna go all zen on ya, but complete mis-uses of terminology deserve at least an epistemological context.

Luckily the terraists haven’t yet figured out how easily they can board planes at smallish airports without being thoroughly searched, ’cause then we’d really be fucked. Oops, did I say that out loud?

I’ve boarded planes in the USA after decidedly incompetent searches, to say nothing of the extraordinary variations between airports, including major metro sites.

I have asked TSA staff on multiple occasions why they made me do something, while the previous airport did not. They replied that each TSA district is allowed to enforce its own interpretation of policies, based on perceived local needs.

Perhaps the incompetence of TSA safeguards us from incompetent terrorists.

McCurdle probably associates Taibbi with Mark Ames, who did the vicious but deeply satisfying piece on how Daddy Mac made his dough. Now Taibbi and Ames fell out ages ago, but that’s factual, and thus irrelevant to McSudsy.

I boarded a plane in Redmond, Oregon, with a bare minimum of fuss – didn’t even have to take my shoes off. I think there was one TSA agent in the whole airport. Meanwhile, in Dallas I had to give up my little bottles of shampoo and conditioner (stop it! I have really dry hair!) because they were 5 ml larger than the size allowed. I’m tellin’ ya, the Terrorist’s Guide to the Best American Airports is ready to ship as we speak.

I’m using Kindle as well, and I LOVE the ability to get a book within minutes.

Where I am, I’d have to drive an hour & a half to the ONE bookstore that might have a chance of having the book [but based on past experience, it's unlikely that they would]. Or, I could order it on-line and wait doG knows how long for the book to finally show up here.

So “yea,” Kindle & iPad!

It was a joke.

Including the fact that it was his “fourth” koan I would have thought was kind of a giveaway, since anyone who knew about Shaseki-shu and the numbers would presumably know what a koan is and that they had nothing to do with Ghandi.

Vanity Fair did a great piece about them that fills in a lot of history about Taibbi and The Exile that’s worth knowing, like how he enrolled in high school in Moscow just for a story or played professional basketball across Russia at one point. It makes his critics who complain from ivory towers how “he just says fuck a lot” or “he’s not a real journalist” seem even more like cloistered ignoramuses than they already did.

Meant to include the link.

BTW does anyone know why we can’t edit comments anymore? I can’t, anyway. Checked all the usual suspects, cleared cache and checked cookie settings and etc. The “time expired” happens right away now, for the past few days.