Look at these stupid shoes. They cost $2,150!!!!!! And no, those aren’t diamonds. They are crystals. This thing with the expensive shoes has got to stop. Shoes should never be $2,000. They should not be $700 either. That is too much money, especially for something that was probably produced in a sweatshop somewhere.

In case you haven’t run into people like this, there’s a segment of the population who actually judges people on whether or not they wear overpriced shoes like the above monstrosities. For some reason, plopping a rent-sized payment on a pair of shoes is judged as good taste instead of stupidity. This happens to be a pet peeve of mine. There’s nothing wrong with liking shoes, but paying that much for a pair is simply decadent and gross. Seriously, if you pay that much for shoes, you are part of the problem with the world and should be ashamed of yourself.

They aren’t even that cute, either.

Despite being a blog, The Huffington Post seems old fashioned and baby-boomer-ish to me. So I am surprised they printed this awesome article by Chez Pazienza criticizing the baby boomer generation. Like me, he finds all their self-congratulation rather obnoxious. Yeah yeah, there were some good advancements in women and civil rights that came out of the 1960s, but those accomplishments don’t outweigh all the greed, consumerism, and hyperbolic self-importance that this generation has thrust upon us for the last 40 years. Let’s get this straight: Woodstock was just another music festival where everyone got high and listened to equally high musicians–no need for us to celebrate its anniversary every few years. And you know all that protesting against the establishment? Doesn’t mean much since the same generation became far worse than their parents when they took over in the 70s and 80s. Or as Pazienza puts it:

Such is the real legacy of the 60s, as filtered through the haze of bong smoke still looked back on with fondness by many of those who were there: It introduced the most narcissistic, self-congratulatory, self-indulgent generation this country has ever seen. A group of people political satirist Christopher Buckley jokingly calls “The Un-greatest Generation.”

I don’t look forward to the boomers’ approaching retirement and inevitable deaths. It means that, like every other aspect of their lives, we’re going to have to listen to them talk about it for the next 20 years. Maybe after that, we can get some peace.

ETA: My parents aren’t baby boomers, btw. They are war babies, apparently part of the “Silent Generation,” whatever that is.

I heed and obey.

(Via)

“Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander. She’s the fourth poet to deliver a poem during an inaugural ceremony. I can only imagine the pressure this woman was under to write this poem.

When I saw Barack Obama for the first time, I thought that he seemed like a good candidate, but I also thought that there was no way Americans would ever elect a black president. I guess you proved me wrong, Country. Well played.

I am absolutely thrilled we have an educated, intelligent, and well-spoken president again. Especially the well-spoken part. His speech last night? Almost made me cry because it sounded so pretty. One thing that has grieved me the most about Bush is that he has destroyed our reputation in most of the world. When he speaks, Obama gives me hope that our reputation can be restored.

Overall, I would say this election is as close to how I vote as I’m likely to ever get. It’s kind of shocking after voting for the last eight years and seeing the opposite results get in every time. With the exception of my fellow Californians agreeing to let the government continue to spend like a drunken sailor, I’m pretty darn happy and feel a renewed pleasure in the USA this morning.

Oprah had a show on saving money yesterday. It had advice like, do not spend more money than you earn. If you lose your job, cut back on your bills. Buy food from the grocery store that is on sale. Do not spend $700 a month at the mall when you don’t have $700 extra a month.

I didn’t realize that people needed to be explained the basics of budgeting. Now that I realize the extent of the problem, I want to do my patriotic duty and help. So here it is, my fellow Americans.

The Joy Lanzendorfer Guide to Surviving the Money Crisis:

a. Do not burn your money
b. Do not eat your money
c. Do not use your money as toilet paper
d. Candy and diamonds are not necessities
e. Credit cards are not money
f. If you want to save money, don’t spend so much of it
g. Money does not, in fact, grow on trees

I hope that helps. Maybe I can go on Oprah now. Do you think?

It’s true! According to CNN:

Obama:

Occidental College: Two years studying Politics and Public Policy
Columbia University: B.A.Political Science, specialization in International Relations
Harvard University: Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude, Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Law Review

Biden:

University of Delaware: B.A. in History & B.A. in Political Science
Syracuse University College of Law : Juris Doctor (J.D.)

McCain:

U.S. Naval Academy: Graduate–Class rank 894 of 899

Palin:

Hawaii Pacific Univ: 1 semester, Business Administration
North Idaho College: 2 semesters, general study
University of Idaho 2 semesters, Journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College: 1 semester
University of Idaho: 3 semesters, B.A. Journalism

Joy:

University of Oregon: B.A. in English
San Francisco State University: M.A. in English (Creative Writing)

Awesome. Do you think I could be vice president?

All this information is from OpenSecrets.org

I predict Barack Obama will win the primaries. Why? He raised more money than Clinton, and in America, that’s what matters the most. Okay, I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but still: Obama raised $138 million compared to $135 million for Clinton. McCain, who is in a much colder race, raised $54 million.

Where did they get their money from? This is an important question to ask. In the 2000 election, Bush received more donations from the oil industry than the last three presidents combined. And look what happened during his terms–gas prices tripled and we are in a war over oil. That is not a coincidence.

So I took a look at where our new candidates are getting their money from. I’m not that great with numbers, but what I learned was kind of interesting, so I’ll share. Obama got most of his money–74%–from Ideological/Single Issue, meaning individual donations, charities, etc. Another 26% is from Business, meaning corporate donations.

Clinton, on the other hand, received the majority of her donations–56%–from Business. About one-third of her money comes from Ideological/Single Issue.

Then I broke their contributions down by industry. Although I didn’t go through every industry, I discovered that Clinton led Obama in donations from every industry I looked at except for Computers/Internet and Education. Here are some samples of what I saw (keep in mind that while I’m including McCain in here, the comparisons are really apples to oranges because he ran on less money):

Industry: Tobacco
Clinton received $45,800
McCain received $17,000
Obama received $16,187

Industry: Oil/Gas
McCain received $283,285
Clinton received $276,150
Obama received $157,390
(This pales compared to Giuliani’s $649,608 from the Oil/Gas industry, btw)

Industry: Insurance
Clinton received $781,361
Obama received $594,760
McCain received $381,482

Industry: Real Estate (A big issue right now, obviously)
Clinton received $5,366,432
Obama received $3,038,325
McCain received $2,193,808

Industry: Commercial Banks
Clinton received $1,211,924
Obama received $1,175,885
McCain received $730,525

Industry: Casinos/Gambling
McCain received $102,200
Clinton received $91,125
Obama received $31,300

Lobbyists:
Clinton received $783,290
McCain received $453,365
Obama received $99,240
(Note that Clinton is the clear leader here–she has almost twice the donations of the second person on the list, McCain. Compare that to Obama’s modest $100,000.)

What does this say? It says, at the very least, that Clinton is friendlier with most industries than Obama is. Considering that most corruption in American government takes place in the dealings between businesses and politicians, these numbers further my distrust of Clinton considerably. They are, after all, on top of her voting us into Iraq and voting for the Patriot Act twice.

One of the reasons I sometimes write about education is because I’m concerned about anti-intellectualism in America. I don’t think Americans are dumb, but I do think that as a culture we have embraced that which is shallow, trivial, and worthless and it’s leading to major problems. It’s not just that younger Americans have worse reasoning skills and shorter attention spans than past generations–which they do–but also that they don’t care as much about becoming educated. They equate getting an education with getting a job, not with becoming smarter and better people. (Worse, many Americans seem threatened by education, as if going to school will brainwash them, not give them the intellectual tools to think rationally and logically–and thereby avoid brainwashings and other scary-yet-unlikely threats.)

So naturally, I’m interested in Susan Jacoby’s book The Age of American Unreason, about American anti-intellectualism. Jacoby blames this phenomenon on the rise of video and the Internet. And while some of her points sound like an older person threatened by the changing media landscape, her column in the Washington Post makes some good points. In particular:

According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it “not at all important” to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it “very important.”

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it’s the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism — a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

Whenever I think about this, I get nervous about the future of our country.

Michelle Richmond has summed up the move that made me lose respect for Hillary Clinton–when she voted for the War in Iraq. Like Richmond, I can’t get past it.

I remember being stunned at the support for military action against Iraq in Congress and the Senate [following 9/11]. When the resolution passed in 2002, I felt as though all of Washington was living in some weird post 9/11 version of Oz, where no one questioned George W. Bush’s motives, and no one dared pull aside the curtain for fear of exposing the true nature of the inept little wizard; they took it for granted that, because the U.S. had been attacked, the wizard spoke for all of us. If they had doubts, most of them kept those doubts to themselves. To me, the massive support for military action among powerful Democrats was an unforgivable case of cowardly politics. Because no matter how one feels or felt about Saddam Hussein, any rational course of thought would lead one to the conclusion that launching a “preemptive” (i.e. unprovoked) attack against a relatively secular Muslim nation–especially at a time when religious fanatics had killed thousands of Americans and were vowing to kill thousands more–could never end up well.

… And Hillary Clinton supported that maneuver. As much as I support her vision for health care and education, I can’t come to terms with her vote on Iraq in 2002. Because the Iraq war is the ugliest and dumbest thing our country has done in a long time.

Read more of Richmond’s Why I Believe in Barack Obama here.