Spend time in or near the ghetto, and you can’t help but notice some things. When you live and work across the social spectrum, as I do, you get a daily dose of comparisons. That makes noticing things easy, which is a dangerous game these days. On the other hand, people get in trouble in the ghetto when they don’t notice things. Modern times is full of these weird, inexplicable juxtapositions.

In SWPL-ville, everyone knows to avoid certain areas, even certain streets. Give someone from SWPL-ville directions that include Martin Luther King Boulevard or Malcom X Avenue and they ask someone else for directions. They know those names are never in places they like. On the other hand, make a comment about it around them and they will harangue you about your racism and narrow mindedness.

I do not suffer from this malady, despite spending a fair amount of time in SWPL-ville. I’ve learned to speak three languages: SWPL, normal and ghetto. I’m most fluent at normal because I try to hang around normals as much as possible. I’ve jettisoned quite a few liberal friends simply because the cost of communicating with them is too high. On the other hand, living on the edge of the ghetto, I have picked up the tongue, which is mostly what normal people said before the lunatics took over. Watch any old 1970′s TV show and you get my meaning.

The other day I was on the way home and remembered I needed cat food. On the edge of the ghetto is a Food Lion, which seems to target the lower classes as a business strategy. They have a big sign announcing they accept EBT and WIC. I’ve stopped there many times, but rarely after work. In my work clothes, I stand out like a sore thumb. Social class is one of those things people notice instinctively, even though we pretend it does not exist. In jeans and a tee-shirt, it is not so obvious.

I get my cat food and get in line. I was in a hurry, being the end of the day, but I should have known better. In the ghetto, time works differently than everywhere else. The employees of the Food Lion are mostly black. They work on CPT. That’s Colored People Time. Start talking about CPT at your place of work and they fire you. Mention it around black people and they laugh, surprised that a white person would know the term. Again, another one of those things everyone knows, but no one says. Mokita.

What CPT means is not just slowness. It is also a certain deliberate tardiness. Black people will tell you that black people are always late. That’s when you’re most likely to hear them break out the term CPT. In the ghetto, it also means slow and distracted.

The two cashiers working that evening were chatting with one another, hardly paying attention to their work, which they were doing at a snail’s pace. The customer in front of me had a mislabeled product so the girl just stopped working and waited for a manager. It’s not laziness or attitude. The two girls were just working at a pace based on their own weird internal metronome.

That’s CPT. Even the most mundane tasks will take twice the time they do in SWPL-ville and no one thinks much of it.

For reasons I’ve never understood, the deli counter at this Food Lion is manned by Latino males. They are a beehive of activity, but you still wait in line for an hour to get even the smallest thing. Standing there in line, I watched four or five Latinos buzzing around in a flurry of activity, with one lonely customer waiting for whatever he ordered. He was still there when I left, which is not surprising. It is the Latin Way.

The Latin Way is a term you hear from Latinos. Like CPT, they are surprised to hear a blanco say it. Unlike blacks, Latinos are oddly proud of it and quite open to talking about it if you ask them. They fully admit that the disorganized chaos is just the way they do things, even though it makes no sense.

It’s like how the Irish are proud of being alcoholics. Unlike CPT, I find the Latin Way to be rather amusing. I guess it pleases my Anglo-Saxon sensibilities to see people rushing about trying to get their work done, even if they are mostly spinning their wheels.

While I’m cataloging the denizens of the ghetto in this way, Hindus are an interesting case. We have a lot of them around here for some reason. My guess is they work at the engineering firms located in SWPL-ville. I’ve had some Hindus work for me over the years and they move at their own pace.

Judging from what I see around town, I’m thinking it is cultural. In the Food Lion, I always see the old women wandering around in their brightly colored saris. They never seem to buy anything, but they are fat as hell so I know they’re not skipping any meals.

Anyway, the whites are not models of Anglo-Saxon efficiency and alacrity. The difference is when motivated, they move as fast and efficiently as anyone else. It’s just that they never seem to be motivated. On summer afternoons they sit on their front step or loiter in the parking lots.

Smoking is still popular in the great white ghetto, along with Oxycontin. You see the fat girls waddling behind strollers, while the males sit around shirtless. The idea is to show off the collection of ridiculous tattoos they love so much. Nothing tells the world you are a violent felon like a neck tattoo. In all of the retail stores on the edge of the ghetto, you never see whites working.

That’s the thing about poverty and the underclass. SWPL types think it is education, but it is time that keeps people in the ghetto. They have no sense of it. Middle and upper class people are obsessed with time. Being on time is an essential part of being a respectable person. The efficient use of time is how one is measured in their job. If you’re good at what you do, you get an assistant at work to help you make the most of your time. The rich have personal assistants to make sure no one wastes their time.

Like father’s day, I doubt watches are of much use in the ghetto. When you have no place to go and no reason to get there, knowing the time is pointless. People I know who hire entry level labor tell me the biggest challenge they have is figuring out how to tell ghetto types how to show up on time and work at a decent pace. That’s why they hire Latinos. They may be monkeys fucking a football without supervision, but they show up on time and at least look like they are in a hurry.

Anyway, I think that’s the dividing line in modern life. The great class line is is time preference. Conventional wisdom says the poor lack impulse control. They buy cheap crap now rather than save for better things later. They don’t understand the value of putting off today’s pleasure for something better tomorrow.

I don’t think that’s right. I think it is the lack of time preference. The middle class person understands how to comprehend the discount function, at least conceptually. The poor have no idea about any of this. A bag of weed today is just a bag of weed today. Saving for a bigger bag of weed tomorrow is inconceivable because tomorrow may as well be next century.

The World Cup started off in grand fashion. The very first match was rigged so the host team could notch a victory.

Croatia coach Niko Kovac said his players “better give it up now and go home” after Brazil were awarded what looked to be a soft, and crucial, penalty in their 3-1 win in the World Cup opening game.

With the match tied at 1-1 in the second half, Japanese official Yuichi Nishimura awarded Brazil a contentious spot-kick when striker Fred went down after a light touch from Croatia centre-back Dejan Lovren.

Kovac called the penalty “ridiculous” and said Nishimura was not at the level to be a referee on the sport’s biggest stage.

“If that was a penalty, we should be playing basketball,” Kovac said. “Those kinds of fouls are penalised there.

The liberal weenies in the American sporting press who keep telling us soccer is important never bother to mention that soccer is the most corrupt sport on earth. Here’s a piece on the rampant cheating and game fixing from PBS.

Soccer has been tainted in the past by evidence of match fixing. But European law enforcement officials outlined a complex scandal yesterday that was enormous in scope and could be deeply damaging to the game’s reputation.

The European Union’s police agency, Europol, said an 18-month investigation turned up 680 matches suspected of being fixed across the globe. The games were played between 2008 and 2011. The scandal may have even involved qualifying matches for the sport’s biggest tournaments, the World Cup and the European Championships.

The probe cited links to criminal networks, including a Singapore-based crime syndicate. Europol wouldn’t name any of the suspected matches or individuals, but said it involved more than 400 people in 15 countries.

That’s in Europe where respect for the law is still kind of important. Imagine what South America is like. But, that’s the nature of stupid sports. Sports with a high level of difficulty attract a different sort of player and a different sort of fan. Soccer is just a bunch of tiny smokers chasing a ball around. Gambling on it is the only way to keep it interesting. Well, that and getting drunk off your ass.

The usual suspects have been yapping about anthropogenic global warming for years when the real threat is not humans. It is volcanoes!

A new study by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin found that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is collapsing due to geothermal heat, not man-made global warming.

Researchers from the UTA’s Institute for Geophysics found that the Thwaites Glacier in western Antarctica is being eroded by the ocean as well as geothermal heat from magma and subaerial volcanoes. Thwaites is considered a key glacier for understanding future sea level rise.

UTA researchers used radar techniques to map water flows under ice sheets and estimate the rate of ice melt in the glacier. As it turns out, geothermal heat from magma and volcanoes under the glacier is much hotter and covers a much wider area than was previously thought.

“Geothermal flux is one of the most dynamically critical ice sheet boundary conditions but is extremely difficult to constrain at the scale required to understand and predict the behavior of rapidly changing glaciers,” UTA researchers wrote in their study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The geothermal heat under the glaciers is likely a key factor in why the ice sheet is currently collapsing. Before this study, it was assumed that heat flow under the glacier was evenly distributed throughout, but UTA’s study shows this is not the case. Heat levels under the glacier are uneven, with some areas being much hotter than others.

Clearly, the threat from Volcanic Global Warming is the most important issue we face today.

I’ve always thought that the Clintons would be viewed as an inflection point in the history of the nation. These vulgarians lowered the standards for just about everything in civic life. So much so that we are no longer outraged by even the most egregious acts. Obama is violating the law on an hourly basis and no one seems to care. What we ran Nixon out of office for forty years ago is now considered admirable.

This is a good example of how rot takes hold of a people.

Chelsea Clinton earned an annual salary of $600,000 at NBC News before switching to a month-to-month contract earlier this year, sources with knowledge of the agreement told POLITICO.

Clinton, who joined NBC News as a “special correspondent” in November 2011, was up for renewal or non-renewal this year. Instead, the sources said, the network decided to keep her on the payroll on a month-to-month basis so that the two parties could sever ties if Clinton’s mother, Hillary, runs for president.

Chelsea Clinton has no skills, other than a famous name and a twat. The latter is a dime a dozen in infotainment. That leaves the former and makes this nothing more than bribery. NBC gets access to Cankles as long as they pay her daughter 600 large every year.

I fully admit to not seeing just how bad Obama would be at his job. I thought the range of outcomes were Jimmy Carter on the one end and Bill Clinton on the other. Bush was Bill Clinton without the vulgarity, but with a dopey foreign policy. Given Obama’s priggishness, I figured he would be some combination of Bush and Clinton. The timid foreign policy of Clinton, the domestic policy of Bush and his own vanity driven moral preening. In other words, not good, but not disastrous.

Wishful thinking on my part.

By 2010 it was pretty clear the guy was a boob, in way over his head. Worse still, he was surrounded by flunkies and coat holders less qualified than him for their jobs. I thought maybe a wave election in the mid-term could be enough to avoid disaster and maybe lay the groundwork for a one term presidency. Then my fellow citizens voted the stupid bastard back in for another term. Now I pray we live through the administration of this uncommonly stupid man.

The odds are not good.

Of the many stunning revelations to emerge out of the wreckage of Mosul on Wednesday — 500,000 fleeing residents, thousands of freed prisoners, unconfirmed reports of “mass beheadings” — the one that may have the most lasting impact as Iraq descends into a possible civil war is that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria just got extremely rich.

As insurgents rolled past Iraq’s second largest city, an oil hub at the vital intersection of Syria, Iraq and Turkey, and into Tikrit, several gunmen stopped at Mosul’s central bank. An incredible amount of cash was reportedly on hand, and the group made off with 500 billion Iraqi dinars — $425 million.

The provincial governor of Nineveh, Atheel al-Nujaifi, confirmed that the ISIS Islamists had lifted additional millions from numerous banks across Mosul, as well as a “large quantity of gold bullion,” according to the International Business Times, which called it the “World’s Richest Terror Force.”

OK, so maybe no one saw this coming? No such luck. It appears they knew about it and did nothing.

As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging areas, according to Iraqi and American officials.

But Iraq’s appeals for a military response have so far been rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was over when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011.

The swift capture of Mosul by militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has underscored how the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have converged into one widening regional insurgency with fighters coursing back and forth through the porous border between the two countries. But it has also called attention to the limits the White House has imposed on the use of American power in an increasingly violent and volatile region.

A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, declined to comment on Mr. Maliki’s requests. “We are not going to get into details of our diplomatic discussions,” she said in a statement. “The current focus of our discussions with the government of Iraq and our policy considerations is to build the capacity of the Iraqis to successfully confront” the Islamic extremists.

I’m no fan of the War on Terror or the Bush foreign policy, but I’m not an isolationist. Sometimes a little force goes a long way. In this case, bombing the crap out of their camps would cost little and do a lot. How can you not know that?

It took a long time for the chickens from the Clinton era to come home to roost. The seeds of the housing crash were sewn in the Clinton years. The nitwit we have in the White House now makes Clinton look like genius. The unforced errors we see every day from these clowns are stacking up and at some point the whole stinking edifice is going to come crashing down.

We’ll be lucky to escape the Obama year alive.

I’m mostly sympathetic to libertarians. I think they get a lot of things right and most of what they get wrong is harmless. That’s not bad for an ideology. But, that’s the problem. They are ideologues and you can never rely on an ideologue. If the choice is between a child holding a puppy and their precious ideology, the boy and his puppy go to the death chamber.

The ideologue trades his self and therefore his sense of humanity for membership in the ideology. They will sacrifice anything for it, including themselves. They will even throw away their political careers for it. Enter Rand Paul who has picked now to throw in with the open borders fanatics.

Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday waded deeper into an issue that has proved perilous to some of his GOP colleagues, throwing his political weight behind an establishment lobby effort to get Congress to reform the country’s immigration system this year.

Mr. Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky and possible 2016 presidential hopeful, participated in a telephone conference call to conservative and business leaders in favor of immigration reform in an effort brokered by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, The Washington Times has learned.

Politically, there is no sane reason for any pol to touch the land mine that is immigration, unless they are against it. Jumping to the aide of the execrable Grover Norquist and his campaign to flood the nation with peasants is suicidal. Yet, there’s Rand Paul, ideologically consistent right into the grave.

The business group, the Partnership for a New American Economy, immediately blasted an email Wednesday evening to supporters crowing that Mr. Paul had formally joined its pro-reform effort.

The timing of the call only heightened the potential stakes for Mr. Paul just one day after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was shockingly ousted from office in the Virginia Republican primary in favor of a little-known college professor.

Tea party activists who whipped up a get-out-the-vote effort for Mr. Cantor’s opponent said they were motivated by the incumbent’s advocacy for immigration reform, actions on Obamacare and vote to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

Mr. Cantor was the second high-profile Republican to suffer political damage by stepping forward on the immigration issue. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, another potential presidential contender, lost the support of his tea party base when he advocated a plan for immigration that some argued created a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Mr. Paul, a longtime favorite of the tea party movement, has made it clear that he believes Congress needs the courage to enact immigration reform. But his latest effort pushed him further into the middle of a strident battle between establishment Republicans like Mr. Norquist who see immigration reform as essential to economic growth, and tea party activists who fear the current efforts in Congress will only lead to de facto amnesty for illegal immigrants.

In fairness to Paul, he is in the blob now which means he has lost touch with the English language. Outside the bubble everyone understands that “immigration reform” means amnesty and open borders. We’re not idiots. The same is true of “path to citizenship.” The phrase “temporary guest worker” means giant loophole for business to hire Hindus to take your job.

Inside the bubble, clones like Paul wrestle with the nuances of these terms as if they have real distinctions. He could also be suffering from Washingtonitis, where the otherwise sensible politicians begins to think the people trust and value his opinion. That’s when they stop representing their constituents to Washington and begin representing Washington to their constituents.

Whether it is ideology or stupidity, Rand Paul just Cantored himself.

Well, maybe not evil, but apparently they are exceptionally unpleasant. So much so their ad agency gave up the account saying “no amount of money is worth it.”

Panera Bread Co.’s lead ad agency, Cramer-Krasselt, has resigned its account after two years with Panera, saying it was “much too much even in this crazy business.”

An internal memo issued this morning by Chicago-based Cramer-Krasselt Chairman and CEO Peter Krivkovich and obtained by Advertising Age portrays a relationship between the agency and Panera that was fraught with tension.

The memo cites as reasons for ending the relationship the “constant last-minute shifts in direction, the behind-the-scenes politics, the enormous level of subjectivity that disregards proof of performance.”

Cramer-Krasselt said that “in the end, no amount of money makes it worthwhile.” However, the memo added that the agency still believes that Panera Bread is a “wonderful brand” that delivers on its food sourcing and quality promises.

“Many of us will continue to eat there. Because it’s that good,” the memo said. “But enough is enough.”

My goodness. I did not think it was possible to offend the sensibilities of ad men.

I’ve run into companies like this. They make it so hard to do business with them you eventually walk away from the account. I’ve never actually fired a customer, but I have systematically ignored them so they will go away on their own. Another trick is to raise rates so high they go looking for some other source. If they stay around you at least have the margin to make the account profitable.

I bet a whole lot of sales guys, attorneys and service providers look at this and smile a little. You dream of sticking it to that client from hell and these guys at Cramer-Krasselt got to do it in a glorious way.

A long time ago a man named Samuel T. Francis was writing for various conservative publications about Middle American Radicals. The essay in which he laid out his ideas can be found here. I don’t use Google Books much so you may have to navigate around a bit to get to the top of the essay. Sam Francis was a great thinker who has been flushed down the memory hole by the Conventional Right. Even the neo-reactionaries of the Dark Enlightenment seem to have forgotten about him, if they ever heard of him.

It is a pity.

If Sam were alive today he would be chuckling at the results of last night’s election in Virginia. Official Washington is busy interpreting the results in a way that pleases them. That’s to be expected. Inside the halls of power, the managers and technocrats hate you. They hate everything about you. Middle America has been their enemy for so long they no longer recall why. They simply know their guy was thrown out of office by the voters in favor of a guy who sounds like Pat Buchanan with a PhD. There has to be a reason that does not indicate failure on their part.

They will tell themselves all sorts of stories rather than face the truth. The reason is they cannot face the truth. The managerial class exists solely to usurp the power and authority of Middle America and the tradition values they rely upon. To accommodate those ideas means denying their right to rule over all of us. By the weekend, they will be out blaming this on racists who oppose  immigration and Tea Party bogeymen. Some of the posts in this thread give a clue as to how the Cult will respond. We also see some hints of how suicidal libertarians will react.

There’s no escaping the fact that immigration and its impact on the middle-class was the key issue. The middle-class in America, by that I mean outside the coastal hipster enclaves, has endured a long hard slog since the crash. It was not exactly good times in the Bush years. The assault on decency and basic civilization that we see from the Obama administration is looking like the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The middle is now ready to throw off their technocratic managers, regardless of party.

What we see in this race is that an articulate and intelligent candidate picked up on the issues that have been out there for over a decade now. The Tea Party tapped into some of it, but it was unmanned by the establishment crooks that attached to it. As soon as I saw Dick Army involved, I knew it was doomed. It was also plagued by the problem all insurgent movements face. It attracted fringe nuts and weirdos. Too many of them carried the Tea Party banner to prominence, thus making it easy for the Cult to disparage the movement.

The issues remain. Middle class people don’t want to see the nation flooded with South American peasants. They don’t want their jobs sent to Pakistan because Mark Zuckerburg needs a new Ferrari. They don’t want to turn on their TV and see men dressed as girls openly talking about sodomy. What ever their reservations, they don’t want to see their old church bulldozed to make way for an abortion mill. Middle America is not ready to march off to the camps as the managerial class hopes.

Brat is a normal guy who tapped into these issues and won over the establishments top guy. Enterprising pols with similar skill will take note. Democrats may be cheering, but there’s an element in their own ranks that shares the same values as the voters who tossed out Cantor. It is why Hillary Clinton plans to run in 2016 as a populist. That’s the source of the “dead broke” comments the other day. She’s working on her shtick. They may be vulgarians, but the Clintons are not stupid.

It is too soon to know what this means, but it is always good to have a reason to reminisce about the great Sam Francis.

Here’s what the invaders have been telling normal Americans for years now:

The voters have finally had enough of this nonsense, it seems. Across Europe the mood is shifting against the invasion of savages and it looks like Americans are catching the fever.

See ya later Cantor. If you’re looking for work, may I suggest you head to the nearest Home Depot and wait for the pickup trucks to stop.

Long ago, there was a movement called the “Plain English Campaign.” It is still around, as you can see by their website, but I don’t know if they have had any effect in the UK. Here is the colonies, things have gone horribly wrong on the clarity front.

Corporate jargon is the most obvious. Clever guys have made corporate jargon generators like this one to mock the bizarre pseudo-language popping from B-schools and HR departments. I’ve run into guys who speak nothing but this weird babble.

Yesterday, I got en e-mail for a job opening. I’m on so many distribution lists for corporate announcements I have a separate e-mail account for them. I usually just delete this crap, but this one is a classic. The abundance of bullshit is amazing. This is for a Senior Vice President:

Overall Accountabilities:

Your mandate as Senior Vice-President, Application Support will be aligned with the Chief Information Officer’s objectives of developing and integrating the IT strategy with IFDS. organizational-wide objectives, including exploring new business opportunities, defining a viable and effective technology road map and establishing priorities for fundamental organizational transformation to sustain competitive advantage.

What the bleep does “aligned with the Chief Information Officer’s objectives” mean? My guess is it means you will be told what to do by your boss, like every other employee. I like “viable and effective” as a goal. Having tried doomed and ineffective a few times, it all makes sense.

 As a critical member of the IT Senior Leadership team, you will play a

key role in aligning IT programs to corporate goals and strategies. You will be accountable for oversight and quality of all facets necessary to the successful delivery and sustaining activities required to provision and support integrated, sustainable, and secure software applications in addition to development or enhancement of IFDS systems and products on a global level.

More aligning! You will be aligned!!

You will have meaningful impact, leading transformational change and leveraging talent through creation of a global, innovative, high-performing team, focused on delivering quality solutions that facilitates business success. Your technical aptitude, business acumen and experience at the senior management level, will empower you to articulate this technical vision and influence business leaders to

ensure exceptional client centric solutions and future growth.

A guy shooting up the place will make a meaningful impact too. It’s weird how moderns think these emotive words are always good. Transformational could mean burning the place to the ground. Focused? Hitler was focused! How’d that work out?

 Competencies: Behavioral & Functional:

Now things promise to get good.

Strategic & Systems Thinking: Understand the connections across functions/enterprise and look at issues from multiple perspectives. Anticipate and look at downstream and cross-functional implications, articulating how technology can transform the business

I dare anyone to explain what the hell that means.

Results Focus & Team Leadership: Drive organizational initiatives beyond delivering the IT project component. Set and adjust priorities effectively; remove barriers and act with an appropriate sense of urgency. Infuse the team with a sense of purpose and create clear accountabilities and metrics. Energize team to excel, continuously improve and develop hi-potentials.

Another magic word is “beyond.” You know, like when Stalin went beyond collective farming and starved millions of Ukrainians. I suppose “energizing the team” has something to do with cattle prods and the lash.

Business Acumen and Intellectually Curiosity: Use financial and technical data to accurately diagnose business strengths and opportunities. Pick up cues from around the organization to be able to raise awareness, simplify and solve complex business and technical issues.

Look, I’ve hired a lot of people in my life and I never wanted any of them to be intellectually curious. That type goes through your briefcase when you’re in the restroom.

Leading Change: Champion change in self and others, build a compelling vision and act with urgency to drive change across the enterprise.

Another magic word. Change is not always good. For instance, if the new guy “champions” the idea of working in the nude, that’s not a change anyone would welcome.

The hilarious thing about these ads is they are all lies. This firm wants a female to run customer service. That’s what all the emotive bullshit is signaling. The fact that the word “diverse” is not used says they are not hiring a black guy this time.