I remember some time ago, Stuart Varney, the Fox News business guy, noting how he had to fight adversity. According to him, it is hard to become on-air talent with a British accent on American television. That’s like saying it is hard to become a world class sprinter because you run so fast. But Varney is an idiot—a very common idiot. I run into his type all the time. He understands economics entirely from a Chicago School standpoint. In his mind, economics is very simple. If you raise the minimum wage, there will be mass layoffs. If you increase the corporate tax rate, prices will go up. It’s very much like the logic of someone with a little physics education thinking that a penny dropped from the top of the Empire State Building will crush someone’s head. It’s strange that anyone could think that prices are set based upon how much something costs to make rather than how much people are willing to pay for it. But that’s what you get when all your knowledge comes out textbooks and an ideological desire to believe.

Most recently, Varney had some very harsh words for Pope Francis. He doesn’t like the fact that the Pope is discussing economic issues. Varney said, “I go to church to save my soul. It’s got nothing to do with my vote. Pope Francis has linked the two. He has offered direct criticism of a specific political system. He has characterized negatively that system. I think he wants to influence my politics.” Oh my God! Say it ain’t so!

Note that Varney never had anything to say about the far more political questions of marriage laws and family planning. While the last two popes went all around the world making the AIDS epidemic worse because nothing was so important to God than that people not us condoms, Varney thought nothing of it. That wasn’t political! It didn’t bother Varney, I suspect, because it didn’t affect Varney. Varney isn’t gay. Varney doesn’t have to listen to the Pope anyway, given that he is an Episcopalian. What’s more, Jesus didn’t say a single fucking thing about homosexuality and birth control. But when the popes who Varney liked focused on these very political issues that are at best on the periphery of Christianity, it was just fine.

But Stuart Varney has a net worth of about $10 million. So when the Pope starts talking about income inequality, well, them’s fightin’ words! Varney wants his soul saved—but on the cheap. The very cheap: the free. The truth is that our modern idea of the soul is very different than it used to be. Now we think of it as some kernel that’s inside us. The Greeks, for instance, thought of the soul as the essence of who we are “that which decides how we behave.” But Varney wants to divorce that from his soul. Like most thoughtless modern Christians, all he thinks he has to do is “believe” in Jesus and his soul is in perfect order. It’s like The Great Pumpkin, but less believable.

What Varney really wants is the good old corrupt Church. The Church that never does anything to offend those who have money or power. And that’s fine. It is clear that Varney’s true God is money. But it is offensive for him to claim to be a Christian. It is even more offensive for him to think that he has any right to lecture the Pope about what his job description is.

I’ve recently become obsessed with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The reason is simple: Bing. Basically every article on this website is cataloged by Google and I get a lot of people coming to this website via it. I get nothing but a trickle from Bing and Yahoo!, which now uses Bing for its search engine, apparently because it wants to become even more irrelevant.

But the issue isn’t even that so little traffic comes here via Bing. I understand that few people use Microsoft’s monstrosity that they have clearly spent more money on marketing than coding. The problem is that very few of the pages on Frankly Curious are even in the Bing database. Google holds over 3200 pages, which is about the number of pages on this site. (A couple of days ago, the Frankly Curious blog posted its 3000th article.) Bing has traditionally had less than 200.

This led me to create a Bing account for webmaster tools, just like the one I have for Google. And I learned about these things called sitemaps. These are XML pages that lay out all the pages that are on this website. Note: Google didn’t need the sitemap. It already did an excellent job of crawling Frankly Curious. But there were some minor problems, and I’ve been doing some major PHP coding on the site to stop some of that. And I provided Google with a sitemap yesterday, which it has already integrated half of.

I did the same thing for Bing. How is it doing? I don’t know. As usual, Microsoft just doesn’t do things as well as Google. I know that they got the sitemap and that they were able to parse it, but that’s about it. Also, Bing doesn’t seem to collect any data about websites until you site up. So it’s been two days and they can’t tell me a damned thing about what activity is going on at Bing regarding this here website.

Thus far this month, Google has directed 3,553 people to Frankly Curious. In that same time, Bing has directed 20. Not 20 thousand, of course; just 20. I’m hoping that in the coming months, now that I’ve spoon fed Bing the contents of my site, this number might go up a bit. But maybe not. Microsoft is a conservative company and they may go along with the Republican belief that it is best to enrich the rich and impoverish the poor. In Microsoft’s case, that seems to be especially so when a website isn’t selling something.

Given I was involved with all this, I checked the library and was very excited to find SEO Search Engine Optimization Bible by Jerri L. Ledford. I could hardly wait to get it. In fact, I called in a favor to get it that very day. The first thing I noticed about it was that it had a lot of filler. I so wanted to get to the point. And the book rarely did that. In total, I would say that the book has perhaps 10 pages of actual information. It is highly repetitive. And of those 10 pages of actual information, none of it was new to me.

Well, I’m perhaps being a bit unfair. Half the book, which I skimmed was not about SEO. It was about paying for advertising. In other words, this is a book for someone who plans to hire someone else to do all the work. Generally, when the word “bible” is used in the title of a computer book, it means that the book is long and detailed. In this case, I think it means that it is faith based.

In addition to everything else, it is hopelessly out of date. But I doubt that four years ago, it was really up on what was happening. The computer publishing business is very bad. O’Reilly is kind of an exception, but even they have been putting out a lot of trash lately. Stay away from their more recent “cookbooks.”

The book did get me to go looking at the online directories. You know, things like Yahoo! I’m proud of Frankly Curious and there is no doubt that I deserve to be in directories. So I spent some time looking around Yahoo! and it was like a ghost town. I don’t know who the editors are, but there were all kinds of sites that no longer existed. And even worse, there were sites that have become really vile commercial outfits (I was looking at the politics section). What’s more, many of the blogs have stopped producing content years ago—2007, 2005. There was even Eric Alterman’s blog at NBC. He left there in 2005. What a great resource that is to the web community! The Open Directory Project is better, but not much better. And all of the directories seem to be designed to confuse users more than anything else. It makes me want to become an editor for them. The main thing they all need is a little weeding. Well, a lot of weeding.

Reddit apparently was not big enough at the time to make it into the book. But I’m really interested in all the new kinds of ways that I can get the word out on this site. Because, with the modest humility that I possess, I think Frankly Curious is quite a good website. Visiting it is like visiting me. I mix things up, I generally have an interesting take on things, I don’t belabor issues. I don’t write long and technical term papers. I have a wry sense of humor. And I have the exact correct amount of outrage. Unlike my other website which gets double the total monthly traffic, this site has a surprisingly large dedicated community of readers who stop by every day. And I know there are more people out there who don’t know about the site but who would enjoy it.

And you know what: I think it sucks that it’s my responsibility to find those people. The search engines do a lousy job of sending people to websites they will like. The thousand people who just come directly to the site each day don’t mean anything to the search engines. Unless there is a link on another page coming to this site, or people clicking on website search engine result pages, Frankly Curious might as well not exist. (Fun fact: the biggest search engine referral to this site is “marlene on the wall.)

So while I continue my attempts to alert the rest of the internet to the special place that is Frankly Curious, be sure you tell all your friends. It can’t last forever. My charm is limited.

Most likely there will be less posting today. I’m working on the technical side of the site. Some of it is going well, but other aspects are really frustrating. Also, I think I’m badly in need of a day off.

The great chemist Fritz Haber was born on this day in 1868. Knowledge can be used for good or for ill. He invented the process for synthesizing ammonia, which is important to fertilizers and is why we are able to feed the billions of hungry people around the world. But ammonia is also used to build bombs. And he used chlorine and other gases to create the first modern chemical weapons used in World War I. So he is often referred to as the father of chemical weapons. We humans are a mixed bag.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr was born in 1909. He was okay. I’m not a fan or anything. But I am rather fond of the racist but still very fun Gunga Din:

The great Lee J Cobb was born in 1911. He was the original Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. He also did a great job in On the Waterfront. But it’s his performance as Juror 3 in 12 Angry Men that blows me away. Estranged from his son, he wants to convict out of his latent pain of his personal loss. The scene where he tears up his son’s picture only to weep at the horror of the act is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in a movie. Here it is; watch it:

Kirk Douglas is 97 today. I’ve never been a huge fan of him as an actor. He’s okay. But apart from his acting, he’s been an impressive guy. In particular, he’s not a bad writer. He’s just a whole lot more interesting than the characters he played. I think most old people die out of boredom. There just isn’t much that interests them anymore. Douglas has kept his life interesting and I have little doubt that helps him to carry on. But the clock is ticking. He has a maximum of 27 years left.

Singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading is 63. I just love her song “The Weakness In Me.” We cannot control ourselves, especially in love. It isn’t rational. “I need to see you!”

Other birthdays: anarcho-communist philosopher Peter Kropotkin (1842); Tip O’Neill (1912); comedian Redd Foxx (1922); actor Dick Van Patten (85); comedy writer Buck Henry (83); actor Judi Dench (79); musician Junior Wells (1998); actor Beau Bridges (72); and kind of an asshole, actor John Malkovich (60).

The day, however, belongs to the great filmmaker John Cassavetes, who was born on this day in 1929. He was an actor of note, but I really don’t care. He wrote and directed some of the greatest films of the 1960s and 1970s. Forget the French New Wave (which I think is over-rated, but interesting). Cassavetes did revolutionary work. I especially like Faces, A Woman Under the Influence, and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. What’s most important in his films is that people matter. Character is primary. And that’s important in a media (even going back to theater) where character really doesn’t matter. Characters are never pawns for the sake of Cassavetes’ plots. All kinds of filmmakers followed his lead, but in their own ways. Nothing is quite like the work that he left. Here is a scene I’ve used before but it shows the power of his work:

Happy birthday John Cassavetes!

Sigh. I like Jonathan Bernstein a whole lot. He’s a very smart guy and I’ve learned so much from him. But sometimes, he is such an idiot. This week he wrote, Still Hoping to Save the Filibuster. His argument is that with lifetime appointments, there really should be some kind of legislative check against the majority. So he offers up some ideas for how we could maintain something along the lines of Filibuster Lite. One idea is that the majority would have to get unanimous agreement. He has other similar ideas.

The problem with all of them is the problem with the filibuster itself. And Bernstein himself has written repeatedly and at length that the problem was not the filibuster but the Republican Party. What would Bernstein’s proposal mean with a big tent party like the Democrats and a tiny tent party like the Republicans? When the Republicans were in control, the most extreme judges would be put on the bench for life. But when the Democrats were in control, the Blue Dogs would insist on “moderate” judges; no more Ruth Bader Ginsburgs. (And note: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is hardly an extremist.)

Martin Longman takes on all of Bernstein’s proposals, Don’t Revive the Filibuster. But even it doesn’t get at the most important aspect of all of this. Namely that the Republicans wanted to kill the filibuster and they would have killed it the first chance they got, regardless of whether the Senate came up with some kind of deal or not.

I understand the desire to keep minority rights strong in the Senate. But any efforts to do that depend upon everyone involved abiding by the historic Senate norms. And as I’ve shown, over the last 50 years, the Democrats have abided by the norms set by the Republicans who broke with those norms each and every time they were in the minority. So this game is played out.

There are two ways to deal with an adversary. One is to try to woo them and find common ground. That is usually the way to go. But when the adversary is a revolutionary group like the Republican Party, there really is no option but complete defeat. So it amazes me that Jonathan Bernstein can be so clear-headed about what has happened to the parties but then pine for some kind of comity that just won’t happen.

There is a conservative party and a liberal party in the United States. And those two parties are inside the Democratic Party. The Republican Party only makes sense in a parliamentary system, where minor extremist parties can thrive. But in our system, we need two reasonable—big tent—parties. There is no indication that the Republicans are capable of moving away from their extremist positions. And the biggest example of this is their approach to the filibuster. They are happy to see it go because they know the Democrats will not make any major changes to the government, and they look forward to one day having complete control of the government when they will try to radically change the nation. God help us if we citizens allow that to happen.

Jonathan Chait has been writing a lot about race this week with having finally seen 12 Years a Slave and now with Nelson Mandela’s death. I wrote a very positive take on one of his articles only yesterday, Liberal and Conservative Views of Racism. But I think he is a bit confused today, Why Conservatives Got Segregation Wrong a Second Time in South Africa. He’s prevaricating terribly. He really doesn’t want to come out and say that conservatives are racists, but he ends his article simply enough, “And a failure to grasp the historical character of racism is not merely a recurring problem for conservative racial thought, it is its defining quality.”

The word “racism” has gotten to be almost useless. In the minds of most people, it conjures up southern bigots lynching a black man who whistled at a pretty white girl. But that’s really not what I mean by racist anymore. We live in a racist society where blacks especially are an underclass. The conservative animosity toward them is not based upon race a priori. The great conservative myth is that hard work and intelligence will allow anyone to thrive in this great nation of ours. If blacks as a group are not now doing as well as whites, it must be because they don’t work as hard and aren’t as intelligent. So it is not that conservatives want to keep minority groups down; it is that their own mythology leads them to the conclusion that minority groups keep themselves down. Thus, in a meritocracy, it would be wrong to do anything for them.

Conservatives believe in the existing power structure, whatever it might be. This is the basis of Corey Robin’s work. What defines conservatism is its reaction against liberation movements of subordinate classes. I write about this all the time, but not in such highfalutin language. Simply: conservatives think that the way things are is the way things ought to be. Anything that might drag the rich down (e.g. taxes) or raise the poor up (e.g. public education) are theoretically repugnant. It is not, as is often claimed, that conservatives think the free market will make a more equitable society; they think the free market will make a more moral society.

Hence, conservatives are racists as long as blacks do not succeed as well as whites in this economic system. This, in itself, would not be so bad. But what passes for the “unfettered free market” in conservative thought is nothing but ossified privilege. They already think that the society is nearly perfect. Thus, giving no-bid contracts with no accountability to the rich just makes sense. If the poor were deserving of government largess, then they would already be rich. And it isn’t just the rich themselves who deserve this special treatment; their children do too. If conservatives really believed in the survival of the “fittest,” they would be in favor of a high estate tax. Instead, they want no estate tax at all.

So let me be clear. Conservatives don’t want to lynch blacks. But they most definitely think that poor blacks and poor whites alike are inferior. And given the statistics, there must be something wrong with the blacks. But that doesn’t make conservatives hate them. They just don’t care. And in particular, they don’t care enough to address gross inequalities in healthcare and education and criminal “justice.” Because in the conservative brain, the only social ill is that the rich are not rich enough and the poor make too much noise.