E'Ville Times

We Are Maybe No So Fucked - Yet

2012-02-14T11:50:00.000-05:00

Privatizing certain things is not in itself a bad idea. If we wanna build a new highway, we contract it out to private firms - that way, we don't have the on-going expense of keeping that capability in-house (and often idle between projects). We also prevent some of the use-it-or-lose-it rationalization that goes on.

But there's a huge difference between privatizing the building of the road, and transferring ownership of the road from Public to Private.

Here's Maude Barlow talking about water (originally aired 2002). Interesting by itself, but what really struck me was the bit starting at about 8:00. Big Water (soon to rival, and then possibly dwarf Big Oil) is making significant progress in privatizing public water in places where there are some pretty bad governments. This looks like a good thing is happening, but if Bad Government is the justification for privatizing, then it simply will become imperative for Big Water to support corrupt regimes in order to maintain the potential for expanding their market.

SInce Barlow's talk, people have won some of the battles against Big Water, but commerce never sleeps - the efforts continue. Now we're seeing a change in tactics (I think). The push now is towards consolidation of water districts. If a local entity transfers control of its water services to a larger regional authority (eg: what's being discussed in Asheville NC), it gets a little easier for the water company to work their magic on the coin-operated politicians they've helped put in office at the state and national levels.

Don't bet against human nature. Greed is a powerful motivator, but a figurative thirst for money and power is nothing compared with the real deal.

Both Sides Do It

2012-02-14T09:34:00.002-05:00

Except they don't.

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

A Thought

2012-02-13T13:29:00.000-05:00

Ideology is a worldview held in spite of evidence to the contrary.

RIP

2012-02-13T10:01:00.000-05:00

I don't spend any real time mourning the death of any given celebrity - whether I was a fan or not. I can feel a selfish loss because they won't be putting out anything new for me to enjoy and/or learn from and/or bitch about; and I can sympathize with their families and friends, but beyond feeling varying degrees of "disturbance in The Force", my life goes on pretty much the same.

What I don't understand is why there are so many meat puppets who seem to go outa their way looking for excuses to tell us all how stupid they are.

(at Little Green Footballs - this is not pleasant - viewer discretion is advised.)

I don’t even know what to say about this any more. There’s a real sickness running rampant in the right wing; the Fox News comment thread on Whitney Houston’s death is yet another disgusting deluge of outright racism: Singer Whitney Houston Dies at 48 | Fox News.

There are almost 5000 comments posted in the thread — these are from the first few pages. Notice that the racist bastards deliberately misspell their slurs or insert random spaces, so they aren’t caught by word filters. And many of the worst comments have numerous “likes” from other commenters.

The comments at the DumFux News site have since been scrubbed up a little.

(hat tip = Balloon Juice)

Just Askin'

2012-02-13T09:11:00.000-05:00

The Right Radicals think they have a huge issue with Obama's decision to mandate coverage for contraception by all employers with more than a certain number of people working for them. BTW, this is what's known as "enforcing the law". I realize this is a concept a lot of "conservatives" aren't familiar with, but trying to get everybody to follow the law is actually the president's job description according to the US Constitution, which is something else "conservatives" seem not to be overly familiar with, even tho' they run their mouths about it all the fucking time.

Anyway, if you're saying there are some outfits that should be granted exemptions because of principles they believe in; that they should be free to make their own decisions; that they have a Right To Choose - you're arguing in favor of the Pro-Choice position.

Or are you saying the Corporation has the right to decide, but not the people working for that Corporation? And isn't that just a slightly different way of saying you want the Government to step in and make the decision for everybody?

What a bunch of fuckin' phonies.

It Gets Better

2012-02-11T11:36:00.000-05:00

Wouldn't it be nice if every LGBT kid knew he could call a cop who actually gets it - and knew that cop was ready to kick ass to stand up for him if it turned out that's what was needed?
(hat tip = Balloon Juice)

Communication

2012-02-11T10:35:00.002-05:00

Words.....................10%
Tone and Inflection.....20%
Body Language...........70%

St George Of Carlin

2012-02-11T09:34:00.000-05:00

...the sanctity of life? We made the whole fuckin' thing up.

Obamacraft

2012-02-10T12:02:00.000-05:00

I'm kinda all over the place when it comes to supporting and/or trashing Obama. He got elected partly because he had that Keep-Hope-Alive thing goin' on in a way Jesse Jackson only wishes he could've pulled off back in the 80s. So it seemed like he was making a lot of promises that "Libruls" love to hear, and anyway, after 8 years of Junior's Play Time Cluster Fuck how can you not vote for a guy like Obama? But what I liked about him was that he talked about getting things back into a more conservative alignment with the US Constitution - Habeus Corpus, Gitmo, Military Commissions, Wire Taps, Reality-Based Gov't, etc. I think the main reason he's disappointed me on some issues is that he ran up against a tangle of interlocking bureaucracies and constituencies that went into warp drive because of 9/11, and have no regard for Separation of Powers or State Borders or anything else that's supposed to do the whole Checks and Balances thing.

So anyway, here we are, nearing the end of his 1st term, and Obama's been lambasted by Right Radicals for everything forever; and he gets slammed from his left for being The Evil Centrist, and now with this flap over contraceptives, a lot of the "Lefties" are pissin' and moanin' about "why did he have to go and give those asshole Republicans an issue they can use to rally the rubes!?!"

Look at the numbers (hat tip = JG):

"Giving them an issue" in this case means they're likely to jump up and identify themselves as loud-mouthed bullies who're trying to impose their minority viewpoint against the majority of voters. And that's exactly what's happening.

And what about the timing? I have to think Sebelius laid this little land mine on purpose. She did it just a few days before CPAC, which almost ensures it'll be topic number one, which makes all the big oily turds float to the top of the punch bowl for all the world to see. I just can't help thinking Obama is pulling a classic Isolate-And-Bypass maneuver on these guys.

Seems to me that while Big O is pulling the body politic back to the left (ie: towards the middle where it belongs), he's finding ways to get the right radicals to help him by pushing from their end as well.

Call me an O-bot if you wanna, but to me this looks like the guy is startin' to roll 'em up pretty good.

Punish The Do-Gooders

2012-02-09T14:45:00.003-05:00

A high school girls' basketball team wore pink unies as part of a fund-raiser for Make-A-Wish and the opposing team's AD and coaches used the "violation" to try to gain a competitive edge.

From NE (Nebraska) Prep Zone:

Before the third quarter began, Columbus coach Dave Licari discussed the uniforms with the officials. State rules require the home team's uniforms to be predominantly white.

The officials then called a technical foul on Burke, and a Columbus player sank both free throws. The Discoverers went on to win 62-47.

Some people have no soul and no honor. Order solely for the sake of order is exactly the kind of bureaucratic tyranny that everybody rightly hates.

Today's Pix

2012-02-08T08:37:00.002-05:00

Saul Alinsky

2012-02-07T14:29:00.000-05:00

And BTW: when somebody sneers about "Obama's just a community organizer", I've taken to asking a couple of clarifying questions.

Does it mean you're against communities in general, or just the ones that are organized?

--or--

When you say "community organizer" like that, do you really mean "uppity nigger"?

A Shortage Of Surprise

2012-02-07T10:46:00.001-05:00

The rubes have become extremely well-conditioned.

Somebody took this:

PhotoShopped it into this:

And got this:

Influential conservative blogger Erick Erickson of Red State retweeted a link of the picture that said, “why oh why did Mitt Romney pose for this picture.”

Then there's this:

Now when I say "the rubes", it apparently has to include people like Erickson and at least one guy in the US House Of Representatives - people I would usually associate with propagating this nonsense; who I have always figured for cynical manipulators. But when it's evident that these leaders of the cult have totally abandoned even small vestiges of healthy skepticism, I have to think we've turned some kinda corner into a very weird place.

I wish I was surprised by this, but I guess I'm not because it seems like a simple progression to the logical extreme.

Today's Pix

2012-02-06T11:32:00.000-05:00

hat tip = AG

hat tip = JR

Banks vs The World

2012-02-06T11:09:00.000-05:00

Minor throw-back tho'ts of "fuck the French" and "those pesky Germans are at it again". But really, it's all about who owns the decisions when it comes to the money.

Testify

2012-02-06T09:44:00.000-05:00

Gotta love this woman.

Remember

2012-02-04T20:08:00.000-05:00

Where'd They Go?

2012-02-04T19:54:00.003-05:00

For at least the last 15 years, I've been casting about, looking for anybody still visible and still with some power in the GOP who isn't totally upside down and backwards on every issue I care about. And it's not a big list, but I don't feel the need to line it out right now because that's not my point.

Here's my point: If you're wondering why it's so hard to find a Moderate in the GOP, it's because they're all Democrats now.

The graph is from voteview blog. The big take away seems pretty obvious. Once you get past Truman and Ike, everything trends in the "Conservative" direction.

Bamboozled - Again

2012-02-04T19:00:00.000-05:00

NASA has come out with a new study that shoots holes in the last of the deniers' arguments - that Solar Activity is the main cause of Global Warming.

Take a look at what's up at the NASA website:

Hansen's team concluded that Earth has absorbed more than half a watt more solar energy per square meter than it let off throughout the six year study period. The calculated value of the imbalance (0.58 watts of excess energy per square meter) is more than twice as much as the reduction in the amount of solar energy supplied to the planet between maximum and minimum solar activity (0.25 watts per square meter).

"The fact that we still see a positive imbalance despite the prolonged solar minimum isn't a surprise given what we've learned about the climate system, but it's worth noting because this provides unequivocal evidence that the sun is not the dominant driver of global warming," Hansen said.

Add this to a growing list of issues about which "Libruls" were right and "Conservatives" have been lying to us.

Corporate Taxes
Climate Change

Theatrics

2012-02-04T11:11:00.001-05:00

We can look at National Security and think in terms of 'stupid' or 'farcical' or 'tragic' or 'melodramatic' or whatever - all of those things are pertinent if trivializing, but even if we're trying to apply more clear-eyed, bang-for-the-buck criteria, we're still losing. We've thrown trillions of dollars at the War On Terrorism, and we've stripped away every meaningful protection for citizens' rights under the US Constitution, and we've accomplished nothing but the illusion of security. And in fact, we've established a state of order in which our liberties are guaranteed only as long as a cop is feeling generous at any given moment.

from James Fallows:

The British couple, shown below in a photo via ABC, got in trouble for a slangy use of the word "destroy" in a Tweet.

And in the end, we're getting a near-exact duplicate (ie; Epic Fail) of the War On Drugs where lots and lots of junkies and casual pot smokers are sent to prison while hundreds of thousands of tons of every conceivable street drug make it to every neighborhood in this country.

In the ten years of Homeland Security, where the fuck is the real evidence that we're under anything close to a level of threat that would justify either the time effort and money, or the abandonment of our principles?

This is horseshit and we need to stop it.

Shoulda Knowed It

2012-02-03T13:34:00.000-05:00

DumFux News is fond of saying the US Corporate Tax Rate is the 2nd highest in the world (35%), getting the rubes to pretend that the debate can just stop there.

Well, the non-rubes among us know that the Tax Rate has no meaning if nobody ever pays at that rate.

So guess what - the 'effective rate' is actually down around 12%. And, the amount of Corp Taxes collected as a percentage of GDP is the lowest it's been since 1972.

So, once again, the "Libruls" were right, and the "Conservatives" have been lying to us.

From the Rupert Street Journal - full piece is behind the pay wall.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Just Cuz

2012-02-03T13:14:00.004-05:00

I think it would be all totally awesome and stuff to have somebody in the US Senate named Mazie.

A Tough Call (updated)

2012-02-03T10:24:00.000-05:00

...but it looks like I have to say something along these lines: Nancy Brinker (Susan Komen's sister) can go fuck herself.

Politicizing a healthcare issue is bad enough, but using a lame excuse to politicize it as a result of Guilt By Association because some prick in Congress is abusing his power - that's as low as it gets.

It's never about what they say it's about - listen for the telltale signs from what Lizz Winstead says at the end of this clip.

Support Planned Parenthood directly with a donation now.

Update via The Atlantic:

Hammarley explained that the Planned Parenthood issue had vexed Komen for some time. "About a year ago, a small group of people got together inside the organization to talk about what the options were, what would be the ramifications of staying the course, or of telling our affiliates they can't fund Planned Parenthood, or something in between." He went on, "As we looked at the ramifications of ceasing all funding, we felt it would be worse from a practical standpoint, from a public-relations standpoint, and from a mission standpoint. The mission standpoint is, 'How could we abandon our commitment to the screening work done by Planned Parenthood?'" But the Komen board made the decision despite the recommendation of the organization's professional staff to keep funding Planned Parenthood. (emphasis added)

This fish stinks from the head down.

The Great American Sing-Off

2012-02-02T08:15:00.000-05:00

Obama opens with a quick Al Green bit:

And then there's Willard:

If you feel moved, and you need to sing, then you should sing - but Dude, if you insist on doin' it in public, ya gotta remember there's a hard and fast rule from Karaoke Nite: If you're not Delbert McClinton or Joe Cocker, never EVER follow the black guy.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassion'd stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness
America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for heroes prov'd
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country lov'd,
And mercy more than life.
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev'ry gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

War Tech

2012-02-01T13:25:00.000-05:00

(hat tip = JG)
From Wired Magazine:

The U.S. military has been after self-guided bullets for years. Now, government researchers have finally made it happen: a bullet that can navigate itself a full mile before successfully nailing its target.

Got me to thinking - sometimes dangerous, always obsessive - and just a few quick Googlies later:

Tweety Speaks

2012-02-01T12:48:00.000-05:00

Matthews is almost always going on about the politics of it all, no matter what weird shit's going on. Maybe I've just not watched him that closely, but I've never heard this from him before.

Seems to fit with this:

Bumper Stickers, Pix Etc

2012-02-01T11:43:00.000-05:00

Hoping

2012-01-31T13:15:00.002-05:00

Maybe the reason the GOP wingnuts are trying all this weird crap now is that they're feeling the heat from an electorate that's finally starting to wise up to their bullshit, and so they feel the need to push a bunch of stupid initiatives before voters throw 'em all out on their bony red butts.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch this morning:

Bill to require ultrasound before abortion advances

A bill that would require a woman seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound took another step toward passage in the Virginia Senate Monday — but not before outnumbered Democrats rose to express their opposition in clinical terms.
Sen. Janet D. Howell, D-Fairfax proposed an amendment — that any man seeking prescription medication for erectile dysfunction must first submit to a digital rectal exam and cardiac stress test.

Virginia has grown more moderate politically over the last several years - Falwell's dead and Crazy Ol' Pat is fading fast, and the DC suburbs are gettin' bluer all the time - so, as their hold on power continues to wane, the last of the die-hard crazies are going back to the well just one more time.

Differences Can Be Legit

2012-01-31T10:25:00.000-05:00

Evidence that 'conservatives' and 'liberals' see the world differently.

From BBC (hat tip = Democratic Underground).

Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are studying liberals' and conservatives' reactions to happy or pleasant photographs and scary or sad ones in an effort to learn more about the cognitive underpinnings of political preference.

Watch the video (no embedding available).

Out On A Limb

2012-01-29T12:25:00.001-05:00

Obama gets blasted a lot from a lot of different directions. I'm not gonna put up a list here because this is a blog, and I can say whatever bullshit I feel like saying, and I don't have to back it up or nuthin', so there.

Here's what I think is happening. Right now, I'm kinda back to where it looks like Obama really is way out in front of us, and we're just starting to catch up with him.

The short version is this: When he "fucks up" - eg: no Public Option, Taxes vs Cuts, etc - he's not looking for everybody to shut up and go along with him (he's not Jr Bush for fuck's sake), he's looking for as many people as possible to stand up and holler and make him do what we want him to do.

So sign the petitions and call your Congress Critter, and send emails and...well, you know, PARTICPATE, you lazy fucks. The guy can't do it all by himself.

Yikes

2012-01-29T10:07:00.001-05:00

I really do try to stay positive, but this kinda thing keeps popping up and I'm right back to thinking it's just not gonna end well.

Both Sides Do It

2012-01-29T08:30:00.000-05:00

..but can you show me examples of this kinda shit coming from the Dems?

Both Sides Do It

2012-01-28T11:25:00.000-05:00

...except when they don't. The centrist meme is that Repubs and Dems are equally fucked up because they all engage in some kind of demagoguery or dirty tricks or whatever. My own sense is that while there's a kernel of truth to it (at least in the Political Mode O'Day), when I look closer, one side is a quite a bit wackier, and a lot more authoritarian, and a boatload more likely to be totally batshit fucking crazy.

From Wonkette:

Arguably the worst person permitted to make laws on behalf of America, Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield, author of the “Don’t Say Gay”bill, recently took part in an interview on Sirius in which he not only defended his already nightmarish views on homosexuality and AIDS...

-snip-

"Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall. My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex…very rarely [transmitted]."

Also from Wonkette:

A RESOLUTION
Declaring 2012 as the “Year of the Bible” in Pennsylvania.

WHEREAS, The Bible, the word of God, has made a unique
contribution in shaping the United States as a distinctive and
blessed nation and people; and

WHEREAS, Deeply held religious convictions springing from the
holy scriptures led to the early settlement of our country; and

WHEREAS, Biblical teachings inspired concepts of civil
government that are contained in our Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS, Many of our great national leaders, among them
President Washington, President Jackson, President Lincoln,
President Wilson and President Reagan, paid tribute to the
influence of the Bible in our country’s development, as
exemplified by the words of President Jackson that the Bible is
“the rock on which our Republic rests”; and

WHEREAS, The history of our country clearly illustrates the
value of voluntarily applying the teachings of the scriptures in
the lives of individuals, families and societies; and

WHEREAS, This nation now faces great challenges that will
test it as it has never been tested before; and

WHEREAS, Renewing our knowledge of and faith in God through
holy scripture can strengthen us as a nation and a people;
therefore be it

RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives declare 2012 as
the “Year of the Bible” in Pennsylvania in recognition of both
the formative influence of the Bible on our Commonwealth and
nation and our national need to study and apply the teachings of
the holy scriptures

Please, gentle readers, go out there and find something I can put in my little blog here that shows Dems or Indies doing anything even remotely like any of this. Tell me where to look. Tell me what I'm missing. Enlighten me. Let's put it all side-by-side for a real comparison.

For all you centrists and all you freeloadin' poseurs who say "fuck 'em all, I refuse to take part" while the rest of us do all the work - try to remember that this is the shit we get when we don't pay attention; when we don't own our responsibilities as citizens.

And lastly, don't be fooled by the rhetoric of (mostly) the Repubs when they tell you we need to beat down the Federal Gov't and let all the power devolve to the states. State governments are chock full of shit-heels like Stacey Campfield, who call themselves conservative, but are truly radical. They don't want you to be free, they want you to be obedient. They don't want reform, they want revolution. And what is it they're likely to deliver to us if their revolution against American Democracy succeeds?

Confirmation Bias Update

2012-01-27T10:31:00.000-05:00

Another great example. Newt scores points in a TV debate by getting huffy with John King for asking a question he doesn't like - big points because the rubes in the crowd are well-conditioned to cream their jeans whenever somebody publicly spanks a Press Poodle. Later, on CNN, King follows up and tells us Gingrich's campaign staffers confirm the story.

But it doesn't fucking matter. The rubes don't watch CNN, and nothing they see on DumFux News is ever going to contradict their preconceptions. It seems the Fox commentators have been instructed to slam Newt, but you're not going to see anything on their air that gives the rubes any reason to question the cult's orthodoxy of Fox Good; All Others Bad.

(hat tip = Crooks and Liars)

Differentiatin'

2012-01-26T22:07:00.000-05:00

I've been watching politics for a while now, and one of things that's been hard to miss in the last 25 years or so is that Repubs and Dems are a lot more sharply divided. (Brilliant observation, Mikey - please tell us more) Right. No news there, but the way it's evolved into the current depiction of GOP=Man, and Dem=Woman is pretty interesting.

It was there back in the 90s when the narrative was "Dad's the hard-working Republican who puts food on the table and protects the family, while Mommy is the Democrat who spends all the money." We've heard that repeated in one iteration or another for what's getting to be a long time. Hell, Ahnode Schvartzenbooger said it straight out when he called the California Legislature a bunch of girlie men. It could be that the Dems now have a chance at turning it back on the Repubs.

So here's what we should all push the Repubs to ask of their candidates: I'd like to see Gingrich shoot a few baskets, and I wanna see Romney throw a football. Seriously, take a look at how these guys carry themselves some time and then try to convince yourself you're not thinkin' about the kid in grade school who always got picked last when you were choosing up sides for kickball - even if you do feel a little guilty when you're thinking it.

The point is that the rubes are so macho-centric, I'm thinkin' it won't take more than 30 or 40 seconds of Newt and Mitt playin' a little catch on YouTube to make sure nobody ever hears from either one of those buttheads ever again.

It's A Wonderment

2012-01-26T13:22:00.000-05:00

In a democracy - Representative Democracy; Democratic Republic; Republican Democracy; whatever - shouldn't it actually be a good thing for the government to grow in size appropriate to the population?

In 1790, there were about 33,000 people for every Congress Critter in the House of Representatives. Right now, every Critter "represents" more than 700,000 Americans.

If we're supposed to be self-governed; if the individual is supposed to have the power; then why do we insist on diluting that power by keeping the number of Reps the same while the population increases? Every Critter "represents" 21 times the number of citizens now as they represented in 1790. It may not be a straight 1-to-1 thing, but to me that means each Critter's power is something like 21 times greater than it used to be, and each citizen's power has gone down by 95%.

I don't like Big Government any better than I like Big Union, or Big Oil, or Big Anything - but if we simply go blindly along with this knee-jerk rhetorical aversion to 'gubmint', then we're delivering more and more power into fewer and fewer hands - which makes the government "bigger" in the only way that matters - thereby accomplishing the very thing we say we're trying to avoid.

It's a wonderment.

Divide And Conflate

2012-01-26T11:03:00.001-05:00

In the Age of Bias Confirmation, the duplicity game can actually be easier to play. Case in point: Jan Brewer meets Obama at the airport; there's a bit of conversation away from the press that nobody hears; and it produces this graphic:

Cue the raging speculation as the blogosphere goes batty.

Gov Brewer tells 'the mainstream media' (eg: CBS) one thing, and then tells a very different story when she pops up on DumFux News.

Brewer scores the points - and scoring points is really the only thing that matters anymore - because she capitalizes on the opportunity to ambush Obama in public, and because the rubes won't see or hear anything that might contradict what they're led to believe.

It's Over

2012-01-26T09:48:00.001-05:00

...and we lost.

(hat tip = truthdig)

Voters go to the polls to confirm an outcome that was decided for them well in advance of "Election Day". Control the message and you control the decision.

Campaign Contributions by all Americans
.26% give more than $200
.05% give more than $5,000
.01% give more than $10,000

That Pussy, Obama

2012-01-25T10:36:00.000-05:00

He's just a typical Librul wuss - always walkin' around all timid and uncomfortable when it comes to knockin' shit over with his dick. Except when you look at his actual record of fuckin' up the bad guys.

From AP/WaPo, via Balloon Juice:
(even DumFux News has this at the top of their page this morning)

Newt's Run

2012-01-25T09:04:00.000-05:00

Molly Ball put up a good piece at The Atlantic yesterday, deconstructing Newt's 4-part plan to beat Obama (thus):

1) 3-hour debates
Seriously? We watch an awful lot of our TV on DVRs - partly because we're busy and we're prob'ly doing something else when the show is aired, but mostly because we can't stand wasting our time watching commercials or listening to politicians while they blow smoke up our skirts.

2) Gingrich presents a greater contrast to Obama than Romney does.
People don't buy 'different'; they buy 'better'.

3) He goes after the "Swing Voters"
Guess what, Newt? We're all swing voters.

4) Obama loses no matter what.
Not when he's winning the Tax issue, and not when he's winning the Jobs issue, and not when he's won the Foreign Policy and Terrorism issues all together.

Obama has much to atone for. There're plenty of reasons not to vote for him. But he's totally outflanked the GOP on every front. If you criticize him for Gitmo and Military Commissions and Habeus Corpus, you're making his 2008 arguments for him. Likewise with practically everything else.

The main slam on Obama is that he hasn't done enough, and the main reason for that is you. So let's try this instead: Get the fuck outa the way and let the man work.

Domestic Terrorism

2012-01-24T10:28:00.000-05:00

From Crooks and Liars today, a story about another incident of political violence.

See the video here (the embedding code isn't working for me today)

Did you catch the operative phrase in the video? At about :55, the News Poodle says, "Burris admits he's liberal". Well, there ya have it - he admits it! And so then, of course, the rest of the piece is all about Animal Cruelty, and not a word about the crime as an obvious act of terrorism against a political opponent.

There are red flags popping up in lots of places.

Distracted

2012-01-23T14:38:00.001-05:00

We definitely need to be arguing about this instead of all the real shit that's goin' on. For one thing - because, well, you know, it worked so well against Obama last time he ran for president (which is when this pic was taken).

But really, why does it seem like somebody somewhere wants us to concentrate on this shit? It's almost as if they don't want us to talk about real issues. Hmmm.

Quick Tho't

2012-01-23T12:08:00.000-05:00

Don't be too hasty to condemn "the do-nothing Congress". Remember that if they manage to do nothing for the next couple of years, the Bush Tax Cuts will expire which means the deficit starts to go away, which in turn means the debt starts to go away.

Can You Spot The Difference?

2012-01-23T09:57:00.000-05:00

With Apologies

2012-01-23T09:35:00.002-05:00

..to Mel Brooks.

GOP Pollster: "Sir, the base voters are revolting!"

Willard: "You're tellin' me - they stink on ice"

(hat tip = Crooks and Liars)

The Power Of Myth

2012-01-22T13:24:00.004-05:00

Seems like this shows up on facebook every few months. I've debunked it more than a coupla times, and it just never sinks in - the same guys keep putting it up in ever so slightly different iterations.

"Conservatives" are usually pretty big on trying to boil down the problems (of government, or culture, or people) to one overarching concept. You know the drill:
"the problem with the economy is too much government regulation"
"the problem with the schools is the Teachers Union"
"the problem with unemployment is that taxes are too high"

So here's mine: The problem (with everything) is the insistence on remaining ignorant.

And btw, why do "conservatives" always cheer when Romney inveighs against "wealth envy", and then piss and moan about some imaginary retired senator getting a fat pension?

Today's Pix etc

2012-01-21T17:42:00.001-05:00

Colbert

2012-01-19T08:30:00.001-05:00

Chock full o' goodies, but my fave so far is "...east coast Hollywood elite..."

Censorship

2012-01-18T10:24:00.000-05:00

Intellectual property is an important thing. You have a reasonable expectation to own your work, and to profit from it.

That said, I tend to take a fairly expansive view of The Fair Use Doctrine. I think the creator of the content usually derives benefits from the use of his creation which - again, usually - outstrip the costs of lost revenues and/or watch-dogging.

The reflex of jealously guarding your proprietorship generally has the effect of narrowing your audience, which is kinda not the fucking point, now is it?

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Anyway, the larger point is that ceding control over the internet to anybody other than the users is just a bad idea.

The Naughty Bits

2012-01-17T15:22:00.002-05:00

I just had to do one more.

Mr Deity

2012-01-17T14:07:00.001-05:00

From the Mr Deity collection

Today's Civics Assignment

2012-01-17T12:49:00.002-05:00

Moyers has rehabbed himself in pretty good shape in the last 45 years. For me, he stands among the last of the straight news guys.

Moyers & Company 101: On Winner Take All Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Yeesh

2012-01-17T09:45:00.000-05:00

Makes me wonder about the level of self-loathing Juan Williams must've reached to put himself thru this.

One point of interest: Gingrich is complaining that Obama has done nothing about unemployment, and the one tangible thing he mentions is road building. It's almost as if he's embracing standard Keynesian principles.

(ed note: the road in question is I-73, which was first proposed way back in 1983, and has been a political football in SC politics ever since)

But most interesting is the enthusiastic reaction of the mob as Gingrich puts a whuppin' on the black guy - in their minds Williams is just a stand-in for "that uppity buck in the White House".

Gingrich poses a real danger to the GOP (along with the rest of us) because he threatens to unleash the monsters of the Great American Id.

(hat tip = Wonkette)

Today's Pix

2012-01-16T09:47:00.000-05:00

Boy Culture

2012-01-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

The pendulum swings. We've spent a long time trying to get girls up to speed, and now I guess it turns out we need to try to treat everybody as if they were individuals. Wow - what a concept.

Walk Off The Earth

2012-01-15T07:18:00.000-05:00

Is this the opposite of multi-tasking?

(I can't find a working link at Amazon)

Rachel, Rachel

2012-01-14T14:15:00.000-05:00

I check in on Rachel Maddow once in a while. When she wags her finger and gets preachy, I can do without her, but when she sticks to stringing the facts together and connecting the dots, there's no better reporter.

Both Sides Doin' It

2012-01-14T13:52:00.000-05:00

I don't even remember where I saw it today, but some preacher dude on a webcast was calling for Newt Gringrich to produce his birth certificate, because "Gingrich's daddy ran off when Newt was just a boy and - you know - ain't no white folk gonna name they baby Newton LEROY..."

I'm really hoping it was satire or just the guy screwin' around or whatever - and not some kind of serious attempt at payback.

Everybody loses when we become what we're fighting against.

A Nation Of Sheep

2012-01-14T09:41:00.000-05:00

...begets a government of wolves.

I'm The Slime

2012-01-14T09:18:00.000-05:00

Nobody better'n Zappa. (hat tip = Democratic Underground)

I am gross and pervertedI'm obsessed 'n derangedI have existed for yearsBut very little had changedI am the tool of the GovernmentAnd industry tooFor I am destined to ruleAnd regulate you
I may be vile and perniciousBut you can't look awayI make you think I'm deliciousWith the stuff that I sayI am the best you can getHave you guessed me yet?I am the slime oozin' outFrom your TV set
You will obey me while I lead youAnd eat the garbage that I feed youUntil the day that we don't need youDon't go for help...no one will heed youYour mind is totally controlledIt has been stuffed into my moldAnd you will do as you are toldUntil the rights to you are sold
That's right, folks..Don't touch that dial
Well, I am the slime from your videoOozin' along on your livin'room floor
I am the slime from your videoCan't stop the slime, people, lookit me go
Copied from MetroLyrics.com

Today's Pix

2012-01-13T12:46:00.001-05:00

Get It Together, Girls

2012-01-12T12:28:00.000-05:00

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

When Mitt Romney Came To Town

2012-01-12T11:59:00.000-05:00

At what point do we start to see a movement to dump Biden and put Gingrich on the ticket with Obama?

Little Jimmy (updated)

2012-01-12T10:21:00.000-05:00

(update) - From a story at The Boston Herald site

James O'Keefe strikes again! Except he doesn't. Here's the video of O'Keefe's latest escapade, attempting to demonstrate the urgent need for Voter ID.

I'll certainly agree with the basic premise that we have to look after the integrity of our elections process - no argument there. But this Voter ID thing is a solution in search of a problem. And while we're at it, how come the "party of personal responsibility and small government" is being so adamant about getting Big Gubmint to step in on this one? Can you say "Nanny State", bitches?

Anyway, Ryan Reilly at TPM has the breakdown. (hat tip = Balloon Juice)

“Who in their right mind would risk a felony conviction for this? And who would be able to do this in large enough numbers to (1) affect the outcome of the election and (2) remain undetected?” Hasen wrote.

That quote hits it smack on the head for me. Again - Voter ID (eg) is not about what they tell us it's about. So what is it?

Pick Them Cherries

2012-01-12T08:47:00.000-05:00

A facebook friend posted this.

When this kinda junk shows up, my habit is to put up some smartass comment on their wall, but this guy's not the usual brand of bible-thumper; I detect very little condescension in his attitude.

So I'll confine my own dismissive and condescending comments to my little blog here.

Anyway, using the formula depicted near the end of the video, we see that Hard Work = 98%, Knowledge = 96%, and Attitude = 100%; but Love Of God = 101%. Yay.

But wait - it gets better. Bullshit = 103%. And if you really really wanna score, then Pious Baloney = 139%. No wonder Gingrich was taking those shots at Romney the other night.

Miracle At Mile High

2012-01-11T14:37:00.001-05:00

(posted by a facebook friend)

Iran

2012-01-11T10:39:00.001-05:00

Sounds plain to me. Iran is not on the verge of getting the bomb. That means all the crap coming from guys like McCain and Lieberman (et al) is meant to focus attention on Iran for other reasons. (ie: this "issue" is in keeping with my basic premise that it's never about what they tell us it's about) So what is it?

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

We Are So Fucked

2012-01-11T10:19:00.000-05:00

From Mother Jones:

For the German chemical giant Bayer, neonicotinoid pesticides—synthetic derivatives of nicotine that attack insects' nervous systems—are big business. In 2010, the company reeled in $789 million euros (more than $1 billion) in revenue from its flagship neonic products imidacloprid and clothianidin. The company's latest quarterly report shows that its "seed treatment" segment—the one that includes neonics—is booming.

The nexus of Crop Engineering, Corporate-Funded Research, and Regulation Capture scares the fuck outa me.

And BTW: Ain't no such thing as National Security when it's not safe to breathe the air, drink the water, or eat the food.

Double Speak

2012-01-11T09:39:00.001-05:00

In the 40 years I've been voting, every time anybody runs for President, he ends up talking about what he'll do - or what we need to do - "to restore America to greatness".

When you say something like that, doesn't it have to mean you think America is a pretty crappy place right now? I know it's just a rhetorical gimmick, but it seems like whoever says that kind of thing will always also say that he's 'plain-spoken'; that he says what he means and means what he says, and blah blah blah. And then he'll turn around and say that the US is - not was, and not will be - but is the greatest.

So when do we get a guy who does actually give it to us straight? We don't. Well, we did let that guy in a coupla times. Bobby Kennedy grabbed us by the collar in 1968 and made us look directly at our own shittiness in places like Appalachia and Viet Nam - we felt so bad about it, we had to shoot him in the head, and then vote for Nixon so we could get us a little law and order up in here. We went back to the well in 1976 but that guy turned out to be Jimmy Carter, who also told us way too much truth about way too many things that really bummed us out. Carter managed to avoid being shot in the head by being extraordinarily adept at shooting himself in the foot - but anyway, we went back to voting for guys who knew how to wave the Big American Dick; guys who could help a bunch of petting zoo ponies pretend to be racing studs.

They lie to us because we insist on it.

Pots And Kettles

2012-01-10T10:48:00.000-05:00

I couldn't look at this and not see people like Willard and Lil' Newt.
(hat tip = Balloon Juice)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Indecision 2012 - Two Debates, One GOP

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

If I Hafta Tebow 'Round The World

2012-01-09T15:48:00.000-05:00

(my sincerest apologies to Marvin Gaye for the title)

Cults of personality are occasionally interesting, sometimes powerful, often dangerous - and generally hard not to watch.

Especially when they're more than a little weirdly ironic.

Smoke And Mirrors

2012-01-09T09:36:00.000-05:00

I've been noticing lately that the officiating in the NFL has been something less than stellar. This isn't a terribly new thing. The players get bigger and faster, and the game speeds up, and it can take a while for the Stripes to catch up - pretty simple formula. What really bugs me tho' is that I don't see any of the blown calls on any of the highlite shows, and I never hear any of the commentators talking about it either. It starts to look a lot like a media blackout.

I'm not saying the games are rigged, but I will say that in the absence of scrutiny, the potential for dastardly behavior will flourish in sports, business, government, religion, whatever.

Connecting those dots with any of these other dots may a bit of a stretch, but it feels like there's a real corollary at work here.

(hat tip = HuffPo)

Chickens Come Home To Roost

2012-01-08T10:30:00.000-05:00

Gee - it's just like 1970 again. The cops are not your friends...

(hat tip = The Agonist)

From care2 make a difference:

Sometime between the time he was arrested on March 27, 2009 around 2:00 p.m., and March 31 at 1:23 p.m. when he was pronounced dead, Christie had been sprayed with ten blasts of pepper spray, also known as OC (Oleo-resin Capsicum), which is a derivative of cayenne pepper.

...and the world is a ghetto.

Today's Slogan

2012-01-08T09:37:00.000-05:00

Corporations are made of people, but that doesn't mean corporations are people.

Romney Is As Romney Does

2012-01-07T12:03:00.000-05:00

via Wonkette:

We've been told for a very long time that 'creative destruction is the natural order of things'; that if we go against the forces of the Free Market we'll only get bad results from our good intentions.

(I realize giving Romney et al the benefit of the doubt here is a huge strain on credulity, but I need to bypass the demonization for a moment. Besides, I imagine it'll be a good long time before we see a shortage of opportunities to call him names.)

Anyway - the intent was not to stiff these guys and put them out of work. The intent was to make the company more efficient - more competitive in a global market, to help it evolve, and thus at least to survive long enough to hire these guys back; or to thrive in a way that pumps enough dollars into the local economy so other companies could hire them. That's how it's supposed to work. That was the intent.

But I can't look at what actually happened to the people who made up that company and then make any credible claim that 'capitalism didn't fail those people, they failed capitalism'.

So if our intentions were good, and we got bad results anyway, then we have to examine our Methods and Practices to find better ways of doing things.

Today's Pix

2012-01-06T11:25:00.000-05:00

Is This Heaven? No, It's Iowa

2012-01-06T11:01:00.001-05:00

Santorum lost by 9 votes - here's how it happened (via Crooks and Liars).

Both Sides

2012-01-06T09:09:00.001-05:00

Seems to me:

Dems tend to use polls to figure out what We The People are thinking, and where we might wanna go if somebody actually stood up and decided to lead us somewhere. Maybe that's partly why the Repubs hate calling them democrat-ic. Anyway, Repubs seem to use their polling to help them decide how to attack public opinion in order to change it enough to suit their agenda.

However slight you believe them to be, there are differences.

d r i f t g l a s s has a good look at it from a wider perspective (quoting a piece from truthout.com):

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

Yo, Repubs

2012-01-06T09:03:00.001-05:00

(ed note: This was hangin' in the Drafts File. Not much new here, but it's generally a good idea to recap once in a while)

It's gotten so bad for you guys that the Repub candidates who might actually have a chance to beat Obama aren't going to bother running any real campaign in states like Iowa and South Carolina. Why? Because your party's "leaders" have allowed the loons to grab control.

There's a pretty severe purity test at work here. If you look at what it takes to get "the base" to vote for somebody in sufficient numbers to win the nomination, you might notice the list of issues requiring absolute fealty is getting pretty long - gays, God, guns, abortion, taxes, immigration, plus one or two others. The point being that when you insist on strict adherence to this widening list of issues, the effect is that you're not just narrowing the field of candidates who could reasonably cleave to that platform, but you're severely narrowing the number of voters who're willing to go along with it, because what it really shows us is a party that seems bent on controlling way too much of our lives.

You're supposed to be the party of personal responsibility, and small government, and "just leave me the fuck alone". But when you tell 5% of the population they're not allowed to marry someone they love, you're not holding to your own philosophy.

When you say you can't vote for somebody who isn't in your chapter of God's Fan Club, then you're ignoring the part of the US Constitution that outlaws tests of religion for elected or appointed office (Article VI).

When you control the Alabama (eg) Legislature and pass a stupid Immigration Law which leads to the arrest of a Mercedes-Benz Production Manager on a visit to the plant in Tuscaloosa, you don't get to piss and moan about how government regulations are hurting business.

Wanna talk abortion? Here it is: You outlaw abortion, and you'll be requiring an expansion of government power that'll make Nicky Ceauşescu look like Calvin Coolidge.

The saving grace is that your rapid acceleration toward the logical extreme is causing the GOP to run in tighter and tighter circles, which will eventually make it disappear up its own asshole - which should let the rest of us get back to makin' shit work again.

Today's Music

2012-01-05T07:52:00.000-05:00

Actually, not today's music at all. It's just a great tune, and it was Billboard's #1 on this date in 1969.

Local Controversy

2012-01-04T08:50:00.000-05:00

Years ago, a guy named Paul Reisler put together a little residency program (Kid Pan Alley) where he recruits local music talent, then chooses a public elementary school for a week of song-writing sessions with the kids. The classes write and perform the tunes at school, and a CD is issued as a means to raise a few bucks for the PTA. As the program gathers enough tunes, Reisler et al will then produce a CD featuring professionals (eg: Terri Allard, Sissy Spacek, The Nashville Chamber Orchestra, Jesse Winchester, etc).

My kids have been thru this, and all seemed well and good until recently, when the 3rd graders at Woodbrook Elementary School here in Charlottesville came up with a song with references to greed and Occupy and 99%ers. And of course, the wingnuts freaked out.

(hat tip = Wonkette)

Local News Video

The knee-jerkers' big question generally centers around whether or not 'the libruls' would still support the results if the songs were about Tea Party stuff or religion, etc. Well, guess what - a quick scan of the Kid Pan Alley website reveals lots of tunes about the things that make these Little-Brains cream their jeans.

Once in a while, I'd like to look into one of these "outrages" and find even the barest thread of truth in what these boneheads are screamin' about. Hell, I'd settle for anything that doesn't simply reinforce my own pre-conceptions about 'em.

(this is not the song in question - just a sample posted on YouTube)

I'm gonna clean my room before my mom tells me to
I'm gonna set the table at a quarter to two
I'm gonna feed the dog, take out the trash
I'm gonna do everything I'm asked

Yes, yes, yes, thats what I'm gonna do
Yes, yes, yes, thats what I'm gonna do

I've done all the dishes and made the beds
Vacuumed the floor, made sure the pets were fed
How come every time I do what I'm asked
Seems like Mom gives me another task

I'm gonna clean my room before my mom tells me to
I'm gonna set the table at a quarter to two
I'm gonna feed the dog, take out the trash
I'm gonna do everything Im asked

Yes, yes, yes, thats what I'm gonna do
Yes, yes, yes, thats what I'm gonna do

I've already taken out the fish and fed the trash
Ate my homework, did my dinner and kissed my bath
There's an infinite number of things to do
Like counting the stars in the sky -- I'll never get through

I'm gonna clean my room before my mom tells me to
I'm gonna set the table at a quarter to two
I'm gonna feed the dog, take out the trash
I'm gonna do everything I'm asked

Yes, yes, yes, thats what I'm gonna do
Yes, yes, yes, thats what I'm gonna do
Yes, yes, yes, thats what I'm gonna do

Tools Explained

2012-01-03T10:24:00.002-05:00

(hat tip = Doug Z)

DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, denting the freshly-painted project which you had carefully set in the corner where nothing could get to it.

WIRE WHEEL: Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light . Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, 'Oh shit'

SKIL SAW: A portable cutting tool used to make studs too short.

PLIERS: Used to round off bolt heads (also good for creating blood-blisters).

BELT SANDER: An electric sanding tool commonly used to convert minor touch-up jobs into major refinishing jobs.

HACKSAW: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. ie: It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

VISE-GRIPS: Generally used subsequent to pliers to finish rounding off bolt heads. Also, if nothing else is available, they can be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for lighting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub out of which you want to remove a bearing race.

TABLE SAW: A large stationary power tool commonly used to launch wooden projectiles for testing wall integrity.

HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after you have installed your new brake shoes, trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.

BAND SAW: A large stationary power saw primarily used by most shops to cut good aluminum sheet into smaller pieces that more easily fit into the trash can after you cut on the inside of the line instead of the outside edge.

TWO-TON ENGINE HOIST: A tool for testing the maximum tensile strength of everything you forgot to disconnect.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the vacuum seals under lids or for opening old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splashing oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to ream out Phillips screw heads.

STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER: A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws while butchering your palms.

PRY BAR: A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50 cent part.

HOSE CUTTER: A tool used to make hoses too short.

HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate expensive parts in reasonable proximity to whatever you're trying to hit.

UTILITY KNIFE: Used to open and simultaneously slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on unseen objects such as seats, vinyl records, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines, refund checks, and rubber or plastic parts. Especially useful for slicing through work clothes, but only while being worn (or when enclosed in packaging, as stated above).

SON-OF-A-BITCH TOOL: (A personal favorite) When working unassisted in a tight place or awkward position, this is the tool you grab and then throw across the garage while yelling 'Son of a BITCH!' at the top of your lungs. It is then automatically converted, becoming the next tool you need.

Settle In

2012-01-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

Get the popcorn ready and sit yer butt down - this is gonna take a while.

Chris Hedges on C-SPAN

At the heart of any protest (at least here in the US) is the simple desire to get this country to live up to its own ideals.

My Kinda Republican

2012-01-02T09:04:00.001-05:00

It's certainly a rarity in politics now, and maybe it always was a rare thing, but once in a while somebody steps up and shows us a little something about honor and leadership and soul.

Via Wikipedia, the story of Fred Tuttle:

In 1998 Tuttle was persuaded to run in the Republican US Senate primary. His opponent was Jack McMullen, a multi-millionaire who had lived in Massachusetts for most of his life. McMullen faced opposition from some Vermont Republicans who felt that he was a carpetbagger who apparently moved to Vermont for the sole purpose of establishing residency for a Senate run. The Vermont primary structure allows Democrats and Independents to vote in the Republican primary, and many people foresaw the possibility that Tuttle would beat McMullen by drawing votes across party lines. In addition, some may have hoped that a Tuttle campaign would help to publicize the film Man with a Plan.

Fuck John Galt - Where is Fred Tuttle?

Scorecard

2012-01-01T10:40:00.000-05:00

Mother Jones has lots of pretty pictures of the ugly truth.

Here's one of my faves. 5000 Americans were asked about Wealth Distribution.

And - surprise, surprise - there's a fairly simple reason your Congress Critter hangs out in the hot tub with Mr Monopoly, but sends you form letters.

Here We Go Again

2012-01-01T10:24:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year.

Now get yer butts back to work - we got shit to do.

A Revoltin' Development

2011-12-31T07:39:00.000-05:00

South Carolina Tea Partiers are gearing up to put on quite a show for us next month.

"The Tea Party" isn't monolithic. Like most political entities, it's an amalgam - but unlike a "real political party" where the point of the exercise is to cobble together a coalition of interests that's as wide and as deep as possible, Tea Partiers are all about purity. And I think that means they'll have to keep splitting into smaller and smaller factions as they try to rid themselves of "the non-believers". Listening to their language, I hear the telltale signs of Fundamentalism taken to the Logical Extreme.
1) Compromise is not an option.
2) Compromisers must be expelled.

So what happens when Fundamentalists start feelin' their oats?
(hat tip = The Firebrand)

Organizers of a tea party convention scheduled to convene next month in Myrtle Beach are fending off accusations that they called for “armed guards” with concealed weapons permits to staff the event. A senior leader of one tea party group in the Palmetto State raised concern about heat-packing patriots amid a flurry of email backlash after supporters of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann announced their intention to hold a straw poll at the event to promote their candidate.
Read more: The Daily Caller

And be sure to drill down into the comments to get a good taste of what's in store for us.

If it was any less tragic, it wouldn't be funny.

Thank You, Firebrand

2011-12-30T11:16:00.001-05:00

Wow. I'm just so impressed with my own bad self right now, I cain't hardly stand it. Thanks, guys.

Firebrand

Bless Their Pea-Pickin' Little Hearts

2011-12-30T09:45:00.001-05:00

From The Richmond Times-Dispatch today:

Anyone who wants to vote must sign a form at the polling place pledging to support the eventual Republican nominee for president. Anyone who refuses to sign the pledge will be barred from voting.

During a brief meeting Wednesday at the state Capitol, the State Board of Elections voted 3-0 to approve three forms developed by the election board’s staff to implement the loyalty pledge requested by the state GOP.

(hat tip = Wonkette)

It's nuts. Obviously, the oath is unenforceable unless they can tie an individual's Primary Vote to the vote he casts in the General Election. It's just a guess, but I'm thinkin' there's a coupla dozen laws in place at various levels of government that are supposed to ensure the Secret Ballot. Are they telling us they intend to break the law trying to impose a little party discipline? (insert sardonic Political Crook reference here)

For me, the real problem is the simple fact that anybody in a leadership position would think it's legitimate even to propose such a thing. Somebody please tell me how this is in keeping with any of the traditions of democracy, in any way, at any time.

I don't vote for Repubs any more because they insist on doing stupid shitty things that make it impossible for me to vote for them.

Give It A Rest Already

2011-12-29T13:11:00.000-05:00

Every election cycle - actually, we're well into the Era of the Perpetual Campaign, but that's a different rant - anyway, every election cycle for at least a good 35 years, we hear the same crap: "We need the government to run like a business". This is the dumbest fuckin' nonsense imaginable.

Think about any business you've ever owned or worked for. Can you tell me, with even the tiniest kernel of honesty, that that business was operated as a democracy? Think of the lightest, fluffiest management you've ever worked under; did they put their policies up for a vote? Good management always talks about "empowering our people" and "soliciting input" on some of the more important issues, but let's be real clear; what's going on is that you're being invited to agree with decisions that have already been made, and/or decisions that will be implemented when the "labor climate is a little more receptive"; no matter what they are, and no matter how they affect you, these decisions are not yours to make. Your participation in these decisions is always post facto.

Looking for proof? You find a hundred people who've worked for any private company maybe 3-5 years, and I'll do the same. We'll ask them all this question: "Have you ever been in a meeting (or in an argument with your boss) debating company policy, where the final pronouncement on the subject has been, 'Yeah well, this is no democracy'?" I'll pay you for every "No" answer, and you pay me for every time somebody says, "Shit, that's all we ever fucking hear any more."

A business is Top-Down and Authoritarian. It's run by Powerful Elites, chosen by other Powerful Elites, who form a Central Planning Committee that sets policy and issues commands in order to make the company do whatever Ownership wants it to do.

Are you sure that's what you want your government to look like?

E-Con

2011-12-29T09:28:00.000-05:00

Here's another good one from Firebrand:

The Atlantic Cities ran an interesting piece today about corporate relocation battles. The short of it is that states compete with one another to bring in specific corporations by giving away huge sums of public money. Right now, Ohio and Illinois are fighting over the Sears corporate headquarters, with both states offering around $400 million of public money to the corporation. Incentives like these amount to around $50 billion a year in state and local spending.

Companies have been playing this Labor Arbitrage game for a long time, with the emphasis on paying very low wages overseas, and counting on relatively cheap fuel and zero tariffs to make shipping easy. Maybe they're starting to see that they're causing themselves to have some real problems because of it. Or maybe they just see that it's time to apply the Principles of Arbitrage here at home in a bigger way.

Unions are on the ropes, so one angle is to propose opening a plant in the Rust Belt (eg), but make sure everybody knows the company simply can't afford to pay union wages, so "If you want a job, you'll have to work for shit - that's the only way - after all, we've got lots of people in Cambodia doing this work right now for 16 cents an hour; you wanna bitch about us doing you a favor at 8-and-a-quarter?"

I think we can look forward to a lot of really shitty things happening as States and Counties and Cities continue to hack away at every government expense trying to find ways to buy those jobs.

Welcome to Pottersville.

A New One

2011-12-29T08:33:00.001-05:00

First, I'm lovin' me some serious Wonkette. They keep coming up with great posts that have very sharp edges.

And B, I found The Firebrand on their blog roll.

Conservatives are pretty shifty in arguments. One moment they appear to be concerned about the poor and how taxes will ultimately hurt them and kill their jobs. The other moment they seem to think the poor don’t deserve anything anyways. Most folks — no matter their political leanings — do not consciously think about the philosophical frameworks that the justifications for their opinions tend to fall in. Although rigid frameworks are probably a bit reductive, they can be useful tools to understand what exactly people are saying. The following three conservative philosophical frameworks can account for almost all of the conservative rhetoric and arguments out there these days. I offer them here to hopefully help those who want to understand and better analyze conservative justifications.

The piece is a good breakdown of three basic formational ideas of what passes for "conservative" thinking these days, and it gives me some good new vocabulary to work with.

A Turnaround

2011-12-28T11:37:00.001-05:00

A facebook friend wrote on his wall: "What if all you had today was what you thanked God for yesterday?"

Seems like bible thumpers believe there can be no argument with this kinda crap; that the authority of their faith says it all; that the sheer profundity of their utterance leaves no possibly for an alternative view.

Poor salesmen take this as 'The Stopper' - an insurmountable objection. Good salesmen go for the turnaround.

What if today, we didn't have all the shitty things that zealots have forced on us in the name of their gods for the last 800 generations?

Just askin'.

Today's Pix

2011-12-28T11:21:00.000-05:00

Today's Random Thought

2011-12-27T14:21:00.000-05:00

We don't free ourselves by changing the world. We free the world by changing ourselves.

Dear Gov Walker

2011-12-26T11:22:00.000-05:00

Nice ad, Scott. But y'know what? If you want people to stop hatin' on ya, then you'll just have to figure out how to do fewer hateful things your own self. And BTW - what you're doing in this ad is called whining - which is exactly what you spent a good long time and lots of tax dollars railing against. But what really gripes me is that you decided to send your wife and kids out to do your fighting for you.Here's a look at the reactions from YouTube:

Quote

2011-12-21T10:40:00.000-05:00

Knowledge is power.
Power corrupts.
Learn and grow evil.

Be Advised

2011-12-19T13:56:00.000-05:00

Lots to do for the holidays and such, so I'll have to be away from the blog thing for a few days.

Watch for the new Christmas letter soon.

Have fun and I'll be back as soon as I can get my shit together.

A Short Battle

2011-12-19T13:29:00.000-05:00

The War on Christmas is sometimes just a little hard to follow. What if some Israeli settlers attacked a busload of Palestinian Christians (eg)?

Do ya think that's gonna find its way onto DumFux News? Yer right - prob'ly not.Ma'an News Agency

We Are So fucked

2011-12-18T19:57:00.000-05:00

The logical companion for Perpetual War is the Perpetual Election Campaign.

Simple arithmetic - and thank God for that cuz numbers ain't my thing: If we get a huge turnout for 2012; something that approaches the 63% level of 2006, it still means the "majority" is actually comprised of just over 31.5% of the people who're eligible to vote. In most years, that number is more like 23%.

Guess what? A poll from USA Today/Gallup asking about the 2012 elections shows 70% "can't wait for it to be over". Worse yet, that number goes to 75% if you're asking people in a dozen states that figure to be the battleground next year.

There's no such thing as "political coincidence". If something happens, it's because somebody wanted something to happen. That's not to say the Rule of Unintended Consequences has been repealed - it's only to say that nothing in politics happens all by itself. Cause and Effect is alive and well.

I'll say further that no matter what the prevailing sentiment is, somebody's gonna stand in front of it and tell us he's been leading that charge all along, or he'll point to it as an example of what we need him to fix for us.

After a good 25 years of Slimecasting, and Both Sides Do It, and They're All The Same, we have an electorate with no fucking clue what's going on and no fucking way to figure out what's going on, and that gives the smart politcos the opportunity to embrace the suck and turn Voter Alienation to their advantage.

First, you can make it harder for a lot of people to vote by passing Voter ID laws; by cutting back on Early Voting and Absentee Voting; by narrowing the window for voter registration; etc - and by making the process itself even more repellent, the people you're keeping out are less willing to fight to get back in. Then you only have to concentrate on moving a couple of percent of the "undecideds".

We didn't just turn a blind corner and find ourselves in the shit - we're here because this is where somebody wants us to be.