Outa The Mouths Of Babes

So, "conservatives", DumFux News gets called out and then spanked by a dozen teenagers because it's just way obvious that Rupert World is a fantasy (aka: bald-faced lie), but you still hang in there believing practically everything that falls out of Bill O's ass - what does that say about you?  

We all find it difficult admitting we've been wrong, and/or that we've been bambozzled, but seriously, you can't just go on denying reality when a high school journalism class knows more about Press Corps Ethics than your #1 Cable News Channel.

The real danger in having your head that far up your ass is that even if you open your eyes, all you're gonna see is your own shit.

The Real Contagion

From Brother Charles at Esquire:

There is a very sad story in Cleveland concerning what happens when the TV lights dim, and when one 24-hour news-cycle crisis abates and another one erupts somewhere else.

You may recall that, back when Ebola was going to kill us all in our beds because President Barack Nkrumah-Kenyatta wanted all of western civilization to start spitting up its own entrails, a 29-year-old nurse named Amber Vinson contracted the disease and, before she was aware of that fact, flew to Cleveland, and then drove to Akron, for a wedding. She shopped for a dress at a place in Akron called Coming Attractions. Then, after the wedding, she flew back to Dallas, where she became symptomatic both of Ebola infection and of cable-news hysteria. The sad punchline is that, because of the publicity around Vinson's visit, and the subsequent mindless terror, Coming Attractions announced it was going out of business.

People stopped patronizing a store where their favorite Nightmare Du Jour went shopping - because they were afraid of getting the dread disease - never stopping to think that maybe they weren't in any real danger since the owners/employees of the store - the people who were there all day every day - weren't fucking sick.

But hey - we live in a time when it's important to be oblivious to having been issued your opinions by Corporate News, and that those opinions must never be examined in the light of actual evidence.

And so, unfortunately, once again, the clear-eyed pragmatic capitalist rubes fail to reach the obvious conclusion that being stoopid is bad for business.

Lying Media

The DumFux News affiliate in Baltimore ran a clip that made it sound like protesters were ending their chant with "kill a cop".

And of course, it was bullshit (Hanlon's Razor notwithstanding).  The station took the story down after they got a lot of push-back, and they even made with the usual "apology", saying it was accidental - which is also bullshit because you don't accidentally do a quick-cut edit unless you're trying to make the thing say something it doesn't actually say.  This does not happen by accident.  Somebody wanted that clip out there.  Somebody OK'd that clip for air, and for posting on the website.



But it's prob'ly not gonna matter to the rubes - they got their Scary-Black-People fix and that's all anybody cares about.

In case anybody wants to know:
We won't stop
We can't stop
'Til killer cops
Are in cell blocks

Fun With Numbers

So, let's try to remember one silly little thing when we hear all the frenzied screeching about ebola:  Exactly .0000003% of the entire population of USAmerica, Inc is currently infected with the ebola virus.

That's one guy out of 316,000,000 people - and that one guy's actually doin' pretty good right now.

The KrugMan Speaks

Paul Krugman takes down the bullshit from Jamie Dimon - that the reason you're not finding a decent job is your own damned fault - stoopid losers.

From his piece in NYT:

“Today, nearly 11 million Americans are unemployed. Yet, at the same time, 4 million jobs sit unfilled” — supposedly demonstrating “the gulf between the skills job seekers currently have and the skills employers need.”

Actually, in an ever-changing economy there are always some positions unfilled even while some workers are unemployed, and the current ratio of vacancies to unemployed workers is far below normal. Meanwhile, multiple careful studies have found no support for claims that inadequate worker skills explain high unemployment.

But the belief that America suffers from a severe “skills gap” is one of those things that everyone important knows must be true, because everyone they know says it’s true. It’s a prime example of a zombie idea — an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die.

Hat tip = Salon

Jamie Dimon lives in his little bubble with a variety of others who occupy similarly lofty stations in USAmerica Inc.  And there's a handful of other bubbles occupied by Big Power Wielders - mostly, those bubbles are filled with people holding C-Level positions in Politics and Military Branches and Law Enforcement etc.  Then, you can add in the bubbles from the rest of the planet, and feed it all a constant stream of talking points and rebuttal arguments from a cluster of Media Bubbles (DumFux News, NRO, AEI, WSJ, etc), which gives us the now-infamous Echo Chamber Effect, because, remember now, Press Poodles get their "news" from the newsmakers, and those newsmakers are all inside one of those bubbles - and before your very eyes the world is transformed into a 1950s Disney cartoon with no grounding in reality at all.

Can you say 'entropy'?


So the Zombie-Think Dr Krugman talks about is an important phenomenon to watch.  It's one thing for the rubes to buy in - hell, ya gotta get the rubes to go along with it, or it won't work - but when it looks like the guys who're supposed to be running the scam start believing their own bullshit, it's time to call in the dogs and piss on the fire cuz this hunt is over.

Because They're Rubes

Via Wonkette, this piece in WaPo:

RICHMOND — If you’re a law-abiding gun owner, former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli II would like to be your lawyer — for less than $10 a month.

Cuccinelli and three partners have launched Virginia Self Defense Law, a firm focused on defending Second Amendment rights. With bargain-basement pricing and a cheeky slogan — “Defending those who defend themselves” — the venture seeks to tap into a feeling among some gun owners that the right to bear arms is under attack.

And here's the nail-on-the-head part:

...because I am not a fucking asshole who can’t feel like a big man unless he is waving a metal penis around. But that is not the point! The point is, how is Cuccinelli convincing the rubes to give him money before they’ve even done their crimes? Easy. They’re rubes, like I just said.

Coining A New Term

To co-opt Mr Clemens - There are lies, damned lies, and TeaParty Rhetoric.



So, lemme see.  We can add Job Killing to Death Panels; Abortion Surtax; Healthcare Rationing; Government Takeover; blahblah blahblah blahblah.

The GOP is just straight-up lying.  And they can lie all they want because they know there's a constituency out here just waiting to lap up whatever falls outa their asses.  Which is why I've decided to start referring to the Tea Party in a way that more accurately reflects their actual function: Toilet Paper Republicans.

Seriously tho', what does it take to get some of these people deprogrammed?

The Benghazi Stoopid - oops corrected

Today's Vocab Word

(Courtesy Penn & Teller's Bullshit series)

Pareidolia (pron.: parr-i-doh-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant, a form of apophenia. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records when played in reverse.

Learn something.

Bullshit

I love Penn's explanation of their use of the language and the "terminology" on the show.

If you call them scamsters liars and frauds, they can sue your ass - so ya just call 'em assholes and bullshit artists instead, and that's OK.  America and Americans never fail to amaze me.



"Skits for money cannot replace loving memory.  How low do you have to be to exploit someone's true grief to sell some bullshit book?"

Yeesh

Just how stoopid do these guys think the rubes are?



Pretty fuckin' stoopid.

A Fairly Simple Concept

I've been wondering pretty hard about how to articulate the basic shoot-yourself-in-the-foot strategy the GOP is trying to make work when it comes to winning elections and being able to "govern"*.

It just doesn't make any sense to alienate up to 95% of any given (eg: black) demographic if you expect to win - unless of course if you have a solid handle on ways to keep a sizable portion of those demographics from voting in the first place.  And that's what all the Voter Suppression - I mean Election Integrity efforts were all about - fucking duh.  (How many times do we have to hear about it from Maddow and every commentator left of Fred Barnes before we get it?).

Anyway, the GOP's real problem is this:


(hat tip = Balloon Juice)

...and the real real problem is that yes, actually it is indeed possible to fool some of the people all of the time.  But we can hope that the "some of the people" demographic is finally starting to shrink a bit.

*is it really "governing" if you're elected by a self-selecting minority?  I think there's a different word for that.

One Of My Questions

People in Red States collect more from Washington than they pay in.  So how come the voters in those states are usually the ones who're always screamin' the loudest about what a shitty deal they're getting from The Gubmint?

(hat tip = Balloon Juice)