Hmmm

The population in the US grows at about 9 or 10 or 11% per year.  (The rate of growth is starting to slow a bit, but the Census Bureau predicts we'll be at about 392 million people by 2050)

Some questions:
Why is it hard to find out what the actual numbers are when I ask, "how much is the Federal Gov't expanding? "

What's an appropriate rate for a government to expand relative to the expansion of population?

If government is supposed to operate more like a business, and our Debt-to-Revenue (using GDP) ratio is right around 1:1, and there are many many very large and profitable companies running much higher ratios, then what's the big fuckin' problem?

Yo, Rand Paul

Go fuck yourself.



Why do we keep handing real power to people who are all about abandoning the two mainstays of what makes the US such a great place?

1) Freedom of expression and association.
2) Presumption of innocence.

I don't know if there's anything else - what Hannity said in response eg - but I'd be very interested to find out what the rubes think about it.

And BTW, Democrats, ya gotta be able to make some hay outa this.

The Point

Art is supposed to be about something.



And it can be about supporting the artist (which should follow naturally if the concept and the execution are good to begin with).

Classic Denis Leary

If Palin Isn't Running

If she's really not running, then she's not running in a very 'yes she's running' kinda way.



I dearly loved hearing her say she's just out on a little vacation romp with the kids, and she's not trying to disrupt anybody's day or anything - while traveling in a quarter-million-dollar bus with 20 or 30 thousand dollars worth of Ad Graphics splashed all over it.

What if we're seeing a new kind of candidacy though?  Given the power of Roger Ailes to run DumFux News as the GOP's PR Department, they could be thinking Palin doesn't have to make any concessions at all to any media they think might be "hostile" to her.

A couple of things: first, there's already a caravan following her around like a bunch of Konrad Lorenz's geese (hat tip).

And two, if she avoids all media outlets except Fox and a few others that get Uncle Roger's seal of approval, then if anybody wants to know anything about Sarah Palin, they'll have to go thru DumFux News to get it.

Obviously, I dunno. What we all have to have learned by now, though, is that we need to be pretty damned careful not to mis-underestimate another Empty-Vessel Candidate neatly packaged and sold by the GOP.

As If Truth Even Existed

There is only Info-tainment in service of a political agenda.  Wherever you think you wanna be on the standard spectrum, you can find a thousand "news" outlets to help you confirm your bias.  There are still some places you can go to get fairly old-school, evenhanded reporting - Christian Science Monitor, McClatchey, AP (kinda), et al - but they're mostly pretty boring.  And there's the problem as I see it.  We've come to see straight up news as boring.  We want spice; a little salsa.  And a really smart guy like Roger Ailes knows exactly how to give it to us.

By Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone

To watch even a day of Fox News – the anger, the bombast, the virulent paranoid streak, the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that’s held to the same standard of evidence as a late- October attack ad – is to see a refraction of its founder, one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican Party. As a political consultant, Ailes repackaged Richard Nixon for television in 1968, papered over Ronald Reagan’s budding Alzheimer’s in 1984, shamelessly stoked racial fears to elect George H.W. Bush in 1988, and waged a secret campaign on behalf of Big Tobacco to derail health care reform in 1993. "He was the premier guy in the business," says former Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins. "He was our Michelangelo."

Lots of great take-aways in this thing, but I think my favorite is the term "liberal bigots".  It has a great ring to it, and captures the perfect combination of conservative self-loathing, white-bread aggrievement, and guilty projection.

Another one:

Dwell on this for a moment: A “news” network controlled by a GOP operative who had spent decades shaping just such political narratives – including those that helped elect the candidate’s father – declared George W. Bush the victor based on the analysis of a man who had proclaimed himself loyal to Bush over the facts. “Of everything that happened on election night, this was the most important in impact,” Rep. Henry Waxman said at the time. “It immeasurably helped George Bush maintain the idea in people’s minds that he was the man who won the election.”

And the Big One: DumFux News has become the model, so it probably just gets weirder for a good long while.

Ya Can't Make This Shit Up

From Right Wing Watch.



Do these guys just not understand there's no difference (for most of us) between this shit and their abject horror at the prospect of somebody imposing Sharia Law? I think the answer is YES, they do understand it. They're just using that little charade to set up another false choice. The argument is simple: "Look, America - we'd better install a good Christianist Legal System before those dirty Mooslums get a chance to subjugate us all to the New Caliphate blah blah blah."

For Memorial Day

Here's another one that bears repeating, particularly on this day.

George Carlin - Super Genius

On Darwin

In light of the bullshit that is the Conservative Movement/GOP these days, here's a bit of refreshment from The RSA (thersa.org):

The term Darwinism has, in recent times, come to suggest that savage, unbridled competition is the ruling principle of life in nature and must therefore rule in human society, too. Darwin’s views have, as neurobiology professor Steven Rose remarks, been seen as “justifying imperialism, racism, capitalism and patriarchy”. Today, he adds, “journalists refer to boardroom struggles and takeover battles for companies as Darwinian”. 

All this is actually the opposite of what Darwin wrote when he discussed human and animal societies in The Descent of Man. There, he traced the origins of sociability in animals and pointed out how many kinds of creature show a direct concern for one another.

It's kinda interesting that the GOP's Dead Jesus Wing takes every opportunity to trash Darwin, while all the swells in the Lizard King Wing practically cum in their pants if anybody even hints at the Dog-Eat-Dog Speech in Atlas Shrugged.

Anyway, here's where the rush to the logical extreme leads:  If your political affiliation requires a reflexive rejection of everything "socialistic", then that reflex is going to be triggered by a widening range of "socialistic ideas" - there're lots of Opinion Manipulators who are happy to point at whatever they need us to oppose and call it 'socialistic" - so this ever-widening definition will come to include anything that has to do with collaboration or cooperation or anything communally held - until eventually you find that you stand against all 4 principle objectives spelled out in the first sentence of the US Constitution - Justice, Domestic Tranquility, Common Defense and General Welfare.  These are concepts that can't be dictated.  They require mutual consent.

And here's the kicker:  Guess what else requires cooperation and collaboration and things that are mutually held?  Corporations.  By current political definition, a corporation is a socialistic construct.

It's just too sweet.  Alan Sherman's elegant imagery of "flying in tighter and tighter circles until it disappears up its own ass" comes pleasantly to mind.