Action

Two basic choices for any politician who wants to survive beyond the next 14 months - get something done or get the fuck outa the way.

I've also wondered some about the criticism that this thing can't possibly get anywhere because it "lacks a clear message". This of course from the people who helped get us into this mess to begin with. But never mind. What Occupy Wall Street is showing us is that it doesn't really matter where you start - but ya gotta start. Act faithfully and faith will come.



From We Are The 99%:

Deep Down

I think it's a good idea to remind myself once in a while that politicians are always in search of a unifying theme to shape the political narrative, and one of the most powerful is Self-Loathing.

How many of the TeaBaggers (eg) are people who absolutely deify "The Greatest Generation"?  How many of them were too young - or not physically present on the planet - to have had much to do with either the Great Depression or WW2 (the events they keep telling us made that generation The Greatest)?  How many of them look back at their own lives and "hold their manhoods cheap" because they didn't have the chance to test their mettle in the forges of hell?

How many Boomers are thinking they copped out on their opportunity to mount a protest and missed their chances to get "hassled by the pigs" or shot at by teenagers in Nat'l Guard uniforms?  How many are thinking they should have stayed true to what they used to believe in because a lot of what they thought was wrong back then is coming back on them now?  Or we can take that one in the other direction, and ask how many Boomers were happy to duck military service in the 60s and 70s, but now feel a little guilty about it?

And how many of us feel the need to make up for our past failings by finding ways to demonstrate how worthy we are now?  Seems pretty natural - a shot at redemption is a powerful thing.

Nobody likes the feeling that their main problem is themselves.  Smart politicians are always looking for ways for us to take the anger we all occasionally feel towards ourselves, and redirect it at a conveniently unpopular target.  Starting to sound familiar?

Both Sides Do It

Except when they don't.

I dunno exactly what the score is, but when I look at things in general, I see one side making some large sized efforts to restrict people's rights.

Abortion
Collective Bargaining
Marriage Equality
Religion in Government
DADT
Voting

This is not my Republican Party.  These people are rabid and radical, and I wouldn't trust them to run a coin-operated laundry, much less a government.

From Balloon Juice:

...in my opinion, conservatives and media have succeeded beyond my worst nightmares in convincing people that the fundamental and constitutionally guaranteed right to vote is exactly the same as cashing a check, using an ATM, or purchasing a bus, train or airline ticket. I’m sure I missed one or two comparisons there, although I believe I’ve heard every one. Like everything else under the sun, the franchise is now akin to a commercial transaction.

War Sucks

You wanna do everything possible to avoid war because once the shit starts, you can't contain the costs.  War is just plain bad business.

Listen to Peter Van Buren on Fresh Air.

The first indication this was all chicken shit was the smell as we arrived at the plant with a group of Embassy friends on a field trip. The odor that greeted us when we walked into what should have been the chicken killing fields of Iraq was fresh paint. There was no evidence of chicken killing as we walked past a line of refrigerated coolers. When we opened one fridge door, expecting to see chickens chilling, we found instead old buckets of paint. Our guide quickly noted that the plant had purchased twenty- five chickens that morning specifically to kill for us. This was good news, a 100 percent jump in productivity from previous days, when the plant killed no chickens at all.

Holy Fuck, Batman

Elections are decided by an average of 12 votes per precinct. Don't believe for a minute that there aren't people out there who think they're doing their patriotic duty by stealing an election or two.

The current narrative in the press is aimed at setting us up to accept "a stunning upset win" by a GOP that is nothing more than about 20% of the electorate.

Save A Pretzel For The Gas Jets

I guess the real tragedy is that he makes almost as much sense when you hear exactly what he's actually saying.

(hat tip: Crooks and Liars)

Listeria

The story about the Listeria outbreak is several days old now, and I have yet to see or hear hardly anything at all on the aspects of food safety inspection - except on some of the blogs I read.

AGAIN - where the fuck is the reporting?  There was one piece a day or two ago that briefly mentioned the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, and said food handling/processing facilities were supposed to be inspected at least once every three years, but apparently, nobody has brains enough to go to the FDA and ask about the status of inspections at Jensen Farms!?!

This one, from The Guardian, is typical.

From the Business Section, NYT.

Every article at least hints at the industry policing itself.  Apparently, we're deeper into an era of privatization and free market self-regulation than I thought.  In the NYT piece, the food safety manager at CostCo is calling for better Quality Control measures from the growers and handlers, but he says nothing about an actual food safety inspections regime on the part of any level of government.  I'm not saying every food item should be tested, but there are sampling techniques that work astoundingly well in manufacturing (eg) that could be applied to cantaloupe or potatoes or practically anything else.

So I'm asking American Business to tell me what the calculation looks like: how many people have to die before it becomes cost-effective for you to stop killing your customers?

FInally, here are a couple of dots that can be connected to this story:
1) All those annoying emails about how grand it was once, back in those golden days when we could do as we pleased and we didn't have to worry our little heads about anything.
2) Tort Reform; particularly Product Liability.

Do you really think this shit just happens at random?

This Latest GOP Debate

Rick Perry took most of the pundit flak because he stumbled again and bungled his sharp-angle rebuttal against Romney's flip-flops (again).

Also, he's had to defend his position on granting in-state tuition for the kids of illegals against attacks from the Hard-Ass Retribution Wing of the GOP, saying something like "if you feel the need to punish kids for something they had no part in, then you have no heart" - and he's gettin' slammed for that defense.  One schmuck on DumFux News said Repubs don't want to hear that because it sounds like something "some liberal would say".  So - yeah.

First, what Perry said sounds a lot like recycled Compassionate Conservatism to me.  Maybe that's what they're worried about.  Hard to say of course.  As hard as the Repubs have been working to wipe away all traces of Junior Bush from the national memory, I imagine they hate it when the guy they've been subtly marketing as the Cowboy Guvner From Texas Who Actually Knows Some Stuff is the one who keeps reminding everybody of the boob they're trying to get everybody to forget.  Circularity's a bitch I guess.

But second, it kinda sounds like these pundits are saying, "Everybody knows we're assholes - our brand is all about Asshole now.  Being assholes got us a majority in The House.  We have to be ever more asshole-ish or we'll lose our credibility, and our momentum, and nobody'll be afraid of us anymore, and then it won't be any fun at all."

That's pretty fucked up, right there.

My Dear Mr Santorum

This guy is just completely stuck in 1992.  He carps about 'Social Engineering' in the US Military when it comes to DADT, and ignores all the other social engineering that's been implemented with some real success stories coming out it all.

Black people serving side-by-side with white people.  That was a bit of social engineering.  They said  we couldn't do it because unit cohesion would be disrupted.  Guess what - it disrupted unit cohesion.  Guess what else.  The unit got over it; and in fact, the unit got better because we started drawing form a wider and deeper pool of prospective talent.
(ok - so I lifted most of that from an episode of The West Wing - it's exactly the point and it bears repeating)

Women - see preceding paragraph.

LGBT - see preceding paragraph, and understand that there's been an LGBT presence in the US Military FOREVER.

Santorum loves to warn us about the dangers of sexuality - especially HOMO SEX - In fact, it seems like every time anything pops up regarding LGBT, the guy goes straight to the Oh-My-God-There's-Gonna-Be-Just-Way-Too-Much-Fucking-Going-On-I-Can't-Stand-It-But-I-Can't-Stop-Thinking-About-It card.  Why should I not think he's just a little too obsessed with it?  Why should I not wonder if he's battling his own demons?  OK, too easy.  If he's a latent case, I gotta figure it'll show up soon enough.

What really gets me tho', is that none of the Press Poodles has picked up on the claim about LGBT's wanting us to "grant them special rights".  That's been bullshit going back 20 years as the Repubs have been trying to pass all those fucked up amendments aimed at denying equal rights to LGBTs.  Where the fuck is one decent journalist who'll ask Santorum to delineate exactly what 'special rights' LGBT's are demanding?

Ya Still Gotta Sell It

One of the problems with how "the left" has traditionally approached issues is their inability to sell the idea in a way that appeals to the people who have to be sold on the idea in order to support it.  The idea may be the best thing since perforated toilet paper, but if you can't sell it to the big squishy political middle, then it's not gonna happen.

Mike's First Law of Business:
No matter how good your company is; no matter how great your product or your service is - nothing good can happen for your company until somebody sells something.

Repubs and "conservatives" have been a lot better at coming up with catchy slogans and snappy jingles, and a sales patter that gets people standing in line for the crap they're selling.  Dems and "liberals" always seem to rely on lofty ideals and 30-point policy statements about why it's good for us to eat all the stuff that tastes bad.

I'm not saying change the message or abandon your principles; and I'm not saying water it down or sugar it up.  But you have to sell it better, and the way you do that is to make it appeal to the self interests of the prospective buyer.

If you have nothing but "do it 'cuz ya know ya oughta do it", then you're going to lose at the first sign of resistance because it's the easiest thing in the world to rationalize away anything you "oughta" do when it's inconvenient or it costs a little more than doing it some other way or not doing it at all.  And it's really easy for the opposition to paint you as a preachy know-it-all trying to tell people how to live.  And yes, I know the other side is trying to tell people how to live too, but if they're first to accuse you of that, then they win the point.

If you want action on Climate Change, then you sell it on the strength of doing business in a smarter, cheaper, more cost-effective way that does not require learning a whole new way of doing everything.  Revolutionary change may sound exciting and cool to you, but it scares the shit outa the people you're asking to make the changes - and who, BTW, have the power to squelch the idea before it even comes up in the next executive committee meeting.

One of the things Selling is about is getting the prospect to the point where he realizes that buying what you're selling is not just a good idea, it's actually what he had in mind all along.