What Reagan Said

USA USA USA

A return to the bad old days of Protectionism, and of Unions that were too big and too powerful isn't a good idea either.  So don't try to play that binary bullshit on me.  What I'm talking about is making an effort to get some sanity and balance back into the system.

Legislative / Judicial / Executive

Management / Labor / Government

Company / Customer / Vendor

Ya gotta have balance.  If you let any part(s) of any system overwhelm the other(s), then the system becomes unstable.

The guiding principle is that when anything becomes too big and too powerful, it has to be beaten down and brought back into balance.  I'm pretty sure that's what American Exceptionalism is supposed to be.  All of history before the USA was about playing and replaying all that imperial crap; "we're God's chosen people"  Well shit, how many empires were "chosen by God" before us?  How many of them are still around?  Is God just really lousy at choosing empires?

I'm pretty sure the people who started this country had the same ideas that occur to me, and they tried to set up a system aimed at resisting the temptations of power; to make it as hard as possible for any one entity to dominate the others; to ensure that we'd at least have the means to prevent the ruinous drift back into monarchy and empire if only we could muster the will.

Over time, of course, people forget.  We get sold on a different idea of how it's supposed to be.  Politicians and Marketeers blur the lines and turn meanings upside down.  We end up believing it's our patriotic duty to support policies that do damage to our founding principles.

And now we have giant multi-national Mega-Corporations taking the place of the old lines-on-a-map Nation States.  (This is nothing new, btw)  People who sit at the top of these Mega-Corps are not called Barons or Captains or Kings for the hell of it, or because it makes them seem quaint or whimsical.  We call them Barons and Captains and Kings because that's how their organizations function, and that's what they are.

300 years ago, Nation States were family-owned private enterprise military organizations that subcontracted out for food, clothing, shelter and trade goods in exchange for protection.  Whenever one of those contractors pushed a little too far into somebody else's territory, the Crown would try to hold up its end of the bargain by invading or otherwise making war on somebody to protect the interests of the merchants, which were in turn, the interests of the Crown.  Government and Business both gradually morphed away from the Inherited Entitlement System towards a more egalitarian system, but there's always a kind of gravitational pull; always something inside us that wants us to return to what our faulty and selective memories perceive as a better time; fueled by the relentless energy of profit-at-any-cost (an oxymoron if ever there was one).  We have to resist that backslide, and remember always that good people continue to fight and bleed and die - sometimes for the noble cause, but mostly for the good of the multi-national companies, and to further the interests of an Entitled Aristocracy that is again coming to believe it owns the government - and owns it by God-given right.

If you want the power, you have to take the power.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

I try never to be unaware of boobies, but I truly appreciate the concept of a whole month dedicated to them; when it's more or less OK to tell women how much you love those beautiful secondary gender characteristics.

Yo, Thumpers

Art Of The Deal

Dad: I want you to marry a girl I've chosen for you.
Son: No way.
Dad: She's Bill Gates' daughter.
Son: Well, in that case, sure.

-- Dad goes to Bill Gates --
Dad: I want your daughter to marry my son.
Gates: Nope.
Dad: But my son is CEO of World Bank.
Gates: That's different - OK.

-- Dad goes to the Chairman of World Bank --
Dad: I want you to appoint my son CEO.
Pres: No way.
Dad: He's about to become Bill Gate's son-in-law.
Pres: By all means then.

And that's how shit gets done.

Corporate Media

Things are changing pretty fast.  We're becoming more aware that some things we've been told over and over for the last 20 years are total bullshit.  Like the notion that we have a free press.  The press is not free - it's owned and operated by big corporate interests, just like practically everything else in this country.  Another one is the lie about "the liberal press".  Take a quick look at the utter contradiction at work here.  Corporations are anything but liberal (most of them anyway), so I'll bet you dollars to dog shit that the people who run those corporations aren't voting for a lot of "Lefties"; and they're going to use the very powerful tools at their disposal to shape a narrative that makes the political climate favorable to themselves and their Corporate Clients (ie: Cronies)

From Wonkette, via Balloon Juice:

Mainstream

Has anyone ever heard either Roger Ailes or Rush Limbaugh say that their organizations present a general viewpoint that ISN'T widely-held?  Don't they at least intimate that their political bent is in agreement with a big majority of the American people?

How do these bozos get away with bitchin' about "the mainstream media" when they ARE the mainstream media?

We Are So Fucked

Campaign Finance has to change if we're ever going to get anything that remotely resembles what American Democracy is supposed to be.

From The Atlantic:

"This may be the first presidential election where we really have no idea who's funding the campaigns until it's too late," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "By January 31, the first five primaries will be done, the nomination process could be all but over, and we'll just be finding out where most of the money came from."

Payback's A Bitch

Don't Let The Bastards Get Ya Down