Hey, Willard

...about that Book Of Mormon thing -



So, why have none of the Press Poodles asked Willard the question?  Why hasn't Willard had to do "the speech" thing - ala JFK and Obama - where he explains it all in nice neat language that settles it for everybody?  How come?

Professional Left Podcast Episode 149

(My rather poor attempt at decoding the html at Driftglass's blog, as I try to embed the podcast)

The Undecideds

Best thing I've seen on the subject in a long while.

Gettin' It Done - 22

Lotsa hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over this one, but here's what I don't get when I hear "conservatives" bitchin' about it:  isn't this what you always refer to as "Creative Destruction"?  If we decide to move from one way of doing something to another way of doing it, we generally welcome that as progress.  You guys have been saying exactly that for 35 years.

22. Created Conditions to Begin Closing Dirtiest Power Plants: New EPA restrictions on mercury and toxic pollution, issued in December 2011, likely to lead to the closing of between sixty-eight and 231 of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants. Estimated cost to utilities: at least $11 billion by 2016. Estimated health benefits: $59 billion to $140 billion. Will also significantly reduce carbon emissions and, with other regulations, comprises what’s been called Obama’s “stealth climate policy.”

It just makes good sense to acknowledge that an economy that's all Dig It Up, Burn It Up, Chop It Down, Break It Down is not something that can go on forever.  So y'know what?  Call it whatever you wanna call it - re-tooling for an economy that's pointed more towards sustainability is one of the best job-creating policies there is.

Standing In Line

Priority Queueing is anti-democracy.  I'm not gonna squawk about express check-in at a hotel or picking up the rental car or whatever a company wants to do with - or for - people who spend more money than I do.  But next time you fly somewhere, be sure to look for the TSA express line at the airport security thingie, and check out TSA's program. Pay to play was never more exciting.

TSA Pre✓™ allows select frequent flyers of participating airlines and members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Trusted Traveler programs to receive expedited screening benefits during domestic travel. Eligible participants use dedicated screening lanes for screening benefits which include leaving on shoes, light outerwear and belts, as well as leaving laptops and 3-1-1 compliant liquids in carry-on bags.

Maybe it's a good sign - if TSA is saying they'd like to move towards not treating everybody like a criminal, demanding we all prove our innocence, then OK.  I still get a bad feeling though.  TSA's been in business for almost 10 years now, and while they've made certain claims in the past about thwarting terrorist attempts, we don't hear much of anything about them any more - and you know damned well they'd be all over the news jumping up and down celebrating if they could document anything even close to breaking up the next 9/11.  But instead, we hear mostly about the occasional oops when the FAA tests the system and an agent wearing an Allahu Akbar t-shirt manages to get a chain saw and a bazooka and 5 kegs of black powder past the Toll Booth School washouts at a security checkpoint.  So it'd be nice if TSA is getting closer to the point where they'll just go away, but knowing that no government agency ever just goes away, I guess we can look forward to a long relationship with airport security because somebody is busily figuring our how to make the whole thing very very profitable.

Only slightly tangential, give this one a listen (from 99% Invisible):

The Political Stage

Episode 3 from Andrea Seabrook and Decode DC:

Via Facebook

I'm really trying to be a nicer guy - so I didn't post this on my facebook page in response to a "friend" who posted something pretty horrendous.

To wit:

What I didn't say on Facebook:

Yeah - OK - Biden totally laughed because people (people he might've actually known) died in the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi.  And if you believe that, then you're a fucking idiot.

Like I said, I'm trying to be a nicer guy about this kinda shit.

Pay Attention

Conservatives" are changing their tactics.  They seem to know that they're gonna get called out for their bald-faced racism whenever they put up some anecdotal crap about "welfare cheats" or "food stamp fraud" that (at least) invite the inference that the bad guys are always "black people".  So they're now going out of their way to include the statement that the dirty rotten perpetrators of these horrible scams are "white".

Fast forward to the part where I say, "So the fuck what?"  You're still just makin' shit up.  You're still trying to pull some very heavy-duty wool over everybody's eyes.  You're still a bunch of low-life, snap-collar, dock-sider, frat-boy legacy pukes who want nothing more than to cement your entitled little asses into positions of privilege and power without ever having to work for anything more than a merit badge that your mommy and daddy bought online to make sure you could put "Eagle Scout" on your application to an exclusive private college - and to make sure you grew up with a feeling that you earned every little thing that made it possible for you to "succeed" - like being born white, and middle class, and going to school in the suburbs, and and and - you pretentious milk-sop fuck.

But, of course, the real problem - the thing that's holding you back from really achieving the spectacular heights of your destiny as a player at the upper reaches of the Ruling Class - "those people"; they must be to blame.

Here's a re-animation of the dead rotting corpse of Ronald Reagan - or more accurately, his efforts to divide us along the fault lines of Status - ie: Welfare Queens etc: (snopes.com)

And remember 2 things:

1. They don't call it Class Warfare until we start to fight back.
2. Once they call it what it is, we've already won.

What Happened

The wisdom of Bob Mondelo:

We have spent the last decade training the public to watch contests on television and then vote.

Gettin' It Done - 23

23. Passed Credit Card Reforms: Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (2009), which prohibits credit card companies from raising rates without advance notification, mandates a grace period on interest rate increases, and strictly limits overdraft and other fees.

It seems like such a good thing - transparency and a reinforcement of requirements to treat people fairly; to codify the plain truth that honesty is pretty important when we're doing business with each other.

Of course, this was passed in May of 2009, when certain politicians were still thinking they needed to get something done to fix some of the problems that nearly dragged us over the cliff in 2008, and to put aside their petty ambitions and empty pursuit of power for the sake of power.

So the Credit CARD Act* passed with a level of bi-partisan support that scared the shit outa the Repubs.  They had to figure that they were helping Obama create a legacy that would put him on Rushmore if they weren't careful.  So they decided to stall.  And I think it's really just that simple.  If they keep stimulus bottled up, then they keep consumer demand bottled up too.  And the longer you can hold it off, the bigger the jump will be when you finally uncork it.  The economy will not stay bad for ever.  If Obama is gone and their guy's in the Oval Office when things really start cookin' again, they'll stand in front of a giant banner every month when the jobs report comes out proclaiming that everything good that happens from now on is because of they helped America put the steel back in our spines blah blah blah.

*the warping, twisting and torturing of the language in order to come up with memorable  titles for these laws illustrates part of the problem - I guess I understand that we can expect the American public to shade towards being Issue-Stoopid, but if we took the time and effort necessary to create the mnemonics, and put it into...fuck it, never mind.  "Issue-Stoopid" kinda says it all.