Today's Quote

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” --Upton Sinclair

That popped up in a piece at Bill Moyers, by Mike Lofgren:

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude. [2]

Sorry about dropping that one on you for the weekend, but you know - somebody's gotta look at this shit and it can't just be me and coupla other dweebs who never get anything else done.

Then there's this tasty little morsel:  The number of terrorist organizations we're fighting is a secret.  We also don't get to know who they are, and we don't get to know where they are - but the kicker?  We certainly do get to know that we get to pay for it, but we don't get to know how much it's costing.  Is that the perfect gig or what?

We are so fucked.

Watch this:

Design

This is far more than simple mental masturbation.

Expenditures devoted to "science for the sake of science" - or to just making shit that's interesting and kinda cool - is almost never wasted.

You have to put it out there, and then wait for the engineers to find a workable and/or useful application.

In the meantime, there's real value in the wonderment of it all.

Wait - What?

If this guy's sign truly reflects his circumstance, shouldn't this be a much bigger story?

Real World Pulchritude

Yeah, OK - it's a little lame in that "holy-fuck-man-why-do-white-people-gotta-try-this-shit" kinda way, but there's a fair-sized chunk o' truth here that needs to get out.



hat tip = HuffPo

And So It Begins(?)

The night of the long knives.

Mondo Cané.

Helter Skelter.

Maybe the revolution will be televised after all.

A crime of passion - one that defies the poor ability of your humble correspondent to describe it - was committed against the defenseless and unsuspecting rich white people living in the wealthiest neighborhood in all of USAmerica Inc.

Residents of Atherton CA discovered several defilements of their preciously private property - spray-painted with the obviously ominous phrase, "Fuck the 1%".

The vandalism took place between 6 and 9:30 p.m., along several blocks of Greenoaks Drive and the 100 blocks of Hawthorne, Rosewood and Heather drives, Wade said.

Not so funnily, there was also one reported instance of "Kill People" on the fence in front of one house.  Not cool, guys.  I don't care how fun it is for you to imagine giving a buncha tight-assed over-privileged dipwads nightmares about The Manson Family, it's not right to threaten anybody like that.

He said police have sought private security camera footage from residents, but so far have come up empty. Some residents don't have surveillance cameras and others didn't have them focused on the areas where vandals struck or didn't have them turned on, Wade said.

It is fun tho' - a whole lotta fun - thinking about all the prospecting calls the good folk in Atherton are about to get from the noble entrepreneurs in the Home Security bidness.  Like orcas on a baby whale.

But anyway-

Without leads or suspects, Atherton Town Manager George Rodericks cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

"We don't know if it was an organized group or a couple of teenagers," he said.

So, Where You At?

A month ago, Sean Hannity said he'd be moving out of New York as soon as he could manage it.

Here's Stewart's take on it back then.

So I'm just wondering: a rich guy like Hannity can make a move at pretty much the drop of a hat.  So where is he now?  Did he leave?  Or is this another solid example of bullshit outrage that pops up with annoying regularity?  Alec Baldwin said he'd move to France or whatever if Shrub got reelected.  Limbaugh said he'd move to Costa Rica if Obama got reelected.

At what point do we stop purposely crankin' it up to 11 every time some jagoff politician says something silly or nasty or straight up stoopid?  Y'know, if you can just kinda keep your cool, you're more likely to find a decent solution for the problem and/or resolution of the point of contention.  And yet we keep crankin' it up.  It almost seems like it could maybe perhaps be deliberate.

So I'm also wondering: who might benefit from keeping us so riled up that we spend all our time and effort beatin' on each other, instead of working together to figure out what to do about whatever problem some Congress Critter / Press Poodle / Bidness Crook tells us to be pissed off about.

Here's what I learned from a mentor fairly early in my working life:
I don't care if you guys go for long walks in the moonlight holding hands, and I don't care if you plan to murder each other after lunch; but as long as you're cashing the fuckin' paychecks, I expect you to work the fuckin' problem.

Logical Fallacy #3 - Appeal To Emotion

Appeal to emotion (or argumentum ad passiones) is a logical fallacy which uses the manipulation of the recipient's emotions, rather than valid logic, to win an argument. The appeal to emotion fallacy uses emotions as the basis of an argument's position without factual evidence that logically supports the major ideas endorsed by the elicitor of the argument. Also, this kind of thinking may be evident in one who lets emotions and/or other subjective considerations influence one's reasoning process. This kind of appeal to emotion is a type of red herring and encompasses several logical fallacies, including:

Appeal to consequences

Appeal to fear

Appeal to flattery

Appeal to pity

Appeal to ridicule

Appeal to spite

Wishful thinking

Here's A Thought

Nobody likes Foreign Aid, and nobody much likes Uganda's prez, and practically nobody's at all in favor of spending tax dollars to help fuck people over (well - not out in the open anyway).

So let's take the $485 Million we'd normally wrap neatly and ship to Museveni's bankers in Switzerland; and instead, divvy it up and give $150 to every public school teacher here at home.  Can we try that just this one time?

Git 'Em, Jon

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Back Pedal

Let the pearl clutching begin!

(hat tip = Facebook buddy KH)

He started way before 1996, but Roger Ailes has been working really hard towards this day for a very long time; his efforts thru DumFux news have been instrumental in the Rise of the Ruling Rubes.

And those Nutty Old Lefties have been trying to warn us about it forever.  So yeah - The Left is right about how The Right is wrong.

What's happening in Arizona and on K Street (and Uganda, btw), is exactly what happens when you unleash the Monsters of the Id* - ie: when you tell the rubes it's OK to be an ignorant superstitious mob, try not to be surprised when the rubes turn out to be an ignorant superstitious mob.

(*watch Forbidden Planet sometime)