I'm No Superman --Lazlo Bane

Watching some old Scrubs episodes yesterday.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

When you turn an economic philosophy into a system of government, you're just looking for trouble.  Ask the Soviets how it worked out for them.

In his 2010 Citizens United opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "The appearance of influence or access ... will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy." He further stated, "Ingratiation and access, in any event, are not corruption."

I'll believe it when it happens, but apparently there's a fair probability that the Repubs will win enough seats to take over the majority in the US Senate, and that they'll pad their lead in the House, and even more important, that they'll continue to hold commanding majorities in 25 - 35 state legislatures, plus a shitload of county boards.

You can pass it off as the typical losses that the party in the White House always suffers in midterm elections.  You can also say it's because the GOP has a higher nutball density (and a much lower paranoia threshold), and those nutballs never fail to turn out, and they never vote for anybody but Republicans.

Meanwhile, it seems like the Dems are about as sharp and focused as a bagful of wet yarn - as usual.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a post about yet another example of a Coin-Operated Politician who's been busted for influence peddling - which makes it impossible for me to ignore the simple fact that sometimes even the really smart guys like Anthony Kennedy say some of the stoopidest fucking things.

So, here ya go - Meet Mr Leland Yee:

Desperate for funds to repay $70,000 in debt owed by his failed 2011 San Francisco mayoral campaign, Yee repeatedly begged, prodded and pressed undercover agents acting as businessmen to make campaign contributions. In exchange, he often did what many politicians do every day: connect donors up with other influential lawmakers, sing their praises to bureaucratic agencies and write letters of support. While the alleged illegal acts in Yee's case go well beyond that kind of access -- prosecutors charge he helped to coordinate an international arms deal -- access was a large part of how he pitched his donors. He opened his door and regularly stated his intent to keep his door open, especially if he ascended to higher office.

We know that big donors get access for their money. Just look at the White House visitor logs, the goings-on at political fundraisers or the Republican presidential aspirants heading to Las Vegas to kiss the ring of billionaire donor Sheldon Adelson. But what we rarely hear is those behind-the-scenes conversations.

The point here is that under the "rules" of unfettered capitalism, everything is a commodity.  Everything is for sale.  Everything and everybody has a price.  And anything goes in the marketplace.  Ya get what ya pay for and ya pay for what ya get.

When we set it all up to sell a candidate like we sell cars and hamburgers and remedies for anal itch, why would anybody think we wouldn't see the kind of auction we've got going on now where power goes to the highest bidder?  If I can throw several tens of millions of dollars at a politician while you and 200 of your closest friends can managed maybe a hundred bucks each - then my voice gets really loud relative to your voice.  And it should be obvious to anybody with a living thinking brain in their skull that - all of a sudden, and gosh, for no apparent reason that Mr Justice Kennedy can think of - my single vote counts for more than your vote plus the votes of your 200 buddies.

So how confident are we s'posed to be about that whole democracy thing now?

A Difference Of Ethos

(not an April Fools thing)

There is no Chief Ethics Officer.
This is not a democracy.
The free market is morally neutral - as God intended.
You get along by going along.
Conform and be dull.
Embrace the Noble Lie.
Watch more TV.  Go out to a movie.
Stay safe - take the blue pill.



DecodeDC

A Few Toons

via Democratic Underground

The KrugMan Speaks

Paul Krugman takes down the bullshit from Jamie Dimon - that the reason you're not finding a decent job is your own damned fault - stoopid losers.

From his piece in NYT:

“Today, nearly 11 million Americans are unemployed. Yet, at the same time, 4 million jobs sit unfilled” — supposedly demonstrating “the gulf between the skills job seekers currently have and the skills employers need.”

Actually, in an ever-changing economy there are always some positions unfilled even while some workers are unemployed, and the current ratio of vacancies to unemployed workers is far below normal. Meanwhile, multiple careful studies have found no support for claims that inadequate worker skills explain high unemployment.

But the belief that America suffers from a severe “skills gap” is one of those things that everyone important knows must be true, because everyone they know says it’s true. It’s a prime example of a zombie idea — an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die.

Hat tip = Salon

Jamie Dimon lives in his little bubble with a variety of others who occupy similarly lofty stations in USAmerica Inc.  And there's a handful of other bubbles occupied by Big Power Wielders - mostly, those bubbles are filled with people holding C-Level positions in Politics and Military Branches and Law Enforcement etc.  Then, you can add in the bubbles from the rest of the planet, and feed it all a constant stream of talking points and rebuttal arguments from a cluster of Media Bubbles (DumFux News, NRO, AEI, WSJ, etc), which gives us the now-infamous Echo Chamber Effect, because, remember now, Press Poodles get their "news" from the newsmakers, and those newsmakers are all inside one of those bubbles - and before your very eyes the world is transformed into a 1950s Disney cartoon with no grounding in reality at all.

Can you say 'entropy'?


So the Zombie-Think Dr Krugman talks about is an important phenomenon to watch.  It's one thing for the rubes to buy in - hell, ya gotta get the rubes to go along with it, or it won't work - but when it looks like the guys who're supposed to be running the scam start believing their own bullshit, it's time to call in the dogs and piss on the fire cuz this hunt is over.

Today's Eewww

Science (and the dogged relentless pursuit of What Da Fuck) does not always lead to rainbow-farting unicorns, or - really - to anything guaranteed not to make your skin crawl.  I can almost understand why some people just throw up their hands and say, "Fuck this - I'm goin' with Jesus".

Almost.

At about 2:05, you might feel a powerful urge to run and hide.



Go ahead - do some porn surfing with the key word 'hairy' - do it now.  I fuckin' dare ya.

It's Just A Theory

hat tip = X-Christian (commenter) at Moyers & Company

Denying the Big Bang:

In the first episode of Cosmos, titled “Standing Up in the Milky Way,” Tyson dons shades just before witnessing the Big Bang. You know, the start of everything. Some creationists, though, don’t like the Big Bang; at Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis, a critique of Cosmos asserts that “the big bang model is unable to explain many scientific observations, but this is of course not mentioned.”

"Not mentioned"?

Ya mean like on the gazillion other occasions when Tyson has said, "I don't know" in response to questions like:
What came before the big bang?
--and--
What does the big bang have to do with dark matter and dark energy?

When he doesn't know something, Tyson admits it, and he doesn't pretend that his imaginary friend has the answer, but conveniently left it out of that one stoopid book.  C'mon, Ken - we all know you're a douche, but it's important for you not to let the rubes see you actually being a douche out in public like that.

Anyway:

Alas, this creationist critique seems very poorly timed: A major new scientific discovery, just described in detail in the New York Times, has now provided “smoking gun” evidence for “inflation,” a crucial component of our understanding of the stunning happenings just after the Big Bang. Using a special telescope to examine the cosmic microwave background radiation (which has been dubbed the “afterglow” of the Big Bang), researchers at the South Pole detected “direct evidence” of the previously theoretical gravitational waves that are believed to have originated in the Big Bang and caused an incredibly sudden and dramatic inflation of the universe. (For an easy-to-digest discussion, Phil Plait has more.)

Pushing back against the Denialists when they inevitably try to pull the False Equivalence  crap:

First - there're some big differences between the use of "theory" when we're talking about science, and the use of "theory" when we're indulging ourselves in conversational conjecture and speculation and such like that there.

Conflation of the two meanings is a very useful rhetorical trick, but it's a fucking trick. Please stop using it; please stop falling for it.

Second - here's a handy, and (I'm fairly certain) incomplete list of some other minor items that are also "just theories":

1. Atomic Theory
2. Theory of Matter and Energy, also Conservation of Matter and Energy
3. Cell Theory
4. Germ Theory
5. Theory of Plate Tectonics
6. Theory of Evolution
7. Big Bang Theory
8. Chaos Theory
9. The “Gaia” Theory of a Sustainable Earth, which is illustrated with the idea of Spaceship Earth
10. Theory of Quantum Mechanics
11. Theory of Special Relativity, which subsumes The Theory of General Relativity which subsumes Newtonian theories of motion
12. Photon Theory of Light Energy and its speed of light
13. Theory of Electromagnetism as begun by Maxwell and continued with the work of others
14. Theory of Radioactivity or Nuclear Theory
15. Theory of Molecular Bonds
16. Theory of States of Matter - or is this part of Atomic Theory and Molecular Bond Theory?
17. Theory of Thermodynamics—hey, I guess this theory takes care of the States of Matter and the Molecular Bond theories.
18. Theory of Homeostasis within Living Organisms
19. Constructivist Theory of Learning
20. Theories of Self and Development - mental processes in the brain.
21. Theory of Gravity

I realize pointing these thingies out should be tres obvioso by now, but repetition is the surrogate mother of political success (aka: the brood bitch of propaganda).  Turn-about's fair play, muthuh fuckuh.

And just to put the cherry on top - your eyes may have been opened by the Lord's eternal awesomeness, but if you've got your head up your ass, all you're gonna see is your own shit.

Yo - Brian

At first blush, it's easy to follow Mr Fischer's reasoning as he says he "discriminated", but he wants us to understand that he's not really "discriminating" (tho' of course he is), but no really, he just wants us all to know that he thinks wimmins is all wonderful and capable and competent...but but but flip flop flip.

The not-so-discreet implication is that them wimmins is only wonderful and capable and competent at doin' all that Wimmin's Work, but hey, let's throw the gals a bone, shall we? (even a bad double entendre seems appropriate here because the kinda shit this guy peddles is convoluted enough to confuse a Byzantine Imperator).

Maybe we should talk about the obvious Mommy Issues that are just barely below the surface, but also too, anybody who spends that kinda time and energy gushing about how welcoming and comforting he feels women are - well, maybe we're into a little self-loathing; trying to admit to being a complete dickweed who has none of the loving qualities he says he finds so endearing in women.  Or maybe he's overcompensating a tiny bit because he has doubts about his own manliness.

Or maybe it's just another mundane example of a guy applying a little lubricating flattery to loosen up somebody's panties.

Fucking classic, dude.

Telomeres And Centromeres

Read all about it at NIH.  But that'll give you a headache unless you're Amy Farrah Fowler - and besides, I put that up there just to pump up my public image by inviting you to infer that I actually read that shit, and that I might have some remote chance of understanding it.  I don't read it, and while I insist on believing I could understand it if somebody explained it to me in very simple terms, I really just don't fuckin' get it.

But, I found this helpful:



And here's one from Carl Sagan:



I love the part when Sagan points out that Creationists have to knock down the thing about the 4.5-billion-year-old Earth - cuz if they don't, they've got exactly bupkis when it comes to their denial of evolution.

Flipping The Message

A while back, Cadillac ran this ad aimed at the Douche Bucket demographic:




Here's an Answer Ad from Ford:



The world is what we make it, kids.