God Love The Onion

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Corporatization

Poster

Peace Train

It kinda sucks when a US President pulls people out of harm's way and it's like nobody even notices. I wanted to post something the other day when it was all happening, but I'm just now getting to it.

I guess I can hope there's something positive in this kind of non-reaction - like maybe peace is making a comeback(?), but I think it has more to do with trying to avoid having to take some real responsibility for the war if we can pretend we have more important things on our minds.

Anyway:

The Fix Is In

From a story in NYT, Balloon Juice posts this:

 Far from being able to take advantage of market forces, our wheat farmer friends are cowed into inaction because our markets are fickle and unreliable and prone to manipulation. This is fundamentally no different from the average joe trying to invest wisely in stocks- he can’t because the game is rigged. Our current system is anything but a free market. A free market would mean that people would be able to act with adequate information. We’re a nation being held hostage by these Galtian super-geniuses like Rick Santelli at the CME and that idiot blowhard Jim Cramer.

Oy

Somebody please tell me this is satire.

OMG

Tea-Partiers may actually be as dumb as we thought.

By way of Dayton Daily News:

DAYTON — About 30 local businesses are participating in a program to link conservative consumers with businesses owned by conservatives to help support the Tea Party.

Donald Hutchinson, a businessman and Tea Party supporter, calls his initiative the Tea Party Exchange Inc.

Tea Party supporters who obtain a TPX-Great American card — similar to a customer-loyalty card consumers can attach to key rings — and show it at a participating business can get a discount on the company’s services. The local merchant then gives 5 percent of the sale revenue to the local Tea party chapter to help fund rallies.

So the business owners are actually willing to drive off some whole-number percentage of their customers and prospects; AND they're willing to pay 5% of what's left of their Sales Revenues in order to support a political party?  They're volunteering to pay an additional tax (cuz a tax is exactly what it is) to an organization that has shown a particular animosity toward good business investments like paving the streets and enforcing the law and educating the labor pool;  and they WANT to pay this additional tax so they can try to avoid paying taxes?

Here's my guess: it's so absolutely counter-intuitive, and the rubes have swallowed so much right wing jiz already, that it's almost automatic for them; they will absolutely eat it up.

Comparing Tax Cut Proposals

Applied Ayn Rand

The logical extreme in Rand's Objectivism is perfectly illustrated by Eric Hague here.
To wit:

When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, "Have a ball, peas [sic]?" And I'm sure you were very proud of him for using his manners.

To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, "No! Looter!" right in his looter face, and then only marginally less proud when she sort of shoved him.

The thing is, in this family we take the philosophies of Ayn Rand seriously. We conspicuously reward ourselves for our own hard work, we never give to charity, and we only pay our taxes very, very begrudgingly.

Don't let anybody tell you we need to put the Free Marketeers back in charge.  These people are thieves and hustlers who blow the smoke of Ayn Rand's rhetoric in your face while using the implied deadly force of the law to pick your pockets.

As usual, they do almost exactly the opposite of they say they're doing.

Don't Make Me Laugh

Too True

From Mother Jones yesterday:

Seen today on West 93rd Street: a mother in a greengrocer's buying a yellow apple. Her toddler was struggling with the concept. "Apples are RED!" he kept insisting. The patient mom took time and explained, "all apples are not the same. Here is a yellow one!" Clearly uncomfortable with the truth in front of him, the little fellow insisted on the old reality.

The maternal moment reminded me of the current political scene: About 20 percent of the electorate are having a rough time accepting realities that take them out of their comfort zone. Glenn Beck viewers, for example, don't like that we NEED immigration in the United States; you CAN'T cut taxes during wars and depressions; human sexuality is NOT all the same; multinational corporations ARE the Big Brother you think the government is; and they ARE behind global warming, which IS real; Medicare and Social Security ARE government programs; etc.

What Glenn and the Beckerheads need, of course, is a patient mommy to explain reality to them. They used to have this when their media choices were limited to professional outlets. But now, why bother, when with FOX News they can see the "reality" they choose? And all apples can be red for always. 'Night, Mother.

Monkey-nomics

I'm sending this one around to some folks I know, wondering how long before somebody who misses the whole point rolls into full outrage mode over spending tax-payer dollars teaching monkeys the principles of Market Economics.

Marketing

Ending The War(s)

Here's the simplest and probably fastest way to get us disentangled from Iraq and Af-Pak.

1)  Take all the operations people who're actually involved with the prosecution of the war efforts, and put them under a new departmental heading - call it the "Department of Foreign Welfare and Security".

2) Tell the Republicans and Fox News that there's a new poll of everybody at 5 different Wal-Marts, 3 Tractor Pulls, and 8 Swap Meets, and the results are overwhelmingly against handouts for ragheads.  (a simple "leak" to MIchelle Malkin &/or Andrew Breitbart should do the trick here)

3) Approach Boehner and McConnell on the sly and propose a secret deal - tell 'em you won't oppose their effort to kill The Dept of Foreign Welfare and Security in exchange for their pledge to hold off eliminating Education and Energy for some number of election cycles.

These guys don't check on much of anything, and when they do, it's pretty obvious that the facts don't really matter to them anyway.

Go ahead - give it a shot.  Let's see.

Time To Get Real

We need to get back to a saner and more common-sensical approach to governing.  The radical policies of Reaganism and Clinton/Rubin Triangulation, the Gingrich Republicans and the Junior Bush Administration have brought us down.

We should start by remembering and admitting that you have to pay for the things you want.