How Stupid Are We?

The Buffett Rule is stuck in the US Senate because Repubs won't let it get unstuck.  This is a measure that CNN's polling tells us is supported by 72% of us.  But because we have a near-totally dysfunctional US Senate, nothing gets done without a 60 vote majority.

But the real kicker is that most of the Press Poodles look at a vote tally of 51 AYEs vs 45 NAYs, and report to us that "the measure failed".

USA Today:

The 51-45 defeat of the "Buffett rule," named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, fell mostly along party lines.

Huffington Post:

Democrats' attempt to pass a Buffett Rule tax on the super wealthy failed Monday in the Senate, as Republicans blocked the measure in a sharply partisan debate.

Reuters (headline):

Buffett rule fails Senate vote in tax fight

New York Daily News:

The Senate rejected the "Buffett Rule," which would've raised the tax rates for millionaires, after Republicans accused President Barack Obama of pitting Americans against each other.

I hope it's just lazy, but it seems to be bordering on dishonest.

NYT has a breakdown that's feels a lot more straightforward to me.

Dots

You just gotta figure there's a blogger or some wingnut somewhere who's feverishly working on how to put the Secret Service partiers together with something that makes the whole thing look even worse.  And here it is.  You're welcome.

The Opposite Game

When you know you suck at something, it's important to deflect criticism of how bad you suck, and to try projecting your suckishness onto your opponent.

hat tip = Blue Virginia

The 92 percent figure obscures the fact that many more men than women lost jobs in the recession, as Wallaces forces Gillespie to admit. The key is timing. Men tend to be concentrated in industries that were hit first, like construction, so they lost their jobs first, while women tend to be contracted in the public sector, which had layoffs later on when state and local governments slashed their budgets.

In fact, it was Republican lawmakers and governors who led this effort, accounting for over 70 of percent state layoffs, so Romney's claim is effectively blaming Obama for policies that Romney supports (cutting government workforces).

Hold On A Durn Minute

What's your hurry, little mister?  Don't you know that terminating a presidential campaign can have seriously negative effects on your mental health?

I should just shut up and leave the satire to the pros (hat tip = BlueGal at Crooks and Liars)

Rick Santorum Aborts Presidential Campaign from Ashley Judd      

Today's Pix

One Thing Leads To Another

History is a not a bunch of random unrelated events.  The point that really stings is at the end of this segment, when it's made clear that the Nazi death camps didn't simply pop up out of the sick-fuck imaginations of a few maniacs - the holocaust was just kinda the latest in a long line of racial terrorism.

If you're looking for a little taste of reality, try watching this whole BBC series.  I dare ya.

Racism Meets Politics

Paying particular attention to what JR says starting at about 5:00.

Top Secret America

A coupla things are interesting when I think about this Frontline story.  First, that there's a bunch of typical rubes who love to worry about The Gubmint, but who're always worrying about stoopid shit instead of worrying about the real thing.  And second, that "The Left" did a lot of hand-wringing about power and secrecy under Bush, but are now a lot less eager to condemn these things because "our guy's in the Oval" (I can cop to that one a little bit myself).  I've heard the flip side of that coin from a few different sources as well - people self-identifying as Repubs say they were OK with Bush having that power because they trusted him, but now they feel more threatened because they don't trust Obama to do right by them.

Anyway - happy paranoia to ya'll.

Watch Top Secret America on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

I Am Not Trayvon Martin

From Ebony:

Can you imagine the outcry if seven White youths had been gunned down by police and security guards in a matter of months? Can you imagine the extensive political interest, the media stories that would saturate the airwaves? Can you imagine Fox News or any number of newspapers reporting about a school suspension for one of the victims or doctoring pictures in an attempt to make these victims less sympathetic? Can you imagine a person holding up a sign calling these victims “thugs” and “hoodlums.”Just think about the media frenzy, the concern from politicians, and the national horror every time a school shooting happens in Suburbia or every time a White woman goes missing...can you imagine if women routinely went missing from your community and the news and police department simply couldn't be bothered?

No, you can't. And you don't have to.

And I just kinda hate thinking that somebody who's probably young enough to be my granddaughter has a better handle on this than I do.


(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

Just What We Need

Considering all the shit the world wants to throw in our general direction, I think the US Military should really make an effort to take all those young Americans - you know, the kids we've trained to kill on command and armed with enough lethal machinery to level every city and every farm building on the planet and still have enough left over to go back and "make the rubble bounce" - yeah, what we really need to do is give those kids lots and lots of drugs.

After two long-running wars with escalating levels of combat stress, more than 110,000 active-duty Army troops last year were taking prescribed antidepressants, narcotics, sedatives, antipsychotics and anti-anxiety drugs, according to figures recently disclosed by the U.S. Army surgeon general. Nearly 8 percent of the active-duty Army is now on sedatives and more than 6 percent is on antidepressants – an eightfold increase since 2005.

“We have never medicated our troops to the extent we are doing now. … And I don’t believe the current increase in suicides and homicides in the military is a coincidence,” said Bart Billings, a former military psychologist who hosts an annual conference at Camp Pendleton on combat stress.-- The Spokesman-Review

War is a racket.  Every war - on, for, or against anything - is a racket.  If you don't know that by now, then you don't know anything.

And isn't it so perfectly coincidental how The "War On Terrorism" is now nested perfectly into the "War On Drugs"?

The Nexus

...of politics and race in America.  Anybody who's watched politics knows about "The Southern Strategy" and how it's morphed over the last 8 or 9 cycles.  I'm thinking it prob'ly goes a lot farther back than Nixon and Wallace - the Dixiecrats come to mind.  So I'm trying to dig things up that tell me something about the long evolution of race (and religion) in our elections and power politics.

For now, here's a nice bit of turnaround/parody from Bill Maher - a few years back.

Bill Gates - TED Talk

Innovating To Zero

Say What?

Sometimes, the parade of stoopid is simply beyond imagining.



And why does it seem like The Daily Show is the only outfit taking this on and asking real questions?  Are the Press Poodles so afraid of the Wingnuts that they won't denounce it for the Epic Stoopid it is for fear of being called "biased"?  I've got news, fellas - it doesn't matter what you do, the Nutters will always call you biased because that's what makes a cult work.

And also too, being biased against something that's so obviously Epic Stoopid is a good thing.

My New Favorite Meme

(hat tip = JG)

My Kinda Guy - Kinda

I consider John Cole (Balloon Juice) a fellow traveller - a Conservative In Recovery.  And actually, I don't think of it as recovering from being conservative so much as trying to recover what being conservative should really mean.  But that begs for an attempt to define "conservative", which only turns "conservative" into "Conservat-ism", which is always where it falls apart because nothing fucks up a good philosophy like hanging that "ism" on the end of it.  The purists jump in and start weeding out those who don't conform - all in the name of "inclusion" and "the big tent", of course - which is where I think the Repubs are stuck now.  Eventually, the only planks left in the GOP Platform are Party Loyalty and Anti-Obama.

So "conservative" is a little like deciding between art and pornography - ya get to make that call for yourself, and nobody else.

But there's one thing more to put to rest before we can claim to be fully free of this Dark Side Politics.  We have to recognize this for the utter bullshit that it is:

Republicans might be crazy, but at least they fucking fight. Whether I am right or wrong, I stand up for what I believe.

I hear this a lot when people feel the need to criticize the Dems (usually for trying to play nice with their fellow Americans - which is kinda the fucking point in a democracy BTW).

You might as well say, "George Zimmerman may have goaded Trayvon Martin into a fight so he'd have an excuse to murder the kid in cold blood, but at least he was standing up for what he believed in".

You don't get points for fighting on the wrong fucking side.