Apr 27, 2013

It's A Sucker Move

Obama says if Assad uses Chemical Weapons, it's a game-changer.
Intel says somebody's used Sarin in Syria.
John McCain immediately hits TV saying we gotta make a move.

There's a lot to it, and I don't claim to know enough to make the definitive call, but remembering that it's never all about what they say it's all about, here's what I hear some of these guys saying:

The Neo-Cons - and the Neo-Liberals too - (for lack of more accurate identifiers) are pushing hard again for another entanglement in the Middle East.  And one of the benefits of pushing Obama into a war would be that it suddenly becomes a lot easier to play the Equivalency card.

So it starts to sound like, "See? Obama is no different than Bush or any Repub or anybody else - so you should all just throw up your hands, walk away from politics altogether, and be sure to stay home on election day because it's all just too weird.  It's ugly and they're all stupid and you're busy with your own shit anyway.  Just stay away."

That's one thing I hear.

Here's Chris Hayes breakin' it down:


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And here's the next segment:


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Junior Bush Wrap-Up

John Fugelsang recaps the GW Bush massive cluster fuck presidency.

This Can't End Well

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone:

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.
We have a few options right now.  We still don't have to let our baser instincts rule over us - not the way these asshole banksters have done anyway.  But we'd better be watching very carefully for the flashpoint.  That special moment when too many people believe there's no chance to break 'em up, so they'll have to shoot 'em down.

I say it can't end well because even tho' there have been a few notable exceptions just in our own history, it's far more likely that the kind of power Taibbi's trying to warn us about is simply too seductive.

(ed note:  I carp a lot about "silver-spoon-legacy pukes" - Matt Taibbi is definitely not among them)

Today's Toon

From Tom Gauld:
hat tip = MoJo

Apr 26, 2013

Music

Taylor Swift can't make it sound like this because Taylor Swift hasn't the requisite soul.  Not yet anyway.




St Ronnie Speaks

This one's making the rounds.  Lotsa "libruls" expect lotsa "conservatives" to...uhmm... to do what, exactly?  Are they gonna lose their shit?  Will their heads explode?  Will they finally get it and change their minds?  Yeah - prob'ly not.

Deny. Ignore. Whatever. Move on.



hat tip = Addicting Info

Credulity Kills

From a friend's facebook post:

Seriously. This is the kinda shit way too many people believe.

There's been a lot said about Deliberate Ignorance in the Age Of Information, so I'll put it a slightly different way:  When you can learn almost anything you wanna know; at almost any time of day or night; just by having a smart phone and a decent cell signal; when it's that easy to look something up - you have to make a special effort to stay stoopid.

I spent maybe 3 minutes just browsing thru the first 20 or so articles (out of the 746 Million hits) that came up on a google search before settling on this one at USA Today:
Most victims of gun violence in 2010 were not on a battlefield or remote hillside in the Middle East fighting in a war. They were, like 6-year-old Brandon Holt, children and teenagers in America, according to the Children's Defense Fund.
Brandon was shot in the head by his friend and neighbor, an unidentified 4-year-old boy, on Monday night. He is now also a statistic of gun violence.

In 2010, 15,576 children and teenagers were injured by firearms — three times more than the number of U.S. soldiers injured in the war in Afghanistan, according to the defense fund.
Nationally, guns still kill twice as many children and young people than cancer, five times as many than heart disease and 15 times more than infection, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

Music




(not the version you just listened to)

Today's Pix








Why It Is

They were wrong - again.  But guess what.  It won't change a thing.

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Apr 25, 2013

Jon Stewart vs DumFux News

It'd be nothing short of amazing if DumFux News could be anywhere near as consistent with their opinions as Stewart is with kicking their ass.

Today's Charlie Pierce

Charlie Pierce often posts James Madison quotes:
The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entagled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?
-- James Madison, Memorial And Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, 1785.

Today In Good Government

Here's a picture of a meeting of a Joint Committee to talk about Long Term Unemployment in a struggling US economy (a grand total of 4 members managed to show up):


And here's a picture of the seating section reserved for all the fucks these dipwads give about anybody who happens not to be in a position to make large campaign contributions - like maybe, I dunno, somebody who doesn't have a fucking job:


The Krugman Speaks

Copied the whole thing from Paul Krugman's blog:


Evidence and Economic Policy

Henry Blodget says that the economic debate is over; the austerians have lost and whatshisname has won. And it’s definitely true that in sheer intellectual terms, this is looking like an epic rout. The main economic studies that supposedly justified the austerian position have imploded; inflation has stayed low; the bond vigilantes have failed to make an appearance; the actual economic effects of austerity have tracked almost exactly what Keynesians predicted.
But will any of this make a difference? The story of the past three years, after all, is not that Alesina and Ardagna used a bad measure of fiscal policy, or that Reinhart and Rogoff mishandled their data. It is that important people’s will to believe trumped the already ample evidence that austerity would be a terrible mistake; A-A and R-R were just riders on the wave.
The cynic in me therefore says that after a brief period of regrouping, the VSPs will be right back at it — they’ll find new studies to put on pedestals, new economists to tell them what they want to hear, and those who got it right will continue to be considered unsound and unserious.
But maybe I’m wrong; maybe truth will prevail. Here’s hoping.