Today's GIF

Upside Down And Backwards

The National Treasure formerly known as Charlie Pierce has today's take down on David Brooks: 

(yeah yeah - OK - "today" as in 4 days ago. I'm pleasantly otherwise occupied. Priorities hafta shift a little and I catch things up when I can)

Moral Hazard noticed that Master had left his computer on, and that there were words on the screen, arranged in paragraphs. He wandered over and put his paws up on the desk. He looked over at Master again. Master's eyes were open but he was not seeing anything. Moral Hazard read, and he understood. He walked sadly out of the room, through the kitchen, and out onto the fire escape over the alley. He let the afternoon breezes wash over him. He wondered if Master would ever wake up, or if anyone would notice if he did.

My own little bit: for all The Fountainhead fans, just turn things over; look at the mirror image, and it's easy to see that David Brooks is straight outa Central Casting - positively born to the role of Ellsworth Toohey.  A venal, self-serving word-weasel paid to reinforce The Noble Lie.  And to paraphrase St Ayn's own way of describing this thing: "the epitome of evil is the man who knows the truth and recognizes it when he hears it, but denies it and substitutes a conveniently profitable lie - meant to deflect the anger of the mob, and redirect it against the very tools they need to free themselves."

You can get regular and thorough David Brooks take-downs at driftglass.

And every Friday afternoon, check in with The Professional Left Podcast.

Today's Pix

 

Marketing To The Id

I'm thinking this is probably not really about self-reliance or empowerment or even the usual patronizing bullshit of "lemme mansplain about how we just wanna keep you sweet brainless dollies a little safer".

Selling with sex is one thing, but look at it.  She's an attractive, purposeful-looking grownup woman - throwing open her coat to give us a peek at her kinda-girlie lingerie, while reaching around behind her, hoping to grab hold of somebody's big hard steely penis, which of course is her only salvation because she's really just that "sweet brainless dollie" who can't possibly survive without some guy's dick in her hand.

A whole Marketing Division somewhere is toasting themselves because they know there's an army of dumbass ammosexuals masturbating on Mom's clean sheets over this right now.

Guys - even without my own little hangups, there're enough Repression Issues in just this one picture to keep a battalion of Freudians on the bestseller list for-fucking-ever.

Halfway To Summer

This being the Vernal Equinox, it won't be long before it's time to pack up the old family wagon and make the trek to a relaxing week at a beach somewhere.

You'll wanna check out all the gear, but also, you need to take certain precautions to be sure your flabby winter bod can take the added stress of the vacation season - especially if you've got kids.

Let's be careful out there.

A Bit Less Dumb Now

Wouldn't it be nice to look forward to a time when we can just learn this and be a little amazed, and not feel like we have to catalog the knowledge in a way that makes it easily retrievable because we know we'll need it to push back against some idiot god-knobber who wants to teach kids about talking snakes and 900-year-old boat builders?

Today's Question

...is pretty much the same question I have almost every week.

Why is a 30-minute comedy show doing a better job reporting on these issues than the army of Corporate Press Poodles?

Today's Quote

Earth, teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life.

Earth, teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall.

Earth, teach me courage as the tree which stands all alone.

Earth, teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring. --William Alexander

Only 40 Weeks Til Christmas

Today's Tweet

19.3 million people in #Yemen are in need of access to safe drinking water. #WaterIs life & more for #YemenChildren. pic.twitter.com/xMVdDewuBq

— UNICEF Yemen (@UNICEF_Yemen) March 19, 2016

So at first, I'm thinking - well now, that'd make a pretty good meme; maybe something like:

"Next time my kids bitch about their hard-ass math teacher..."

-- or -- 

"All I've ever asked you to do around here is to clean up your room once in a while" 

But fuck that, cuz fuck me for not trying to think a bit past my own little corner of the world, which is still pretty well insulated from what seems like a bigger and bigger piece of the world that looks more and more fucked up practically every day.

I'm still gonna make my silly jokes, but I'll be trying to widen the horizon a little.  

It actually gets harder to ensure the survival of the species if we insist on never looking beyond, "it could be much worse for us, so be glad it's them".

Some Friday Tunes

Roots N Toots

Today's Tweet

🤓 pic.twitter.com/hqxaWFUw7F

— libellule (@Paulus_vv) March 18, 2016

Don't leave Liberty out in the cold.
Smarten up & vote right - I mean left.
No, wait - shit - you know what I mean. https://t.co/QAZlNLZKhr

— Mike Roberts (@eVilleMike) March 18, 2016

Today's Toon

I don't want to discount the real dangers of The Trumpenstein Monster.  Weirder things have happened in politics all over the world for a very long time.

But I want to make a coupla points.

First, even though Trump has a "commanding lead", he's still polling below 50% (mostly), which is half of the 30-40% of the rabidly nutty wingnuts in the GOP, which still adds up to about 20% of the total electorate.

But second - and here's the kicker - the GOP has spent a lot of time effort and money putting in place mechanisms intended (IMO) to shift political power towards minority control. 

eg: Only about 30% of Americans favor tight restrictions on abortion, but according to Gutmacher, 80% of the states have passed laws aimed at putting abortion out of reach for many women, and/or banning most abortions in one way or another. 

How many legitimate voters will be turned away in November because of Voter ID and continuing efforts to scrub the registration rolls?

When a sizable majority of votes cast nationally are votes for Democratic candidates (Mid-Terms 2014), but we still have a GOP majority in both houses of congress, and GOP majorities at the state and local levels, something's amiss.

So, it's not just the rhetoric and bombast that "conservatives" have been playing with for 35 years that created this Trump Problem.  We have to put that together with the nuts and bolts of a political organization built to make a "majority" out of about 48% of the votes by whipping the army of rubes into a rich creamy lather and pointing them at a variety of phantom enemies in order to drive them out to the polls each time.

Trump's no dummy. He saw that nobody's really in charge way back in 2011. Remember, part of the deal with authoritarianism (supported by an apologist army of corporate Press Poodles) is that when things blow up or fall apart, "there's plenty of blame to go around"; "mistakes were made"; "let's not start pointing fingers" etc.  The first order of business is to make sure nobody can be held accountable for anything, so the party faithful are just milling about in an amorphous blob looking for somebody to help them channel their anger at having been played for such suckers for such a long time. Trump just stepped in to fill the void.

Or more accurately, Trump is pretending to fill that void - if you notice, he's taking no responsibility for the shit he's throwing into the fan.

So what happens when this little pipe dream disappears with the morning fog, and along about midnight on the first Tuesday in November, the rubes are thinking they've been left just standing there with their dicks in their hands - again?  

The "wise gray heads" of the GOP are up late every night.  Worried, certainly - but as per usual, they're indulging themselves in a cynical exercise of trying to flip it back around so they don't have to admit to being wrong about almost everything. 

Lets' review:  
They don't think the problem is the fact that they've effectively killed off one of the major political parties that just happens to be essential to a healthy democracy. 
They think the real problem is that they might have to accept the blame for killing it off. 

This is up to you guys, GOP gurus. First you address it, then you fix it, and then Sepuku, motherfucker.  We'll miss ya, but we'll all be better off without ya.

Today's Tweet

Every failed attempt at anything is worth something.

I made a robot to help me argue on the internet pic.twitter.com/NxpXhk0NMM

— Simone Giertz (@SimoneGiertz) March 16, 2016

Today's GIF

Took me a while, but here it is.  And yeah - it's been around for a while; don't care.  Can't  stop loving this.