Thanks, Professor

...that was loads of fun.

Bloomberg won't allow the embedding, so here's the link on YouTube.

How Interesting

The revolt is spreading faster and farther than could have been dreamed.  We've seen the glorious uprising of ordinary people against one bullying despot after another - Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria and now even The GOP.  Wait; uh, what?

A day or so ago, Mitch Daniels told a rather skittish crowd at CPAC that Repubs need to reach voters who don't care what Rush Limbaugh says (not quite what Daniels said, but words to that effect).  We've heard grumblings along those lines for years from some pretty big-deal Republicans like Christy Todd-Whitman and David Eisenhower and Mike Steele, et al; and practically all of them were thoroughly dismissed, spanked or otherwise quickly dispatched very loudly and very publicly - most of whom either knelt before His High Rushness to beg forgiveness or just limped away and disappeared.  Now, we have Little Mikey Medved feelin' his oats; and in The Rupert Street Journal, no less.

In short, the White House record of more than 200 years shows plenty of bad decisions but no bad men. For all their foibles, every president attempted to rise to the challenges of leadership and never displayed disloyal or treasonous intent.

This history makes some of the current charges about Barack Obama especially distasteful—and destructive to the conservative cause.

He goes on to take aim directly at Limbaugh, calling attempts to paint Obama as a willing destroyer of Mother America "almost perfectly imbecilic".

So how long before we hear from Limbaugh about Rupert Murdoch's vicious campaign against poor humble Rush?  How long before we hear mention of it on DumFux News itself?

SCOTUS Update

I just got off the phone with somebody in the public info office - the message on the main number listed on the website says to call 202-579-3000 and ask them to page a representative.  The lady was nice enough, but she said they have no intention of issuing a statement on Thomas's problems, and that there's no press availability scheduled either; and that if I want to ask questions, I have to call during business hours and ask for a regular PIO (Public Information Officer).

I have no idea what kind of protocol might be in place for this.  I do think it would be cool in the extreme if huge numbers of regular US citizens started making personal calls to SCOTUS to ask them to explain themselves to us.

SCOTUS

Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have both been implicated in some "minor" scandals the last few years.  Now we may have a major problem because ol' Clarence did quite a bit more than drop by a little get-together with the Koch Brothers in California.  ("a quick drop-by" is how the SCOTUS spokesmodel put it when asked by Common Cause).

Read it and weep.

Herald-Gazette (Knox County, ME)

Here's the full text of an article that seems to have mysteriously disappeared from NewsVine: (I got to it thru Google's cache archive - yay Google!)

What more does the Justice Department need to launch an investigation into the possible conflict of interests surrounding Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and their votes in the Citizens United case?

Maybe they need to hear from you.

We've asked Attorney General Eric Holder to meet with us to discuss all that's been uncovered in recent weeks, but we haven't gotten an answer yet.

Please call Holder's office today at (202) 514-2001 and ask that he meet with Common Cause! Click here after you've made the call.

We are simply asking for a brief meeting to discuss whether Justices Scalia and Thomas should have recused themselves from ruling on the Citizens Unitedcase, which opened the floodgates to corporate spending on election campaigns when it was decided in January 2010.

We already know that:

• Both justices attended secretive political strategy sessions sponsored by Koch Industries, a major beneficiary of the Citizens United ruling. Koch is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate that has invested millions of dollars in political campaigns and causes.

• Justice Thomas failed to disclose more than $600,000 of his wife Virginia's income from the Heritage Foundation (he has recently amended his filings to reflect this income), or any of her unknown salary from Liberty Central, a political action group that was actively involved in the 2010 midterms.

• Justice Scalia recently met behind closed doors with the head of the House Tea Party Caucus, and Virginia Thomas is now promoting herself as an "ambassador to the Tea Party movement."

All these facts create a troubling appearance of bias. Attorney General Holder, as the head of the Justice Department, has a duty to review these issues and to make a decision regarding the launch of an investigation.

And we want a chance to lay out our case to him. Please call the Attorney General's office today at (202) 514-2001 and ask that he meet with Common Cause. 

Then, click here after you've made the call.

 (the link goes to Common Cause)

Curveball Lied

It's not exactly news, but at least somebody is trying to dig out some of the truth for us.  Unfortunately, it didn't matter to enough of us then, and it prob'ly won't matter much now either.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

My biggest fear right now is that we're allowing the system to lose its capacity for self-correction.  There are glimmers and flickers once in a while - Dick Cheney got heckled with shouts of "war criminal" at his speech to a CPAC session, and there's the tiny fraction of Tea Partiers who actually aren't stupid bigoted assholes - but for the most part, the big power players know they can pull some pretty horrendous shit and still count on getting cover.  The Hard-Right Radicals in particular know that DumFux News will polish their turds no matter what.  So once in a while we get a public hanging (Mark Foley, Chris Lee, William Jefferson, et al), and that helps us believe the lie that the Koch Bros and Wall Street - The American Aristocracy - aren't really running the joint and that we don't have any thing to say about it at all.

And Jesus wept.

Hoping For Egypt

The final outcome (if there is such a thing) in Egypt is something we won't know for a while, but here's a thought: Egyptians booted out a quasi-dictator with 18 days of protests that were mostly pretty relaxed and groovey.  There was no armed resistance; no guerilla tactics; no bombings; no terrorism - just growing numbers of everyday people gathering in different places to tell their government they weren't going to get pushed around any more.  The only real violence came when somebody (probably on Mubarak's side, if not at Mubarak's behest) decided to start a fight in the hopes of scoring some propaganda points.  People got hurt, and some hundreds killed, but it didn't work.  The people were unarmed; they defended themselves just enough to keep the crowd together, but they didn't counterattack and so far, I haven't heard anything about retaliation.  And most importantly, the military leadership was smart enough to know they couldn't win anything by ordering Egyptians to shoot Egyptians.

Here's my main take-away:  The notion that an armed citizenry is what ensures freedom is proven again to be a lie.

Stupid Arguments

I don't know how to tell you how dumb it is to be arguing about Obama's "faith".  Here's the main reason:
US Constitution, article VI, 3rd paragraph:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.


So we have the Constitution telling us that according to the law, it can't be an issue, but that just leads us to the real stupidity of Obama defenders who feel the need to dispute the assertion.  The really stupid part is that by arguing the point of Obama's religion, you legitimize the assertion itself.  You're saying first that it was OK for some short-necked bigot to a raise the question of Obama's faith, and then by refuting his Muslim-ness, you're tacitly agreeing that it would be a problem if he actually is a Muslim.


Here's a thought:  How 'bout we just keep all that religion shit to ourselves for a change?

A Trend?

Check this out at Daily Beast.

There are a lot of program directors whose radio ‘spider-sense’ is tingling,” says Randall Bloomquist, a long-time radio executive and president of Talk Frontier Media. “They're thinking ‘this conservative thing is kind of running its course. We're saying the same things from morning 'til night and yes, we've got a very loyal core audience—but if we ever want to grow, if we want to expand, we've got to be doing more than 18 hours a day of ‘Obama is a socialist.’”

This could be pretty interesting.  Though I think if their ratings continue to drop, they'll just get even more rabid.  When the marketing dweebs are consulted, they're likely to tell these guys to stick with the formula.  Radical Clown Radio doesn't differ much from the GOP.  In fact, the business of wingnut radio and politics are practically the same thing.  So when you start to lose market share, the instinctive reaction is to "rediscover your core competency" and concentrate on solidifying your base.  This is all well and good, but eventually, you have to widen things out a bit.  Unfortunately, the effect is usually the opposite - you can easily end up narrowing your appeal to the point where your market niche is no longer a real factor.

Anyway, we've been alarmed at the growing bombast from guys like Beck and Limbaugh, thinking it means they're getting more powerful (or feeling more powerful).  But it could easily mean just the opposite.

More Bio Mimicry

One of the problems we continue to have is that we've allowed some not very honest people to convince us that there's friction between our economic interests and our need for a clean and healthy environment to live in.

We end up talking past each other. Here's a guy who can talk about "saving the environment" by linking the need to take good care of the biosphere directly to huge business opportunities.

Bio Mimicry And Closed-Loop Sustainability

This kinda shit just amazes me.

Hoping (update)

A few days late, but it's still a good thing.

Hoping (update)

Mubarak has resigned, but he hasn't split the country.  No idea what that means, but I'm thinking he's not quite done yet.  Governments and financial houses are busily freezing his assets, so that should make it harder for him to fuck with things, at least 'til they get all that sorted out.  So anybody who tries to tell me it's all gonna be swell needs to get called a moron.

The Press Poodles are still gushing about Freedom Fever while DumFux News is flacking the threat of The Muslim Brotherhood.  Meanwhile, nobody (either in The Kennel or at Fox) has said thing one about any efforts by anybody's diplomatic services - zero, zip, zilch.  The only thing I've heard so far is the standard meme about how Obama got caught flat-footed.  Are you fucking kidding?  Am I really supposed to believe we've spent something like 1/3 of a TRILLION dollars on intel and counter-intel, and anti-terrorism shit - aimed specifically at the middle east and that we got nothing out of it!?!  We didn't see any of this as any kind of possibility at all!?!

Anyway, for now it's all a big smiley-face celebration - I'm bettin' a lot of happy protesters  are gettin' laid tonite - and tomorrow or Sunday we might start to see if we get any clues as to how the Egyptian military intends to spend its political capital.  This ain't anywhere near over.  The really dangerous part starts soon.

Hoping

I just get a bad feeling about Egypt.  Mubarak is in a tough spot, and unfortunately, when guys like him start to feel cornered, they tend to listen to the kind of advice from some of the assholes they surround themselves with, who almost always advocate a get-tough-show-'em-who's-boss approach.  We saw some of that earlier when the Camel Goons attacked.

Anyway, here's hoping it doesn't come to this.

Cartman Speaks

The Press Poodles in the US are finally starting to look at who the protesters actually are.  It's been a nice little narrative so far, about a genuine grassroots uprising; that there are no real leaders; that the whole thing is spontaneous - as if to say, "The noble Egyptian people are just trying to express their Inner American".  It's a big steaming pile of Newsie bullshit.

Hat Tip: Sully

Just Make Shit Up

It's not like we didn't know this already, but I think it's important to make an effort to keep score, and to remind ourselves that an outfit like DumFux News is not a news organization at all.  So while this article is from the "terminally librul" MediaMatters, and the source is anonymous, we can at least see that it's consistent with practically all the other reports of how DumFux News operates.  Have we ever heard anything from any former DumFux'er that didn't sound a lot like this?

...a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking. 

“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”

And don't forget these little gems:
Leaked Memo
Climate Science

Mr Reagan, 1948

Charlie Brooker

...is a fucking genius.

Part 1


Part 2

Socialism On The March

I'm hoping certain people will be reminded of what happened yesterday in Super Bowl 45  whenever they start waxing rhapsodic about the wonders and the majesty and the supremacy of free-market capitalism.  I don't know exactly what our 'system' should be called, but whatever name you come up with, it sure as hell ain't free-market capitalism - not when the biggest annual Celebration-Of-All-Things-Totally-Awesome-About-America ends with a team owned collectively by the good folks of Green Bay being crowned champions of a business consortium which has thrived since adopting some very 'socialistic' principles.

Climate Change

The Reagan Myth(s)

The big 5 as per Will Bunch at The Washington Post:

1) Reagan is our most popular president
2) Reagan cut taxes
3) Reagan was a hawk
4) Reagan decreased the size of the federal government
5) Reagan was a conservative culture warrior