Today's Deep Thought

It's illegal in the US for any person to own another person - because people are people and  not property.

If a corporation is a person, then why is it legal for anybody to own it?

Service To Their Country

This young man is a great example of who we want serving in a professional military, and a perfect example of what we stand to lose when we make stupid decisions on what we want those pros to do.

John Kasich

...is a petty, vindictive prick.

Col Wilkerson

When I piss and moan about 'honor', this is part of what I have in mind.

Larry Wilkerson is no hero owing to the simple fact that he didn't say any of this when he was in a position to make it stick, and to make a difference by coming out with it. It's possible that he was just too close to the problem at the time; or that he was living the nightmare scenario for any military pro, where you start to get the feeling that the people in charge are leading you off the cliff, but your training and experience are telling you just to keep your head down and do the work. "Theirs not to reason why" and all that shit.

In the end, though, every soldier has to make a judgement call as to whether or not his orders are inside the legal and ethical boundaries. You don't ever stop being responsible for your own actions.



Watch the whole series here.

Ah Yes, I Get It Now

Today, Stan Collender is the smartest guy in the room.

Here's his lead-in to his blog post at Capital Gains and Games.

On the one hand, many Congressional Republicans are insisting that they don’t have to vote for an increase in the debt ceiling because the presumed dire consequences of not acting won’t be that bad. On the other hand, they’re also insisting that not raising the debt ceiling will indeed be harmful and, therefore, the White House had better agree to do what they want.

Spectacular.

Nice Try, Willard

Romney's new campaign ad takes a line from an Obama speech, and tries to do a turn-around. It fails badly, but I'm not sure anybody's gonna notice.

My question: In that one line - or anywhere in that whole speech - how exactly did Obama say unemployed people were bumps in the road?

This is typical Repub nonsense. They're so sure you have your head up your ass, they think that's how they need to talk to you. It's as if they're saying that there were so many people unemployed, it caused a recession.

If your premise is false, it's impossible for your conclusion to be true.

And Jesus Wept

Rick Santorum stakes his claim to the extreme. He says he wants criminal prosecution for a doctor who performs an abortion procedure, but he won't support penalties for a woman seeking the abortion. So there's the catch (and there's always a catch). These guys just want to look good for their wingnuts, and make it seem a little less than complete horseshit for the rest of us, while they push for laws that will turn out to be impossible to enforce, and overturned on the first challenge in any court.

I'm very glad the Dems are finally getting around to calling these dipwads out, even tho' the Press Poodles can't quite figure out how to ask these guys what exactly the law would require.

Scenario: You cross paths at the grocery store with a woman you're casually acquainted with. You chat, and she tells you she's pregnant for the 4th time, and you get the impression she's not too thrilled about it. You see her again 5 months later. She's obviously not pregnant now. She tells you she "lost the baby a few weeks ago", and she seems not only relieved, but kinda happy about it. Under Santorum's Law, are you obligated (as a good citizen) to report this to the local authorities so they can question her and decide whether or not there's been illegal activity?

The Wallow Fire

Still not contained, the fire has eaten over 400k acres since it started (May 30).

More great news; dry and windy weather should push it well over the current champion fire (from 2002) into first place by a fair margin.

See the progress of the beast here.

We hear practically nothing any more about AGW when these disasters pop up.  Have we finally begun to notice that when one of these huge things happens - lately anyway - we're no longer looking back to the 1800s or (usually) even the early 1900s to find the previous record-setting event?  So we've just kinda quietly accepted the whole thing now?

Typical Nonsense

Herman Cain doesn't like the term African-American because he doesn't like being "labeled".  So he labels himself "American. Black. Conservative."

Jeffrey Goldberg's post over at Bloomberg:

At a convention of the Conservative Political Action Committee in February, Cain told an enthusiastic audience: “They call me racist too, because I disagree with a president who happens to be black.” To cheers, he went on, “You will get called racist simply because you happen to disagree with a president who happens to be black. You are not racists! You are patriots because you are willing to stand up for what you believe in!”

That last bit is what I've come to see as a good example of a defining statement for "conservatives" in general.

I think what he's trying to say is about right - dissent is a patriotic thing.  But in their little heads, the rubes are going to decode that message as: "my political positions may mean I'm a racist, but as long as I stand up and declare them openly, then my racism makes me a patriot; and I know this because my black friend Herman told me so."

Along the same lines (and remembering their willingness to accept revised history), support for Cain also provides the Repubs additional cover.  "See?  We have a black guy too.  But our black is a good black guy.  He's not all superior and uppity like your black guy."

Quick Question

Gabby Giffords should be going home after almost 6 months of treatment which (so far) has included trauma surgery, many days in ICU, at least 2 high-level MedEvac style transports, reconstructive surgery, 150+ days inpatient time, etc.

I'm not bitchin' about it, but what exactly did all this cost us?

Second, what about the costs of caring for all the other victims of that one shooting incident?

I don't think it's a stretch to assume we're talking about multiple millions here.  So really what I'm asking is this:  On what plane of existence does it make sense for a society to spend that kinda money for the sake of a manufacturer, a wholesaler and a retailer to make $36 on a 30-shot magazine?

More Happy Prospects

Radioactive Iodine:

Prepare to evolve - or mutate if you prefer.

Janet Sherman, MD (at Counterpunch)

Lila York (at OEN)

Makes me wonder; maybe the Repubs are trying to stuff all the social programs because they believe we're all gonna be really sick as a result of de-regulation and poor enforcement, while the Dems aren't really worried about Entitlements because we'll all be dead before we qualify for them anyway.

Happy Prospects

We're looking forward to a nice economic boost because American companies have over a third of a trillion dollars in contracts pending for guns and bombs and shit.

From channelnewsasia.com, by way of The Agonist:

In all, over 13,000 contracts are currently underway with 165 countries for $327 billion, according to Landay.

Perpetual war, permanent crisis mode.  Every time we turn around, there's another outrageous attempt to strip away people's rights, or to roll back a bunch of the real social advances of the last 50 years or so; along with a juicy new scandal of some kind that distracts us from those outrages.

It's a circular process: threat of pain, application of pain, relief of pain.  We're willingly participating in our own mass torture.  But it's not a circle at all.  It's a spiral, and it's not going anywhere good.

They Don't Buy What You Do

Simon Sinek provides some of the best sales training I've ever heard. Also works for managers, job seekers, parents, and just plain humans.

Today's SIlliness

I can kinda see this, but I had to ask Irene - and she was happy to read it to me.  Maybe a little too happy.

 

Today's T-Shirts

We Are So Fucked

Labor problems aren't going to get any better any time soon.  We've been pumping out MBAs by the carload, and they're working up thru the system with a kind of single-minded focus on Productivity Improvement as the one true path to profitability.  "Do more with less" is all well and good - everybody needs to be mindful of conserving resources and keeping costs down.  But when you take any one aspect of good management and turn it into an obsession, you're asking for trouble.

Here's today's formula:

  Economic Growth
- Productivity Growth
  Employment Growth

So, you're either making the same amount of stuff with fewer people, or you're making more stuff with the same number of people.  The thinking is that it doesn't really matter which way it tips, if you concentrate on Productivity, the bottom line stays healthy.

If you view it from inside the US, then we're just cannibalizing ourselves, and before long the whole thing craters because there aren't enough workers who can afford to buy the stuff they're making.  But Capital has no respect for political boundaries or any other civilizing conventions.  A market of 300 million Americans matters a lot less when your Potential Customer Pool is close to 7 BILLION.  Of course, that means we're cannibalizing the whole world now, but we believe strongly that by spreading the stress over a much broader surface, we minimize the problems and (most important) we postpone the crash long enough to find some solutions.  Color me dubious.  In the long run, it's still not sustainable.

We have to figure out how to rebalance.  There's always tension between Private and Public; Individual and Collective; Labor and Management; and and and.  It's a Yin-and-Yang universe, but that doesn't make it strictly binary, where it's always and only a choice between one extreme or the other.  It's not a Net Zero thing.  You don't have to lose for me to win.  And if everybody has to lose for me to win, then what's the point?  I can scramble to the top, slaying my competitors along the way; chasing down the gazelles according to my leonine instincts; cracking bones and sucking out the marrow of every deal, blah blah blah - but what have I accomplished?  In the end, I'm standing alone on a hill in the middle of a dead world.

I reject the premise that Economics has to be bloodless and dispassionate and without heart; that business has to be about conquest and consumption.  I expect people to conduct themselves honorably.

The Miss Dys-Remembering Pageant

A Minor Reminder

We're dealing with the massive hangover from the biggest, craziest party ever. There's no way to hurry it along, it just takes time. Of course, it'd be nice if certain people weren't walking around banging pots and pans together, and generally acting as if they're intentionally trying to make things worse.

Welcome Home, Sarge

I guess all I can say is that you should get used to it(?)  And also that this is actually what you've been fighting for, in spite of what you believe you were supposed to be fighting for.

Privatization is the newspeak term for when Government is manipulated in order to pump public dollars into private pockets.

For myself, I can only say I'm sorry for not being able to keep you from it.

Free Markets

Like everything else, Labor is a marketable item - a commodity just like any other.

When a business manager is trying to figure out what his plan should be for the coming year/quarter/whatever, he has to figure out what the costs will be for him to produce the goods and services his company offers.  He has things like rent, and equipment, and taxes, and raw materials, and labor.  He looks at several options before he moves into the space he needs for his operation; he invites at least 3 vendors to bid on selling him the stuff he needs to build whatever he's selling, etc.  The point is to get some real competition going in order to drive down his costs.

If he can pay some dues to Chamber of Commerce, or American Manufacturer's Assn, or some other trade group that can help him elect sympathetic politicians who will pass laws and enact policies that drive down the cost of practically everything, then he benefits greatly; and he will do exactly what we see being done to American workers right now.

When you look at Paul Ryan's budget plan, you needn't wonder why it seems he intends to tamp down on Medicare; he intends to press down on all aspects of the cost of labor because his Corporate Masters have told him to push the labor market to be more highly competitive.    They understand that when you have 100 people standing in line to fill an opening for one decent job, then you've basically created a bidding war.  Suddenly, every prospective employee (aka Labor Vendor) has to bid on that job, and the "winner" is the guy who's willing to do it for the lowest pay, or the longest hours, or the crappiest benefits, or whatever.

You think politicians aren't doing enough to get the economy going again?  Then you're thinking about it from the wrong angle.  The economy is actually going pretty well for the ownership class; all they're trying to do is to figure out how to placate us just enough to keep us from taking to the streets and burnin' this shit down.