Just Keep Pluggin' Away

Repubs lost big last month, but you wouldn't know it by their behavior lately.  Right now, they're concentrating on The Fiscal "Cliff" - which I'm sure you already know is really more of a gentle incline, but hey, we need something to angst about so let's pump up the high school fuck-around drama to maintain some level of interest.  If We The People aren't tuned in on the issues, then the politicians have to admit the thing's a bit of a scam.  But if we "really know what's going on", then we'd be able to see for ourselves what a scam it is, and that's even worse.  So Politicians and Press Poodles come up with ways of framing the issues and reporting the proceedings that keep voters lined up in support of one side or the other.  Red Pols need to point at their numbers to make their claims of "the American people are with us..." and the Blue Pols do basically the same from their side.  The big difference here is that the Red Pol Supporters are almost always on board with bullshit - Climate Change is a hoax; Eric Holder is confiscating guns; tax cut equals tax revenue increase; democracy is threatened because too many people are voting; etc.  Repubs haven't stopped promoting all that crap because The Big Lie works, and we're seeing it in action.

I guess we should expect more of the same as the fight for party control in the GOP continues.

The problem, of course is that we'll be presented various choices from the menu of "very serious GOP intellectuals" who have to carry several tons of Tea Party baggage (which they won't be allowed to offload any time soon), and who'll have to pretend all that dead weight is actually a good thing because it represents good old American Values blah blah blah - which means they'll either never get out of The Bubble, or by the time they're allowed to talk about what they really wanna do, we'll know they don't really know what the fuck they're talking about anyway.  Reality can really harsh your mellow.

Enjoy a little Krugman right now:

As Jonathan Chait points out, Bobby Jindal — who is supposed to be one of the intellectual leaders of his party — has just published an op-ed on the cliff that sure looks as if he has no idea whatsoever what the cliff is about. There’s nothing in that piece even hinting that the looming problem is spending cuts and tax increases that will shrink the deficit too soon; and his big policy ideas would actually make the lurch to austerity worse. It’s not just the idea of a balanced budget amendment, which would force harsh austerity every time the economy goes into recession; putting a cap on spending as share of GDP would do the same, because you’d have to cut spending whenever GDP went down.

Bonnie's New One

Borderline spectacular.

Denis Leary

Yeesh

Just how stoopid do these guys think the rubes are?



Pretty fuckin' stoopid.

Exxon Hates Your Kids

Today's Pix

Maybe Good - Maybe Not

Here's the headline:  "Physicists Bummed That Physics Is Pretty Much What They Expected" (The Atlantic)

The Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs boson. Hooray! Success for the big machine!

But not really.

The discovery of the Higgs means that an entire era of physics -- in which the so-called Standard Model of particles was theorized and then proven -- has come to an end. And the LHC is not creating any new mysteries to investigate. Physics is following the predictions too closely.

I think I realize that a lot of people were anticipating some surprises when they cranked up the LHC, and I think I understand the disappointment when "all you get" is confirmation of things you expected to happen all along.  Not to mention the difficulties you'll have now that the very large piles of money spent on the very large project might disappear if you can't come up with some new shit to theorize about.

I'm just really hoping the reaction to the results coming out of Lucerne isn't something like, "Well, we know it all now.  It's not possible for us to learn anything else because there's nothing more to learn."  No matter what, guys, ya gotta keep working at it.

Prof Parenti

Here's something that isn't new.




And here's why it isn't new:
(John Kenneth Galbraith's series from the 70s)

Mr Madison Speaks

hat tip = Charles Pierce

Notwithstanding the general progress made within the two last centuries in favour of this branch of liberty, & the full establishment of it, in some parts of our Country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between [government] & Religion, neither can be duly supported. Such indeed is the tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both the parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded [against].  -- James Madison to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822.

While you're at it, read Charlie's bit on Simpson-Bowles:

So, comes the end of the day, and just when you least expect it, Eric Cantor lets John Boehner out of the leg irons long enough to present a "reply" to the president's plan to avoid sliding us all down the Gentle Fiscal Incline. Whether it is lighter on specifics, or on political reality is a question best left to philosophers at this point, but it is in no sense a "plan" any more than is the average food riot. Among its happy provisions, it seeks to raise the age for Medicare eligibility and cut Social Security benefits. If this seems familiar to you, it should, because it's pretty much what Erskine Bowles suggested a year ago, when the president's prospects were not very bright and neither, it should be said, was Bowles. Anyway, I'm sure Boehner accounts himself clever for throwing Bowles's discreet granny-starving back at the president. Cantor may let him have a whole cookie tonight.

Quick tho't:  let's not burn up any more mental ergs than we have to trying to understand and/or explain why the Repubs don't seem to groc that they lost the election and they should be making nice with Harry and The Prez.  The guys running this show don't fucking care what anybody thinks because they know they can make some of us think almost anything. They're playing the long game (with some very long green) and they'll just keep pushing their shit until they drop.

But remember that even dictators have to have some popular support (that's why they spend so much time and money on advertising).  The one thing we can do is to make sure our Congress Critters hear a message that's a little contrary to what they're dishing out to us.

So call 'em - every day or every week, or whatever - it has to become a habit.  If he's "on your side", then he needs to hear you're with him.  If she's not, she needs to know there's a bunch of people out here who don't think she's doing the people's business by just going along with the crowd.

Happy Zappadan, Everybody

Today is Bummer Nacht (aka: the last day Frank Zappa refused to die), and marks the beginning of Zappadan, the festival celebrating the life and works of one of the best (and sometimes weirdest) people in all of artdom.

Expect miracles.



(hat tip = BlueGal)

Bill Burr

Two guys working in stand up right - Bill Burr and Louis CK - I think may be the voices of American men in the 21st century.

They go all the way out there to some places that're pretty weird and a little scary, and then bring it all the way back.  Phenomenal.

No More Mr Nice-Guy

"They call me Mr President".

That’s what you’re really seeing in this “proposal.” Previously, Obama’s pattern had been to offer plans that roughly tracked where he thought the compromise should end up. The White House’s belief was that by being solicitous in their policy proposals, they would win goodwill on the other side, and even if they didn’t, the media would side with them, realizing they’d sought compromise and been rebuffed. They don’t believe that anymore.

So The Prez is all fired up and scowl-y and the Repubs just don't know how to deal with it.

Let's hope this signals the time when we can stop calling Obama "President Lawnchair", and that he fully intends to stick his hat in their gizzle.

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

Once Upon A Time

Huh?

I don't even know what to say.





...Except that there's just no way for this to be anything but parody.  The problem - I guess one of the problems - is that some percentage of people out there will take it to heart.

Another problem is that I haven't found anything yet to debunk it.  The internet can be a very weird place.

Start The Clock

I get pretty sick of these mush-brained jagoffs and their predictions of dire horribleness.



So let's see if there's anything true about any of this crap 5 years from now.  Oh, gosh.  I forgot.  Beck and others of his stripe always put these things far enough out so we're sure  not to recall what they actually said way back 5 years ago.

I don't know how to chronicle all of the doofery, but let's see what happens a few years down the road (assuming I'm still here), when somebody comes back to my little blog and clicks on the "predictions" tag.

About Susan Rice

If you wanna bitch about something, at least bitch about something real.

From TruthDig:

It turns out that Susan Rice, President Obama’s apparent favorite for the next secretary of state, has financial investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that stand to profit from the growth of the North American tar sands industry and the operation of the proposed multibillion-dollar Keystone XL pipeline.

If Rice gets the job, Scott Dodd at OnEarth writes, one of her “first duties likely would be consideration, and potentially approval, of the controversial mega-project.”

Mike's First Rule - it's never about what they tell you it's about.

So while McCain and Graham and Ayotte stomp around yelling "Benghazi cover-up", the real shit slides on by without anybody noticing.

And they wonder why Congress has an approval rating in the low zeroes.

Professional Left Podcast

More smart people talking about important stuff:

The Professional Left

d r i f t g l a s s

BlueGal

Instant Gratificationist

Have You Ever Seen Bird Balls?

Watching The Science Channel the other night, I learned where hiccups come from (a "theory" about it anyway), and as I was looking around for evolution stuff, I stumbled on this.



Here's the teaser for Mankind Rising:

It's Simple, Really

Ramps Levers and Wheels.  That's all it is.

But y'know - they never had Legos like this when I was a kid.



(hat tip = Fail Blog)