Logical Fallacies Explained

Your Logical Fallacy Is (website - you can scroll thru them all and get a good synopsis for each one)

Today's Tunes

"Tight" and "Nawlins" and "JazzFunk" are not the kinda words that often bump into each other in the same sentence.

Trombone Shorty at NPR Tiny Desk Concerts:

What About Bob?

Juan Cole is not given to the kind of exaggeration necessary for political slagging.  One of the redeeming qualities of "The Academy" is that generally they understand how important it is to maintain their good standing in the company of their peers; so it's pretty rare for any high-profile academician to stray widely from the fold when it comes to speaking out too strongly about much of anything unless he's very confident of his position.  They're really a pretty conservative bunch - which seems odd, doesn't it? - since all we ever hear is that they're exactly the opposite?  I wonder what that's all about.

Anyhoo - Bob Gates has left our employ, and it's time for him to suck around for his place on the Wingnut Welfare Circuit; but first he has to re-establish his worthiness with the Repub faithful (after all, he went to work for "those people") so he's taken a giant shit on Obama's head no, that ain't it.

He's written a book nope sorry, missed again

Wait, I got it: He's offering a good-n-greasy literary handjob to any "conservative" who needs to get his rocks off by hearing another privileged Washington insider calling The Prez a lazy shiftless no-good dirty infantile pickaninny - all in polite-sounding coded language of course.

But perhaps I go too far - and perhaps that's why I'm a low-rent blogger while Juan Cole gets paid pretty good to do this kinda thing a lot better:

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his new memoir is said to have slammed Vice President Joe Biden for having been consistently “wrong” on foreign policy matters over the past four decades.

Gates’s petty gossip about his former colleagues should put an end to the pusillanimous Democratic Party tradition of appointing Republicans as secretaries of defense in Democratic administrations.

There is a lot to like about Gates. He over time became something like a defensive realist. He appears to have helped prevent Dick Cheney and the Neocons from attacking Iran. He warns against the seductive character of drone warfare, and wants a court to sign off on drone strikes. He said he thought any military commander who wanted to take US troops into another big ground war should have his head examined. He is scathing on the grandstanding and sadism of congressmen during hearings.

But lest it be forgotten, Gates’s career has been checkered and he has been consistently wrong about foreign policy himself. To wit:

1. Gates as a high official at the CIA was involved in the 1970s and 1980s invastly exaggerating the economic and military power of the Soviet Union...

2. When he was a high official at the CIA in the mid to late 1980s, Gates was involved in selling Pentagon weaponry to the Ayatollah Khomeini. ...

3. Not only did the Reagan administration in which Gates served as a loyal capo illegally steal weaponry from Pentagon warehouses...

4. Gates was, further, involved in further covert provision of weaponry, including chemicals and biological precursors to Saddam Hussein of Iraq. ...

5. Gates was among the architects of the US policy of giving billions to far right Muslim jihadis (Mujahideen) such as Gulbadin Hikmatyar in northern Pakistan...

6. The Afghanistan jihad waged by Gates and others at the CIA involved pressuring Saudi intelligence also to raise funds for it. The Saudis asked Osama Bin Laden to help as a fundraiser. ...

7. Gates and others in the Reagan administration appear to have downplayed Pakistan’s nuclear program...

8. Gates thinks that the 2007 Bush troop escalation or “surge” was effective. ...

9. Gates was confident in 2008 that a troop escalation in Afghanistan could allow for free and fair elections and actually said that the Taliban held no territory and the security problems in that country were exaggerated.

10. Gates asserts that he believes that once the US winds down its military role in Afghanistan, that country will be on a fairly good track to success. ...

Sochi 2014

Walt Putin is a Soviet era kinda guy, and he's having a difficult time breaking with the old Soviet habit of trying to get style to triumph over substance. (not that he's the only politico who seems always to fall for his own bullshit - just sayin', y'know?)

Read about some of this shit at UK's Daily Mail.

By The Numbers

Not that it'll matter one little bit, but hey - I'm in full Quixote mode, so fut da wuk.

The success of Costco, Trader Joe’s, QuikTrip and Mercadona, Spain’s biggest supermarket chain, indicate, [business professor Zeynep Ton] argues, that well-paid, knowledgeable workers are not an indulgence often found in luxury boutiques with their high markups. At each of the aforementioned companies, workers are paid more than at their competitors; they are also amply staffed per shift. More employees can ask customers questions about what they want to see more of and what they don’t like, and then they are empowered to change displays or order different stock to appeal to local tastes. (In big chains, these sorts of decisions are typically made in headquarters with little or no line-staff input.) Costco pays its workers about $21 an hour; Walmart is just about $13. Yet Costco’s stock performance has thoroughly walloped Walmart’s for a decade.

Lest We Forget

Shit Happens.

And the shit that happens on any given media platform doesn't happen by accident.

If you wanna know how things got to Level Cluster Fuck, here's a golden oldie:

That's a near-perfect example of the Double Negative being used against us by a shrinking number of increasingly rich; increasingly powerful people.  

First, you wanna make "the science" (in this case AGW) seem sketchy, so you need to slam it directly with a good dose of False Equivalence by suggesting that the opinion of average poorly informed Americans is just as valid as the scientific findings of trained pros.  But second, you must always reinforce the notion that science is bad, so you make sure the numbers in your "Scientific Polling" don't quite add up.

Persuasion is not the point - the point here is to maintain the divisions between people, which maintains the balance (Red Team/Blue Team, Con vs Lib, Repubs against Dems), which maintains the status quo, which favors the current holders of power.

By playing both sides, and then by convincing us that both sides are equal - and equally bad - the Power Holders get to stay in power.

Maybe I'm seeing it just because I'm looking for it, but it seems to be in play all over the joint. (btw, hat tip to The Professional Left Podcast)

Ever wonder why the Repubs keep repeating the same ol' crap?  Benghazi, IRS, Birth Certificate, Luxury Vacations, etc etc etc?  First you pump up each new "scandal" by launching phony investigations and making the rounds at DumFux News and the Sunday Morning Circle Jerk.  Then, when it's time to run an election campaign, you slag Obama for "this culture of corruption", and make loud declarations about how "the American people are suffering from a profound bout of Scandal Fatigue".  Sound familiar?

The Chase:  Apathy favors the Status Quo.  Voter Suppression - whether by statute or by media manipulation or whatever else the tricksters come up with - reinforces the status quo.  Status quo favors those currently in power.  Did I already say that?  Get used to hearing it.  Power is supposed to change hands on a regular basis here in our little experiment in self-government.  The fact that it doesn't; and seeing as how things have gotten more than a little fucked up, I have to think the problem lies partly with the ones holding the power; but just as importantly, the problem lies with those of us who refuse to see the problem in order to avoid the responsibility for doing anything about it.

From Common Dreams:

Other recent studies looked at partisanship. A paper published last year by Volscho and Nathan Kelly, a political scientist at the University of Tennessee and a co-author of the gridlock study, found that, between 1949 and 2008, a one percent increase in congressional seats held by Republicans (about five seats), correlated with the top one percent of households seeing their share of the nation’s income go up by about four-fifths of a percent, regardless of which party occupied the White House.

Others have looked at how the ideological positions of the two major parties play a role. And a number of studies have concluded that the average voting patterns of senators from both parties tend to align with the interests of the wealthy first and foremost, of the middle class occasionally and almost never those of the poor.

So if you like the way things are, then keep doing nothing.  Don't vote.  Don't state any opinion in any public forum other than "they're all alike, and they all suck".

Don't rock the boat.  Conform and be dull.

And pretty much above all, you must never ever question the conventional wisdom of "choosing the lesser of two evils is still evil".  Guess what - if you deliberately avoid choosing the lesser evil, then you're leaving it to someone else to choose the greater evil for you.

America's Best Christian

Mrs Betty Bowers explains:



And I guess sometimes, when the jokes are actually in charge and way too many people are taking them way too seriously, then it just ain't funny no more.

hat tip = Addicting Info

Today's PSA

"Sorry, we didn't agree to this - this wasn't in the script..."



75% of all Americans know someone who is (or was) a victim of Domestic Violence - that's 232,500,000 of us.

Every day, 4 Americans are murdered by their intimate partners. Four. Every. Fucking. Day.

Worth a visit - RAINN

Will The Real Hornswogglers Please Stand Up?

Turns out that "privatization" is often just another word for Ripping Off The Taxpayer (thank you, Captain Obvious).

  Out of Control

hat tip = naked capitalism

Caveat: The report is obviously intended to make a point, but that doesn't mean it's not truthful.  My biggest problem is that I can't think of one example of privatizing that hasn't  carried with it a load of waste fraud and abuse - you know, exactly what the Anti-Gubmint bozos are always bitching about.

Today's Pix

On The Very Bad Year

"Obama had a lousy year" - that's kinda the theme for 2013.  Bullshit, says I.

"The Left" - for want of a better descriptor - has acquired a kind of self esteem problem. God forbid they do or say anything that might leave them open to being criticized for supporting Obama even when he does something they don't agree with.

So we get lots of Obama slagging - Hippie Punching if you prefer.  The best way to inoculate yourself from being tagged as an ObamaBot is to shit on Obama's head whenever you get the chance.

Anyway - cutting to the chase:  Turns out that Obama's a politician who disappoints us once in a while.  Wow - now there's a revelation.

He's not the god-sent messiah everybody on "The Right" is saying everybody on "The Left" is saying he is.  But y'know, he is actually healing the sick (ACA) and he did manage to raise the dead (GM), so hey - maybe we should just chill a little and give him a hand now and then, and just wait to see if he's got something else up his sleeve for us.

We're still here; we've got another war winding down; we're not in default; the economy sputters a lot but it's moving in a generally upward direction (while the deficit continues downward); we have something that resembles an actual budget in place; and considering the Cocktail of Clusterfuck he has to deal with every fuckin' day, I think it's pretty remarkable the Prez still gets up every morning and heads into the office to see if he can get something done.

Here's to hoping for an even better year in 2014.

What It Ain't

This is not entitlement:

This is entitlement:

Putting The Lie To It

"Liberal Bias in the Media".  We hear it all the time, and once in a while, somebody comes up with something that should be considered proof that there's no such thing - that the truth is exactly the opposite - and still, we just can't seem to break thru.  I wonder why that is.

Here's a little chart from a post at MSNBC by Steve Benen:

The above chart shows every political figure who made 10 or more Sunday show appearances this year, with red columns representing Republicans and blue columns representing Democrats. For 2013, the race wasn’t especially close – House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) easily came out on top, making 27 appearances this year. That works out to an average of one appearance every 1.9 weeks (or 2.25 Sunday show appearances a month, every month for a year).

And just in case you're inclined to think NBC is booking these guys in order to grill 'em a little - to hold their feet to the fire - uh uh.  Watch a few of these weekly circle jerks, and then try to tell me the main point of the enterprise isn't about coin-operated politicians selling us a box full of fog.

Ray And Bonnie

Do I Ever Cross Your Mind? --Ray Charles and Bonnie Raitt



A year ago today.

Haiku You

The Rude Pundit has opened his annual(?) Kaiku Contest thingie - submit a Haiku and get it published on the interwebs!  Woohoo!

His example for today:

Soul-free GOP
Shits on the souls of Newtown,
Fellates NRA.

You can email your entries to: rudepundit@yahoo.com

One Day It Called To You

The Summer Wind --Sinatra

Running A Little Contrary

The 12 Days After Christmas --Julia Murney



The first day after Christmas my true love and I had a fight.
And so I chopped the pear tree down and burned it just for spite.
Then with a single cartridge, I shot that blasted partridge,
My true love, my true love, my true love gave to me.

The second day after Christmas, I pulled on the old rubber gloves.
And very gently wrung the necks of both the turtle doves,
My true love, my true love, my true love gave to me.

The third day after Christmas, my mother caught the croup.
I had to use the three Frech hens to make some chicken soup.

The four calling birds were a big mistake, for their language was obscene.
The five gold rings were completely fake and they turned my fingers green .

The sixth day after Christmas, the six laying geese wouldn't lay.
I gave the whole darn gaggle to the A.S.P.C.A.

On the seventh day what a mess I found.
All seven of the swimming swans had drowned,
My true love, my true love, my true love gave to me.

The eighth day after Christmas, before they could suspect,
I bundled up the eight maids a milking,
nine pipers piping,
ten ladies dancing,
'leven lords a leaping,
twelve drummers drumming - actually, I kept one of the drummers -

and sent them back collect.

I wrote my true love, "We are through, love",
and I said in so many words,
"Furthermore your Christmas gifts were for the birds!"

Deep In The Heart Of Me

I've Got You Under My Skin --Sinatra (Live At The Sands)

Today's Quote

Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

-- James Madison to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822.

hat tip = Charlie Pierce

Happy Newtonmas, Everybody