The Opposites Game

Using the same tactics you criticize your opposition for using.

Let's call this one The Alinsky Gambit.  The following is a list of Power Tactics that Saul Alinsky put together in his 1971 book, Rules For Radicals - A Pragmatic Guide For Realistic Radicals.  See if you can spot the ones being employed by your favorite "conservative" organization.

Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.

The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings.

The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.

The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative.

The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right — we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us."

The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

hat tip = Snopes

And yes, the Dems use the same tactics - but then the Dems aren't saying it's a bad thing for the other side to be doing it.  There's only one side doing that.

Along the same lines - "conservatives" bluster and harrumph about something like Rules For Radicals, but then turn around and mimic the thing they spend so much time and energy slagging.  Here're a coupla books on Amazon that I guess are intended to countervail Alinsky:

Just A Quickie

...on the Bob Menendez thing.

I think it's a bit suspicious that Menendez suddenly has another "corruption problem" pop up just as Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell are getting fried for actually and obviously being corrupt.

I'm not saying it's not possible for Menendez to be less than a perfectly straight shooter - there's a fair probability that he's at least a little crooked, cuz a) he's a politician and b) he's a New Jersey politician.  It's just that the timing seems a little too coincidental, and after the bullshit allegations about him and Dominican hookers, this new stuff has to be seen through very skeptical filters.

But here's the real kicker.  This is a tweet from Brad Dayspring, Repub Nat'l Senatorial Committee:

"one man’s allegations are another man’s evidence."

As long as that other man's a booger-eatin' moron - which is what the GOP Brain Trust thinks we all are.  Unfortunately, they're right when it comes to about 25% of us.

It Occurs To Me

Bad NFL Lip Reading

hat tip = #1 Son

It's All About The Jesus

Closing The Circle

The continuing bad news in West Virginia is that Freedom Industries "Oops-ed" again by neglecting to mention there'd been a second chemical spilled at the same time as the MCHM (it appears they occurred at the same time - tho' nobody's saying for sure).  So there was also a spill of PPH (polyglycol ethers).  But since this other shit is a bit less toxic, we can just kinda overlook all that.

Let's leave aside for just a moment that a 30-year campaign to weaken shitcan our Regulatory Infrastructure continues to produce this ongoing nightmare scenario - from Enron to Wall Street to Deepwater Horizon to Mayflower AR to Charleston WV to everywhere else there's still one GOP/Glibertarian moron bitchin' about how da gubmint just needs to leave us all alone.

OK OK - try a little harder to leave all that shit aside, cuz here's the thing:  The circle is closing.

In West Virginia, the governor has come out and said he doesn't know what's up because he's not a scientist.  The scientists are a little baffled because they've all been working on something other than Air and Water Quality cuz a guy really can't make much of a living doing that anymore (or they're all working for the chemical companies, so they're not likely to bite the hand that feeds 'em).  Da Gubmint is pretty useless because the people who used to work on things like Environmental Health have been forced out by budget cuts etc (see "working for the chemical companies" above), plus the "regulators" who're still on the job were put there by Coin-Operated Politicians who needed to pay off their contributors by demonstrating how Business Friendly they really are.  Of course the private-sector Water Utility can't be expected to do anything because they're held hostage to Big Coal just like everybody else.

And now, Freedom Industries has filed for bankruptcy protection - with a twist:



Everybody's guity; nobody's responsible; nobody can be held accountable.

So they close the loop, which basically indemnifies everybody who by right should be crucified - which is exactly how it's supposed to work - and guess who gets left holding the bag.

One last thing - while everybody's running around yelling about how they don't know anything and they can't do anything, and and and - there is this little thing called The West Virginia Poison Center, and there's a "branch office" right there at The Charleston Area Med Ctr, 3110 Maccorkle Ave SE, Charleston, WV 25304   (800) 222-1222

Election With A Consequence

Blue Virginia links to a story in WaPo, saying our new AG, Mark Herring, will not just blow off defending Virginia's ban on gay marriage, but actually join the suit brought by 2 gay couples to overturn it.

Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring will announce Thursday that he believes the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and that Virginia will join two same-sex couples in asking a federal court to strike it down, according to an official close to the attorney general with knowledge about the decision.

The action will mark a stunning reversal in the state’s legal position on same-sex marriage and is a result of November elections in which Democrats swept the state’s top offices. Herring’s predecessor, Republican Ken Cuccinelli II, adamantly opposes gay marriage and had vowed to defend Virginia’s constitutional amendment banning such unions, which was passed in 2006 with the support of 57 percent of voters.

Prob'ly shouldn't get too het up about it, but this has to be a pretty good sign that the Christianists are losing a big one.

It also points up the importance of getting everybody out to vote.  Herring won his election by less than a thousand.  

Semi-Wow

Bob McDonnell's term as Virignia's Governor ended a week and a half ago, and today a federal grand jury handed down a big stack of indictments for Vaginal Bob and Lady McBarbie.

I'd like to say yay, but two things keep popping into my head.  First, I'm not convinced anybody will really care now.  I believe the thinking will be "gee, isn't he's gone now?" and "lookee there - the system worked - he got voted outa office" and "the Dems won the election - all they wanna do is punish the guy for being a Republican".

And second - that kind of thinking is why these things need to happen while a prick like McDonnell is still in office.  The whole thing almost got negotiated away - "in the interest of what's good for The Commonwealth".  Amazing just how chummy these assholes think they are with "us folks" once it becomes clear they've been fuckin' us with our pants on.

The announcement of the indictments was postponed, and the reasoning we got was so it wouldn't disrupt the elections last fall.  Fuck that shit.  Maybe disruption is what we need.  Maybe voters need to get shook up.  Maybe politicians and pollsters and image consultants and spinmeisters and party operatives - the whole political industry in general needs a collective kick in the nuts.

Taken together, the charges, if they resulted in convictions and maximum sentences, could produce fines in excess of $1 million and put the McDonnells behind bars for decades.

The indictment caps a stunning fall from political grace for the former governor, whose term ended Jan. 11. His tenure produced budget surpluses, restoration of voting rights to a record number of former felons and a landmark transportation funding package, before it was consumed by scandal in his final nine months in office.

I'll bet dollars to dingleberries there were people in positions of power who knew about all this crap a good 2 years ago, when they started vetting McDonnell for 2012 Veep.  None of this came as any kind of surprise to anybody anywhere near shoutin' distance of either party.  But they all kept it cool.  They all started calculating what they might be able to get out of it for themselves and for their own organizations.

Hey, guys - ya wanna know why so many of us get stuck in the Centrist Trap?  Would it interest you at all to learn why we fall for "Both sides do it"?

One side pulls some shit and the other side suddenly goes deaf dumb and blind.

Today's PodCast

From You Are Not So Smart: What's up with all that conspiracy theory shit?



It goes along with the Type 1 Error I posted about earlier.  We take a certain bit of information, it makes us skittish, and at some point (feeling the need for reasons and explanations), we ascribe Agency or Intent to it.

Nobody's saying there can't possibly be anything to any of what you think is a conspiracy regarding certain events or conditions.  But while there are (and have been) in fact many conspiracies to commit various acts both heinous and heroic, The Grand Conspiracy has so far been thoroughly delusional.

Oh yeah - in case you're wondering about the Ant Death Spiral mentioned in the podcast:



The ant gets a bit of info and, since he can't apply any reasoning to the problem, he can only follow along dutifully ("thinking" this is how he gets to a safe dry place that his little ant-sized brain calls home).  Eventually, they all die of starvation and/or dehydration, never even knowing they were acting on insufficient evidence.

The real difference of course is that the ants can't reason their way thru it, while we actually choose not to.

One last bit, for all you Randites out there, I'll paraphrase from The Fountainhead:  The evil at work in the world is when a man recognizes Truth and Beauty as they are, and denies them.

Now You're Mystified

Used To Rule The World --Bonnie Raitt

The Message For 2014

...and beyond - as long as it takes.

Here's the poster for every Democrat running for any office at any level at any time - or until they manage to get outa their own fuckin' way:

It's the Tea Party economy, stupid.

BTW, Dems - ya gotta figure out how to give up the industrial strength corporate funding.  And I get it; it's gonna be harder than quittin' smokin'.  But ya gotta do it, guys.

more than a lousy tip o' the hat = The Professional Left Podcast

Type vs Type

Type 1 Error = False Positive

Type 2 Error = False Negative

(paraphrasing Michael Shermer)
You're a hominid out for a stroll on the African plains 2 million years ago, and you hear a rustle in the grass.  Do you assume it's a dangerous predator, or do you assume it's harmless?

If you identify the sound as a predator, and it turns out to be the wind, then you've made a mistake (a Type 1 Error).  You lose some time, but you've survived - you continue to hunt and to live and to breed.

If you identify the sound as the wind, but it turns out to be a leopard, then you've removed yourself and all your potential descendants from the gene pool.

We are descended from a very long line of creatures who consistently made Type 1 Errors.

And that (partly) explains why we insist on believing in ghosts; and that Elvis is alive; and that there is a god.

Dr Shermer, if you please:

Shit Doesn't Just Happen

Mr Tim Wise on Privilege

I've posted this before in one iteration or another, but it's generally a good idea to repeat the important lessons.  So just think of it as being part of our Continuing Education requirements.



I tend to check on certain things.  And when somebody sounds like he knows what he's talking about, it's even more important to see if he really knows what he says he knows.

Today's Seer

I really do try not to be too dismissive of most people's heart-felt beliefs (yeah, I know - that one prob'ly seems pretty hard to swallow).  The problem is that when guys like Pat Robertson get to where they're guys like Pat Robertson, it just always seems like they goes right 'round the fuckin' bend.

Notice here - in 2011 - the guy makes predictions with some fairly hard dates attached - even tho' he issues the usual bullshit caveat about how it's risky to do exactly what he ends up doing.



Did you get it?  Right now, we're supposed to be completely broke; creditors banging on the doors of the treasury; unemployment way higher than it is; with strife and turmoil; and and and.

These people are phonies.  Stop giving them money you don't have for something that doesn't exist, and which you don't need in the first fuckin' place.

Some Change Is Good

Vaginal Bob is no longer Virginia's Governor.  So, with his departure, along with that of his evil minion Attorney General (Kenny the Kooch), we can finally start to scour the first few layers of crappy governance off the public hide in Richmond.

We shoveled literally hundreds of thousands of public dollars into the pockets of private lawyers so Bob McDonnell would have legal representation once it was disclosed that Cuccinelli shared McDonnell's aversion to keeping his hands outa the cookie jar.  And that's kinda how some of these crooks get away with their shit - it's a fairly simple (and very much time-honored) tradition of making sure nobody's accountable because everybody's guilty.

Hope springs eternal in spite of politicians' constant efforts to kill it, but I insist that it's not unreasonable to expect public officials to act honorably.  So here's hoping  Mark Herring and Terry McAuliffe are at least a little more square with the whole ethical behavior thing.

hat tip = Blue Virginia

Today's Tune

Maybe a little more suited to warmer weather, but I don't really care.

Emma Jean --Amazing Rhythm Aces



btw - Gin and pink lemonade?  Don't knock it 'til ya try it. 'Sides, it's a suthrun thang.  Ya'll just don't git it.

These Kids Today

Political (and other messaging) Manipulation might get some of us to believe practically everything anybody tells us, but it's just as possible that digital tricks get way too many of us to the point where we're not willing to believe anything about anything at all.

Welcome to the dawning of The Age of Radical Skepticism.

Today's Pix

No Means No, Dick

Except, of course, once a woman says "I do", she can't say "No, don't" ever again - she must submit to her husband because she's forfeited all rights to make her own decisions about anything.



And don't even think about giving me shit about my "prejudices against conservatives".  Conservatives don't hold radical views (that's one of the big reasons we call 'em conservative in the first fuckin' place, ya peabrain).  Stop voting for these Taliban assholes.

hat tip = Addicting Info

An Outrageously Blatant Act Of Journalism

And the name of the rat bastard pinko librul media type who insisted on at least trying to hold this valiantly entrepreneurial job creator accountable for something completely out of his control?  Kallie Cart, WCHS Channel 8 Eyewitness News

I have no idea if Ms Cart has done anything else of note in her career, but when a Press Poodle does anything even close to a decent job of imitating a real reporter, I think it's important to pile on some laurels.

Now, maybe if she took a hard look at the failures of the Regulatory Regime, we'd have something even more worthy of my much-sought-after kudos.  Go get 'em, Kallie.  Keep doin' good.

hat tip = Addicting Info

Random Toons

You Are Not So Smart

Another one I stumbled across yesterday:

The Narrative Bias --David McRaney

You Are Not So Smart is a blog I started to explore self delusion. Like lots of people, I used to forward sensational news stories without skepticism and think I was a smarty pants just because I did a little internet research. Little did I know about confirmation bias and self-enhancing fallacies, and once I did, I felt very, very stupid. I still feel that way, but now I can make you feel that way too.

Here is how the blog started: One week, I saw both the Derren Brown person swap and the Invisible Gorilla videos on YouTube, and they blew my mind. Also, at that time, I was marathoning Penn and Teller’s Bullshit! on DVD. I felt like there was a common thread in all of that, something about how flawed perception and reasoning goes unnoticed because we are all so unwittingly overconfident. It reminded me of the experiments that seemed to stir up the most conversation in class when I was taking lots of college psychology courses, and it all just clicked. That would make a cool blog.

Today's Quote

"The great irony is that the only way to be a Conservative Christian is to be a Raving Liberal." --John Fugelsang

Today's PSAs

A few from Right Wing Watch (via SoundCloud):






And an ad for ConStar



hat tip = Addicting Info

Today's Toon

Just a reminder - "both sides do it" is a good way to keep us from making the kinds of changes we need to make.

Echoes

“...you know, I started off talking about schools and highways and prisons and taxes — and I couldn’t make them listen. Then I began talking about niggers — and they stomped the floor.” --George Wallace, reflecting on how he won in 1962 after losing in the previous cycle

Via AlterNet - they have an excerpt from a new book by Ian Haney-Lopez - "Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class."(Oxford University Press, 2014).

The story of dog whistle politics begins with George Wallace. But it does not start with Wallace as he stood that inauguration day. Rather, the story focuses on who Wallace was before, and on whom he quickly became.

Before that January day, Wallace had not been a rabid segregationist; indeed, by Southern standards, Wallace had been a racial moderate. He had sat on the board of trustees of a prominent black educational enterprise, the Tuskegee Institute. He had refused to join the walkout of Southern delegates from the 1948 Democratic convention when they protested the adoption of a civil rights platform. As a trial court judge, he earned a reputation for treating blacks civilly — a breach of racial etiquette so notable that decades later J.L. Chestnut, one of the very few black lawyers in Alabama at the time, would marvel that in 1958 “George Wallace was the first judge to call me ‘Mr.’ in a courtroom.” The custom had been instead to condescendingly refer to all blacks by their first name, whatever their age or station. When Wallace initially ran for governor in 1958, the NAACP endorsed him; his opponent had the blessing of the Ku Klux Klan.

In the fevered atmosphere of the South, roiled by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision forbidding school segregation, the moderate Wallace lost in his first campaign for governor. Years later, the victor would reconstruct the campaign, distilling a simple lesson: the “primary reason I beat [Wallace] was because he was considered soft on the race question at the time. That’s the primary reason.” This lesson was not lost on Wallace, and in turn, would reshape American politics for the next half-century. On the night he lost the 1958 election, Wallace sat in a car with his cronies, smoking a cigar, rehashing the loss, and putting off his concession speech. Finally steeling himself, Wallace eased opened the car door to go inside and break the news to his glum supporters. He wasn’t just going to accept defeat, though, he was going to learn from it. As he snuffed out his cigar and stepped into the evening, he turned back: “Well, boys,” he vowed, “no other son-of-a-bitch will ever out-nigger me again.”

So instead of staying true to his own principles, and understanding that his constituency needed leadership to help move them forward with integration, and to learn some new things about how to treat people with respect and humanity, Wallace only learns how to win elections by appealing to the baser instincts of the tribe.

And the kicker - in case you were wondering why "those dumbass southern rednecks" get to run things? First, try to remember the south has no kinda corner on the market when it comes to rednecks; cuz second, in the week following the episode of Wallace trying to defy Washington:

More than 100,000 telegrams and letters flooded the office of the Alabama governor. More than half of them were from outside of the South. Did they condemn him? Five out of every 100 did. The other 95 percent praised his brave stand in the schoolhouse doorway.

So, more than 50,000 telegrams - many from Illinois and Massachusetts and Colorado and Oregon - came in to Montgomery saying "Yay, George" and "Way to go, Mr Wallace" and "We're with you".  These things do not go unnoticed by the people who help politicians talk us into handing them power.

Here's the Kindle link at Amazon:

If It's Love You're Lookin' For

A few from Concrete Blonde

Joey




Scene Of The Perfect Crime




Mexican Moon

Persuasion

All O' Dis "New" Stuff

I spent some time feelin' a little sheepish if not outright stupid for buying the occasional Leon Redbone record or whatever; I guess it's OK that I saved 'em after all(?)

I don't even know what to call this.
Neo Roots?
American Mid-Folk/Pre-Swing Revival?
Middle Class White Kid Musical Masturbation?

Maybe I should just try to relax and enjoy some solid execution of some really fun tunes.

Pokey LaFarge & The South City Three (via NPR Tiny Desk Concerts)



hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Pokey's bio

Today's Quote

...and also Today's Wingnut; and also Today's Too Self-Absorbed To Be Self-Aware; as well as a good followup on What About Bob:

I was put off by the way the president closed the meeting. To his very closest advisers, he said, “For the record, and for those of you writing your memoirs, I am not making any decisions about Israel or Iran. Joe, you be my witness.” I was offended by his suspicion that any of us would ever write about such sensitive matters.

That's a quick little excerpt from the memoirs written by the obviously irony-challenged Bob Gates.

hat tips = Balloon Juice and Dave Weigel

The New Guy

From God's Perspective --Bo Burnham



Burnham started out just putting up homemade vids on YouTube, and because he's pretty damn good, he managed to cut thru the clutter, and here he is.

BTW - this is a clip from a 1-hour show called "What".  He uploaded the whole thing to make it available on YouTube for free - that's the story I got anyway.

(hat tip = #1 son)

Some of his stuff on Amazon:

Today's Pix

We Don't Soldier So Good

The world's tax dollars hard at work.

Today's Tune

Waiting --Calum Graham

Today's Uber Patriot

From The Columbus Dispatch, via Charlie Pierce:

An Indiana National Guardsman was arrested outside Columbus on New Year’s Day after a state trooper found nearly 50 bombs and the blueprints for a Navy SEAL training facility inside his car, the Madison County prosecutor said yesterday.

Andrew Scott Boguslawski, 43, also had a remote-control device to detonate the bombs, Madison County Prosecutor Stephen Pronai said. Boguslawski’s civilian job is as a groundskeeper at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center in south-central Indiana. Prosecutors could not say definitively yesterday whether the blueprints in his car were for the facility where he worked.
Boguslawski also had a bulletproof vest in his car, Pronai said.

“He said something to the trooper about making a bomb vest,” Pronai said.
Lt. Col. Cathy Van Bree, a spokeswoman for the Indiana National Guard, said Boguslawski is a specialist in the guard who does intelligence analysis and has top-secret clearance.

Pronai said Boguslawski, who is from Moores Hill, Ind., appeared to be heading to Indiana when a state trooper clocked him going 85 mph in a 70 mph zone on I-70. When the trooper came back to the car to give Boguslawski a ticket, he saw the handle of a gun between his legs.

The trooper ordered Boguslawski out of the car and called for backup. Investigators found three more guns in the car — all loaded — and 48 bombs. They also found material to make more explosives.

Pronai said most of the bombs were small. He said investigators from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have searched Boguslawski’s house, and that local and federal investigators are trying to determine whether Boguslawski planned to attack the military facility. They are also combing through a computer, cameras and GPS found in his car.

Boguslawski is charged in Madison County with one count of manufacturing explosives, a second-degree felony. A preliminary court hearing is scheduled for Friday. He is being held at Tri-County Jail in Mechanicsburg in lieu of a $1 million bond.

Somebody please enlighten me as to how this dipwad from the American MidWest is in any discernible way materially different from any randomly selected Taliban/Al Qaeda dipwad from anywhere in South Asia or the Middle East.

And BTW - when Uncle Charlie talks, we should listen:

The argument really isn't about guns, per se. The argument is about a well-financed, and profitable in return, marketing strategy by weapons manufacturers and their sublets in Congress, and the media bubble that they all inhabit, through which people are fed a constant diet of indigestible paranoid crud about the government and the people in it. This isn't all coming directly from some crackpot on a shortwave in upper Michigan. It's the barely concealed subtext of everything that Wayne LaPierre has said in public in his entire career. It's what's behind the winks from Princess Dumbass of the Northwoods, who brags in her book-like product about giving a gun for Christmas as an act of "civil disobedience." There is a culture being created, and there are reckless, opportunistic people who are turning a buck on it, and not everybody marinating in that culture is necessarily the most well-balanced jar on the shelf. This isn't about guns. It is about weaponry. It is about why someone would arm themselves so luxuriously, and how they came to believe it was necessary. I think we've been awfully damned lucky so far.

I Have A Question

"Conservatives" - especially those identifying as TheoCons - (usually) like to piss and moan about how Da Gubmint always fucks everything up.

A coupla questions really - how come so many TheoCons want Da Gubmint all up in their religion?  If you let Da Gubmint get mixed up in your religion, then doesn't your ideology demand the conclusive assumption that your religion is gonna get all fucked up?

Just wonderin'.

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.