It's Gotta Stop

How stupid do we have to be?  How bad does it have to get before we know that it has to stop, and it can only stop when we stand up and make it stop?

If you have the stomach for it, look at these pictures closely, and then tell me you don't understand how men and women in uniform are all fucked up in the head when we finally let them come home.  Why can't they just chill out and relax?  Why do so many of them look away - sometimes they seem embarrassed or even ashamed - while we're falling all over ourselves trying to convince them how grateful we are when all we can do is recite a few meaningless cliches about service and sacrifice that we heard on TV or we saw on a Facebook post?

There's no such thing as a Non-Combatant, and there sure as hell ain't no Un-Wounded Warriors.  What we've been doing for the last 15 years; the damage we're doing - purposefully - to an entire generation of American kids, as well as populations around the world - I guess all I can say is that every one of these asswipe TheoCons better hope there's no god after all, cuz he's gonna be pretty fuckin' pissed at all this shit.

Thinly Veiled

They don't call it influence-peddling, and they sure as hell don't call it bribery - they don't even call it lobbying any more - and before too much longer, they won't have to call it anything because we won't be able to see it.  The whole rotten thing will be scrubbed and sanitized to the point where not even the people participating in the scam will be able to recognize the stench of their own corruption.  Remember, we have great capacity for rationalization; bordering closely on self-delusion.



BTW - it's Russia TV.  So grains of salt are in order.  That said, sometimes the most honest criticism comes from your fiercest rival.

Here's the Link to Republic Report

Today's Pix

Logical Fallacy # 4: The Fallacy Fallacy

From Wikipedia:

Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false.[1] It is also called argument to logic (argumentum ad logicam), fallacy fallacy,[2] fallacist's fallacy,[3] and bad reasons fallacy.[4]
Fallacious arguments can arrive at true conclusions, so this is an informal fallacy of relevance.[5]

Form[edit]:

It has the general argument form:

If P, then Q.

P is a fallacious argument.

Therefore, Q is false.[6]

Thus, it is a special case of denying the antecedent where the antecedent, rather than being a proposition that is false, is an entire argument that is fallacious. A fallacious argument, just as with a false antecedent, can still have a consequent that happens to be true. The fallacy is in concluding the consequent of a fallacious argument has to be false.

That the argument is fallacious only means that the argument cannot succeed in proving its consequent.[7] But showing how one argument in a complex thesis is fallaciously reasoned does not necessarily invalidate the proof; the complete proof could still logically imply its conclusion if that conclusion is not dependent on the fallacy:

All great historical and philosophical arguments have probably been fallacious in some respect... If the argument is a single chain, and one link fails, the chain itself fails with it. But most historians' arguments are not single chains. They are rather like a kind of chain mail which can fail in some part and still retain its shape and function.  --David Hackett Fischer, Historians' fallacies[3]

Making The Case

...with the case being that "conservatives" and DumFux News are all about the hyper-partisan politics and not about the policy at all.

From Media Matters (hat tip = Democratic Underground):



Another straightforward conservative, being all rational and pragmatic.  And of course, that's just crap all day long, because Chuckles Clownhummer said very nearly exactly the opposite when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008:

What is to be done? Let's be real. There's nothing to be done militarily. What we can do is alter Putin's cost-benefit calculations.

I wonder what changed.

Today's Reality

I don't watch "reality TV" because it's anything but reality.  I guess I should say I don't watch much of it.  I do feel the need to check in on it once in a while - partly because I have teenagers who watch way too much of that shit, and partly because ya gotta take a peek at whatever passes for "the popular culture" once in a while.

So anyway, the Kardashians and the Robertsons and all these other over-privileged addicted-to-themselves attention whores have absolutely nothing to say and nothing to do unless they first go as far outa their way as possible to find something to piss and moan about; and once they find something to get bitchy about, they go even farther outa their way to make sure their friends and family members are the ones they scuffle with over it.  BTW: they keep it "in the family" because the writers and the producers (and most importantly, the marketeers) have told them that's what the rubes viewing public want to see.  Nobody's that dysfunctional without being Deliberately and Purposefully Dysfunctional.  So that's pretty fucked up right there, but knowing it's what we asked for is even more fucked up.

Anyway - take all that and go one tiny step farther, by overlaying it onto what we see in politics practically every day.

Why does Walt Putin need to fuck with Crimea?  And why do Huckleberry Fauxbutch and Grampy McDumfuck then have to work so hard trying to figure out how to take the caricature of Obama as the feckless dictator who rules by Executive Order whenever he calls the GOP on obstructionism, and turn him into a dithering stumblebum who couldn't lead ants to a sugar bowl because he won't immediately launch all the nukes when Putin decides to wiggle his dick at somebody in western Asia?

There's plenty that's both real and wrong about what's happening in and around Ukraine.  I just wanna see a lot less of the fake shit.  Show me more of John Kerry stepping on his dick with a track shoe scolding the Russians about not invading countries for bullshit reasons - that was real and fun - and really funny.

Today's Placebo

Kristi Erdal, Colorado College, talking about her research on some of the amazing shit your brain can do.

Be sure to stick around for the Self-Delusional News after the cookie commercial too.



We are now a little less dumb. 

Stay In School(?)

It's A Start

Atheists Don't Have No Songs --Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers

Because They're Rubes

Via Wonkette, this piece in WaPo:

RICHMOND — If you’re a law-abiding gun owner, former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli II would like to be your lawyer — for less than $10 a month.

Cuccinelli and three partners have launched Virginia Self Defense Law, a firm focused on defending Second Amendment rights. With bargain-basement pricing and a cheeky slogan — “Defending those who defend themselves” — the venture seeks to tap into a feeling among some gun owners that the right to bear arms is under attack.

And here's the nail-on-the-head part:

...because I am not a fucking asshole who can’t feel like a big man unless he is waving a metal penis around. But that is not the point! The point is, how is Cuccinelli convincing the rubes to give him money before they’ve even done their crimes? Easy. They’re rubes, like I just said.

An Observation

Guys like Bloody Bill Kristol and Leo Strauss and practically any other NeoCon Proto-Fascist pus pocket you care to name - these guys are always pushing for doing things "the old-fashioned way", which for my purposes here is all about "society manufacturing good citizens".  Which is exactly the way it's been done for 400 centuries in every other place in the world, under every system of government ever; which is exactly the opposite of how we're supposed to be doing it here in the USofA.

American Exceptionalism is what happens when citizens make for a better society (which in turn makes for better government) - not the other way around.

If we remember only that one thing; if we can keep that one precept in mind whenever we listen to the politicians and the pundits and the Press Poodles and the Think-Tankers and whoever else believes he's entitled to a few minutes in the spotlight (usually because his daddy owns the theater) - maybe we get outa this mess in one piece.

Now, if I can just figure out how all o' dat doesn't mean I'm in line with the TeaBaggers on this one fine point, I'll feel a lot better about it.

It's Just Too Simple

Finding shit out and then telling people about it?  Can't possibly work, but fut the wuck, maybe we could try it for a while.

From truthout, by Wm Rivers Pitt - just a taste of a buncha good stuff.

I believe the minimum wage should be somewhere between $15 and $20 an hour, and that all the so-called business “leaders” crowing against any raise to that wage are self-destructive idiots. Commerce needs funds in the hands of consumers to survive and thrive and consumers today are barely handling rent. Put more money in the worker’s pocket and he will spend some of it at your store, because he can. The minimum wage has been stagnant for 30 years, and is due for a right and proper boost. If people don’t have money, your store won’t sell any goods. Get out of your own way and pay your people, so they can have money to spend on what you’re selling. This strikes me as simple arithmetic.

--and--

I believe the 50 percent of eligible American voters who can’t be bothered to turn out one Tuesday every two years should be ashamed of themselves, because this is a good country, but if that goodness doesn’t show up at the polls, we wind up in this ditch with a bunch of self-satisfied non-voters complaining about the mess we’re in. Decisions are made by those who show up, and lately, the small minority of hateful nutbags showing up become a large majority because they’re the only ones pulling the lever.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Today's Corporate Monster

...eating companies and shitting people.



Do the petition thing at FreePress.net

...and then Call your Congress Critter

Yo - Gun Freaks

A Quick Analogy

My god-given right to swing my fist ends where your jaw begins.

In light of recent arguments - aka stupid little tempests in stoopider little teapots fomented by the stoopidest little god-bothering bigots ever - I'm talking about "issues" that shouldn't even enjoy the briefest consideration here in what the grownups like to call the 21st fucking century - here's the thing (via Rude Pundit):

...the moment your worship of whatever invisible sky wizard you choose infringes on his right to exist without the rules of your sky wizard imposed on him is the moment that your religious liberty becomes his oppression.

Today's American Taliban

The large steaming piles of douche-canoe buggery that fall out of this guy's Whopper slot in such rapid succession are a pure wonderment to behold.




The kids at South Park had a few ideas about Mr Donohue

hat tip = Blue Virginia

Today's Quote

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” --Upton Sinclair

That popped up in a piece at Bill Moyers, by Mike Lofgren:

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude. [2]

Sorry about dropping that one on you for the weekend, but you know - somebody's gotta look at this shit and it can't just be me and coupla other dweebs who never get anything else done.

Then there's this tasty little morsel:  The number of terrorist organizations we're fighting is a secret.  We also don't get to know who they are, and we don't get to know where they are - but the kicker?  We certainly do get to know that we get to pay for it, but we don't get to know how much it's costing.  Is that the perfect gig or what?

We are so fucked.

Watch this:

Design

This is far more than simple mental masturbation.

Expenditures devoted to "science for the sake of science" - or to just making shit that's interesting and kinda cool - is almost never wasted.

You have to put it out there, and then wait for the engineers to find a workable and/or useful application.

In the meantime, there's real value in the wonderment of it all.

Wait - What?

If this guy's sign truly reflects his circumstance, shouldn't this be a much bigger story?

Real World Pulchritude

Yeah, OK - it's a little lame in that "holy-fuck-man-why-do-white-people-gotta-try-this-shit" kinda way, but there's a fair-sized chunk o' truth here that needs to get out.



hat tip = HuffPo

And So It Begins(?)

The night of the long knives.

Mondo Cané.

Helter Skelter.

Maybe the revolution will be televised after all.

A crime of passion - one that defies the poor ability of your humble correspondent to describe it - was committed against the defenseless and unsuspecting rich white people living in the wealthiest neighborhood in all of USAmerica Inc.

Residents of Atherton CA discovered several defilements of their preciously private property - spray-painted with the obviously ominous phrase, "Fuck the 1%".

The vandalism took place between 6 and 9:30 p.m., along several blocks of Greenoaks Drive and the 100 blocks of Hawthorne, Rosewood and Heather drives, Wade said.

Not so funnily, there was also one reported instance of "Kill People" on the fence in front of one house.  Not cool, guys.  I don't care how fun it is for you to imagine giving a buncha tight-assed over-privileged dipwads nightmares about The Manson Family, it's not right to threaten anybody like that.

He said police have sought private security camera footage from residents, but so far have come up empty. Some residents don't have surveillance cameras and others didn't have them focused on the areas where vandals struck or didn't have them turned on, Wade said.

It is fun tho' - a whole lotta fun - thinking about all the prospecting calls the good folk in Atherton are about to get from the noble entrepreneurs in the Home Security bidness.  Like orcas on a baby whale.

But anyway-

Without leads or suspects, Atherton Town Manager George Rodericks cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

"We don't know if it was an organized group or a couple of teenagers," he said.

So, Where You At?

A month ago, Sean Hannity said he'd be moving out of New York as soon as he could manage it.

Here's Stewart's take on it back then.

So I'm just wondering: a rich guy like Hannity can make a move at pretty much the drop of a hat.  So where is he now?  Did he leave?  Or is this another solid example of bullshit outrage that pops up with annoying regularity?  Alec Baldwin said he'd move to France or whatever if Shrub got reelected.  Limbaugh said he'd move to Costa Rica if Obama got reelected.

At what point do we stop purposely crankin' it up to 11 every time some jagoff politician says something silly or nasty or straight up stoopid?  Y'know, if you can just kinda keep your cool, you're more likely to find a decent solution for the problem and/or resolution of the point of contention.  And yet we keep crankin' it up.  It almost seems like it could maybe perhaps be deliberate.

So I'm also wondering: who might benefit from keeping us so riled up that we spend all our time and effort beatin' on each other, instead of working together to figure out what to do about whatever problem some Congress Critter / Press Poodle / Bidness Crook tells us to be pissed off about.

Here's what I learned from a mentor fairly early in my working life:
I don't care if you guys go for long walks in the moonlight holding hands, and I don't care if you plan to murder each other after lunch; but as long as you're cashing the fuckin' paychecks, I expect you to work the fuckin' problem.

Logical Fallacy #3 - Appeal To Emotion

Appeal to emotion (or argumentum ad passiones) is a logical fallacy which uses the manipulation of the recipient's emotions, rather than valid logic, to win an argument. The appeal to emotion fallacy uses emotions as the basis of an argument's position without factual evidence that logically supports the major ideas endorsed by the elicitor of the argument. Also, this kind of thinking may be evident in one who lets emotions and/or other subjective considerations influence one's reasoning process. This kind of appeal to emotion is a type of red herring and encompasses several logical fallacies, including:

Appeal to consequences

Appeal to fear

Appeal to flattery

Appeal to pity

Appeal to ridicule

Appeal to spite

Wishful thinking

Here's A Thought

Nobody likes Foreign Aid, and nobody much likes Uganda's prez, and practically nobody's at all in favor of spending tax dollars to help fuck people over (well - not out in the open anyway).

So let's take the $485 Million we'd normally wrap neatly and ship to Museveni's bankers in Switzerland; and instead, divvy it up and give $150 to every public school teacher here at home.  Can we try that just this one time?

Git 'Em, Jon

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

Back Pedal

Let the pearl clutching begin!

(hat tip = Facebook buddy KH)

He started way before 1996, but Roger Ailes has been working really hard towards this day for a very long time; his efforts thru DumFux news have been instrumental in the Rise of the Ruling Rubes.

And those Nutty Old Lefties have been trying to warn us about it forever.  So yeah - The Left is right about how The Right is wrong.

What's happening in Arizona and on K Street (and Uganda, btw), is exactly what happens when you unleash the Monsters of the Id* - ie: when you tell the rubes it's OK to be an ignorant superstitious mob, try not to be surprised when the rubes turn out to be an ignorant superstitious mob.

(*watch Forbidden Planet sometime)

Nailin' It

The Rude Pundit is aptly named.  This is not the guy who gets invited to the garden party, but he is definitely the guy needed there frequently and regularly.

Here's his entire post re: "the Jindal thing":

2/25/2014
Bobby Jindal: The Motherfucker at Work:
How many times have you hosted a party and invited everyone in the office to be fair and one of them ends up fucking your mother? You're all having a good time - the snacks you made are a big hit, the music mix is getting everyone dancing, the secretaries and the execs are getting along - when you turn the corner and there, bent over a table, is your mother, just being fucked, in your own house, by that guy you knew was a motherfucker. You're got no one to blame but yourself. The Rude Pundit's been over this many times, but it always bears saying: If someone is a motherfucker, he will fuck a mother, every time. It is what motherfuckers do. Otherwise, why bother calling them "motherfuckers"?

So it was that yesterday the President of the United States hosted a nice brunch at the State Dining Room of the White House for a gathering of the nation's governors, both Democrats and Republicans. The Vice President was there, too. It was, to borrow a phrase, a big fucking deal, as these things tend to be. President Barack Obama spoke of how much he admires and wants to work with the governors. Congress may be filled with assholes, but, the President said, "I am absolutely convinced that the time is right to partner with the states and governors all across the country on these agendas, because I know that you guys are doing some terrific work in your own states." 

Oh, sure, sure, Obama acknowledged reality: "We won’t agree on every single issue every single time." However, the hand of friendship was extended: "I guarantee you that we will work as hard as we can to make sure that you succeed -- because when you succeed, the people in your states succeed and America succeeds, and that’s our goal." Simple, committing to something, however vague, open-minded - what else would you want? And then they met privately with Obama.

After the meeting, some of the governors went before the gathered press on the lawn of the White House to talk about how awesome bipartisanship is, how Congress sucks monkey balls, and how they all are concerned about military cuts because military bases are gold mines (note: They didn't say that part but, you know, c'mon). And then Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, likely loser in the 2016 presidential race, walked up to the mike and decided, quite vividly, "Fuck this shit. I got some primaries to win."

So, being a motherfucker, Jindal brought a mother out and proceeded to fuck the shit out of her. He attacked his brunch host by saying that Obama was "“waving the white flag of surrender" on the economy and that "The Obama economy is now the minimum wage economy." Then he turned that mother over to fuck her some more. The solution to the economic problems of the United States are found in oil, bitches, like approval of the Keystone XL pipeline: "There’s no reason it’s taken five years of study and they still haven’t reached what at this point is an inescapable conclusion...There’s no good reason other than political ideology to turn down the pipeline." And shale, man. Don't forget about frackin' shale. Said Jindal, his Adam's apple undulating like it was an alien trying to escape, "One of things the administration can do to get out of the way...[is] not only to continue to allow the fracking revolution, the shale revolution taking place across this country, they can accelerate it."

And since no one can be a proper motherfucker without saying something about stopping Obamacare, Jindal took that position, too: "Since they’ve shown the willingness to delay some of the mandates, why not just delay the entire program, delay all the mandates, including the individual mandate?"

Jindal was essentially reciting what he had written in the National Review (motto: "Vigorously raping Buckley's corpse on a daily basis"), a great and mighty editorial about how to cure what ails the U.S. of A. It pretty much boils down to "Fuck up the environment some more" and "Give education money to churches and private companies through school vouchers." Jindal also attacks the IRS, unions, and Obamacare. If he had somehow been able to make Benghazi into an economic issue, he'd've had idiot Bingo. 

Time and time again, whenever President Obama attempts to show that he is above partisan politics, he forgets that he is trying to tell motherfuckers to stop fucking mothers. It's never gonna happen.

And btw - does Piyush Jindal have some kind of Little-Man Complex now?  Is he still trying to make up for that awful SOTU response?  I realize that if you wanna get the free ticket to the GOP Primary Fair you have to shit in Obama's pocket and wipe your ass with his tie whenever you get the chance, but there seems to be something else working on Jindal too.

New Gun Facts

Add this one to the heap of real things that won't make any difference to the rubes:

A study in the Annals Of Internal Medicine examining gun violence worldwide proved that women in the United States are disproportionately likely to be victims of gun violence when compared to women in other developed countries:

As reported by The Atlantic “Women in the United States account for 84 percent of all female firearm victims in the developed world, even though they make up only a third of the developed world’s female population. And within American borders, women die at higher rates from suicide, homicide, and accidental firearm deaths in states where guns are more widely available This is true even after controlling for factors such as urbanization, alcohol use, education, poverty, and divorce rates.”

Another study published in the American Journal of Public Health showed that not only are women more likely to be the victims of gun violence, but this violence is more likely to be perpetrated in the home by a male domestic partner than by a stranger:

“More than twice as many women are killed with a gun used by their husbands or intimate acquaintances than are murdered by strangers using guns, knives, or any other means.” 

Today's Pix

Smart Guy

If you want to get anything done - in business or in politics or in your daily existence or whatever - the first thing you do is jam as many smart guys as you can fit into any given space, and then shut up and listen.

Here're some bits from David McRaney:

Benjamin Franklin knew how to deal with haters, and in this episode we learn how he turned his haters into fans with what is now called The Benjamin Franklin Effect (read more about the effect here).

Listen as David McRaney reads an excerpt from his book, “You Are Now Less Dumb,” explaining the psychology behind the effect and how the act of spreading harm forms the attitude of hate, and the act of spreading kindness generates the attitude of camaraderie.

At the lowest level, behavior-into-attitude conversion begins with impression management theory which says you present to your peers the person you wish to be. You engage in something economists call signaling by buying and displaying to your peers the sorts of things which give you social capital. If you live in the Deep South you might buy a high-rise pickup and a set of truck nuts. If you live in San Francisco you might buy a Prius and a bike rack. Whatever are the easiest to obtain, loudest forms of the ideals you aspire to portray become the things you own, like bumper stickers signaling to the world you are in one group and not another. Those things then influence you to become the sort of person who owns them.

The Benjamin Franklin Effect:

The Misconception: You do nice things for the people you like and bad things to the people you hate.

The Truth: You grow to like people for whom you do nice things and hate people you harm.

Why do I love my kids?  Aside from humans having evolved a genetic predisposition to love their children, it's at least partly because I do good things for them (I try anyway).

Why does it seem so many "conservatives" hate poor people?

I'm going to stop a little short, and not try to shoehorn everything into this one concept, but damn - this makes a lotta shit clearer for me.

Today's Irony

No particular reason I chose this one, it just kinda popped into my head.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃe ɣeˈβaɾa];[7] June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.[8]

As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed.[9] His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement inGuatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Árbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the United Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology.[9]  Later, in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing US-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.[10] Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.[11]

So the guy spends his entire adult life working to combat the darker impulses of Capitalism, only to have his image (and practically his whole persona) posthumously hijacked in service to at least some of what the CIA killed him for fighting against.

The Hook Brings You Back

Hook --Blues Traveler



It doesn't matter what I say
So long as I sing with inflection
That makes you feel I'll convey
Some inner truth or vast reflection
But I've said nothing so far
And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
And it don't matter who you are
If I'm doing my job then it's your resolve that breaks

Because the Hook brings you back
I ain't tellin' you no lie
The Hook brings you back
On that you can rely

There is something amiss
I am being insincere
In fact I don't mean any of this
Still my confession draws you near
To confuse the issue I refer
To familiar heroes from long ago
No matter how much Peter loved her
What made the Pan refuse to grow

Was that the Hook brings you back
I ain't tellin' you no lie
The Hook brings you back
On that you can rely

Suck it in suck it in suck it in
If you're Rin Tin Tin or Anne Boleyn
Make a desperate move or else you'll win
And then begin
To see
What you're doing to me this MTV is not for free
It's so PC it's killing me
So desperately I sing to thee
Of love
Sure but also of rage and hate and pain and fear of self
And I can't keep these feelings on the shelf
I've tried well no in fact I lied
Could be financial suicide but I've got too much pride inside
To hide or slide
I'll do as I'll decide and let it ride until I've died
And only then shall I abide this tide
Of catchy little tunes
Of hip three minute ditties
I wanna bust all your balloons
I wanna burn all your cities to the ground
I've found
I will not mess around
Unless I play then hey
I will go on all day. Hear what I say
I have a prayer to pray
That's really all this was
And when I'm feeling stuck and need a buck
I don't rely on luck because

The Hook brings you back
I ain't tellin' you no lie
The Hook...
On that you can rely

Sometimes They Just Lie

A quick review:
We have to expect politicians to twist things a bit.  They say things in a certain way that makes them or their ideas or their philosophy sound better.  It's just good salesmanship.

Of course, the problems start when you take what's true and twist it into something that bears no resemblance to the truth.

You can take a fact, and tell everybody it's a lie.

And you can tell a straight-up lie, and then by repeating it over and over, people will come to to accept it as the truth.

Politicians of a certain stripe (mostly of the Republican persuasion these days) have become exceedingly masterful at that last part.

From NYT:

Of all the myths and falsehoods that Republicans have spread about President Obama, the most pernicious and long-lasting is that the $832 billion stimulus package did not work. Since 2009, Republican lawmakers have inextricably linked the words “failed” and “stimulus,” and last week, five years after passage of the Recovery Act, they dusted off their old playbook again.

“The ‘stimulus’ has turned out to be a classic case of big promises and big spending with little results,” wrote Speaker John Boehner. “Five years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, millions of families are still asking, ‘where are the jobs?’ ”

The stimulus could have done more good had it been bigger and more carefully constructed. But put simply, it prevented a second recession that could have turned into a depression. It created or saved an average of 1.6 million jobs a year for four years. (There are the jobs, Mr. Boehner.) It raised the nation’s economic output by 2 to 3 percent from 2009 to 2011. It prevented a significant increase in poverty — without it, 5.3 million additional people would have become poor in 2010.

And yet Republicans were successful in discrediting the very idea that federal spending can boost the economy and raise employment. They made the argument that the stimulus was a failure not just to ensure that Mr. Obama would get no credit for the recovery that did occur, but to justify their obstruction of all further attempts at stimulus.

Late Saturday Nite Tune

That's All --Laura Fygi

A Quick Reimnder

We've renewed the foofaraw over the Confederate flag because some dumbass redneck in the Georgia chapter of Sons of Confederate Veterans insists on staying stoopid.

Look, guys, ya gotta get a coupla things straight - and I'll use some visual aids here to help get it through your cement-lined vacuum-packed little heads.

This first one is what we call The American Swastika:

But this is the one you need to concentrate on, because it's the last flag of The Confederate States of America - and that makes it the only one that fucking matters:

Are we clear?

Today's Pix

Friday Nite Tune

Perfidia --Laura Fygi

Today's Lee Camp

If you own the past, you're a big step closer to owning the present.

Or if you prefer the real thing:

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” --George Orwell, 1984

Lee Camp's Moment of Clarity:

Today's Poem

We don't need miracles or miracle workers.
We are the miracles, and we can do the work.

5th Philosopher's Song --Aldous Huxley

A million million spermatozoa
All of them alive;
Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah
Dare hope to survive.

And among that billion minus one
Might have chanced to be
Shakespeare, another Newton, a new Donne--
But the One was Me.

Shame to have ousted your betters thus,
Taking ark while the others remained outside!
Better for all of us, forward Homunculus,
If you'd quietly died!

Best be makin' the best of your miraculous little self.

The Con Academy

Try to keep this in mind the next time you're tempted to get into it with somebody you just know is full o' shit.

And just in case you were wondering about what Mama Rand tho't about all this:

"Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. --Ayn Rand

Ownership Society

Or more accurately: The owners of our society.

The last item on the To-Do List of Capital in the US is to purchase the government, which is all but complete now.



I don't advocate blowing shit up.  I don't condone it; I don't approve of it; I see nothing but rationalized stupidity in a term like Creative Destruction, and it doesn't matter if you apply it to wrecking our manufacturing sector or you try to use it to justify revolution.   I've spent my life trying to learn how to build things up and make them work, so I don't want anybody thinking I see anything noble or heroic in the actions of some jag-off who decides to set fire to something just to watch it burn.

But that's not to say I don't understand the impulse.

Logical Fallacy #2 - False Cause

There's a good number of sub-headings under False Cause (aka: Questionable Cause).
I grabbed this one from Wikipedia just cuz it's my fave:

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin: "after this, therefore because of this") is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) that states "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." It is often shortened to simply post hoc. It is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc (correlation does not imply causation), in which two things or events occur simultaneously or the chronological ordering is insignificant or unknown. Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence appears to be integral to causality. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection.