That Was Then And This Is Then Again

  

Know Your Shit

Here at the end of White History Month which (paraphrasing Tim Wise) goes by the clever name of March-thru-January, we should oughta maybe not concetrate only on the Black History part, but make sure we look at the other side and examine our own shit a bit more closely.

It All Comes Down To Money

Money's what matters.

From Zach Carter at HuffPo:

Next week, the House will consider a bill to amend the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995, which then-Speaker Gingrich (R-Ga.) shepherded through Congress. The 20-year-old law imposed a host of cost-benefit standards on federal regulators, including a requirement that they consider the costs that new rules might impose on state and local governments. But in order to garner Democratic votes and protect against a presidential veto, Gingrich made a significant concession: The regulators' calculations could not be challenged in court.

--and so-- 

"Cost-benefit analysis has been and will continue to be a blueprint for big banks to water down, dilute and block Wall Street reforms," warned Amit Narang, regulatory policy advocate for Public Citizen. "The bill ensures that if financial agencies adopt reforms based on cost-benefit analyses that do not reflect Wall Street preferences, big banks will be waiting in the wings with a lawsuit to overturn the rule."

So on one hand, it kinda looks like they just wanna "play fair" and make sure that all those poor hardworkin' Uber Ethical Biz-Fucks can enjoy access to the courts on the same footing as all those dirty fucking hippies who use Da Gubmint to steal the money I've earned by the sweat of by own brow, just so they can turn around and give it to some Welfare Queen blah bah blah. Or maybe they'll sell it as making sure all three branches get a chance to weigh in on the effects of legislation.  That's all horseshit, IMHO.  It's never really about what they tell us it's about.

Regulation is a key component in any form of device, organism, organization, system, et cetera ad nauseum ad aeternam.  I've hit on this point before, but it's a good one to remember.  The analogy is that without my pancreas to regulate it, my blood sugar goes nuts and while I have a pretty good time for a little while, I'm in sugar shock in a coupla days and I'm dead by this time next month.

What these guys want - "guys" meaning the embedded weevils congressional staffers who work for Monsanto and ExxonMobil and Raytheon, but get paid by suckers like me and you - what they want is another way to exempt their shadow employers from rules that they tell us are oh so very important to maintain "law and order".

So that's the dodge.  We've been almost perfectly conditioned to think government is always and only bad.  If you buy into that, then it follows naturally that pretty much anything that helps Public Governance has to hurt Private Enterprise.  Which is exactly what we end up arguing about, instead of recognizing that it's really "rules for you but not for me".

Right now, once the Regs have been vetted by the Cost-Benefits thing, and they get put in place, you can't challenge them in court - that's not great because we get some really weak shit regs to begin with, but at least Goldman Sachs can't challenge them either.  So fuck that. What's the point of having all this money if I can't just buy the government that all my rich friends keep telling me I deserve?

As usual, Coin-Operated Politicians who already play us like a cheap kazoo are pushing to turn the whole thing over to a Judiciary that's all but bought and paid for now too.  It costs a good chunk o' change to slug it out in court.  Do you suppose Halliburton might have some small edge when you need the courts' help because your well water is now usable as a fuel for your backyard grill?

While we've been distracted, taking the rhetorical beatings because of ridiculously successful creations of Straw Man crap like the Nanny State, the "conservatives" have been busily installing The Daddy State.  The loop is closing apace.

Find The Time

2 1/2 hours of the good stuff for a cold and crappy Saturday

Solo Accoustic Live --Jackson Browne

Today's Professional Left Podcast

Another good one, guys.

Friendly reminder:  This shit's free. Send 'em a little card and 5 lousy bucks, ya fuckin' moochers.

The Professional Left Podcast

PO Box 9133

Springfield, IL 62791

--or--

Do it with PayPal at their site:

The Professional Left

God Love The Onion

My Recent Discovery

I've been reading Charlie Pierce for years, and he often makes reference to "Obvious Political Anagram, Reince Priebus".  I've always wondered, but I never looked very far trying to find out about it.

I swear to Zalmoxis that I didn't know this until today, when I Googled it and found a Facebook page explaining it all*:

Reince Priebus = Rube's Epic Rein

No wonder they keep re-electing the guy.

*Ed Note:  I can't guarantee this is what Mr Pierce has in mind, but - you know - holy crap.

Told Ya

A coupla days ago, I posted a bit about the Great Gathering of Grifters aka: Kaptain Kornball Klub, aka: The Iowa Freedom Freakout Summit.  And in that post I opinionized about how certain of the "candidates" were there for reasons other than Public Service.  Well - imagine my surprise when I find out that there are people out here in the Blogoshpere who do more than just opinionize - they actually look into this shit.

Last week, Mother Jones reported that Mike Huckabee used his PAC to funnel more than $400,000 to his family. This week, Politico’s Ken Vogel gives us a story about scammy conservative PACs that make thousands of dollars from home with just one weird trick. These “scam PACs” play fast and loose with federal election rules by claiming-but-not-quite-claiming to represent Tea Party favorites like Ben Carson, Allen West, or Donald Trump’s hair plugs. The catch is that almost none of the money these scam PACs raise goes to those candidates. It’s the political equivalent of selling beachfront property in North Dakota, and because it’s politics, it’s somehow not fraud. ‘Tis truly a blessed time to be a conservative grifter!

Aha!  I posted mine 2 days ago, and then all of a sudden, there it is all over the place.  Post hoc ergo propter hoc, muthuhfuckuh.  Well, Ok, except for that 'last week' thing.  shit

You're welcome, Wonkette - glad I could help. Please keep doing that part of my job for me.

The Explanation

It seems so obvious.  Maybe that's why I need a reminder once in a while.



hat tip = Democratic Underground

A Mighty Metaphor

Jon Stewart having fun mocking the Press Poodles is nothing new - and also something that never gets old.  

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

But what really comes to mind is the Clauswitz bit - paraphrased for my purposes: A good plan for your news show can survive anything except contact with actual events.

But the suits are in charge now, so "actual events" - aka: Reality, aka: The-Fucking-Truth - none of that matters if it's in conflict with The Plan.

Management made enormous commitments and invested at great expense to come up with The Plan, and Management is never wrong.  We must stick to The Plan - The Plan is everything because fuck you, we'll drop you like a bad habit, that's why.

Of course, Stewart says it a lot better.

Unintended Truth

Some of those dirty fuckin' hippies have been trying to tell us for a pretty long time about how the "political center" has moved way to the right over the last 30 years, and practically everybody I know either shrugs it off or tells me I'm a fool for believing the left-leaning media which we all know has a wicked librul bias.

But then, along comes Steve King making a bit of a slip as he introduces Moose-alini at the annual meeting of the Kaptain Kornball Klub in Iowa.  

This turns into the Mother of All Word Salads as it appears Palin tries it without the teleprompter, but listen close in the first few seconds:



Yeah, I know - I couldn't stay with it either.  After the first few minutes, it's like you can hear your brain cells screaming as they start to die.

BTW - everybody and his fuckin' uncle is running on the Repub side so far, and I think it might be because the rubes' pockets aren't quite as deep as they used to be - having nuthin' at all to do with stoopid GOP economic policies of course - so you have to show up and do some of the huckstering in person - gotta work 'em a lot harder than just a coupla years ago.

I'll go out on what I consider a very short limb here, and I'll say that everybody not already positioned to get rich by holding an elected office is in this thing to boost their mailing lists, bolster their networks of "supporters", and make it all pay off by hittin' up every yokel for a generous donation...cuz that's what most of these jag-offs are - they're panhandlers; they're fuckin' moochers playin' every sucker for every dime, every chance they get. And boy has it been a good long run.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Today's Pix

Comin' Back On Ya, Barry

OK, to be real clear - I hate the thought of the Secret Service guys brainstorming on how to handle this new type of potential threat, and coming up with the idea of carrying Obama around in a bullet-proof sedan chair or some-fuckin'-thing, but at the same time, why am I having such a hard time not thinking, "Payback's a bitch, ain't it?"

--and--

As Meat-Space becomes too dangerous for everybody but the cops and the military, when might we expect the emergence of the first All Cyber-Space President?

Today's Quote

"If you're very very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you're very very stupid?  You'd have to be relatively intelligent to realize how stupid you are.  This explains almost the entirety of Fox News." --John Cleese

Monday Tunes

Fever (cover) --A Fine Frenzy





Albatross --Fleetwood Mac





Duck Before You Drown --Dinah Washingtion




La Vie En Rose (cover) --Sophie Milman




Exactly Like You --Diana Krall





Dance Me To The End Of Love --Madeleine Peyroux





Europa --Santana

Dearest Anti-Vaxxers

Sunday Funnies

Outa The Mouths Of Babes

So, "conservatives", DumFux News gets called out and then spanked by a dozen teenagers because it's just way obvious that Rupert World is a fantasy (aka: bald-faced lie), but you still hang in there believing practically everything that falls out of Bill O's ass - what does that say about you?  

We all find it difficult admitting we've been wrong, and/or that we've been bambozzled, but seriously, you can't just go on denying reality when a high school journalism class knows more about Press Corps Ethics than your #1 Cable News Channel.

The real danger in having your head that far up your ass is that even if you open your eyes, all you're gonna see is your own shit.

Today's Chart

I have to think long and hard about how the hell I'm gonna get a coupla 17-year-olds thru the next 4 years of college.

I don't like thinking about that right now, but what I really don't wanna have to fuck with is the belief on the part of so many rubes that "them durn thugs are getting all the scholarship money, and all the good placements in all the good schools just because they're black and it ain't fair that they're takin' the spot of a deserving white child blah blah blah."

(btw - the rubes really do use the word "thug" in polite company so they don't have to use the word "nigger".  Yes. Really.)

Anyway, here's another of my handy dandy charts to illustrate just how stupid some of these clowns can get.

That tiny blue line at about 12 o'clock on the doughnut is the one-quarter of one percent of the total scholarship money available which is actually "earmarked" for use by kids with brown skin.  Which means that the white people, who make up about 80% of the total population are collecting most of the remaining 99.75% of the bucks.  Sound familiar?

Could you please stop bitching about it now?

The Honesty Episode

Keep it 100.

Get Your Bucket List In Order

The hard-workin' kids at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists did this presentation midday yesterday.  

But somehow, it just wasn't deemed quite as important as the story about Boehner once again gettin' butt-fucked behind the coat rack in DC.  

It didn't have the appeal of The NFL Scandal du Jour (I helped on this one - my bad).  

Somehow, we needed to know about the awesome manliness of Chaz Bono more than we needed to know that the people who actually understand this shit are kinda fucking worried that we're about to screw the pooch like we're all amped up on Ex and Crystal at a Lady-N-The-Tramp costume party.  

What the fuck, you guys!?!

See the whole nightmare here.

Billy Belichick

...rhymes (in a Slant Rhyme kinda way) with Lyin' Sack O' Shit.

hat tip = FB friend KH

Maybe That's It

We spend an awful lot of time and energy trying to figure out what's wrong up in this joint.  And for once, maybe looking to a nice simple bumper-sticker exlanation is all we need to do.

"You know that being American is more than a matter of where your parents came from.  It is a belief that all men are created equal and that everyone deserves an even break." --Harry Truman

"...everyone deserves an even break."  That's it.  So now all we have to do is figure out - do we have too many suckers, or do we have too many PT Barnums?

hat tip = FB friend VWE

Today's Pix

Playing The Turn-Around

It's all in the talent of the speaker to use the language of Reasonability and Anti-Theocracy in order to manipulate the crowd into 1) agreeing that what we have now is a Theocracy, and 2) since you agree that's what we have, then how can you disagree with replacing it with a better one?  Of course, he's banking on the rubes not being able to recognize the false premise, ie: that Atheism is just another religion.  

The whiplash from this kind of rhetorical gymnastics is enough to put normal people in traction.  But the rubes ain't normal people - they eat this shit up like it's 2-fer Tuesday down at Luby's.  It actually makes sense to 'em.

But in case you missed it, the kicker's up front; when he says it's not about how ol' Pappy Huck wants to be president - no - he hears the call of that god feller sayin' HE wants Ol' Pap to be president cuz we need somebody who's right with the lord; somebody righteous to straighten us all out and help us get our minds right; somebody god has anointed to be our leader.  So gosh, if god says he needs me to do it, I guess I should do it even tho' I really don't wanna do it unless of course god-his-own-bad-self says I should do it, so tarnation, I reckon I'll just hafta go ahead and do it then.

They pull this shit cuz it works.  Huckabee knows I'll see this clip, and he knows I'd never support him anyway so it doesn't matter what I think of it.  And he knows it'll get thru to his intended audience on the "conservative" websites, and he knows they're all duly afraid of guys like me so they're at practically no risk of reading anything contrary like my little post here, and he knows that even if a rube does hear some criticism, it'll make exactly zero difference because they're all pretty much the brand of "christians" who've been innoculated against the truth anyway.

And just for the hell of it (file this next bit under "I really don't give a fuck about Godwin"):

The bad guys don't come in looking like the bad guys.  The Little Corporal didn't just pop up in 1933 and say, "Hi, my name's Adolf and I'll be your fuhrer this evening - OK, so let's go fuck up the jews."

Star-Spangled Exceptions

Jon Stewart on DumFux News apology (no-go zones), and the one exception we have to make to The First Amendment in order to protect America from things like The First Amendment:

VICE is Nice

What we don't know will kill us.

DumFux News vs France

John and Mike from Fox News - Eric et Quentin du 16/01

Everybody knows:

--you never get involved in a land war in Asia
--you never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line

But only slightly less well-known is that you're just never gonna out-bitch-slap the French.

Just Shut Up And Listen

17 minutes that started continued some pretty momentous change.  The prospect of change (and the agents of that change) proved so scary and dangerous that the authoritarian assholes among us moved quickly to try to kill it.



The problems King was trying to tell us about haven't gone away.

Here's one of the more imprtant points from a longer talk by Tim Wise - I've put this one up a coupla times before, and I'll keep going back to it until I can recite it verbatim:



It's about what's fair vs what's unfair.  It's about getting USAmerica Inc to live up to its promises, and to stand by its word.  It's about demanding "the power" to behave like regular human beings.

We should never expect anything more, and we must never accept anything less.

And also too - if this doesn't apply to you, then why're you gettin' all bent outa shape about it?

Today's Worst

Seems like every other day or so, something pops up about something I've really loved for a long time that makes me have to consider blowin' it off for a while or telling it to take a flying fuck at a rollin' doughnut.

The world just kinda sucks right now.

Some Charts

So Obamacare isn't quite the disaster we were told it would be.  In fact, it's begininning to work very much like it's supposed to work, which isn't as good as it could be, but a shitload better than what we had before.

More people have coverage, which means the risk is spread thinner, which means the average cost goes down some, which means more people can get coverage, which means etc etc etc - gee it's almost as if there's some kind of Basic Principle Of Economics at work or something.

Anyway, The Commonwealth Fund did their survey, and guess what:

For the first time there are fewer working people without coverage.
For the first time, there are fewer working people struggling to pay their doctor bills.
For the first time, there are fewer working people putting off a visit to the doctor due to cost.

For the first fucking time - seems vaguely significant to me.

And yet it still seems like we've got a particular bunch of rat-bastard politicians trying to pull a very standard maneuver - where they fuck something up and then stand aside and say, "Hey look everybody - it's all fucked up.  We need to trash this thing and start over" 

("so we can take the credit for solving a problem we caused in the first fucking place" - that's the part you don't ever say out loud).

These people have no soul and no honor.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Happy National Religious Freedom Day, Everybody

From a proclamation by The Prez in 2014:

In 1786, the Virginia General Assembly affirmed an ideal that has long been central to the American journey. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, penned by Thomas Jefferson, declared religious liberty a natural right and any attempt to subvert it "a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either." The Statute inspired religious liberty protections in the First Amendment, which has stood for almost two and a quarter centuries.

Today, America embraces people of all faiths and of no faith. We are Christians and Jews, Muslims and Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, atheists and agnostics. Our religious diversity enriches our cultural fabric and reminds us that what binds us as one is not the tenets of our faiths, the colors of our skin, or the origins of our names. What makes us American is our adherence to shared ideals -- freedom, equality, justice, and our right as a people to set our own course.

Thomas Jefferson was asked what he tho't were his greatest achievements, and he listed his big 3:

Conspicuously absent are things like Minister to France, Sec'y of State, President of the United States. You know - the small stuff.

But it's that 2nd one that makes it all really shine.  We have a legitimate claim to being exceptional because we broke free from the cynical manipulations of politicians that grow from the arbitrary bullshit of religion and religious authoritarianism.

An Act for establishing religious Freedom.

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;

That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,

That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;

That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions, which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical;

That even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;

That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry,

That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right,

That it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it;

That though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;

That to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;

That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order;

And finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:

Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

It's all about the freedom to think.  Like the man said, "for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Welcome To Pottersville

It's Russia TV, but the truth is what the truth is.

Know Your Rights: Medical, Dental and Mental Health Care (2012 resource): Prison officials are obligated under the Eighth Amendment to provide prisoners with adequate medical care. This principle applies regardless of whether the medical care is provided by governmental employees or by private medical staff under contract with the government.

Know Your Rights: Publications Sent by Mail (2012 Resource): Restrictions on prisoners’ access to publications cannot be arbitrary; they must be “reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.” That said, in practice, courts often will accept the judgment of prison authorities in deciding whether censoring a publication is reasonable.

Know Your Rights: Legal Rights of Disabled Prisoners (2012 Resource): Statutes exist under both the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to protect the rights of prisoners with disabilities.

LA County Jails: The ACLU has served as a court-appointed monitor of the L.A. Country jails since 1985. During this time, the ACLU and the ACLU of Southern California have documented overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and extreme abuse of inmates at the hands of deputies. The ACLU is working to expose and put an end to the unconstitutional conditions and ongoing climate of violence the nation’s largest jail system.

Stop Solitary - The Dangerous Overuse of Solitary Confinement in the United States: Over the last two decades corrections systems have increasingly relied on solitary confinement as a prison management tool – even building entire institutions called “supermax prisons” where prisoners are held in conditions of extreme isolation, sometimes for years or decades. But solitary confinement jeopardizes our public safety, is fundamentally inhumane and wastes taxpayer dollars. We must insist on humane and more cost-effective methods of punishment and prison management.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

Per military.com:

At least 184 Humvees, 58 tanks and nearly 700 other vehicles have been destroyed or damaged in the more than 1,600 airstrike missions that have hit more than 3,200 ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria since bombing began last Aug. 8, the U.S. Central Command said Wednesday.

In addition, a total of 26 MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles and armored personnel carriers, 79 artillery and mortar positions, and 673 infantry fighting positions were destroyed, CentCom officials said.

An unknown number of Humvees, M1A1 Abrams tanks and MRAPs were captured by ISIS when Iraqi national security forces fled and abandoned their equipment as ISIS swept into Iraq last June.

The formula for success in American Capitalism is pretty simple - at least it is in certain sectors of our economy, and once you've managed to put in place the basics of the incestuous Revolving Door setup that's been cultivated since before WW2:

Military Brass at the Pentagon recruited and groomed for executive positions at Big Defense once they "retire"

plus

Lobbyists who are almost invariably former and/or future Staffers at the Pentagon or in Congress

plus

Coin-Operated Politicians who collect monster campaign donations from Big Defense in return for their influence when it comes time to "appropriate" the Tera-Bucks for all the National Security shit we need in order to fend off invaders from anywhere from Ulan Bator to Alpha Centauri.

plus

The Press Poodles necessary to keep us confused as to who should be held responsible for fucking us with our pants on - paralyzing us in the middle with the Both Sides Narrative

But once in a while we hear the story I quoted above, and it gets a little clearer that some of these jokers are playing an even simpler and much shorter version of the game.

1) Sell large quantities of materiel to the Federal Government in order to supply "our friends" (Iraq, Syria, etc) with the means to defend themselves, making sure of course all that gear is not the latest and greatest.

2) Wait for "our friends" to lose all that gear to ISIS (eg) - we all knew that was gonna happen, but hey, how do we just sit around and do nothing blah blah blah.

3) Send in the air strikes that destroy the gear, which makes it necessary to supply more gear, which makes it necessary to destroy more gear as it falls into the wrong hands - and which also makes it vital to develop even better gear for ourselves, because - remember(?) what if that gear falls into the wrong hands!?! (and then begin again at #1 above).