God Love The Onion

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Corporatization

Poster

Peace Train

It kinda sucks when a US President pulls people out of harm's way and it's like nobody even notices. I wanted to post something the other day when it was all happening, but I'm just now getting to it.

I guess I can hope there's something positive in this kind of non-reaction - like maybe peace is making a comeback(?), but I think it has more to do with trying to avoid having to take some real responsibility for the war if we can pretend we have more important things on our minds.

Anyway:

The Fix Is In

From a story in NYT, Balloon Juice posts this:

 Far from being able to take advantage of market forces, our wheat farmer friends are cowed into inaction because our markets are fickle and unreliable and prone to manipulation. This is fundamentally no different from the average joe trying to invest wisely in stocks- he can’t because the game is rigged. Our current system is anything but a free market. A free market would mean that people would be able to act with adequate information. We’re a nation being held hostage by these Galtian super-geniuses like Rick Santelli at the CME and that idiot blowhard Jim Cramer.

Oy

Somebody please tell me this is satire.

OMG

Tea-Partiers may actually be as dumb as we thought.

By way of Dayton Daily News:

DAYTON — About 30 local businesses are participating in a program to link conservative consumers with businesses owned by conservatives to help support the Tea Party.

Donald Hutchinson, a businessman and Tea Party supporter, calls his initiative the Tea Party Exchange Inc.

Tea Party supporters who obtain a TPX-Great American card — similar to a customer-loyalty card consumers can attach to key rings — and show it at a participating business can get a discount on the company’s services. The local merchant then gives 5 percent of the sale revenue to the local Tea party chapter to help fund rallies.

So the business owners are actually willing to drive off some whole-number percentage of their customers and prospects; AND they're willing to pay 5% of what's left of their Sales Revenues in order to support a political party?  They're volunteering to pay an additional tax (cuz a tax is exactly what it is) to an organization that has shown a particular animosity toward good business investments like paving the streets and enforcing the law and educating the labor pool;  and they WANT to pay this additional tax so they can try to avoid paying taxes?

Here's my guess: it's so absolutely counter-intuitive, and the rubes have swallowed so much right wing jiz already, that it's almost automatic for them; they will absolutely eat it up.

Comparing Tax Cut Proposals

Applied Ayn Rand

The logical extreme in Rand's Objectivism is perfectly illustrated by Eric Hague here.
To wit:

When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, "Have a ball, peas [sic]?" And I'm sure you were very proud of him for using his manners.

To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, "No! Looter!" right in his looter face, and then only marginally less proud when she sort of shoved him.

The thing is, in this family we take the philosophies of Ayn Rand seriously. We conspicuously reward ourselves for our own hard work, we never give to charity, and we only pay our taxes very, very begrudgingly.

Don't let anybody tell you we need to put the Free Marketeers back in charge.  These people are thieves and hustlers who blow the smoke of Ayn Rand's rhetoric in your face while using the implied deadly force of the law to pick your pockets.

As usual, they do almost exactly the opposite of they say they're doing.

Don't Make Me Laugh