Slouching Towards Oblivion

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

As If Truth Even Existed

There is only Info-tainment in service of a political agenda.  Wherever you think you wanna be on the standard spectrum, you can find a thousand "news" outlets to help you confirm your bias.  There are still some places you can go to get fairly old-school, evenhanded reporting - Christian Science Monitor, McClatchey, AP (kinda), et al - but they're mostly pretty boring.  And there's the problem as I see it.  We've come to see straight up news as boring.  We want spice; a little salsa.  And a really smart guy like Roger Ailes knows exactly how to give it to us.

By Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone
To watch even a day of Fox News – the anger, the bombast, the virulent paranoid streak, the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that’s held to the same standard of evidence as a late- October attack ad – is to see a refraction of its founder, one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican Party. As a political consultant, Ailes repackaged Richard Nixon for television in 1968, papered over Ronald Reagan’s budding Alzheimer’s in 1984, shamelessly stoked racial fears to elect George H.W. Bush in 1988, and waged a secret campaign on behalf of Big Tobacco to derail health care reform in 1993. "He was the premier guy in the business," says former Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins. "He was our Michelangelo."
Lots of great take-aways in this thing, but I think my favorite is the term "liberal bigots".  It has a great ring to it, and captures the perfect combination of conservative self-loathing, white-bread aggrievement, and guilty projection.

Another one:
Dwell on this for a moment: A “news” network controlled by a GOP operative who had spent decades shaping just such political narratives – including those that helped elect the candidate’s father – declared George W. Bush the victor based on the analysis of a man who had proclaimed himself loyal to Bush over the facts. “Of everything that happened on election night, this was the most important in impact,” Rep. Henry Waxman said at the time. “It immeasurably helped George Bush maintain the idea in people’s minds that he was the man who won the election.”
And the Big One: DumFux News has become the model, so it probably just gets weirder for a good long while.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Ya Can't Make This Shit Up

From Right Wing Watch.



Do these guys just not understand there's no difference (for most of us) between this shit and their abject horror at the prospect of somebody imposing Sharia Law? I think the answer is YES, they do understand it. They're just using that little charade to set up another false choice. The argument is simple: "Look, America - we'd better install a good Christianist Legal System before those dirty Mooslums get a chance to subjugate us all to the New Caliphate blah blah blah."

For Memorial Day

Here's another one that bears repeating, particularly on this day.

George Carlin - Super Genius

On Darwin

In light of the bullshit that is the Conservative Movement/GOP these days, here's a bit of refreshment from The RSA (thersa.org):
The term Darwinism has, in recent times, come to suggest that savage, unbridled competition is the ruling principle of life in nature and must therefore rule in human society, too. Darwin’s views have, as neurobiology professor Steven Rose remarks, been seen as “justifying imperialism, racism, capitalism and patriarchy”. Today, he adds, “journalists refer to boardroom struggles and takeover battles for companies as Darwinian”. 
All this is actually the opposite of what Darwin wrote when he discussed human and animal societies in The Descent of Man. There, he traced the origins of sociability in animals and pointed out how many kinds of creature show a direct concern for one another.
It's kinda interesting that the GOP's Dead Jesus Wing takes every opportunity to trash Darwin, while all the swells in the Lizard King Wing practically cum in their pants if anybody even hints at the Dog-Eat-Dog Speech in Atlas Shrugged.

Anyway, here's where the rush to the logical extreme leads:  If your political affiliation requires a reflexive rejection of everything "socialistic", then that reflex is going to be triggered by a widening range of "socialistic ideas" - there're lots of Opinion Manipulators who are happy to point at whatever they need us to oppose and call it 'socialistic" - so this ever-widening definition will come to include anything that has to do with collaboration or cooperation or anything communally held - until eventually you find that you stand against all 4 principle objectives spelled out in the first sentence of the US Constitution - Justice, Domestic Tranquility, Common Defense and General Welfare.  These are concepts that can't be dictated.  They require mutual consent.

And here's the kicker:  Guess what else requires cooperation and collaboration and things that are mutually held?  Corporations.  By current political definition, a corporation is a socialistic construct.

It's just too sweet.  Alan Sherman's elegant imagery of "flying in tighter and tighter circles until it disappears up its own ass" comes pleasantly to mind.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Friday, May 27, 2011

We Gotta Fix This Shit

Here's the letter Arne Duncan sent out for Teacher Appreciation Week in early May.

I scanned thru the comments and found that they were almost universally negative.

And here's a reply posted on Democratic Underground today (from David Reber, who teaches high school biology in Lawrence KS):

May 25, 2011

Mr. Duncan,

I read your Teacher Appreciation Week letter to teachers, and had at first decided not to respond. Upon further thought, I realized I do have a few things to say.

I'll begin with a small sample of relevant adjectives just to get them out of the way: condescending, arrogant, insulting, misleading, patronizing, egotistic, supercilious, haughty, insolent, peremptory, cavalier, imperious, conceited, contemptuous, pompous, audacious, brazen, insincere, superficial, contrived, garish, hollow, pedantic, shallow, swindling, boorish, predictable, duplicitous, pitchy, obtuse, banal, scheming, hackneyed, and quotidian. Again, it's just a small sample; but since your attention to teacher input is minimal, I wanted to put a lot into the first paragraph.

Your lead sentence, "I have worked in education for much of my life", immediately establishes your tone of condescension; for your 20-year "education" career lacks even one day as a classroom teacher. You, Mr. Duncan, are the poster-child for the prevailing attitude in corporate-style education reform: that the number one prerequisite for educational expertise is never having been a teacher.

Your stated goal is that teachers be "...treated with the dignity we award to other professionals n society."

Really?

How many other professionals are the last ones consulted about their own profession; and are then summarily ignored when policy decisions are made? How many other professionals are so distrusted that sweeping federal legislation is passed to "force" them to do their jobs? And what dignities did you award teachers when you publicly praised the mass firing of teachers in Rhode Island?

You acknowledge teacher's concerns about No Child Left Behind, yet you continue touting the same old rhetoric: "In today’s economy, there is no acceptable dropout rate, and we rightly expect all children -- English-language learners, students with disabilities, and children of poverty -- to learn and succeed."

What other professions are held to impossible standards of perfection? Do we demand that police officers eliminate all crime, or that doctors cure all patients? Of course we don't.

There are no parallel claims of "in today's society, there is no acceptable crime rate", or "we rightly expect all patients -- those with end-stage cancers, heart failure, and multiple gunshot wounds -- to thrive into old age." When it comes to other professions, respect and common sense prevail.

Your condescension continues with "developing better assessments so you will have useful information to guide instruction..." Excuse me, but I am a skilled, experienced, and licensed professional. I don't need an outsourced standardized test -- marketed by people who haven't set foot in my school -- to tell me how my students are doing.

I know how my students are doing because I work directly with them. I learn their strengths and weaknesses through first-hand experience, and I know how to tailor instruction to meet each student's needs. To suggest otherwise insults both me and my profession.

You want to "...restore the status of the teaching profession..." Mr. Duncan, you built your career defiling the teaching profession. Your signature effort, Race to the Top, is the largest de-professionalizing, demoralizing, sweeter-carrot-and-sharper-stick public education policy in U.S. history. You literally bribed cash-starved states to enshrine in statute the very reforms teachers have spoken against.

You imply that teachers are the bottom-feeders among academics. You want more of "America's top college students" to enter the profession. If by "top college students" you mean those with high GPA's from prestigious, pricey schools then the answer is simple: a five-fold increase in teaching salaries.

You see, Mr. Duncan, those "top" college students come largely from our nation's wealthiest families. They simply will not spend a fortune on an elite college education to pursue a 500% drop in socioeconomic status relative to their parents.

You assume that "top" college students automatically make better teachers. How, exactly, will a 21-year-old, silver-spoon-fed ivy-league graduate establish rapport with inner-city kids? You think they’d be better at it than an experienced teacher from a working-class family, with their own rough edges or checkered past, who can actually relate to those kids? Your ignorance of human nature is astounding.

As to your concluding sentence, "I hear you, I value you, and I respect you"; no, you don't, and you don't, and you don't. In fact, I don't believe you even wrote this letter for teachers.

I think you sense a shift in public opinion. Parents are starting to see through the façade; and recognize the privatization and for-profit education reform movement for what it is. And they've begun to organize --Parents Across America, is one example.

. . . No doubt some will dismiss what I've said as paranoid delusion. What they call paranoia I call paying attention. Mr. Duncan, teachers hear what you say. We also watch what you do, and we are paying attention.

Working with kids every day, our baloney-detectors are in fine form. We've heard the double-speak before; and we don't believe the dog ate your homework. Coming from children, double-speak is expected and it provides important teachable moments. Coming from adults, it's just sad.

Despite our best efforts, some folks never outgrow their disingenuous, manipulative, self- serving approach to life. Of that, Mr. Duncan, you are a shining example.

There's a lot that needs to be worked out, but the first thing we have to do is to understand that public education can't be included in this manic obsession with privatization.  There are things that simply must be held communally; among them are Healthcare, Law Enforcement, National Defense and (at minimum) K-12 Education.

Second, you can't fix the schools if you don't fix the communities those schools are trying to serve.

Third, there are problems with Unions and with Tenure that have to be addressed, but those are problems of ego and power structures.  The original point of tenure was to  protect faculty from undue pressures from donors, clergy and politicians.  You don't abandon the solid principles of collective bargaining and academic freedom when things get outa whack.  You tend to the needs; you tweak; you remodel and rebuild; you get the system back into balance and go on from there.

The Honorable Mr Weiner

He's generally a pain in the ass, and he can be uber partisan, but when a guy's right, ya gotta give him his props.

Two things:
1) The Repubs have been bitching about "no Medicare plan from the Dems". The Dems' plan was passed last year - it was called The Affordable Care Act (aka: Healthcare Reform).

2) The Repub plan is a voucher plan. Repub plans are almost always voucher plans. Why? Because they need to pay off their big contributors, and a voucher is a good way to launder the money.

An Apt Nickname

Sarah "The Barracuda" Palin is turning out to be exactly the empty-souled phony I think she is.

Zero Hedge has the story.

Even if it all turns out to be more legit than it looks, this reinforces her public image as a shameless opportunist, willing to work any angle that gives her any kind of advantage, or accrues to her personal benefit.  btw: none of this makes her a whole lot different from any of her fellows; what makes her stand out (for me) is that she's so clumsy and obvious about it.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

War Is A Racket

"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force--the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I suspected I was part of a racket all the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service." --Maj Gen Smedley Butler

Huh? (update 2)

Starting at about 40:00, it goes into the heart of the matter regarding The Logical Extreme.

More No Surprises

OK, I get it now.

via Spy Talk:
At the same time Tiffany & Co. was extending Callista (Bisek) Gingrich a virtual interest-free loan of tens of thousands of dollars, the diamond and silverware firm was spending big bucks to influence mining policy in Congress and in agencies over which the House Agriculture Committee--where she worked--had jurisdiction, official records show. 
Filings by Tiffany’s lobbyist, Cassidy & Co., and other government records show that the firm’s spending on “mining law and mine permitting-related issues” in Congress, as well as the Forest Service, the Interior Department, and Interior’s Bureau of Land Management shot up sharply during the period when Callista Gingrich was chief clerk at the House Agriculture Committee.
Tiffany's annual lobbying expenditures rose from about $100,000 to $360,000 between 2005 and 2009, according to records assembled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan government watchdog organization.

No Surprises

This is certainly not news.
Members of the House of Representatives considerably outperform the stock market in their personal investments, according to a new academic study.
Four university researchers examined 16,000 common stock transactions made by approximately 300 House representatives from 1985 to 2001, and found what they call "significant positive abnormal returns," with portfolios based on congressional trades beating the market by about 6 percent annually.
What's their secret? The report speculates, but does not conclude, it could have something to do with the ability members of Congress have to trade on non-public information or to vote their own pocketbooks -- or both.
It would be news if anybody in congress actually did something about it.  The story does mention that a few Representatives have been trying to move legislation that could address this problem, but they've been at it for over 4 years now and it's gone nowhere.

Something else that would be news is if the Press Poodles would actually pick it up and at least put it in front of us.  But of course, that's not gonna happen.  News media are all owned by companies who benefit from the same inside information.  The parent companies contribute heavily to the re-election campaigns of these Congress Critters, who of course will then either pass bills that benefit those contributors, or kill regulations that restrict those contributors; the companies make more money, the Congress Critters get a nice little spiff because they have information the rest of can't get; and the contributions continue to roll in.  It's a Closed-Loop System that you get to pay for, and that you're not allowed into.  Such a deal.

And here's the kicker:  this is exactly where a truly unfettered Free Market takes us.  Everything is a commodity; everything has a price; everything is for sale.

Related: from Robert Reich.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Huh? (updated)

I've been wondering why the Repubs are trying to spin a Senate vote into a trap, and why they seem so hell-bent on letting the Dems paint them as the Medicare Villains all while seeming to think of themselves as the heroes who saved entitlement programs by destroying them, because of course, the true zealot holds himself superior to reality blah blah blah.

I'm seriously getting the feeling they're stuck in a kind of ideology whirlpool.  They're so determined to "out-conservative" each other, that it takes on an inertia that leads to critical mass and then implosion/explosion.  Maybe I'm just thinking of tornadoes or floods or disasters in general because that's in the news lately, but sometimes these random connections are valid. So against the backdrop of things that happen in understandable progressions, I'm also thinking of the mindset that ideologues eventually get into when the more radical of their ideas are proposed (or even adopted as policy), and are then rejected or ignored by "the masses" when it becomes clear those ideas weren't really all that great to begin with.

Watch this installment from The Power of Nightmares, and listen for the part about what happens when Ayman al-Zawahri comes to the conclusion that it's not just the infidels who are to blame, but that his fellow Muslims have failed to keep faith (at about 9:00).  These guys never stop to consider that they might have it just a teensy bit wrong - they always assume their followers are betraying their principles; and they always end up rationalizing the absolute need to punish their followers for those failures.

The parallels with what's happening in the GOP are rife and obvious to me. And no, I'm NOT saying the Repubs are just like al-Qaeda. I'm saying that once you've thrown in with fundamentalists of any kind, you're joining a race to the logical extreme.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Interesting (updated)

From a movie back in the day when the Democrats were Ronald Reagan and Bull Connor. And all the "good Repubs" hated guys like Eisenhower.

UPDATE : Oops - the movie's from 1940. So, gee - I got that one wrong. Don't care, it's still a great line, and Hope came up with lots of those.

Lithgow Does Gingrich

Huh?

Party first; everything else if and when we bloody well feel like it.
Leading Democrats, such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, think the Ryan plan is toxic, too. Reid plans to hold a vote this week in which Republican senators will have to go on record as supporting, or opposing, the House-passed budget bill -- which includes the Ryan plan to fundamentally transform Medicare as we know it. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, seeing the trap that Reid has laid, says each GOP senator will be free to vote his or her conscience.
To begin: scheduling a vote in the US Senate, requiring each senator to declare where he/she stands on the question of Medicare - is a trap?

Next: McConnell says he won't whip his people on this vote, and that means each Repub senator is "free to vote his or her conscience".  Just this once, y'all can vote on what ya think is best for your constituents.  But remember now, this is a special case, so don't get used to it.

Why is it OK for McConnell to say that shit out loud?
Why does it seem like I'm the only one jumpin' up and down yellin' WHAT THE FUCK!?!?