Today's Cartoons

Fellow Travelers

Can you say Strange Bedfellows? Both are from public appearances in 1964. It just makes me wonder about coincidence, and how two people we would assume are diametrically opposed might have something very important in common.

Starting at 5:30


And then this:

The Tax Swindle

Middle Class Americans have to be distracted while the Ownership Class continues to pick their pockets.

A good way to keep them from noticing how badly you're fucking them is to scapegoat some other group (in this case the poor and the working poor), which makes them think you're actually on their side, which enlists their help in your efforts to fuck them over even more.

It's classic.  People of a particular authoritarian bent, who are in positions of privilege and power are always advocating the most severe remedies "for the good of the country"; and those remedies somehow always end up being imposed on (and to the detriment of) the very people who should benefit from those remedies the most.  And lately, all this self-sacrifice for the common good is being sold to us under the guise of Ayn Rand-type philosophy.  Guess what?  Rand HATED the notion of self sacrifice; and she especially HATED the rationale of sacrifice in service to the collective.  Rejection of all things communal, and a complete disdain for sacrificing the Self are at the very heart of Rand's construction of Objectivism.

I'm off the point a little, so let's bring it back to the bullshit currently being peddled by DumFux News and their network of echo chamber media lizards.

via The Atlantic:

There is no question that the wealthy pay a higher overall tax rate than any other group. That is an American tradition. But there is also no question that their tax rates have fallen more than any other group’s over the last three decades. The only reason they are paying more taxes than in the past is that their pretax incomes have risen so rapidly — which hardly seems a great rationale for a further tax cut.

Logic Will Out

(with a hat tip to Balloon Juice)

There is a sick feeling of perverted satisfaction in stories like this.  I guess it comes from thinking that this is where all their Free Market shit ends up.

So far this year, at least 180 drugs that are crucial for treating childhood leukemia, breast and colon cancer, infections and other diseases have been declared in short supply — a record number.

-snip-

Executives at Premier, a hospital buying cooperative, said that in April and May its members received hundreds of offers from obscure drug wholesalers to sell drugs in short supply at vastly inflated prices. Of the 636 offers that included a price, 45 percent were at least 10 times the normal rate and 27 percent were at least 20 times normal.

Such sales offers are legal as long as suppliers prove that they bought the drugs appropriately. Some wholesalers buy certain drugs in large quantities because they are betting there will be a shortage. The excessive buying can help make their predictions come true. “We never like to see a situation where people can profit off of a national crisis and engage in price gouging,” Mike Alkire, Premier’s chief operating officer, said in an interview.

If you think for a minute these guys won't look for opportunities to create a shortage, then you're just fuckin' stupid.  I knew Mike Alkire when he was a lowly drug rep - the guy's a shark.  He would have no qualms at all about taking advantage of these situations.

We Are So Fucked

...with our pants on.

First, Matt Taibbi talking about Too Big To Jail




Then, from Democracy Now, talking with Dean Baker about the Super Congress, and the continuing all-out assault on the middle class.

What They Wished For

I think the conversation inside the Republican Party is getting pretty heated, and grows more public all the time.

Here's Michael Tanner (Cato Inst), asking 5 questions, which I think betray a real fear among the old guard that the Tea Partiers represent nothing less than the disintegration of the GOP.

Money = Speech

Why is it that a comedy show is where we get the best reporting and analysis?

(see the full episode here)

Two ridiculously important takeaways:
1) When people's votes are counted straight up, you get one result, but when you add in the multiplying effect of money, the result is entirely different.

2) People like Frank Luntz manipulate the language in an attempt to fog up the issues, making some of the most atrociously harmful policy proposals sound reasonable &/or beneficial* - and then topping it all off by referring to this process of obfuscation as "clarification", and calling the practitioners "Plain Speaking".

(*see Overton Window)

The Colbert Report
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Seasteading

Lurching towards the logical extreme, this is not unexpected:

PayPal-founder Peter Thiel was so inspired by Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand's novel about free-market capitalism - that he's trying to make its title a reality.

So we'll have a colony of wealthy residents living outside the territorial limits of the US. They're not subject to our laws and regulations, and they get to "live free" in this Randian paradise.

Makes me wonder about a few things - not the least of which is piracy.  I think if I were an enterprising individual who was already involved in something illegal like the drug trade, I might deem it worth the risk to raid one of these little settlements now and then, just to see what's available.  Better yet, some kind of protection racket might be quite profitable for me.

Just wonderin'.

Contradiction

A big chunk of "the right" loves to claim Ayn Rand as a patron saint while ignoring one of her main points, ie: contradictions exist, but cannot prevail.

By way of example:

Reconstruction

Yikes.  Got the main bill for the Hospital side of things for my Total Hip Replacement.  The bill from the surgeon should be following shortly.

Previously, I had an XRay for diagnosis, and then another XRay Study to measure for the device itself.  Those two totaled close to $1400.00.

Right now, I'm getting two visits per week from a nurse who checks me over and tests my Coumadin level, plus two visits per week from the Physical Therapist.  Once they turn me loose and I'm no longer considered "house-bound", I switch to Out-Patient status, and I go to a rehab center twice a week

Thank God for good insurance coverage. 

Fun Fact

This represents exactly one dollar more than what ExxonMobil paid in taxes last year.

Caption Contest

1) "Bachmann reveals truth about what it takes to get a Republican nomination."

2) "And now, my impression of my husband - the girls at the club love this one."

Super Congress

I've decided not to piss and moan about the ridiculous level of self aggrandizement and ego-petting when it comes to naming the gimmick these guys have come up with to try to deal with the petty politics of the Budget and the Debt.

I don't know about the legalities of the thing because I don't think it matters, because I think it's wired to fail anyway.  The Repubs have stacked their side with people who are dead set against any tax increases.  They're all on the record, or they've signed one of Grover Norquist's stupid pledges.  And the Dem Leadership (making what looks like a deliberate attempt to prop up the "both sides do it / they're all the same" meme), have appointed members who are party loyalists and apparatchiks - but Harry Reid made one pick that I think absolutely ensures an outcome favorable to the Repubs, and his name is Max Baucus.

First, of course, we have to ignore the irony of a government setting up a brand new piece of bureaucracy in an attempt to cut back the existing bureaucracy.  But no matter; I expect they'll make a nice show of it, and we'll be entertained (ie: distracted) long enough for the "automatic cuts" to kick in.

The real fight goes on backstage; the real fight is about whose fiefdom lives or dies.  Watch and listen.  I think this thing is all about re-organizing the power allotment of the existing structures of congressional committees; the relationships between federal, state and local governments; and practically all things "government".  This is nothing short of a full-on paradigm shift fueled by the big-time ambitions of small-time operators, and it's bound to be a wild ride.

Corporate Personage

Here's Willard employing a Debate Stopper as he tries to make the point for lowering Corporate Tax rates.
(A Debate Stopper is a meme; a statement of "political fact" - usually in simplistic terms - intended to require agreement on the speaker's basic premise, allowing the speaker to go on to make a conclusive statement of policy).



The problem, as always, is that if your basic premise is false, then your conclusion cannot be true.

And here's the fallacy: If a corporation is a person; and it is entitled to the same rights and privileges of all other people, then it must be subject to the same responsibilities and liabilities as any other person.

A corporation is allowed to own another corporation, but a person is not allowed to own another person.

A corporation is not - cannot be - a person.

Both Sides

The centrist meme starts with a perfectly reasonable assumption that there're at least two sides of the story; that we need to be sure we're addressing questions from as wide a perspective as possible. All well and good, but it starts to fall apart when you take that next step and assume that ALL issues MUST have at least two sides (they don't), and that both points of view are ALWAYS valid (they aren't).

While Centrism has its uses, as a political philosophy, it's just intellectually lazy. It's a product of our need not to feel embarrassed because we supported the wrong candidates and causes; or because we aren't willing to do the work required of every good citizen in a democracy; or that we were just following a fashionable trend; or whatever.

To take just a piece of the argument, here's Bill Maher exposing the lie of "both sides do it".