The Costs Of War

And another generation of Americans is forever changed.

When do we finally get it thru our heads that nobody wins a war? Whoever convinces themselves that they lost the least gets to declare themselves the victors; and then go about preparing for the next go 'round.

People Of The lie

Podcast

I listen to this podcast every Sunday instead of watching the morning bobblehead shows.  They've been evolving a general theme that's aimed at creating and distributing vocabulary and tactics that can be used to countervail the constant stream of nonsense that seems to dominate any random political discussion.

It all comes down to fighting the Conditioned Response and/or the Confirmation Bias and/or the Reflexive Reactions that we're all susceptible to - in order to move a little closer to the big-t Truth.  But just substituting one kind of knee-jerk response for another doesn't get us where we need to go either.

One suggestion: Everybody gets tired of trying to rebut the idiot emails they get from their "conservative" friends and in-laws. One solution is simply to stop rising to the bait, and instead demand the sender provide straight-up proof of whatever the email's about.  Let the facts tell the story.  And yeah, I know - some "conservatives" flat out deny the facts, or just make shit up.  The direct challenge is still the best antiseptic for that.  "What you can't prove qualifies as nothing more than a crock full of shit."  One thing that comes in pretty handy is that I can look stuff up on my phone now and make 'em look foolish in public.  I love that.

Something else that sticks in my brain is the idea that people are not just well conditioned in what they say, but also in what they hear you say in rebuttal.  It's pretty apparent, but I think it bears repeating.  And really, it's just the Straw Man thing, where they take what you say; turn it into something you didn't actually say; and proceed to tear it apart.

Whenever I'm arguing policy now, I'm trying to remember the thing about framing that George Lakoff talks about in Don't Think Of An Elephant.*  If the listener is properly conditioned (ie: the frame of his thinking is set), then he'll hear and agree with whatever is said that fits that frame, and disregard or dispute anything that doesn't fit.
(*)


If your debate partner is at all "typical" of the total putz nozzles who pass for conservatives these days, then he's going to be in line with "The Sweeping Generalization" --government is bad.  --poor people are just lazy.  --taxation is burdensome and oppressive.  --and on and on;  We all know the drill.  You make a point in criticism of something generic like Corporate Greed, and you can bet the rebuttal will be all about how you hate Capitalism, and how you want the gubmint to enslave the noble job-creators, blah blah blah.  It has nothing really to do with the point you made, but it works if you don't recognize what he's doing, and if you don't then turn it back around by insisting that he address the actual point instead of the one he just pulled out of his ass.

Being aware that the other guy is only hearing what he wants to hear, requires me to improve my arguments and to improve how I make my arguments.  If I can anticipate his reaction, I have the advantage.

But here's the real kicker:  I'm not going to convince the guy I'm arguing with, and he's not the guy I'm really talking to.  I'm talking to the people who are listening around the edges; the people who read the comments on facebook or the blogs, but never leave comments of their own.  They're there looking for something that strikes them as reasonable. They're looking for something that rings true.  Give it to them.

Another part of the ProLeft podcast had to do with keeping up with the machinery that produces the crap that too many people take for the truth.



Whatever you believe nobody cares 
Whatever it is you think you know 
Don't give a Goddamn 
Reality is bullshit 
Reflection is a concept 
Based on your own fucked up ideal 

Don't call it part of your faith 
Another way you justify hate 

Voices shouting under water 
Drown you out, steal your air 
Blinded by their own illusion 
Through a crooked looking glass 

Army of theives 
Blood on their hands 
Lightning, fire and brimstone 
They'll say whatever they can 
Conspiracy theories, Arrogant trash 
They prowl alone and trvel in packs 

[Chorus] 

Vocies shouting in the water 
Drag you down, steal your air 
Dissolut, Diabolic 
Snake oil salesmen everywhere 


[x4] 
People of the lie 

Whatever you believe 
Nobody cares 
Idol worship, made of fantasy 
Don't push your deity on me 

Reality is bullshit 
Reflection is a concept 
Based on your own fucked up ideal 


[x4] 
People of the lie 

Turn That Shit Off

OWS Statement

Shoulda done this a while ago.

Official Statement from Occupy Wall Street - this statement was voted on and approved by the general assembly of protesters at Liberty Square: Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

"As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive."

Money Talks

Is it irony or satire or what?  (hat tip: Democratic Underground)

Biased Media

The contention that "the mainstream media" is slanted toward the Liberal side of the spectrum is a myth that gets exposed on a pretty regular basis.

There's a good long post at Crooks and Liars:

As if to prove the truth of this study, The Hill ran with an amazing headline today:

Poll: Half of Americans believe Obama doesn't deserve reelection

Hmmm. Let's see. If half of Americans believe he doesn't deserve re-election, then that means the other half does, right? Which means that headline could easily have been flipped around to read "Half of Americans believe Obama deserves re-election." And if that headline could have been flipped and wasn't, one might ask why? Here's another way they could have worded it: "Americans evenly split on whether Obama deserves re-election". That would have been neutral, at least.

Another Dead Dictator

Qaddafi is (apparently) dead as of this morning, so the question now is: How will DumFux News manage to give the Repubs most of the credit while still practically denying the very existence of Junior Bush?

Makes Me Wanna Holler

It Takes A While

From prototype to market in less than 20 years - wow.

Introduced at a trade show in Chicago in 1961, this thing featured a flat screen (4 inches thick) and a programmable recorder.

(hat tip The Atlantic)

Sheesh

It would be so good to get back to where we could count on the reporter being as smart as the subject of the interview.


My only recollection of anything even remotely to do with SDS: When I was a sophomore in high school in the fall of 1968, some of the senior footballers declared a random Friday "Chuck Taylor Day". This being in the time of strict dress codes, it was considered quite the rebellion to be wearing your low-cut black Converse tennies outside of gym class. The school administration was so paranoid about this turning into some kind of "SDS-style demonstration" (their words), they became alarmed enough to call the "instigators" into the office and grill them about their motives; wanting desperately to avoid any kind of potentially violent clash.

I can understand being worried over safety issues, and it was 1968 after all, but you can't superimpose today's sensibilities on it. The simplest fact is that they were scared witless by the thought of a few dozen 17-year-olds wearing tennis shoes - that's how threatening the prospect of a little civil disobedience is to authoritarian power.

A Poll Of One

There are good reasons not to vote for Obama (Gitmo, Drones, Death Warrants, Torture, etc).  But when I look at the alternatives, I can't justify voting against him.

He knows all that, btw.  He also knows that the Hard-Left Hippies are finally getting a little traction; pulling the whole thing back towards the center - and he knows this is a good thing for him.

I think he's having an FDR moment.  He's been constantly scolded for not doing "what we sent him up there to do", but until recently, all of the real pressure has come from the Repubs and Blue Dogs.  Now that Planet Occupy is kinda up and runnin', he can finally point at something tangible and tell John and Mitch, "See?  The people are making me do this - opposing me will cost you".

Next, I don't think the Repubs have any real chance to glom onto the Occupy thing.  They spent the first 3 weeks trashing it, which has had the effect of putting the Democrats' brand on it.  They know they screwed the pooch and are only now trying to cozy up with it.  I think the Dems have played it about right so far.  They know they'll get more votes from the Occupy folks than the Repubs will get, so it's a matter of working the leverage.

Lastly, if the Dems are careful not to let it look like a co-opting thing, they could benefit in a big way.

Solution Seeks Problem

The need to fight rampant voter fraud is one of those really scary sounding memes the Repubs love to trot out as they try to beat back the tide of Youth and Minority voting that they fervently believe threatens to wash them away at any moment.

Rampant Voter Fraud is also - you guessed it - almost completely baseless.

Here's a good look at the "issue" in The Tennesseean (not exactly a bastion of liberal bias):

“They identified a lot of fraud, but very, very, very, very, very, very little of it could be prevented by identification at the polls,” Levitt said.

The remainder involved vote buying, ballot-box stuffing, problems with absentee ballots, or ex-convicts voting even though laws bar them from doing so. Over the same seven-year time period covered by the cases Levitt reviewed, 400 million votes were cast in general elections.

“If there was evidence of this, we’d know about it,” said Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters. Her organization, which has affiliates in every state, knows voter registrars, attends election meetings, observes and works at polls and is intimately aware of how the election system works.

It's not about protecting the franchise.  It's about keeping people from voting a certain way - in this case for Democrats - and it stinks.  If a big majority (of either party) showed up in some state houses, the electees might grow some balls, step out of line, and then the Lords of Lucre will lose a big measure of control.  And we can't have that now, can we?

Get Rich By Running For Office

I'm not sure I have a huge problem with this, but there is definitely something about it that stinks just a little.

“All candidates publish books and they offer them as premiums to donors, but most candidates aren’t buying them from their own companies,” he said. “It raises the question of his campaign contributions ending up in his own pocket.”

Read all about it over at Bloomburg.

Occupy Dylan Ratigan

Here's an old-ish rant from a Dylan Ratigan show that aired a few months ago.  I dunno if this is really what it's all about, but it's pretty close.  The corrosive influence of money has to be addressed.   And I love the passion - reminds me of what I get criticized for all the time.  I kinda like the overly dramatic soundtrack too.

Signage

(From Occupy Wall Street) A couple of indications that this was definitely not a Tea Party rally:
1) The message is a bit long, so it requires some higher brain function to process the meaning.
2) All the words are spelled right.

Signage

From Occupy Boulder - an important message from an important bunch of voters.  (hat tip to JR)

My Kinda Veteran

As long as the protesters fit the hippie/hipster stereotype, the police can function within a comfortable frame of reference. But throw 'em a curve, and they're lost - it blows their programming all to pieces.

Bunny Hitler

It's a good idea to mock these assholes for a thousand eternities.  This is what hell is about for a nonbeliever like me.  If there's any possibility of an afterlife, then it's important to make sure that every time Adolf tunes in to find out what's happening, what he sees is many many people reiterating what a fuckin' jerk he was.

James Fallows - Again

The guy is fast becoming one of my faves.

Critical of a recent WaPo article, Mr Fallows writes:

- It reflects so thorough an absorption of the idea that the filibuster-threat is normal business that it describes the latest cloture vote as a vote on the bill itself: "Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Jon Tester (Mont.), who are both up for reelection next year, took to the Senate floor and delivered a sizeable blow to the bill's prospects by voting against it." No, they voted against the cloture measure, which they knew had zero chance of getting the necessary 60 votes. Several other Democrats with doubts about the bill itself nonetheless were persuaded to vote for cloture, so that it would end up with a symbolic but ineffective 51-vote majority.

Yay James Fallows

From The Atlantic:

'Enabler' problem: The reluctance of the mainstream media to call this what it is, and instead to talk about "partisanship" and "logjam" and "dysfunction." Yes, those are the results. But the cause is intentional, and it comes overwhelmingly from one side.

I tend to read Fallows as a "goodguy conservative".  ie: He has a point of view that's generally "more right-of-center" than mine, but he understands (and has begun insisting) that policies have to be in line with facts and not ideology.

I think I see many more signs that a real shift could be taking place.