Slouching Towards Oblivion

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Dubious Associations

Papa Bear says it perfectly at the end of the last clip.

(hat tip = Wonkette)


But don't forget to vote for Newt cuz he's gonna get us all the gas we want at $2.50 a gallon.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Today's Pix




(hat tip = DZ):
Santorum/Limbaugh - 2012






Say What?

(hat tip = Crooks and Liars)

One of the great opening paragraphs of all time:
Wisconsin is the only state that's been bleeding jobs for a straight six months, and the Walker administration is truly puzzled. Gov. Walker followed every single recommendation in the Wingnut Book of Corporate Wishes, resulting in a huge pile of manure, and yet he still can't find the free market pony. If only there was something he could do to change things - you know, things like go back in time and not lay off all those teachers and public workers whose spending helped stimulate the economy:


A coupla things that stand out for me - in keeping with the usual Repub habit of taking full responsibility for your actions, and then blaming everything on everybody else when your chowderhead policies take the economy into the shitter, just like everybody you're now blaming told your dumb ass they would.

First, at about 1:40, "the federal government failed to act".  I tho't he told us the federal government was one of the big problems and that he wouldn't be needing them for anything.

Second, by about 2:00, he's flipped all the way over and starts reciting practically every point the evil libruls have always said were essential to a healthy economy, all of which Mr Walker has done nothing but deny and refute - basically, Education and Infrastructure and Living Wage Jobs.

Yo, Guv - if this where you were going anyway, then what the fuck have you been doing for the last 2 years!?!

Monday, March 05, 2012

Wait...What?

Most of the rationale behind most of the GOP's efforts to downsize government, and to cut spending, and to ease the 'tax burden' has been built around the basic tenet that "the government is broke" - especially the state governments.  So Repubs have been runnin' around making a lot of the usual weird noise about how the voodoo bullshit of Tax-Cuts-Equals-More-Tax-Receipts isn't just a fever dream due to an overuse of Rectum-Derived Statistics (hat tip = Bill Maher).

Anyway, they keep saying they have to fire cops and teachers and firefighters and street maintenance crews, and kill the unions because those rotten unionized workers just cost too darned much.  Every shitty thing they wanna do is because the gubmint don't got da money no mo'.

But then, this headline from Cincinnati.com:


Kasich turns down federal disaster aid

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said thanks but no thanks to immediate federal disaster relief Saturday, even as governors in Indiana and Kentucky welcomed the help.
Kasich did not rule out asking for assistance later, but his decision means tornado-ravaged towns in Ohio will not get federal aid now and are not eligible at this time for potentially millions of dollars in payments and loans.
The governor said Ohio can respond to the crisis without federal help and he would not ask federal authorities to declare the region a disaster area.
Oh, I get it.  The state's too broke to pay a decent wage to people who bust their asses to teach the kids and chase the bad guys and make sure the roads are safe, but there's plenty to go around when a camera hound like Kasich gets a chance at a little national exposure.  And of course, this can't possibly have anything to do with setting himself up for a run at The Oval in 2016, now can it?

The normal scenario here is that Kasich makes the news by "bucking the system" (he's a maverick; a take-charge guy; somebody who knows how to get shit done).  Then once the news cycle has passed and the Press Poodles are chasing the next shiny thing, the feds will come in quietly - "let's not be playin' politics with people's lives, Mr President" - and things will go along as they usually do, even if the help is too late for a few of the poor suckers who're always caught in the middle of this kinda shit; and the only thing that anybody will see or remember or care about is what makes it into the campaign ads or the coverage of Candidate Kasich - that he handled the tornadoes of 2012 like a seasoned executive blah blah blah.  And we can all be pleasantly surprised if the rubes don't just keep swallowing it.

It's Not About That

It's never about what they tell us it's about, so when a Repub says "this is about...", you know you're gonna get a load of finely shredded and heavily composted mulch dumped right on top of your pea-pickin' little head.




In a weird way, this is NOT about contraception - but it's definitely not about big bad gubmint pissing on your faith either.  It's about Repubs giving every business a chance to shitcan The Affordable Care Act for any stoopid "reason" they care to come up with over a few highballs after work.  Notice that the attempts (eg: The Blunt Amendment) are all aimed very generically at letting employers opt out of practically anything they have "a moral objection" to.  Fairly simple for the GOP to fit it in with all the other flimflam they get the rubes to swallow every time out.  To wit: "I think this is socialized medicine, and I believe it's immoral to forcibly confiscate any of my employees' hard-earned rewards in order to pay for somebody else's abortions, or whatever ".

Stick to your guns, Dems.  And somebody please tell Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to stop arguing about whatever these assholes want her to argue about and start looking for the real shit for a change.

Sunday, March 04, 2012

Stick to The Point

Lots of fury over the latest giant pile of steaming Limbaugh.

From Balloon Juice, mistermix posted a good one, quoting Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon:
"Some women aren't even taking the birth control pill for contraception! They need it for cramps/endometriosis/etc."
Every time you say this, a right winger wanting to imply that women who have sex for pleasure are sluts gets his wings. This statement and all variations on it feeds into the right wing claim that a) contraception is not health care and b) that women who have sex for pleasure are so indefensible that you have to lean on off-label uses for a contraceptive drug to justify its existence. It also does absolutely nothing to defend the non-pill contraception that's covered by the health care act, such as IUDs or sterilization. Plus, that gives them an easy out, which is to say that they're fine with insurance covering pills that are prescribed for non-contraception use, but just object to prescriptions for women who use them to prevent pregnancy.
It's one of the debate tactics that "conservatives" use all the time - first, they claim you agree with them that women are always and only either Mary Mother of God,  or that they're always and only Devil-Fuckers.  And second, that since you agree on the first point, then you're encouraging woman to have sex with Satan.  And that means you're the one who is "anti-woman".

Here's really the only thing that matters as far as I'm concerned:
There are many good reasons for women to have unrestricted access to "contraceptives", and while everybody's wellbeing is of some concern to all of us in a generic kinda way, what a woman chooses to do with her lady-parts is NONE OF MY DAMNED BUSINESS.

Ya want people to be left alone?  Then try it sometime, ya fuckin' jerk.

Friday, March 02, 2012

Today's Pix




Zombie Economics - Kinsella

"...one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."



Spotlight Virginia

It seems The Old Dominion is one of the big battleground states for this election cycle, so here we go again, kids - the heat is on.

I've joined Team Obama as a campaign volunteer, and I'll have a table set up for Voter Registration at Kelly's Corner between noon and 4 tomorrow - assuming they don't run me off.  Let's just say it wouldn't surprise me to find out that lots of people in this part of the county assume it's illegal to be anything but Republican.

Anyway, one of the marquee races this time is between George Allen (R-Macaca) versus Tim  (The Chubby Leprechaun) Kaine (D-Happytown).

Thought I'd give you a friendly reminder about ol' Georgie boy:


This could be fun.

And There It Is

The exposure parade continues.  Sec'y Sebelius tries to explain to US Rep Tim Murphy (R-Brainfart) how contra-ception works, but he can't hear what she's saying because God is stomping around in his head, making too much awesomely righteous noise up there or some-damn-thing.

(hat tip ThinkProgress)
SEBELIUS: There also is no abortifacient drug that is part of the FDA approved contraception. What the rule for preventive care…
MURPHY: Ma’m that is not true…Is the morning after pill or something like that an abortifacient drug?
SEBELIUS: It is a contraceptive drug, not an abortifacient… It does not interfere with a pregnancy. If the morning pill were taken, and a female were pregnant, the pregnancy is not interrupted. That’s the definition of abortifation.
MURPHY: Ma’m that is your interpretation, and I appreciate that’s your interpretation.
SEBELIUS: That’s what the scientists and doctors…
MURPHY: We’re not talking about scientists. Ma’m we’re not talking about scientists here, we’re talking about religious belief. Ma’m, I’m asking you about a religious belief. In a religious belief, that is a violation of a religious belief.
And there it is.  Science doesn't matter.  Fact doesn't matter.  Reality doesn't matter.  If truth goes against my religion-fueled ideology, then truth must be dismissed and ignored and condemned.

One last thing: according to Ayn Rand, (approx - The Fountainhead) "...evil is when a man sees the truth - recognizes it for what it is - and denies it."

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Evidence To The Contrary

I tho't this was interesting (hat tip = AG):


"Conservatives" love to bash places like Charlottesville and Boulder as being "the People's Republic of..." etc, because (I assume) they perceive those places as bastions of Librul Think or whatever.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the cities on the top list are fairly well-known as homes of some of the great 'Liberal Arts' colleges and universities - some of the best schools anywhere.  You know; those places where our innocent unsuspecting children go to be indoctrinated by evil Marxist professors, according to buttheads like Little Ricky Santorum - Provo being the probable exception.  But I'm getting off the path here.

What do you suppose we could learn if we put the two lists side by side and looked at things like Air and Water Quality Standards, Growth Planning, Industry Zoning and Regulation, and and and - all the things "conservatives" love to bitch about.  I wonder why the conservative towns are seen by their own citizens to be kinda crappy places to live.