What Does It Mean?

These days, a "conservative: is a guy who loves America - or at least an idealized version of America - but seems to hate just about any American who doesn't look, think and act almost exactly like he does.

So how do I reconcile this one?  Justice David Souter quit the Supreme Court a coupla years ago, and took a pretty hard shot at his "conservative" peers on his way out, in the form of a dissenting opinion on a matter before the court at the time.  Meanwhile, Chief Justice Roberts (no relation to your beloved blogger here) used a procedural gimmick to delay the court's decision (Citizens United) long enough to make it impossible for Souter's critique to escape into the public domain - and his rationale was based on not wanting to harm the credibility of the court.

Didja catch that one?

hat tip = Balloon Juice

From The New Yorker - Jeffrey Toobin:

In one sense, the story of the Citizens United case goes back more than a hundred years. It begins in the Gilded Age, when the Supreme Court barred most attempts by the government to ameliorate the harsh effects of market forces. In that era, the Court said, for the first time, that corporations, like people, have constitutional rights. The Progressive Era, which followed, saw the development of activist government and the first major efforts to limit the impact of money in politics. Since then, the sides in the continuing battle have remained more or less the same: progressives (or liberals) vs. conservatives, Democrats vs. Republicans, regulators vs. libertarians. One side has favored government rules to limit the influence of the moneyed in political campaigns; the other has supported a freer market, allowing individuals and corporations to contribute as they see fit. Citizens United marked another round in this contest.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/21/120521fa_fact_toobin#ixzz1uxL8bOut

Today's Quote

"Every man has a right to an opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts." --Bernard Baruch

Thank You, Dr Chomsky

I was never a big fan, but the simple fact that so much scalding vitriol is aimed in his direction requires me to look for myself.



Special Bonus: David Frum at about 8:30.

I'm good with it until near the end (about 1:15:00) when he starts talking about the new "Libertarian Socialism" which will lead us to a spiritual transformation.

First, as soon as you tack that "ism" on the end of a set of philosophical tenets, you're well on your way towards the logical extreme, which means you've begun the slide into the abyss of self-cancellation.

Second, never bet against human nature.  If your system requires people to behave as anything other than people, then your system just ain't gonna work - not any time soon anyway.

But third, maybe it's more of a chicken-or-the-egg proposition.  Maybe it does work the way Chomsky imagines it working, where if you take the idea of Libertarian Socialism, and mash it up together with the need for a spiritual transformation, you nudge the evolutionary process - the philosophy and the transformation serve to carry each other forward.  I like that one better.

We're #1

...except when we're not - or about stuff we shouldn't be - or somethin'.

We have an amazing capacity for deluding ourselves.  And while it's not exactly unique to Americans, it seems like we have some special kind of weird need to buy into our own bullshit.  Maybe it's because our insistence on Free Speech made the slide into Propaganda unavoidable.  Maybe it's because we've allowed Free Speech to mean we can say whatever we want to say without being held to account for its consequences.

We think Foreign Aid makes up 25% of the Federal Budget, and that a more appropriate level would be about 13% - when it's actually less than 1%.

• 48% of Americans believe Healthcare Reform has been repealed.
• 51% don't know The US Supreme Court has 9 Justices
• ...and 54% can't name even one of 'em.
• 78% know Larry, Curly and Moe, while 58% can't name all 3 branches of the US Government.
• 125 million American Christians can't name all 4 Gospels.
• 67% of adults in the US can't find England on a map.
• 80% of us consider ourselves Above Average Drivers.
• 41% can't name the current Vice President of the United States.
• 7% think funding for Public Broadcasting represents more than half of the federal budget.
• As recently as 1999, 20% of Americans thought the Sun orbits the Earth.

Economic Mobility

"The South is the native home of American poverty" --Gene Nichol, director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

I really wish this would come as a surprise - just once in a while.  Why is it always The South?  There're 9 states doing worse than the average and they're all in The South, and they're all Deep Red politically.  The politics in every one of those states is dominated by Right Wing TeaBaggers and/or Christianists, but certainly by radicals who're pretending to be "conservatives".

Utah's an obvious outlier, but on the other side of that coin, there're 8 states doing better than average, and 7 of those are either Hard Blue or toward the blue end of Purple.

I don't know what exactly has to happen to change all of this, but I do know that not much will change until people figure out for themselves just how badly they're being swindled.

Where Credit Is Due

Jon Stewart is a fucking genius.

Politicizing Mothers' Day

Ann Romney has a piece in USA Today all about the glories of motherhood and the importance of cherishing our moms.  Wow - way to take a tough stand on that one, Annie.

Go read it if you think you need a little blast of meaningless treacle from about 1915.  For my own self, this is one of those times I wish I could spell the sound I make when I puke.

It's hard to imagine now, but before the birth of my first child, I had never held a baby. Not once, not in my entire life. No baby at home to tend, no niece or nephew to babysit. So you can imagine, the day my first boy was born I felt woefully unprepared.

She tries to make it sound like she's some kinda "regular person".  She isn't.  She'd never held a baby?  Seems odd 'til you take a quick little Google spin thru her old neighborhood, or do a bit of reading on Bloomfield Hills Michigan* where she grew up.  She probably never did any laundry or cooked a meal for herself either.  Not that any of that makes her a bad egg in any way - just that it doesn't make her any kind of kindred spirit with anybody who's ever struggled with any of life's little obstacles.  It's hard to imagine Ann Romney ever being denied much of anything, or a time when somebody wasn't shinin' her ass over one thing or another.

*Bloomfield Hills ... consistently ranks as one of the top five wealthiest cities in the United States with population between 2,500 to 9,999 — it currently is listed at the number four position and in 1990 it was ranked number two,[6] and has the highest income of any city outside of California, Florida or Virginia. The median income for a family is over $200,000. In 2000, 49% of residential property in Bloomfield Hills had a value of over $1,000,000.[7]

Generally, I don't mind when campaign consultants insist on trying to pull this kind of crap; I just wish they weren't always so fucking clumsy and obvious about it.

Go Greeks

Y'know, some people just really know how to do that protest thing better than others.

Prostesters in Greece managed to get into the studio and pelted a TV Anchor Guy with eggs and yogurt (this is Greece after all).

Unofficially translated, they're chanting, "Cops, TV, neo-nazis, all the scoundrels are working together."

One Example

Government as Business can be even more of a nightmare than what "conservatives" are always creamin' their jeans over.

A teenager in a For-Profit Prison in Mississippi turned up missing, and it took his dad more than a month to find him - in a local hospital, after suffering irreparable brain damage in a riot that was possibly instigated by at least one of the guards.  That's pretty fucked up right there.

From AlterNet via Democratic Underground:

On March 26, U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves issued a blistering court order approving the settlement of the lawsuit. He wrote that the GEO Group Inc., the company that runs Walnut Grove, “has allowed a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions to germinate.”

Violence by youths and guards wasn’t the only problem. Neither were the gang affiliations of some guards. Or the grossly inadequate medical and mental health care. Or the proliferation of drugs and other contraband. Or the lack of educational and rehabilitative programs. Or the wild overuse of pepper spray on passive youths.

Indeed, the DOJ found that sexual abuse – including brutal youth-on-youth rapes and “brazen” sexual misconduct by prison staffers who coerced youths – was “among the worst that we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation.”
What’s more, both the prison staff and the Mississippi Department of Corrections, which pays GEO $14 million each year to run the prison, showed “deliberate indifference” to these problems.

This hyper-macho, get-tough bullshit just ain't workin', guys.  We gotta figure out something else.

Back In The Black

Not that it's gonna last, but the US Gov't reported a budget surplus of $58 Billion for April 2012.

CBO estimated that receipts were $30 billion higher in April than the same month a year ago, due to declining refunds that month and higher corporate income tax receipts. Spending fell by $69 billion compared to April 2011, marked by lower outlays on defense, Medicaid and the Postal Service.  --Market Watch

How this happened is anybody's guess, but the real question is how long will it take for the Repubs to turn it around, and get the failure they've been pushing for?

Making Government run like a business is great as long as it's never ever allowed to turn a profit.  Which kinda shows how fucked up the GOP's premise actually is.  Because if Gubmint works like a business, then Gubmint is - in fact - working.  And that just can't be because we all know that Gubmint doesn't work at all, so we have to work a lot harder to make it work better, but...  

If your premise is false, your conclusion can't be true.  So, like I've said before - they run in tighter and tighter circles until they disappear up their own assholes.