We've Only Just Begun

We're actually involved in a kind of (so far) slow-moving Civil War. And I think the progression is pretty easy to see.

1) Leadership. It's a fairly simple and obvious fact that if you have enough money, you're not subject to the same "Justice" as the rest of us. Once people see "leaders" getting away with larceny, fraud, torture, bribery, child rape, and even murder, then why should the "common folk" hold themselves to any other standard of behavior?

2) Followership: Even when those standards are set and adhered to by people we admire, over time, we will misconstrue and eventually totally pervert the concept. Vince Lombardi says, "winning isn't everything; it's the only thing", and a very short time later, it's morphed into "win at all cost". And that perversion happened well after Lombardi publicly refuted his own statement, saying he regretted ever having said it. Didn't matter.

3) Political Marketing: Self-Governance = Self-Loathing. Anti-Gubmint sentiment strikes at the very heart of our little experiment in democracy.

We're the Government, and Government sucks, so: We Suck.

But our need for self preservation requires us to try not to internalize that hatred - we will most likely turn it outward, looking for some external agent to blame for our feelings of being victimized. So pick a group - any group. Muslims, Hispanics, Liberals, Tea Partiers, NRA Members, NeoCons...you name it, we got a group for you to hate with the power of a thousand suns.

So what we have now is the beginning of something I think is already in motion and will simply continue to snowball until it consumes us all. If that sounds as dire and overblown to you as it does to me, then we can still hope for cooler heads to prevail, but it's probably best if you don't now start thinking about what happens if we mix in a nice big hunk of the disruptions we can expect to be driven by Climate Change in the next 10 - 30 years.

So, here's what I think is a kind of instigating incident:

Any given Stand Your Ground law is being interpreted by an awful lot of average yahoos as a license to impose their will on anybody they don't like, and/or act out their Wyatt Earp fantasies, and/or exact vengeance for what they perceive as "those people" tearing down our once-great USA blah blah blah.



None of these boneheads oughta get medals for brains - but nobody ever deserves to get shot arguing about noise in the neighborhood. This just gets worse from here on out.

Rocky Flats

From 1966 to about 1973, my family lived down-stream and down-wind from the facility where Dow Chemical and Rockwell built triggers and other parts for nuclear weapons.

Of the 4 women in my family who lived there, every one of them has had at least one bout with cancer, and 3 of them are dead.

There is no significant evidence of an hereditary factor for cancer among female relatives or ancestors in my family.







"Corporations are people, my friend".  Cool - I want the death penalty for these pricks.

This One's A Little Weird

Here's an example of a mis-remembered thing that gets stuck in my brain.  I went a good 40 years thinking I'd been taught in 3rd grade that this was Colorado's Official State Song.



BTW: The real Official State Song of Colorado (Where The Columbines Grow) is even worse.

Guilty By Reason Of Womanhood

I'm "pro-choice" because I think people have the right to make their own decisions about their own health and well-being, and because if you give Government the power to prohibit abortion, then you're giving Government the power to require abortion.

I've also hypothesized on what happens if we re-criminalize abortion, asking what does the law look like; and what am I required to do (as a law-abiding citizen) to help uphold such a law?  If you've made abortion a crime, and I suspect a woman may have taken illegal steps to end a pregnancy, I think I have a duty to notify the police and to demand an investigation.

To me, that last bit always sounded like I was waxing a bit hyperbolical, but guess what?

An Idaho woman arrested for inducing her own abortion is taking her case to federal court. Jennie Linn McCormack was charged last year under an obscure Idaho law for ending her pregnancy with RU-486. She joins an increasing number of women who get the so-called abortion pill off the internet.

More at NPR.

Cut The Crap

Obama wasn't born in the US.
Obama is a secret Muslim.

Obama is stealthily destroying American Capitalism on purpose.

Obama wants higher gas prices to help out his hippie buddies in Green Biz.

Whether you love Obama or you hate him, or you don't really care one way or another - it'd be good to make decisions based on real information rather than the smarmy bullshit that passes for political debate points these days.

Isn't it a little weird that the GOP and "conservatives" are all pissed off at Obama for a bunch of baloney they made up, when they really should be in favor of what he's doing (eg) overseas?  You know - the shit they condoned or even rabidly supported when Bush was doing it?

All that other junk is brought to us by people who have no honor and no soul.

Obama's Gaffe

What does Obama mean when he says 'the private sector's doing fine"?  Where does he get off contradicting the Official GOP Narrative!?!

Oh wait - maybe this is what he was trying to tell us:

First, this is what The Private Sector looks like now - with jobs back up to about where they were Pre-Recession.

Now, here's Federal Jobs

And finally, All Gov't Jobs

Which part of Republicans-are-a-bunch-of-lyin'-sacks-of-shit are you having trouble understanding?

John Jonik

A new find for me - John Jonik.

Iran's Unclear Ambitions

From The Agonist today:

Over at Nuclear Diner, veteran Los Alamos nuclear engineer Susan Voss analyzes the amount of 20% enriched uranium Iran has made to date and concludes "The 98 kgs is more than needed for one core for TRR but a reasonable amount if the Iranians are planning on producing a batch of fuel for the TRR rather than producing it every 5-6 years when it is needed." It's exactly on par with the batch of three full fuel cores Argentina supplied Iran in 1992 which is estimated to run out this year.

So, it's probable that all the talk about this material being for bomb production is just warmongering hype.

Bonus: Gareth Porter talks to former top Iranian nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who tells Porter that France and Germany were prepared in spring 2005 to negotiate on an Iranian proposal to convert all of its enriched uranium to fuel rods, making it impossible to use it for nuclear weapons, but Britain vetoed the deal at the insistence of the United States.

That last bit seems pretty important. I wonder why The US would want to make it nearly impossible for the French and the Germans to prevent the Iranians from getting the bomb(?)  Hmmm.

Parade Of Stoopid

This is some high-quality stoopid right here:

 

 Not even Juan (The Twin Token) Williams can go along with Bolling's malarkey.

Listen Up

It's A Wonderment

Thinking about some things that recently popped into my silly little head.

Here's one: Welfare Cheats.
And another'n: Voter Fraud

How long have we heard about this?
"Young bucks eatin' steak and lobster on Food Stamps".
"Dead people voting numerous times".

Here's my basic premise: There's an element of truth to it - the notion that some people are gaming the system has to be assumed.  I'd hafta be stupid to believe it never happens.  But what I think I know now is that this is "truth with a lower case t", which means it's a Political Truth, which in turn means it's a Political Lie.

And here's my take-away:  The Political Truth is always much smaller than they want you to believe it is, and the Political Lie is always a lot bigger.

On Wisconsin

Sometimes you win by losing and sometimes you lose by winning.  It all depends on how you react to whatever just happened.

via Balloon Juice:

Exit polling showed tepid majority support for public unions (51%), with equally tepid support for Walker’s handling of collective bargaining (52%). This reflects the resentment towards public unions based on the perception that they’re getting a better deal than the rest of us :

Some random stuff:
1) Resentment works.  Voters aren't trying to raise everybody to the level of Unionized Workers, they're convinced that "those damned union bastards are gettin' some kinda free ride at the expense of everybody else".  This is what the race to the bottom looks like.

-because-

2) Advertising works. The prevailing message was that Gov Walker was just doing what he told you he'd do when he ran for the office.  You voted for him; now stop whining and take your medicine.

3) The double Standard is alive and well.  It's OK to attack Obama for being successful at what he's done, but going after Romney means you're engaging in class warfare.  Also, it isn't fair to criticize Romney for his success, but those successful unions; well they're just evil.

Hopefully, having outspent the Dems 10-1, the Koch Suckers have a pyrrhic victory on their hands and there might be a somewhat diminished enthusiasm for making the same effort on the next fight.  I'll admit to being a bit dubious on that one - we'll have to see what goodies Mr Walker offers up to reward his benefactors.

Also too - remember that the Dems won another seat in the State Senate, which takes the Repub majority away.

Dr Krugman

Austerity is bad policy because it's not Economics at all - it's an Ideological Religion.  A true faith.  The big problem is that Demand has dried up, and the Supply-Siders just can't stand thinking their pet theory might not work all that well this time.

Mr Escher

MC Escher with a kind of western European yin-yang thing.

The Five Monkeys

One more on the power of conditioning.

On Being A Hero-In-Waiting

Philip Zimbardo:

Conform And Be Dull

This is nothing new.  The marketeers (commercial and political) know about all this, and they use it to manipulate us at every turn.



The Asch Experiments:
Of particular interest to me (in the context of the current political climate) is the bit regarding united opposition at about 3:00.



Now, try not to think about DumFux News, and the simple fact that there's an awful lot of "low-information voters" (aka the independents) out there who pay no attention to what's happening until it's time to decide; and who then simply try to get a feel for which way the wind is blowing so they can vote according to what they perceive as the "majority sentiment".

Today's Pix

Meanwhile, over at The War On Drugs...

Disconnected

Almost every opinion survey tells us a coupla things that have now passed into "facts" of Conventional Wisdom.

First, approval ratings for Congress are always somewhere down around 10%.  And yet, in spite of those numbers, sometimes 60% of us show up to cast our votes - obviously trying in some way to fulfill the promise of self-governance.

Second, approval ratings for US Military always come in up around 70%, but fewer than 1% of us are signing on to serve.

We've become extremely well conditioned to a weirdly reflexive Political Correctness that requires a basic hypocrisy.

We claim to hate The Government, but we love trying to make something useful of it.

And we profess an undying love for the Military, but we hate the tho't of wearing the uniform ourselves.

And God help you if you ever say anything like that in public.

Like my mom always said, "Conform and be dull".

The Real America

(hat tip = Crooks and Liars)