Boycott Frenzie

From Addicting Info:

Fox Business Network reported recently that Zane Tankel, CEO of Apple-Metro, an Applebee’s franchisee group for the New York City area, said that Applebee’s “won’t hire more people” because the Affordable Care Act would cost the company “some millions of dollars.” Consumer anger erupted nearly immediately and brought with it a Twitter hashtag calling on consumers to #boycottApplebees.

Great - now we can add Applebee's to the list.  Not that I need any more good reasons to avoid going out to a phony-looking cookie-cutter franchise joint for some shitty food.  It's just that it gets a little hard to keep it all straight.

Chick-Fil-A
Papa John's
Applebee's

Generally, you shouldn't be punished for speaking your mind, but if you decide to beat up on your employees because of your mis-perception of something that hasn't even happened yet, then you're the one who's got a beat-down coming.

And BTW also too - letting your personal politics make your business decisions for you means you're something of a fucking idiot and you should probably not be in charge anymore.

After Veteran's Day

A different look from a different perspective, only to see the same thing.



hat tip = Wonkette

Good TV

..is supposed to be one of the great oxymorons, but when it's Key&Peele?  Not so much.

God Love The Onion

Florida

A statement from Gov Scott, (R-FL)

“We are glad that so many voters made their voices heard in this election, but as we go forward we must see improvements in our election process,” Scott said in a statement. “I have asked Secretary of State Ken Detzner to review this general election and report on ways we can improve the process after all the races are certified.”

Dear Governor Scott,
FUCK YOU, ya fuckin' jerk.

Yikes (again)

On Saturday, I posted a video with David Frum lambasting the GOP (Yikes).

Well, here's his piece from The Daily Beast yesterday:

Some combative conservatives may wish that Mitt Romney had talked more about the various plots and conspiracies they believed Obama to have launched upon the land: Fast & Furious, ACORN, Pigford, U.N. bike lanes, Obama’s imagined plan to abolish the suburbs. But while this kind of angry talk may gain eyeballs on Hannity, it’s not the stuff that swings undecided voters in Colorado and ­Virginia—­especially not the women voters who formed 53 percent of the electorate on Tuesday; or the moderates, men and women, who formed 41 percent of it; or the nonreligiously observant, who formed three quarters of it. Only 34 percent of the vote Tuesday was made up of white men. The share of the vote that was made up of older, conservative white men must have been much smaller still. Fox Nation never was more than a very tiny slice of the American nation, and it was only sad self-delusion that ever led anyone to think otherwise.

And deep down, we all know it.

Yet if we know that extremism is dangerous, why do we see so much of it?

I think it's easy to see how the GOP policies would've been just as effective at sinking Romney as was the shit-for-brains ding-bat loonies of Fox Nation etc, but at least Frum knows the Republican Party can't go on acting like a bunch of Bag Ladies, Ripple-fueled Oracles and Polyester Prophets if we're ever gonna get back to where we can have a real discussion with each other about real things.

Just Wondering

The Citizens United decision made it possible (some say probable; some say inevitable) for somebody like Karl Rove to push and pull all the levers, moving massive amounts of secret money around the election to manipulate the vote and get a result that was anything but what "the average American voter" wanted to have happen.

Some will now say Obama's win proved that was a false assumption.  I'm not so sure - it has to play out over a few more cycles before we know the full effect.  Hopefully, of course, we can get our shit together enough to change the law and push back against the tides of Plutocracy.  But for now, I have to stop and ask, "Hey, Secret Donors, you dumped a boatload of cash into this thing and you got bupkis - now what?"

Conventional wisdom has Karl Rove being slow-roasted over an open flame by his very rich and powerful clients who really really really hate to lose, but I'm not convinced we're anywhere close to being out of those particular woods.  Not yet anyway.

But last - I'd really like to ask this of all those good folks, mostly in all those deep red precincts who go out and vote in all good faith: You pay hard-earned dollars for energy and food and clothing and everything you need to live your lives - and there're Corporateers who're in charge of those companies you spend all those dollars with - is it right for them to charge you for the money they spend on what amounts to a scheme of legalized bribery?  Do you think you should pay (eg) $3.85 for a gallon of gas so ExxonMobil can take even a few pennies of that to spend on getting some yahoo from Kansas elected to the US Senate where he'll be sure to vote in favor of keeping the Big Oil Subsidies in place?  Do you really think that's a good system?  Really?

You guys are always complaining (and rightly so in some ways) that your government is taking taxes from you with one hand and using the money to buy a club so the other hand can beat you over the head with it.  What if it's Monsanto doing that?  What if it's GE?  Or Wal-Mart?  Or United Airlines?

I should say now that I'm not talking about how The Government used to be the enemy, but now the enemy is The Corporateer.  There are no real enemies in any of this.  There are certainly some people who behave like dastardly villains - I'll give ya that, but the enemy is not a person or even an organizational entity at all.  The enemy is, always has been, and always will be Too Much Power In Too Few Hands.

So Turd Blossom may or may not lose his head over all of this - he played the game and it remains to be seen if he'll pay the price.  I'd venture a casual guess and say that his career as Master Puppeteer is over now, but who knows?  I am pretty sure about a couple of things: one is that there's a giant hole in the GOP machinery right now, and the other is that power vacuums don't stay unfilled for long.

Post Racial My Ass

A few choice tweets from around the cyberverse via Jezebel:

And let's see what happens when we map these little nuggets of wisdom from the "real Americans".

(hat tip = Addicting Info & Floating Sheep)

Today's Term

Systemic Causation.

Systemic causation is familiar. Smoking is a systemic cause of lung cancer. HIV is a systemic cause of AIDS. Working in coal mines is a systemic cause of black lung disease. Driving while drunk is a systemic cause of auto accidents. Sex without contraception is a systemic cause of unwanted pregnancies.

There is a difference between systemic and direct causation. Punching someone in the nose is direct causation. Throwing a rock through a window is direct causation. Picking up a glass of water and taking a drink is direct causation. Slicing bread is direct causation. Stealing your wallet is direct causation. Any application of force to something or someone that always produces an immediate change to that thing or person is direct causation.

When causation is direct, the word cause is unproblematic.

Systemic causation, because it is less obvious, is more important to understand.

Go read the piece from George Lakoff right now.

See What Happens

Today's Krugman - inspired by a James Fallows piece*:

But I’d go even further: the Democrats now look like the natural party of government. Bush had already established a reputation for being unable to get anything right in the actual business of governing; all that was supposedly left was political prowess, and now that’s gone too. And even the news media have, I think, begun to notice that we aren’t the “center-right” country of fantasy, we’re a diverse nation, ethnically and otherwise, in which a lot of liberal ideas have become perfectly mainstream.

Now go read Fallows.

*Barack Obama's election four years ago was, by definition, more historic than his reelection last night.

But his second win last night was more impressive than his first, and probably more important.

It seems more than a little weird that suddenly, it's not the Democrats who could fuck up a 2-car parade.

For Veterans' Day

A quote by PFC Robert Leckie (USMC, Guadalcanal, 1942: [in a letter to Vera Keller - the future Mrs Leckie]

Dear Vera, it seems a lifetime since we met outside Saint Mary's. This great undertaking for God and country has landed us in a tropical paradise, somewhere in what Jack London refers to as "those terrible Solomons." It is a garden of Eden. The jungle holds both beauty and terror in its depths, most terrible of which is man. We have met the enemy and have learned nothing more about him. I have, however, learned some things about myself. There are things men can do to one another that are sobering to the soul. It is one thing to reconcile these things with God, but another to square it with yourself.

There's nothing worse than war.  And nothing with less believable justification.

I refuse to glorify the war or the warrior by waxing poetic about either.  We simply have to find ways to settle our differences that don't include bashing each over the head with sticks and rocks.

More Sore Butts

You get your ass kicked like what happened last Tuesday and it's gonna hurt for a while.  And it's good to know there're plenty of jerks just like me to rub it in for ya too.

Romney won the Old White Guy vote by close to 20 points on average, and close to 30 points in some places.  That's a really big deal, and it wins every national election by a huge margin - if it's 1982 and if it's the only demographic you have to appeal to.  But it isn't, and it isn't.

Here're some highlites (via Rolling Stone) on how it breaks down here in the real world of 2012:

• Latinos voted for Obama 70+% to Romney's (about) 30%
• Blacks (who showed up in numbers just as strong as in 2008) voted for Obama 95% to Romney's 5%
• Gen Y (18-30 years old) voted for Obama 60% to Romney's 37%
• Gen X (31-44 years old) voted for Obama 54% to Romney's 47% (approx)
• Single Women voted for Obama 67% to Romney's 31%

It's The Policy, Stupid

Or more accurately, it's the stupid policy.

Repubs and the Conservative Entertainment Complex are very busy analyzing the Romney Fail, and everybody's talking about everything except the simple fact that the GOP Platform and the GOP Voter Strategy were repulsive to a majority of the voters.

But first, guess what - Obama is the first POTUS to get a majority of the vote in 2 elections since St Ronnie the Reagan did it in 1984.  28 years.

(Just wanted to throw that in because it's kinda important once we get it through our think skulls that there's really only about 10 or 20% of the voting public who actually come under the heading "The Base" in any party)

So anyway, one of my favorite rationalizations for Romneybot's Malfunction is that Obama played Identity Politics to pump up his base and get them to turn out for him.  I think "turning out The Base" is a tired old saw in politics that people just need to let go of.  "The Base" is always there - they show up come hell or high water.  It's everybody else ya gotta worry about.  Which is why the "Identity Politics" crack is so hollow.  First off, it's just another example of (what's become) a trademark Republican tactic of taking your worst shortcoming and projecting it onto your opponent.  But it seems emblematic in that practically every GOP campaign in the last 30 years has been all about Voter Identity, and has worked hard to narrow the party's appeal to the point where they might as well hang a sign on the door - "No Dogs, Jews or Coloreds allowed".

It suddenly occurs to me that Romney felt totally blindsided because he truly felt he'd run the campaign according to the formula you apply when you're selling Goods and Services; he did everything you're supposed to do, but I think the results prove it's a big mistake to base your pitch on Snob-Appeal and Exclusivity, and believe it works in politics the same as it works in Retail Selling.  Cuz it don't.

So, Repubs - if you guys wanna go on losing, all you have to do is keep lying to yourselves (and to each other) about how Party Purity is the best way to expand Party Appeal.

And BTW: Adults stand up and accept responsibility while children point fingers and assign blame.

Yikes

David Frum was kind of ousted and shunned by the "conservatives" a while back - because it seems he re-activated his gag reflex, and still just can't go along with all the junk being peddled by the "Conservative Entertainment Complex".

Give a listen (via Crooks & Liars):

It's Aristocracy vs Democracy