Today's Shameless Fanboy Plug

All hail Keith!

There is no bigger pain in the ass (from what almost everybody says), and there is no better reporter anywhere in any field at any price.

The NFL recently agreed to pay $765M to be paid out to 4500 guys over a 17-year period.  As others have said, it sounds right decent, but... a little math (the kind that's simple enough even for me to understand) shows just how big this particular bamboozle really is.

The league made some $9.5 Billion last year - BILLION. If that number stays static over the 17-year lifetime of the deal (and we all know it's a lot more likely to go up rather than stay the same or go down), the total "cost" to the owners is less than one half of one percent of league revenue.

But of course, we can always count on some Press Poodle - who in this case owes his living to the NFL - to come up with some good PR Fluffery (in the form of sneering mockery which has become the prevailing journalistic style of Corporate Attack Dog Media).

Enter Pete Prisco at CBS Sports:

I just got off the phone with my attorney. Why?

I had a concussion playing 115-pound football and another in high school. Back then -- not leather helmet days but close -- they just called it getting your bell rung and stuck some nasty crap in front of your nose, and told you to go back into the game.

So I am suing.

Why not? I might get an extra $100,000 or so for my bank account. The precedent has been set. The NFL settled Thursday with a group of players filing concussion lawsuits to the tune of $765 million. So why not go after the high schools? Pop Warner? Colleges? And maybe even those two-hand touch games set up by our dads?

So, are you saying your coaches didn't know about the dangers of head injuries?  And that we should pretend it's still 1965 and make all of our health and safety decisions based on what we didn't fucking know 50 years ago?  Or are we finally unmasking your deep-seated fear that maybe your daddy didn't really give a fuck about you?

Here's Keith taking Mr Prisco down:



Nobody does it better.  Welcome back, Mr Olbermann - we've missed you.

BYU @ Virginia

I'm trying hard to be less of a football fan, but sometimes I just cain't hep muhsef.  It's my game and I love it.



My boy Luke plays on his HS LAX team, and since Americans have lost their ability to understand the causal relationship between paying less and less in taxes and getting less and less in terms of (eg) the quality of public schools (which includes "little extras" like Arts & Humanities, Athletics, air conditioning etc), the Booster Clubs for each of the sports teams (ie: parents) have to devise ways of raising several thousand dollars in order to provide their kids with commensurate "little extras" like transportation, lacrosse balls, helmets - just those incidentals that make the activity a bit more enjoyable, and maybe even - oh I dunno - survivable?

Anyway, our big money-maker is to volunteer as a group to scan tickets at UVa football games.  So there we were yesterday at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville for the season opener;  the Cavaliers of Virginia versus the Cougars of BYU, when a little airplane flew overhead towing one of those advertising banners - you know - it's usually something like "10% off all day tomorrow blah blah blah."  But not this one. We looked up and saw this:

Maybe you can teach an old Democrat new tricks.

Dumb Is Dangerous

From a piece in HuffPo:

It's remarkable how low America places in healthcare efficiency: among the 48 countries included in the Bloomberg study, the U.S. ranks 46th, outpacing just Serbia and Brazil. Once that sinks in, try this one on for size: the U.S. ranks worse than China, Algeria, and Iran.

But the sheer numbers are really what's humbling about this list: the U.S. ranks second in healthcare cost per capita ($8,608), only to be outspent by Switzerland ($9,121) -- which, for the record, boasts a top-10 healthcare system in terms of efficiency. Furthermore, the U.S. is tops in terms of healthcare cost relative to GDP, with 17.2 percent of the country's wealth spent on medical care for every American.

In other words, the world's richest country spends more of its money on healthcare while getting less than almost every other nation in return.

Keep Pluggin' Away

Bill Watterson retired from writing and drawing "Calvin & Hobbes" about 18 years ago, but the timelessness of his message -- to always remain thoughtful, imaginative, and playful -- will stick in our culture forever, if we're lucky. Case in point: Cartoonist Gavin Aung Than, who pens comics on his blog Zen Pencils, created this tribute to Watterson that has struck a chord with the Internet over the last few days.

Than took the text from a commencement speech Watterson delivered at Kenyon College in 1995, and illustrated it in the style of "Calvin & Hobbes." He explains that this is the first time he's intentionally attempted to mimic Watterson, although the man has been an inspiration for his art as well as his career.

If you want to buy a print of Than's cartoon, you may be out of luck. He explains that since Watterson famously refuses to license his work, preferring to let his art speak for itself, selling this "would be against the whole spirit of Calvin and Hobbes." However, you can (and should) click over to his site and browse his other, non-Watterson related artwork.

hat tip = HuffPo via Democratic Underground

New Findings

Like we didn't know this already?  I guess it doesn't hurt to look for a little confirmation and reaffirmation now and then.

In an earlier study, published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Piff and four researchers from the University of Toronto conducted a series of experiments which found that “upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals.” This included being more likely to “display unethical decision-making,” steal, lie during a negotiation and cheat in order to win a contest.

In one telling experiment, the researchers observed a busy intersection, and found that drivers of luxury cars were more likely to cut off other drivers and less likely to stop for pedestrians crossing the street than those behind the wheels of more modest vehicles. “In our crosswalk study, none of the cars in the beater-car category drove through the crosswalk,” Piff told The New York Times. “But you see this huge boost in a driver’s likelihood to commit infractions in more expensive cars.” He added: “BMW drivers are the worst.”

 --and--

These findings may appear to represent a bit of psychological trivia, but a study to be published in Political Science Quarterly by Thomas Hayes, a scholar at Trinity University, finds that U.S. senators respond almost exclusively to the interests of their wealthiest constituents – those more likely to be unethical and less sensitive to the suffering of others, according to Piff.

Hayes took data from the Annenberg Election Survey — a massive database of public opinion representing the views of 90,000 voters — and compared them with their senators’ voting records from 2001 through 2010. From 2007 through 2010, U.S. senators were somewhat responsive to the interests of the middle class, but hadn’t been for the first 6 years Hayes studied. The views of the poor didn’t factor into legislators’ voting tendencies at all.

It gets harder and harder for me to understand why we insist on doing nothing to address the massive problems being created and perpetuated by the ability of hugely wealthy Government Patrons to control the very process of government in a system that's supposed to be all about keeping that kind of power in check.

Today's Religious Blather

The headline says it all - most of it anyway:

‘Miracle’ Fresno Tree ‘Weeping Tears of God’ Is Really Just Dripping Bug Poop

Read the story at Moral Low Ground.


Behold - the power of self-delusion and the miracle of deliberate ignorance:

Here We Go Again

From The Guardian:

In a sign that Obama believes he has the legal authority, independently of Congress, to launch a strike, Carney said that allowing the chemical weapons attack to go unanswered would be a "threat to the United States".

It's not at all clear what we're fixin' to do, but when the White House intones a certain combination of magic words (eg: "threat to the US"), then it's pretty clear we're fixin' to do somethin'.  And never mind that some asshole Syrian colonel used poison gas to settle an old score (what? it's as likely as anything else we've heard).  The point is that it poses practically no serious "threat to the US".

(boiler plate): It's never about what they tell us it's about, so we have to assume we don't know what Obama knows.

Let's hope Obama knows a shitload more than I do; and that what he knows includes the very real probability that Assad might have something Russian or Chinese up his sleeve.  A piss-ant like Assad usually won't do what we tell him not to do unless he's got some real backup from some heavy friends.

Obama said he'd do something if illegal weapons were used, and now he has to follow through.  But if he goes in there with a big swingin' dick, he's likely to get a very rude surprise.  Since that's not Obama's style, maybe we can expect to hear about whatever we're planning to do after the fact - and it'll be like Osama bin Laden all over again.

Today's Pix

Today's Wonderment

So, tell me again - why is everybody always so down on The Media?

Outrage and shock and dismay, oh my! It was all over Facebook the last coupla days too.

C'mon - really?  With all the really weird and horrible shit going on in the world, Miley Cyrus is what we need to worry about?

And when I stop to think about it for a moment, maybe the people who're throwing their little hissy fits might wanna thank her for letting them retreat back into the fantasy of believing an exhibitionist teenager is at the root of all our troubles.

Today's Quote

God love Charlie Pierce, especially for having sense enough to love Little Jemmy Madison:

Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it.  -- James Madison, Political Observations, April 20, 1795.

A Brief Moment Of Enlightenment

Libertarians (for lack of a better label) are opposed to ObamaCare because taken to the logical extreme - which is where an awful lot of 'em seem to be located now - they have to be opposed to any and all efforts to suck them into any and all kinds of Collaborative/Cooperative/Collective endeavor.

It's not that they object to ObamaCare per se - they have to object to the very notion of Insurance itself.  The idea of getting together with a bunch of people you don't know and can't trust is off-putting enough, but being forced to pool your resources with these unwashed, unwelcome, undeserving miscreants?  Child, please.

Insurance is the Communism of Capitalism, and it must be avoided by all self-respecting Rugged Individuals.

Pay What You Owe

So here we go again.  We're still in a position of having to borrow money from ourselves to pay the bills, and we'll have to raise the debt limit (again) in the next coupla months, and of course that means the Repubs are making noise (again) about "getting some concessions" from the president in exchange for their support.

OK - as if we weren't all just sick o' this shit - here it is (again):  The House of Representatives decides how much money we're going to spend on what things.  It's right there in Article 1 of the US Constitution - look it up.  The Prez and the Senate and your dead Aunt Tilley can submit budget requests until Michele Bachmann grows a brain, but nobody spends one brass farthing if John Boehner and his merry band of Sludge Divers don't agree to it ahead of time.

So Boehner says it's OK to spend the money; Obama spends the money; and then Boehner says whoa, you spent too much money - we'll have to punish you for spending the money we told you it was OK to spend, so instead of paying for all the shit we told you to buy, we're going to shut down the whole government until you agree to keep us from telling you to spend all that money next time, which will cause our credit rating to drop, which will cost us even more money - and it's all your fault.

How in the blue-eyed-buck-naked-fuck does this make sense to anybody?

Our Glorious Empire

If this pic doesn't enbiggen very well for you, go to Federacion de Asociaciones Cannibicus for a better look.

Today's Best Blog Line - #2

"Ignorance Arbitrage"

Here's the whole post from No More Mister Nice Blog:

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

EVEN THE TRIVIAL TALKING POINTS FROM THE RIGHT ARE DISHONEST

I saw that Newsmax was pushing this ridiculous story and wasn't sure it was worth a post, but now I see it's a front-page story at Fox Nation, so here's the ridiculousness:

'Butler' Box Office Sales Plummet by One-Third

The movie "Lee Daniels' The Butler" saw its weekend box office receipts plummet by nearly a third, from $24.6 million in its opening week to $17 million last week, after a storm of protests from Republican and veterans groups.

The film depicts a White House butler who served eight presidents, and has come under fire for its portrayal of former President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy as being racially insensitive and for casting Jane Fonda as the first lady.

Supporters of President Reagan and veterans groups especially have criticized the film, with some calling for boycotts....

Oh, its box office plummeted? By nearly a third? And it's all because of boycotts by Reagan lovers and Jane Fonda haters? (Or, as the Fox Nation headline implies, because America has suddenly become tired of Oprah Winfrey?)

Nonsense. Every movie that reaches #1 at the weekend box office "plummets" the next week. Boycotts aren't necessary -- moviegoers just move on.

Yes, The Butler's box office dropped 33.0% in its second weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. But the previous #1, Elysium, suffered a54.1% drop in its second week. Before that was 2 Guns: a 58.4% drop.Before that was The Wolverine: a 59.9% drop. Before that was The Conjuring: a 46.9% drop.

Do I need to go on? In fact, The Butler had the smallest second-week drop for a #1 movie since Identity Thief back in March.

This story is up at Fox Nation even though Rupert Murdoch runs a movie studio. It's not as if the moviegoing habits of Americans are unknowable to the Fox media empire.

But this is what I call the right-wing media's "ignorance arbitrage." The conservative purveyors of this nonsense know it's nonsense. But they know they can sell it to people who don't. And that's what they do.

Today's Best Blog Line

Actually it's more like the naming of a concept - something I've been trying to find for a very long time now:

Compulsory patriotism does nothing for soldiers who risk their lives -- but props up those who profit from war

So simple - like the Jitterbug - it plumb evaded me.

From a piece in Salon by an English professor at Virginia Tech:

In addition to donating change to the troops, we are repeatedly impelled to “support our troops” or to “thank our troops.” God constantly blesses them. Politicians exalt them. We are warned, “If you can’t stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them.” One wonders if our troops are the ass-kicking force of P.R. lore or an agglomeration of oversensitive duds and beggars.

Such troop worship is trite and tiresome, but that’s not its primary danger. A nation that continuously publicizes appeals to “support our troops” is explicitly asking its citizens not to think. It is the ideal slogan for suppressing the practice of democracy, presented to us in the guise of democratic preservation.

 --and--

In reality, the troops are not actually recipients of any meaningful support. That honor is reserved for the government and its elite constituencies. “Support our troops” entails a tacit injunction that we also support whatever politicians in any given moment deem the national interest. If we understand that “the national interest” is but a metonym for the aspirations of the ruling class, then supporting the troops becomes a counterintuitive, even harmful, gesture. 

Today's Freedom From Religion

This is Eddie Castillo - a student at Texas Tech:

Eddie is fighting the good fight.  The Texas DMV allowed him to wear his pasta strainer for his driver's license picture.

From Raw Story:

A Texas Tech student said that he was celebrating religious freedom for atheists when he fought to wear a pasta strainer on his head in his official driver’s license photo.

KCDB reported on Saturday that Eddie Castillo spent four months researching and contacting government officials before he got approval to wear the pasta strainer, which he claims is religious garb worn to “worship” the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Castillo is part of a group of “pastafarians,” a name coined by atheists protesting the Kansas School Board’s decision to teach intelligent design in 2005.

“You might think this is some sort of a gag or prank by a college student, but thousands, including myself, see it as a political and religious milestone for all atheists everywhere,” Castillo told KCDB.

Way to go, Eddie.

College Then And Now

How do I get into a decent school?
1983: Pay enough attention in high school to graduate with a 2.5 GPA, then fill out 3 forms and mail them to a college somewhere that sounds like an OK place, and where a few of your friends plan on going.
2013: Graduate HS early with a 4.8 GPA, be fluent in 3 languages, write the greatest Entrance Essay anybody ever read explaining how easy it was for you to find a cure for cancer in your spare time after church.

How do I pay for college?
1983: Work a construction job in the summer after HS, and then bus tables for a few hours a week during the school year when you need cash for beer and pot.
2013: You know you don't need both of those kidneys, right?

Once I get my degree, what can I do with it?
1983: Find a good job in your chosen field (or in almost anything, really) and begin building a rewarding life for yourself.
2013: Hang onto that diploma - you'll be short on toilet paper soon enough.

Out There Amongst Them

So here I am at the Dunkin' Donuts on US29 north of town - for reasons I don't need to explain - and there's this old guy at the counter feeling a bit chatty, complaining about all the bums and freeloaders he's encountered lately.  He tells of the panhandler he talked with not long ago, who claimed to be making $300 or $400 a day, and how he has a late model Mercedes, and one of his panhandler buddies just bought a nice new RV.  I successfully resisted asking him if he's in the habit of striking up conversations with people he has so little respect for when they accost him on the street and ask him for a handout.  I'm always a bit curious how you can get such a wealth of information from someone you think is a total bum.  Unless of course one of you is a liar.

The kid doing the cooking chimed in with his story of a "homeless guy" he met who told him about getting a boatload of hotel vouchers - at $60 a pop - and how he stays at the Hilton four nights a week, and blah blah blah.

Then, wanting not to be left out apparently, the cashier lady just had to throw in with "if I have to take a drug test to get a job, then they should take a drug test to get their free stuff".

Maybe I've been around too long or something, but these stories and the standard reactions and observations and what somehow passes for insightful comment have all grown pretty fucking boring.

I don't believe most of what spills out of people's gobs most of the time anymore.  I get the weird feeling that an awful lot of these "regular folk" have heard these anecdotes in one form or another for so long, they not only take them as the truth, but have actually absorbed some of them to the point where they think the tale in question has sprung organically from their own experience.  It seems like a variation on Munchausen's Syndrome - Munchausen's By Osmosis maybe?

So, Here's A Question

What if Antoinette Tuff had been laid off?



If the school district in Decatur had come up a little short this year (because of a thoroughly bizarre problem we have of not being able to figure out that we have to pay for stuff), then there's a real probability that this one turns out just a bit different.

PS) Ms Tuff can "give it all" to her god if that's what she feels the need to do - for myself and (I'm bettin') for the 870 kids in that school, and the thousands of their family members, we're just pretty grateful for Antoinette Tuff.

A Special Message

For all of our friends out there who're still hung up on the conventional wisdom - stuck in the rut of False Equivalence  - still convinced that "both sides do it" - "they're all the same".  These are otherwise good people.  And no matter how fucked up the Repubs get, they're just always going to say, "Yeah, but the Democrats..."

This is for them - because we love them: