Today's Quote

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” --Upton Sinclair

That popped up in a piece at Bill Moyers, by Mike Lofgren:

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude. [2]

Sorry about dropping that one on you for the weekend, but you know - somebody's gotta look at this shit and it can't just be me and coupla other dweebs who never get anything else done.

Then there's this tasty little morsel:  The number of terrorist organizations we're fighting is a secret.  We also don't get to know who they are, and we don't get to know where they are - but the kicker?  We certainly do get to know that we get to pay for it, but we don't get to know how much it's costing.  Is that the perfect gig or what?

We are so fucked.

Watch this:

Design

This is far more than simple mental masturbation.

Expenditures devoted to "science for the sake of science" - or to just making shit that's interesting and kinda cool - is almost never wasted.

You have to put it out there, and then wait for the engineers to find a workable and/or useful application.

In the meantime, there's real value in the wonderment of it all.

Wait - What?

If this guy's sign truly reflects his circumstance, shouldn't this be a much bigger story?

Real World Pulchritude

Yeah, OK - it's a little lame in that "holy-fuck-man-why-do-white-people-gotta-try-this-shit" kinda way, but there's a fair-sized chunk o' truth here that needs to get out.



hat tip = HuffPo

And So It Begins(?)

The night of the long knives.

Mondo Cané.

Helter Skelter.

Maybe the revolution will be televised after all.

A crime of passion - one that defies the poor ability of your humble correspondent to describe it - was committed against the defenseless and unsuspecting rich white people living in the wealthiest neighborhood in all of USAmerica Inc.

Residents of Atherton CA discovered several defilements of their preciously private property - spray-painted with the obviously ominous phrase, "Fuck the 1%".

The vandalism took place between 6 and 9:30 p.m., along several blocks of Greenoaks Drive and the 100 blocks of Hawthorne, Rosewood and Heather drives, Wade said.

Not so funnily, there was also one reported instance of "Kill People" on the fence in front of one house.  Not cool, guys.  I don't care how fun it is for you to imagine giving a buncha tight-assed over-privileged dipwads nightmares about The Manson Family, it's not right to threaten anybody like that.

He said police have sought private security camera footage from residents, but so far have come up empty. Some residents don't have surveillance cameras and others didn't have them focused on the areas where vandals struck or didn't have them turned on, Wade said.

It is fun tho' - a whole lotta fun - thinking about all the prospecting calls the good folk in Atherton are about to get from the noble entrepreneurs in the Home Security bidness.  Like orcas on a baby whale.

But anyway-

Without leads or suspects, Atherton Town Manager George Rodericks cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

"We don't know if it was an organized group or a couple of teenagers," he said.

So, Where You At?

A month ago, Sean Hannity said he'd be moving out of New York as soon as he could manage it.

Here's Stewart's take on it back then.

So I'm just wondering: a rich guy like Hannity can make a move at pretty much the drop of a hat.  So where is he now?  Did he leave?  Or is this another solid example of bullshit outrage that pops up with annoying regularity?  Alec Baldwin said he'd move to France or whatever if Shrub got reelected.  Limbaugh said he'd move to Costa Rica if Obama got reelected.

At what point do we stop purposely crankin' it up to 11 every time some jagoff politician says something silly or nasty or straight up stoopid?  Y'know, if you can just kinda keep your cool, you're more likely to find a decent solution for the problem and/or resolution of the point of contention.  And yet we keep crankin' it up.  It almost seems like it could maybe perhaps be deliberate.

So I'm also wondering: who might benefit from keeping us so riled up that we spend all our time and effort beatin' on each other, instead of working together to figure out what to do about whatever problem some Congress Critter / Press Poodle / Bidness Crook tells us to be pissed off about.

Here's what I learned from a mentor fairly early in my working life:
I don't care if you guys go for long walks in the moonlight holding hands, and I don't care if you plan to murder each other after lunch; but as long as you're cashing the fuckin' paychecks, I expect you to work the fuckin' problem.

Logical Fallacy #3 - Appeal To Emotion

Appeal to emotion (or argumentum ad passiones) is a logical fallacy which uses the manipulation of the recipient's emotions, rather than valid logic, to win an argument. The appeal to emotion fallacy uses emotions as the basis of an argument's position without factual evidence that logically supports the major ideas endorsed by the elicitor of the argument. Also, this kind of thinking may be evident in one who lets emotions and/or other subjective considerations influence one's reasoning process. This kind of appeal to emotion is a type of red herring and encompasses several logical fallacies, including:

Appeal to consequences

Appeal to fear

Appeal to flattery

Appeal to pity

Appeal to ridicule

Appeal to spite

Wishful thinking

Here's A Thought

Nobody likes Foreign Aid, and nobody much likes Uganda's prez, and practically nobody's at all in favor of spending tax dollars to help fuck people over (well - not out in the open anyway).

So let's take the $485 Million we'd normally wrap neatly and ship to Museveni's bankers in Switzerland; and instead, divvy it up and give $150 to every public school teacher here at home.  Can we try that just this one time?

Git 'Em, Jon

The Daily Show
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Back Pedal

Let the pearl clutching begin!

(hat tip = Facebook buddy KH)

He started way before 1996, but Roger Ailes has been working really hard towards this day for a very long time; his efforts thru DumFux news have been instrumental in the Rise of the Ruling Rubes.

And those Nutty Old Lefties have been trying to warn us about it forever.  So yeah - The Left is right about how The Right is wrong.

What's happening in Arizona and on K Street (and Uganda, btw), is exactly what happens when you unleash the Monsters of the Id* - ie: when you tell the rubes it's OK to be an ignorant superstitious mob, try not to be surprised when the rubes turn out to be an ignorant superstitious mob.

(*watch Forbidden Planet sometime)

Nailin' It

The Rude Pundit is aptly named.  This is not the guy who gets invited to the garden party, but he is definitely the guy needed there frequently and regularly.

Here's his entire post re: "the Jindal thing":

2/25/2014
Bobby Jindal: The Motherfucker at Work:
How many times have you hosted a party and invited everyone in the office to be fair and one of them ends up fucking your mother? You're all having a good time - the snacks you made are a big hit, the music mix is getting everyone dancing, the secretaries and the execs are getting along - when you turn the corner and there, bent over a table, is your mother, just being fucked, in your own house, by that guy you knew was a motherfucker. You're got no one to blame but yourself. The Rude Pundit's been over this many times, but it always bears saying: If someone is a motherfucker, he will fuck a mother, every time. It is what motherfuckers do. Otherwise, why bother calling them "motherfuckers"?

So it was that yesterday the President of the United States hosted a nice brunch at the State Dining Room of the White House for a gathering of the nation's governors, both Democrats and Republicans. The Vice President was there, too. It was, to borrow a phrase, a big fucking deal, as these things tend to be. President Barack Obama spoke of how much he admires and wants to work with the governors. Congress may be filled with assholes, but, the President said, "I am absolutely convinced that the time is right to partner with the states and governors all across the country on these agendas, because I know that you guys are doing some terrific work in your own states." 

Oh, sure, sure, Obama acknowledged reality: "We won’t agree on every single issue every single time." However, the hand of friendship was extended: "I guarantee you that we will work as hard as we can to make sure that you succeed -- because when you succeed, the people in your states succeed and America succeeds, and that’s our goal." Simple, committing to something, however vague, open-minded - what else would you want? And then they met privately with Obama.

After the meeting, some of the governors went before the gathered press on the lawn of the White House to talk about how awesome bipartisanship is, how Congress sucks monkey balls, and how they all are concerned about military cuts because military bases are gold mines (note: They didn't say that part but, you know, c'mon). And then Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, likely loser in the 2016 presidential race, walked up to the mike and decided, quite vividly, "Fuck this shit. I got some primaries to win."

So, being a motherfucker, Jindal brought a mother out and proceeded to fuck the shit out of her. He attacked his brunch host by saying that Obama was "“waving the white flag of surrender" on the economy and that "The Obama economy is now the minimum wage economy." Then he turned that mother over to fuck her some more. The solution to the economic problems of the United States are found in oil, bitches, like approval of the Keystone XL pipeline: "There’s no reason it’s taken five years of study and they still haven’t reached what at this point is an inescapable conclusion...There’s no good reason other than political ideology to turn down the pipeline." And shale, man. Don't forget about frackin' shale. Said Jindal, his Adam's apple undulating like it was an alien trying to escape, "One of things the administration can do to get out of the way...[is] not only to continue to allow the fracking revolution, the shale revolution taking place across this country, they can accelerate it."

And since no one can be a proper motherfucker without saying something about stopping Obamacare, Jindal took that position, too: "Since they’ve shown the willingness to delay some of the mandates, why not just delay the entire program, delay all the mandates, including the individual mandate?"

Jindal was essentially reciting what he had written in the National Review (motto: "Vigorously raping Buckley's corpse on a daily basis"), a great and mighty editorial about how to cure what ails the U.S. of A. It pretty much boils down to "Fuck up the environment some more" and "Give education money to churches and private companies through school vouchers." Jindal also attacks the IRS, unions, and Obamacare. If he had somehow been able to make Benghazi into an economic issue, he'd've had idiot Bingo. 

Time and time again, whenever President Obama attempts to show that he is above partisan politics, he forgets that he is trying to tell motherfuckers to stop fucking mothers. It's never gonna happen.

And btw - does Piyush Jindal have some kind of Little-Man Complex now?  Is he still trying to make up for that awful SOTU response?  I realize that if you wanna get the free ticket to the GOP Primary Fair you have to shit in Obama's pocket and wipe your ass with his tie whenever you get the chance, but there seems to be something else working on Jindal too.

New Gun Facts

Add this one to the heap of real things that won't make any difference to the rubes:

A study in the Annals Of Internal Medicine examining gun violence worldwide proved that women in the United States are disproportionately likely to be victims of gun violence when compared to women in other developed countries:

As reported by The Atlantic “Women in the United States account for 84 percent of all female firearm victims in the developed world, even though they make up only a third of the developed world’s female population. And within American borders, women die at higher rates from suicide, homicide, and accidental firearm deaths in states where guns are more widely available This is true even after controlling for factors such as urbanization, alcohol use, education, poverty, and divorce rates.”

Another study published in the American Journal of Public Health showed that not only are women more likely to be the victims of gun violence, but this violence is more likely to be perpetrated in the home by a male domestic partner than by a stranger:

“More than twice as many women are killed with a gun used by their husbands or intimate acquaintances than are murdered by strangers using guns, knives, or any other means.” 

Today's Pix

Smart Guy

If you want to get anything done - in business or in politics or in your daily existence or whatever - the first thing you do is jam as many smart guys as you can fit into any given space, and then shut up and listen.

Here're some bits from David McRaney:

Benjamin Franklin knew how to deal with haters, and in this episode we learn how he turned his haters into fans with what is now called The Benjamin Franklin Effect (read more about the effect here).

Listen as David McRaney reads an excerpt from his book, “You Are Now Less Dumb,” explaining the psychology behind the effect and how the act of spreading harm forms the attitude of hate, and the act of spreading kindness generates the attitude of camaraderie.

At the lowest level, behavior-into-attitude conversion begins with impression management theory which says you present to your peers the person you wish to be. You engage in something economists call signaling by buying and displaying to your peers the sorts of things which give you social capital. If you live in the Deep South you might buy a high-rise pickup and a set of truck nuts. If you live in San Francisco you might buy a Prius and a bike rack. Whatever are the easiest to obtain, loudest forms of the ideals you aspire to portray become the things you own, like bumper stickers signaling to the world you are in one group and not another. Those things then influence you to become the sort of person who owns them.

The Benjamin Franklin Effect:

The Misconception: You do nice things for the people you like and bad things to the people you hate.

The Truth: You grow to like people for whom you do nice things and hate people you harm.

Why do I love my kids?  Aside from humans having evolved a genetic predisposition to love their children, it's at least partly because I do good things for them (I try anyway).

Why does it seem so many "conservatives" hate poor people?

I'm going to stop a little short, and not try to shoehorn everything into this one concept, but damn - this makes a lotta shit clearer for me.

Today's Irony

No particular reason I chose this one, it just kinda popped into my head.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃe ɣeˈβaɾa];[7] June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.[8]

As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed.[9] His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement inGuatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Árbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the United Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology.[9]  Later, in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing US-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.[10] Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.[11]

So the guy spends his entire adult life working to combat the darker impulses of Capitalism, only to have his image (and practically his whole persona) posthumously hijacked in service to at least some of what the CIA killed him for fighting against.