My Dearest Mr Koch

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Social Progress

And the hits just keep comin'.

Via Nicholas Kristof at NYT:

In the Social Progress Index, the United States excels in access to advanced education but ranks 70th in health, 69th in ecosystem sustainability, 39th in basic education, 34th in access to water and sanitation and 31st in personal safety. Even in access to cellphones and the Internet, the United States ranks a disappointing 23rd, partly because one American in five lacks Internet access.

“It’s astonishing that for a country that has Silicon Valley, lack of access to information is a red flag,” notes Michael Green, executive director of the Social Progress Imperative, which oversees the index. The United States has done better at investing in drones than in children, and cuts in social services could fray the social fabric further.

--and--

Over all, the United States’ economy outperformed France’s between 1975 and 2006. But 99 percent of the French population actually enjoyed more gains in that period than 99 percent of the American population. Exclude the top 1 percent, and the average French citizen did better than the average American. This lack of shared prosperity and opportunity has stunted our social progress.

You can play with the charts and maps by going to the Social Progress Index website.

Have fun - Mediocrity Uber Alles!

hat tip = FB friend DR

An Important Skill Set

Knowing you're good at something requires the same set of skills as being good at something.

Being stoopid means you lack the tools necessary for knowing you're stoopid.



Goes a long way towards explaining  - oh, I dunno - Louie Gohmert, The GOP Platform Committee, Victoria Jackson, Libertarianism, ad nauseam...

The Task At Hand

How come the people in charge are so often the ones who don't know a fucking thing about what makes something work?



I can't count the number of times I've been in meetings like this.  I just wish I could honestly say I was never a good example of everybody except the guy in the blue shirt.

It Occurs To Me

What is it with "conservatives" that gets them so hung up on The Supply Side of every-damned-thing?

Wanna talk Economics?
They can't think of anything but cutting taxes for themselves, and a harsh dose of Austerity for everybody else.  (Supply Side Economics, btw is self-defeating because it leads to a slow deflationary death spiral - which, in case ya hadn't noticed, is pretty much what we're in right now)
Global Labor Arbitrage
Supply Side Economics

How 'bout that War on Drugs?
We concentrate almost solely on interdiction and putting millions of users in prison (which may look like working the demand side, but actually only serves the purpose of the suppliers by conveniently gathering all the customers in one place) - again, just working the supply side.

Yeah OK, we try to get "our partners" in places like Afghanistan and Colombia to help us, but c'mon, they don't actually do anything helpful that I can see.  And why is that?  Because there's a huge demand for their #1 export, and they're not stupid enough to shut down the drug trade on their end because that's what keeps them all in power.  Plus, you've been preaching Supply Side at 'em for 30 years - do ya really think the message they've gotten is that they should cut back on THE SUPPLY!?!.  So what does it get us?  Prisons that are so crowded they've become little feudal states that generally operate outside the control of anything "government" can do, for one thing.  And don't get me started on the total FUBAR of the Privatized Prison Industry, and the connections to DoD and Defense Contractors and DEA and BATF and Capitol Hill and Wall Street and and and.

Well what about Abortion then?
"Conservatives" seem to think we don't need to do anything but shut down all the clinics and harass women at every turn in an attempt to shut 'em up - which means they're all over the supply side again, while fervently struggling against everything that's been proven effective in preventing the need (ie: demand) for abortion.  Family planning and birth control.  Equal pay for women.  Early and honest Sex Ed.  Free condoms.  Public education.  Lots of public information.  Public women's healthcare centers. etc.

And wait just a damned minute there - in a system of unfettered free market capitalism, isn't it supposed to be a good thing to have lots and lots of clinics doing all manner of abortions on demand?  As long as they turn a profit, isn't that what y'all keep telling us is what god intended?

So guess what, kids - there are actually two sides to these things, and if you just stop for a minute, you might see that working the Demand side is a lot more effective in practically every instance.  At the very least, ya gotta work the Demand side as well as the Supply side.

Every time you turn around, it's like "conservatives" are boosting the fuck outa the Supply Side approach (which doesn't work, tho' they keep insisting it must), while slashing and bashing away at Demand Side solutions (which they insist can't work, when it's actually and obviously what does work).

Why do ya suppose they do all that?

What Day Is It?

ROCKVILLE, MD—A study released Tuesday by the National Institute for Mental Health confirmed that the vast majority of Americans’ anxieties and phobias have no logical grounding in reality, aside from those related to being attacked in open waters and torn limb from limb by a gigantic, merciless shark. “Our research shows that people’s most common fears, such as the fear of flying or heights, are wholly unfounded, with the notable exception of the fear of a tiger shark swimming up undetected while you wade in the surf, latching its piercing teeth into your thigh, and dragging you screaming out to sea,” said the study’s lead author, Michael Buckley, citing clinical studies that described any pervasive sense of paranoia unrelated to being disemboweled by an inescapable frenzy of five sharks while swimming close to shore as “entirely irrational.” “We found that those individuals who expressed anxiety about public speaking, small spaces, germs, darkness, and nearly every other clinically identifiable source of phobia spent much of their time worriedly obsessing over these unrealistic concerns when they would have been far better served to channel this dread toward the very real danger of entering the ocean with a small cut or a piece of shiny jewelry and splashing around too close to the surface, all things that are likely to instigate a lethal bull shark or great white attack.” According to Buckley, the only two other reasonable and completely justified phobias discovered in the course of the study were the fear of getting caught in a swarm of killer bees and the fear of dying alone.

I'm No Superman --Lazlo Bane

Watching some old Scrubs episodes yesterday.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

When you turn an economic philosophy into a system of government, you're just looking for trouble.  Ask the Soviets how it worked out for them.

In his 2010 Citizens United opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "The appearance of influence or access ... will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy." He further stated, "Ingratiation and access, in any event, are not corruption."

I'll believe it when it happens, but apparently there's a fair probability that the Repubs will win enough seats to take over the majority in the US Senate, and that they'll pad their lead in the House, and even more important, that they'll continue to hold commanding majorities in 25 - 35 state legislatures, plus a shitload of county boards.

You can pass it off as the typical losses that the party in the White House always suffers in midterm elections.  You can also say it's because the GOP has a higher nutball density (and a much lower paranoia threshold), and those nutballs never fail to turn out, and they never vote for anybody but Republicans.

Meanwhile, it seems like the Dems are about as sharp and focused as a bagful of wet yarn - as usual.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a post about yet another example of a Coin-Operated Politician who's been busted for influence peddling - which makes it impossible for me to ignore the simple fact that sometimes even the really smart guys like Anthony Kennedy say some of the stoopidest fucking things.

So, here ya go - Meet Mr Leland Yee:

Desperate for funds to repay $70,000 in debt owed by his failed 2011 San Francisco mayoral campaign, Yee repeatedly begged, prodded and pressed undercover agents acting as businessmen to make campaign contributions. In exchange, he often did what many politicians do every day: connect donors up with other influential lawmakers, sing their praises to bureaucratic agencies and write letters of support. While the alleged illegal acts in Yee's case go well beyond that kind of access -- prosecutors charge he helped to coordinate an international arms deal -- access was a large part of how he pitched his donors. He opened his door and regularly stated his intent to keep his door open, especially if he ascended to higher office.

We know that big donors get access for their money. Just look at the White House visitor logs, the goings-on at political fundraisers or the Republican presidential aspirants heading to Las Vegas to kiss the ring of billionaire donor Sheldon Adelson. But what we rarely hear is those behind-the-scenes conversations.

The point here is that under the "rules" of unfettered capitalism, everything is a commodity.  Everything is for sale.  Everything and everybody has a price.  And anything goes in the marketplace.  Ya get what ya pay for and ya pay for what ya get.

When we set it all up to sell a candidate like we sell cars and hamburgers and remedies for anal itch, why would anybody think we wouldn't see the kind of auction we've got going on now where power goes to the highest bidder?  If I can throw several tens of millions of dollars at a politician while you and 200 of your closest friends can managed maybe a hundred bucks each - then my voice gets really loud relative to your voice.  And it should be obvious to anybody with a living thinking brain in their skull that - all of a sudden, and gosh, for no apparent reason that Mr Justice Kennedy can think of - my single vote counts for more than your vote plus the votes of your 200 buddies.

So how confident are we s'posed to be about that whole democracy thing now?

A Difference Of Ethos

(not an April Fools thing)

There is no Chief Ethics Officer.
This is not a democracy.
The free market is morally neutral - as God intended.
You get along by going along.
Conform and be dull.
Embrace the Noble Lie.
Watch more TV.  Go out to a movie.
Stay safe - take the blue pill.



DecodeDC

A Few Toons

via Democratic Underground

The KrugMan Speaks

Paul Krugman takes down the bullshit from Jamie Dimon - that the reason you're not finding a decent job is your own damned fault - stoopid losers.

From his piece in NYT:

“Today, nearly 11 million Americans are unemployed. Yet, at the same time, 4 million jobs sit unfilled” — supposedly demonstrating “the gulf between the skills job seekers currently have and the skills employers need.”

Actually, in an ever-changing economy there are always some positions unfilled even while some workers are unemployed, and the current ratio of vacancies to unemployed workers is far below normal. Meanwhile, multiple careful studies have found no support for claims that inadequate worker skills explain high unemployment.

But the belief that America suffers from a severe “skills gap” is one of those things that everyone important knows must be true, because everyone they know says it’s true. It’s a prime example of a zombie idea — an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die.

Hat tip = Salon

Jamie Dimon lives in his little bubble with a variety of others who occupy similarly lofty stations in USAmerica Inc.  And there's a handful of other bubbles occupied by Big Power Wielders - mostly, those bubbles are filled with people holding C-Level positions in Politics and Military Branches and Law Enforcement etc.  Then, you can add in the bubbles from the rest of the planet, and feed it all a constant stream of talking points and rebuttal arguments from a cluster of Media Bubbles (DumFux News, NRO, AEI, WSJ, etc), which gives us the now-infamous Echo Chamber Effect, because, remember now, Press Poodles get their "news" from the newsmakers, and those newsmakers are all inside one of those bubbles - and before your very eyes the world is transformed into a 1950s Disney cartoon with no grounding in reality at all.

Can you say 'entropy'?


So the Zombie-Think Dr Krugman talks about is an important phenomenon to watch.  It's one thing for the rubes to buy in - hell, ya gotta get the rubes to go along with it, or it won't work - but when it looks like the guys who're supposed to be running the scam start believing their own bullshit, it's time to call in the dogs and piss on the fire cuz this hunt is over.

Today's Eewww

Science (and the dogged relentless pursuit of What Da Fuck) does not always lead to rainbow-farting unicorns, or - really - to anything guaranteed not to make your skin crawl.  I can almost understand why some people just throw up their hands and say, "Fuck this - I'm goin' with Jesus".

Almost.

At about 2:05, you might feel a powerful urge to run and hide.



Go ahead - do some porn surfing with the key word 'hairy' - do it now.  I fuckin' dare ya.

It's Just A Theory

hat tip = X-Christian (commenter) at Moyers & Company

Denying the Big Bang:

In the first episode of Cosmos, titled “Standing Up in the Milky Way,” Tyson dons shades just before witnessing the Big Bang. You know, the start of everything. Some creationists, though, don’t like the Big Bang; at Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis, a critique of Cosmos asserts that “the big bang model is unable to explain many scientific observations, but this is of course not mentioned.”

"Not mentioned"?

Ya mean like on the gazillion other occasions when Tyson has said, "I don't know" in response to questions like:
What came before the big bang?
--and--
What does the big bang have to do with dark matter and dark energy?

When he doesn't know something, Tyson admits it, and he doesn't pretend that his imaginary friend has the answer, but conveniently left it out of that one stoopid book.  C'mon, Ken - we all know you're a douche, but it's important for you not to let the rubes see you actually being a douche out in public like that.

Anyway:

Alas, this creationist critique seems very poorly timed: A major new scientific discovery, just described in detail in the New York Times, has now provided “smoking gun” evidence for “inflation,” a crucial component of our understanding of the stunning happenings just after the Big Bang. Using a special telescope to examine the cosmic microwave background radiation (which has been dubbed the “afterglow” of the Big Bang), researchers at the South Pole detected “direct evidence” of the previously theoretical gravitational waves that are believed to have originated in the Big Bang and caused an incredibly sudden and dramatic inflation of the universe. (For an easy-to-digest discussion, Phil Plait has more.)

Pushing back against the Denialists when they inevitably try to pull the False Equivalence  crap:

First - there're some big differences between the use of "theory" when we're talking about science, and the use of "theory" when we're indulging ourselves in conversational conjecture and speculation and such like that there.

Conflation of the two meanings is a very useful rhetorical trick, but it's a fucking trick. Please stop using it; please stop falling for it.

Second - here's a handy, and (I'm fairly certain) incomplete list of some other minor items that are also "just theories":

1. Atomic Theory
2. Theory of Matter and Energy, also Conservation of Matter and Energy
3. Cell Theory
4. Germ Theory
5. Theory of Plate Tectonics
6. Theory of Evolution
7. Big Bang Theory
8. Chaos Theory
9. The “Gaia” Theory of a Sustainable Earth, which is illustrated with the idea of Spaceship Earth
10. Theory of Quantum Mechanics
11. Theory of Special Relativity, which subsumes The Theory of General Relativity which subsumes Newtonian theories of motion
12. Photon Theory of Light Energy and its speed of light
13. Theory of Electromagnetism as begun by Maxwell and continued with the work of others
14. Theory of Radioactivity or Nuclear Theory
15. Theory of Molecular Bonds
16. Theory of States of Matter - or is this part of Atomic Theory and Molecular Bond Theory?
17. Theory of Thermodynamics—hey, I guess this theory takes care of the States of Matter and the Molecular Bond theories.
18. Theory of Homeostasis within Living Organisms
19. Constructivist Theory of Learning
20. Theories of Self and Development - mental processes in the brain.
21. Theory of Gravity

I realize pointing these thingies out should be tres obvioso by now, but repetition is the surrogate mother of political success (aka: the brood bitch of propaganda).  Turn-about's fair play, muthuh fuckuh.

And just to put the cherry on top - your eyes may have been opened by the Lord's eternal awesomeness, but if you've got your head up your ass, all you're gonna see is your own shit.

Yo - Brian

At first blush, it's easy to follow Mr Fischer's reasoning as he says he "discriminated", but he wants us to understand that he's not really "discriminating" (tho' of course he is), but no really, he just wants us all to know that he thinks wimmins is all wonderful and capable and competent...but but but flip flop flip.

The not-so-discreet implication is that them wimmins is only wonderful and capable and competent at doin' all that Wimmin's Work, but hey, let's throw the gals a bone, shall we? (even a bad double entendre seems appropriate here because the kinda shit this guy peddles is convoluted enough to confuse a Byzantine Imperator).

Maybe we should talk about the obvious Mommy Issues that are just barely below the surface, but also too, anybody who spends that kinda time and energy gushing about how welcoming and comforting he feels women are - well, maybe we're into a little self-loathing; trying to admit to being a complete dickweed who has none of the loving qualities he says he finds so endearing in women.  Or maybe he's overcompensating a tiny bit because he has doubts about his own manliness.

Or maybe it's just another mundane example of a guy applying a little lubricating flattery to loosen up somebody's panties.

Fucking classic, dude.

Telomeres And Centromeres

Read all about it at NIH.  But that'll give you a headache unless you're Amy Farrah Fowler - and besides, I put that up there just to pump up my public image by inviting you to infer that I actually read that shit, and that I might have some remote chance of understanding it.  I don't read it, and while I insist on believing I could understand it if somebody explained it to me in very simple terms, I really just don't fuckin' get it.

But, I found this helpful:



And here's one from Carl Sagan:



I love the part when Sagan points out that Creationists have to knock down the thing about the 4.5-billion-year-old Earth - cuz if they don't, they've got exactly bupkis when it comes to their denial of evolution.

Flipping The Message

A while back, Cadillac ran this ad aimed at the Douche Bucket demographic:




Here's an Answer Ad from Ford:



The world is what we make it, kids.

Today's Doonesbury

Gary Trudeau can be about as subtle as a hand grenade in a bowl of oatmeal.  What passes for 'wry' is usually more like a barstool across the face.  Which is what it takes sometimes.  Like now fer-instance.

DIY Whitewash

First, say something honest-ish sounding:  "There will be no whitewash".  But don't use the term "whitewash" because that's old hat, and you must never ever ever allow any words to be used that might make anybody question your "integrity".

Second, make it clear to the handful of underlings who actually know you're a lying sack of shit that they will burn if they say anything - that's what you tell them in private just before you announce that they've been fired for the scummy things they did on your behalf and at your instruction been fired for doing bad things totally unbeknownst to your own saintly self, or that they've left public service to pursue opportunities in the private sector, or that they need to spend more time with family blah blah blah.  Also, publicly you say there will be no immunity and no deals and no fuckin' around here - I mean it.

Well, no shit - you cut people loose and leave 'em standing naked and alone while you threaten to bring the full power of a state government down on them as you slide on by?  Gosh - you just might get some very quiet people that way.

Third, since all or most of your fellow-consprators won't be saying anything to your hand-picked team of "investigators", there's no real chance that anything of substance will ever turn up - not in time to make a difference anyway - so you can conveniently insinuate that the people who know where you buried the bodies are actually the guilty ones because - hey, why else would they plead the 5th?  Why would they not testify if they have nothing to hide - am I right or what?

Of course, Bridget Ann Kelly et al will deny it and refute the findings, and we'll all have a merry old time being distracted by raising money for the Defense Fund and spending the next several years slugging it out in court, and watching the whole thing every day and every night on Nancy Grace and DumFux News and Ed Schultz.

But Christie has done the politically smart thing by getting his shit out in front.  No matter what else, he gets to point at "an investigation that exonerated me fully", and to play the jolly ol' fat workin' stiff who's just tryin' to do a job for the fine folk of New Jersey, but who's beset on all sides by disloyal sycophants and a corrupt liberal-biased press; and they're all jealous of his masterful prowess; and they only wanna bring a good man down to further their own ambitions.

And you just keep pounding away at it - believe what I say, not what your lyin' eyes are tellin' ya.

There's a perversely delicious beauty to it.

America - Made In China

"American Icon" has become the perfect realization of style over substance; that the symbol is now more important than whatever the symbol is supposed to represent.

The uniforms worn by the 2012 US Olympic Team were made in China.  That's not news, of course, but when I ponder that one, it seems more than a little warped that we just let it go by, with the only result of the complaints and pushback being that the winter team unis were "American Made" (and just look how that turned out), while the stampede of jobs to foreign locations continues not only unrestrained but encouraged; and even "required" under the interpretation of certain laws.

I realize I'm a fogey at this point in time, and it's always a possibility I'm worrying about a few BBs in a boxcar but does it really mean nothing to anyone that we don't do anything other than "manage the brand" anymore?  We're being sold a pocketful of mumbles.

Made In China:

Saturday's Tune

Can't You See --Marshall Tucker band