Ex Nehil Nehilo Fit

George Packer writing in the New Yorker about the debt ceiling crisis and the ever more strained fault line running through Washington, reminds us of a quote usually attributed to Vladimir Lenin: "the worse, the better."

I rather think Lenin himself was quoting Georgi Plekhanov, when he wrote his essay Three Crises in 1917, but whatever the source and however Lenin used it, I tend to agree with Mr. Packer that we're looking at a planned destruction of our economy to serve a revolutionary cause that in some ways; in it's ideological blindness to practical consequences, looks so much like the Bolsheviks, it might cause liquid irony to condense into caustic clouds and rain down upon us.

Indeed the worse this manufactured crisis becomes, the more likely it is, at least in the minds of the radical right, to destroy the prospects of Obama and the Democrats as well as our national prospects, leaving the Tea Party, like roaches after a nuclear war, in charge of a withered State sure to become a wildly prosperous unregulated utopia. It seems a fatuous dream of course, to anyone who has read even a little about the aftermath of the 1918 revolution, but if you've read this far I shouldn't have to point it out. Out of a power vacuum, power comes.

Packer quotes Max Weber, writing only only two years later with regard to “the ethic of responsibility” versus “the ethic of ultimate ends” and it seems that little has changed in the course of human events since then -- at least in American events. The distinction

"between those who act from a sense of practical consequence and those who act from higher conviction, regardless of consequences."

describes our current struggle; unser Kampf, if you will.

" These ethics are tragically opposed, but the true calling of politics requires a union of the two."

Is there any doubt about into which group the "tax cuts and deregulation produce prosperity" and "the government is always the problem" people fall? Discussion of practical consequences can't be heard through the roar.

Such a political union is less foreseeable I think, than at any time in American History that I can call to mind and a complete rupture or a complete capitulation of the "ultimate responsibility" forces to the anarchists and nihilists may be the only possible outcome. Ex nihilo, nehil fit: out of nothing, nothing comes, no longer is supported by science, but in the world of governments and power and people, things are different -- and après ça, le déluge, of course.

The Debt Ceiling, Debt, and America's Political Hide: the Consequences of Willful Imbecility

Beaucoup ink has been expended on the economic consequences of a U.S. debt default, should that happen, but not much has been said about its political consequences. It seems to me that regarding the economic consequences, the central one is the partial loss of national autonomy that would stem from a failure to agree to keep paying our debts. Even a dinosaur can see that while it's a bad affair to have to borrow money with which to pay back a little of the money you've already borrowed, if you suddenly decide not to make the minimum payment on your credit card, so to speak, you end up ceding a lot of decision-making power to the large entity or entities who have been extending you what amount to loans on a monthly basis. But I guess the tea-timers in Congress don't know that…. It's just one of the many things they don't know.

Still, I'm focusing here on the political inferences that might be made by the powerful in this country and abroad. Wouldn't the lesson be something like, "Americans can't be trusted to elect a government that will manage their affairs competently, so their form of government is doomed, probably sooner rather than later?" The other day I was listening to an interview with some Ivy-League economist professor, and he pointed out that at some point after any default (and only after), the president might end up having to invoke the 14th Amendment "to save the Republic." That language stuck with me: the professor is right in that nothing less than the Republic's viability could hang in the balance.

Can we continue to manage our own affairs, or are we so stupid that we intend to keep sending cartoon characters to the halls of congress to do our bidding for us, and do it unbelievably badly? How do you sustain a republic with a majority of dunces and a legislative branch that is a nearly perfect symbol of that majority? How do you sustain a republic if its economy goes up in smoke thanks to the willful imbecility of a major branch of its government?

I still think saner heads will prevail and a deal will be reached, but I'm not as sure of it as I used to be. I'm not entirely certain Mr. Boehner can keep his side of the aisle from committing economic treason, or suicide (or whatever you want to call a refusal to honor the nation's debts) and thereby provoking an economic meltdown and possibly a constitutional crisis when the president has to deal with it by fiat.

Finally, as for the general right-wing strategy for dealing with the fix in which we find ourselves – namely, a very expensive government combined with our blockheaded refusal to raise the necessary revenue to sustain it -- I can offer this by way of The Wisdom of the Jurassic (what little of it there is): a capitalist economy CANNOT shrink its way out of a severe economic situation. Capitalism is like a shark: it must keep moving or it dies. Cutting guv'mint spending to the bone is therefore not the right thing to do, and anybody who thinks otherwise is dumber than a pile of particularly dumb rocks. The only way we will move from red to black at some point is if the economy generates sufficient wealth combined with a fair tax code that allows us to collect enough to pay for what we want the government to do. It would help, of course, if we stopped collectively pretending we don't want the government to do anything.

West world

When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, many of the ugliest Republicans told us that Democrats were "playing the race card" a mawkish cliché which means, I think, falsely accusing them of the racism they do really espouse. In other words, talking anal cysts like Limbaugh were having their pearls of wisdom denounced by the "politically correct" because you can't criticize a black man these days without being called a racist. It's a cheap dishonorable gambit, but like counterfeit money, it can be passed off on an uncritical populace.

An uncritical, astigmatic, angry and greedy American public seems to have had another bit of counterfeit money passed off it. Allen West, the Republican Congressman from the 22nd Congressional District right here in Florida, land of snakes, lizards, Teaturds, pollution and poisonous toads -- Allen West, one chromosome short of a tape-worm, says in his blog:

"I must confess, when I see anyone with an Obama 2012 bumper sticker, I recognize them as a threat to the gene pool."

Well isn't that special? Indeed it's the one feature of that pretentious Club of Fools that keeps it in business: it allows the mentally under-endowed, cognitively incontinent circus clowns to challenge their betters and to assault us with ideas that don't hold water nearly as well as a worn out douche bag. The giggle gallery in the back of the class, mocking the teacher.

Indeed West, speaking from his teabag-buttressed platform of arrogated biological superiority seems to be of an intellect too limited to have noticed the irony of a black man appealing to the snobbery of the uneducated, ill-informed, probably stupid and definitely angry whites, and offering soothing delusions of genetic superiority in a grotesque parody of white supremacists from Montgomery to Munich. But then, when has any American been too stupid and dishonest to be someone's hero?

There is indeed a tide in the affairs of men and there is an armada of those now afloat on that full sea of hate, not only using it for their own purposes but seeking to make it rise further until it drowns the land. Allen West is such a man, a man whom under ordinary circumstances would be a nobody, a flyblown bit of flotsam in a stagnant pool; but because of this tidal wave of fury, he can pretend to be a battleship and his flatus a volley of cannon. He can twist, misuse, misquote and invent, he can put on the white-face and wear a red tie, He can grin like Uncle Tom and mock like a monkey, but while honesty is within reach of all, what he pretends to is not.

Women from Planned Parenthood and the activist group Code Pink "have been neutering American men" he says and making them weak. West tells us this with his genetically based intellect still unaware of Dr. Strangelove and bodily fluids. Perhaps he himself is having problems with his manhood and this talk of virility and gene pools tells a cover story. Perhaps his politics serve as verbal Viagra for the intellectually impotent Representative. But I don't need to postulate such questions, the doctored Obama bumper sticker with the hammer and sickle tell us the whole, sick, sad, disgusting tale. Allan West is a whore. Allen West is Count Dracula's rat-eating Renfield, Allan West is a liar. Allen West, and for reasons probably too disgusting to contemplate, is trying to ruin everything good about the United States of America. So what do I do when I see that sticker? You don't want to find out.

The president, despite all appearances and lack of opposition to corporate abuse and capitalist excess is a "low-level socialist agitator" reciting "Marxist demagogic rhetoric." Is West describing himself again, or is he just grabbing bits from the instruction manual like a tent-meeting preacher with his mouth full of Jesus and a mind full of money? Obama is a Communist to the extent that John D. Rockefeller was a Communist and Bernie Madoff was a capitalist.

No, this high water mark of anti-government anger that produces foul and foetid things like Allen West and the Tea Party has little to do with genetics and everything to do with our national ignorance and our manufactured delusions; both fed and cultivated by the people who reap benefits in their billions and trillions by subverting the values of civilization and setting the dogs on the ever expanding masses. It's an old story, but in our new version, not all the dogs have four legs.

Pledge Scams as Ambush Politics (And why the No Tax Pledge Violates the U.S. Constitution)

Two pledge scams have been in the news lately: The so-called Family Pledge (covered by Nameless Cynic in this post, The American Taliban) and Grover Norquist’s so-called No Tax Pledge. Although seemingly unrelated, these pledges share at least one trait in common: To bully public officials and hold them hostage. More to the point, pledge scams are a form of ambush politics designed to preclude any reasonable debate on any subject by coercing compliance without forethought as to implications, impacts, or alternative solutions.

The No-Tax Pledge represents a case in point. As a Damocles sword wielded by nihilists over the heads of GOP chumps, it is the singular cause of gridlock in the current debt default debate. Here is what a debt default will mean:

• A downgrade in the credit worthiness of the nation;
• Interest rate increases on home mortgages, auto loans, student loans, and credit cards;
• Worldwide turmoil in bond and equity markets;
• Steep losses in the value of homes and retirement accounts;
• Interruptions in Medicare, Social Security and VA disbursements;
• And a crippling double-dip recession.

In other words, it is not just GOP stooges who are being held hostage; it is the American economy and We, The People … all on account of an anti-tax lunatic fringe wielding The Pledge to play brinksmanship at our expense.  When these GOP stooges took their oaths of office, they also pledged to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which requires them among other things to honor the nation's debts. Does this mean Grover Norquist holds more authority than the U.S. Constitution?  In allowing themselves to be suckered, the GOP have turned themselves into fools as well as hypocrites.  And they have no one else to blame but themselves!

It reminds me of a nursery rhyme I once read to my kids …

Jesus Christ!

A couple in Anderson County, SC has decided that Jesus decided to appear to them on a receipt from Walmart.

Jacob Simmons and his fiancee, Gentry Lee Sutherland, said they bought some pictures from Walmart on Sunday, June 12.

The following Wednesday, the couple had just come home from a church service when Simmons spotted the receipt on the floor of Sutherland's apartment. He says the receipt had changed. "I was leaving the kitchen and I just looked on the floor, and it was like it was looking at me," Simmons said.

It's just like in Scripture - "...and on the third day, he arose again, and ascended into Commerce..."



Just to be fair, let's leave aside uncomfortable questions like "could they find a more redneck religious icon than a Walmart receipt?" and move on to the more interesting questions. Like "Why did Jesus choose to appear there?"

Why would Jesus, much like an anal-probing alien, choose to appear in South Carolina, the colostomy bag of America?

Could it be because Simmons and Sutherland are an unmarried couple cohabitating in a single apartment, and Jesus wanted them to know that they're going to hell?

Was He just trying to pass along the message "Yo, hick! Can you clean this pigsty? I've been laying here for three days!"

Perhaps it was a marketing ploy by Walmart: "I'd come back from the dead for savings like these! Even if they are destroying the economy!" (And really, this is sheer genius as advertising goes: it's a ploy that will go over big in the Bible Belt.)

But to be honest, I think that Mr Simmons has misidentified his picture. Because really, it looks more like Charles Manson to me.



But I'm pretty sure that this miraculous appearance doesn't mean "Go start killing everybody in the neighborhood (or as they call it in South Carolina, "urban beautification"). Jesus has been aggressively marketing Himself of late, appearing on telephone poles, rocking chairs, and even some crackhead's cell phone.

I'd say that for answers, we should turn, as we always do, to that other bearded guy in robes.

Dawn patrol

The last time I watched the movie Spirit of St Louis, about Charles Lindbergh's 1927 flight across the Atlantic, I wondered what he would have done if someone had told him: "hey wait, in a few years you'll be able to do this in a few hours while drinking champagne and watching this movie. That's not how the human ego operates however. We take huge risks to be the first. Risks that would be far, far smaller if we waited a while for technology to catch up.

Of course if it weren't for the Cold War we might never have gone to the moon or built a space station or have our hopes for a verdant Mars dashed in the 1960's and 70's. Sometimes you are better off taking the risk, spending the money; but is that an argument for not moving on with the times?

While the press and much of the public is lamenting the end of the seriously flawed shuttle program, the real science of space exploration is continuing to produce astounding advances that dwarf the advancements to knowledge produced by our manned program. With the rapid advance of semi-autonomous robotics and miniaturization, it's foreseeable that the huge risk and titanic expense of sending people around the solar system and returning them alive and sane may be less and less worthwhile.

What have we learned from the shuttle experience? That space travel is still very risky, still vastly more expensive and difficult than we imagine when we design these things. Expensive enough that we will always make serious compromises in design that eventually make things even more expensive when we have to work around them. The shuttle is a textbook lesson in the perils of design by committee and politicians. It's catastrophes result directly from design decisions driven by economy.

If we are to continue the Space Station project for a while, perhaps there will be sufficient motivation to develop a smaller, lighter, truly reusable, economically sound and more modern supply vehicle, but the Space Station, if it has any justification, is all about practice in sending people to places to do what robots will probably be able to do much better before we get there.

Yes, perhaps we'll be able to support some sort of human existence on Mars for a period of time and perhaps construct a moon base that could, for a time, house humans, but it wouldn't be much of a life and it certainly shouldn't be called a "colony" in the way European settlements in the Americas were colonies. We still lack the money and the technology as well as a reason to develop them. In that respect science fiction tends to be a somewhat cloudy fun-house mirror of the past more than a window into the future.

Would we ever send; would we ever expend the huge resources to send men and women to Vesta, or Ceres much less to the vicinity of the outer planets with their monstrous radiation belts and no resources -- a journey that would force the new Conquistadors to live in conditions we now reserve for pickled herring -- and keep them in constant danger and deprivation for years? No, but we can send and have sent patient, unemotional and replaceable robots whose capabilities are expanding as fast as the universe itself. Would we spend trillions and ask a crew to take a decades long trip in a stinking tin can without a shower, drinking recycled urine and eating horrible food just to orbit Pluto? Will we ever travel to the nearest star? I doubt it, but the technology to send an unmanned vehicle is at least a real possibility, even if we won't live to see the pictures.

Robots can be sent in small vehicles; can be small vehicles, powered by small efficient ion motors and won't suffer from emotional problems or long for the cool, green hills of home. A cheap cell phone now has more computing power than existed anywhere when we first walked on the moon and high resolution video cameras are smaller than the human eye. (remember when color TV cameras were the size and weight of refrigerators and required a two man crew?) The rate of change is accelerating. Think of what we'll be able to do in the 20 or 30 years it would take to build manned rockets and ancillary equipment for a very risky Mars mission.

The shuttle was a 1970's design loaded with so much design compromise that it was obsolete before it got off the ground. Robotic missions on the other hand can go from the drawing board to landing on Jovian moons in fairly short order. The real science is done on places that would incinerate, irradiate, freeze and squash an astronaut, even if he survived the mind numbing confinement and squalor needed to get there and back.

Not so with the Dawn mission now, as of yesterday, in orbit around the asteroid Vesta; an object so small and distant that even the Hubble telescope can't see anything but a featureless smear. Expect a flood of hi-res images in the next few weeks. In time it will move on to Dwarf Planet Ceres and surely gain some insight into the formation of planetary systems. That may be less a thing of dreams than small boys and Sci-Fi fans like to imagine but much more of a thing of science. We've already seen the sunset on Mars and watched dust devils cross the endless desert. We've heard the wind blow on Titan and seen its methane rivers and lakes and there's more to come as the technology improves.

It's impossible to do more than guess, but I'm guessing that long before we discover bug-eyed monsters on alien worlds, we'll be building our own in Pasadena and sending them there. You and I can see the dawn rise on worlds more alien than we can imagine and we can do it poolside with a glass of lemonade.

Breaking News: The Huckster Gets Hacked by None Other Than ...

Tone Deaficit

By Octopus

First, let’s dispense with an outrageous lie. The current debt under discussion is REPUBLICAN DEBT authorized by Congress and signed into law by former President George W. Bush. The debt in question covers bills that have come due … from two unfunded wars, from unfunded tax cuts and tax loopholes that have benefited the wealthy and ravaged the middle class, from gross mismanagement of the nation’s economy under Republican supply side bullshit.

Over two years ago, I tried to make a point under this post, Lets Go Viral, dated April 17, 2009. I find this date especially curious. On April 17, 2009, President Obama was a newly elected president scarcely 3 months in office. From the beginning, as you can see from my original post, the Tea Thug Party was already organized and marching to the orders of Rush Limbaugh who said, “I hope he fails” – uttered on January 16, 2009 - four days BEFORE President Obama took the oath of office.

My point: Even from the beginning, the Republicans were hell-bent on sabotaging the Obama presidency. For the two years and three months that have elapsed since my original post, Obama has been battered and abused with non-stop vitriol, defamation, outright racism, and endless filibusters from far right wing Republicans (who have transformed their party into a proto-fascist movement that places political ambition above the national interest).

Two years and three months ago, the national debt stood at eleven trillion dollars, nine trillion of which was amassed under Republican administrations – representing 82% of total debt. As of this month, July 14, 2011, the national debt stands at fourteen trillion dollars, of which nine trillion was amassed under Republican administrations – representing 64% of total debt. Yet, the Republicans continue to repeat the same dishonest trope about tax-and-spend liberals. Despite the $750 Billion TARP bailout started under Bush, and the $730 Billion economic stimulus bill to prevent economic collapse, Republicans remain the all-time champions of deficit spending:

64% OF OUR NATIONAL DEBT

WAS SPENT BY REPUBLICANS

(AS OF BASTILLE DAY 2011)

Lets dispense with outrageous lie number two: Last night on MSNBC news, Judson Phillips, founder of the Tea Party Nation, said rich people deserve to have tax breaks because it is rich people who create jobs.

Total bullshit. Rich people do not create jobs, never have and never will. Producers will hire only when there is demand for their goods and services. No consumer spending means no business confidence means no job growth. It is as simple as that, unless you are Judson Phillips, a self-styled spokesperson for corporate proto-fascists. When you impoverish the poor and the middle class, you have choked the engine that drives business expansion.  Consumers create jobs when they create demand for goods and services, always have and always will.

Last year, Tea Thug Republicans ran on a platform of jobs, jobs, jobs. Since the new legislative session in January, Democrats have sponsored seven jobs bills, as follows (source):

• A bill to end government contracts that reward corporations for shipping American jobs overseas.
• The Build America Bonds Act – a bill that leverages public dollars to strengthen private sector investment in schools, hospitals, and transit projects.
• The American Jobs Matter Act – a bill that would give preference in federal contracts to U.S. manufacturers that create jobs at home.
• The National Manufacturing Strategy Act, which calls on the President to develop plans and policies to help American manufacturers compete and grow in the global trading environment.
• The Advanced Vehicle Manufacturing Technology Act – a research and investment bill to help ensure that the cars of the future are built in America.
• The Currency Reform Fair Trade Act - provides our government with tools to address unfair currency manipulation. According to estimates, the bill would have created over 1 million manufacturing jobs by leveling the international playing field for American workers and companies.
• A bill to promote jobs and innovation at home by offering incentives to patent holders who pledge to develop and manufacture innovative new products in the United States.

All of the aforementioned bills were voted down by Republicans. How many job creation bills have the Republican introduced since January? NONE, NADA, ZIP.   Their idea of shrinking the deficit is sabotaging the country.  For what?  Their stinking political ambition!

Pants on fire

“The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

-Article III of the US Constitution-

“There is no Supreme Court in the American Constitution"

-Newt Gingrich-

Really, Newt? Are you really a history professor? Do you really think we're that stupid?

It's getting hard to tolerate the stench coming out of the pre-caucus Republican cesspool; from Presidential candidates getting government funds -- our tax dollars -- to teach people how to pray away the gay and advocating the use of Federal might to stamp out all forms of pornography frowned on by their frowning religion and to legislate and limit and punish our personal relationships -- while griping about too much government interference and too much spending and too much social engineering. It's getting damned hard to tolerate morally, mentally and ethically bankrupt creeps like Newt Gingrich, who is quite happy to feed the malignant idiocy now consuming the remnants of our Republic by telling us that our constitution does not "mention" much less provide for a supreme court, Article III of the Constitution notwithstanding.

"We now have this entire national elite that wants us to believe that any five lawyers are a Constitutional convention. That is profoundly un-American and profoundly wrong.”

lies the moral multimillionaire elitist with the million dollar line of credit at the jewelry store and a string of illicit mistresses and abused ex-wives. That's profoundly un-American and profoundly wrong and profoundly Republican. But of course anyone who thinks the highest court is an extra-legal ad hoc assembly of five self-appointed members foisted on the public by "elitists" and with no constitutional authority can hardly be considered an elitist of any kind unless there's a ranking of candidates according to their ignorance and mendacity and greed. Perhaps Newt just forgot that the Supreme Court Justices are approved by Congress or perhaps he's just a lying tub of septic scum who thinks he's entitled by birth and party affiliation to feast on the corpse of America.

You can fool some of the people all of the time: you can fool a lot of them in fact. They're called Republicans. They're called perverts, they're called liars, thieves, embezzlers and saboteurs.

Quick thought on women in elevators

Now, if you don't occasionally wander through the godless corners of the internet, you might have no idea, but a vlogger named Skepchick posted a video where (right about the 4:30 mark, if you're in a hurry), she mentions an encounter she had.

Basically, she'd given a talk explaining that when men sexualize her, it creeps her out. So, when a guy (later established to have been present at that talk) followed her onto an elevator and asked her up to his room, she was uncomfortable.

And that blew up, with a lot of people trying to claim that she was calling all men rapists, and women should just chill out, and on and on. Because... well, because men are dicks, mostly. I should know - I happen to be one myself. Some of us repress that side of our personalities, but far too many don't.

(In the midst of all this exaggeration, a world-famous atheist tried to poo-poo the whole thing, essentially saying that women in Muslim countries have it far worse, so women in America should stop complaining. You know, something like claiming that people are blown up in Jerusalem a lot, so if you get knifed in Boston, just walk it off and quit whining.)

Now, I just have one thing to say about this (of course, I'm going to take way too long saying it, but that's just me). And, actually, it breaks into two parts.

First, that's not what she said!! Christ, the video is right up above here, and I told you where to look! Go watch the fucking thing!

* ahem *

But (he continues in a calmer voice), since you brought it up, yes, women do, in fact, get raped in elevators. In fact, one guy in New York enjoyed it so much that he went out and tried it again. Which inspired copycats.

(Pro-tip: when googling for examples of "elevator rape," be sure that SafeSearch is on. That also happens to be a twisted fantasy for some guys. Which should actually tell you something.)

Also, two fairly common justifications for this dickish attitude on the part of guys:

1. Well, elevator rape isn't very common!
Yeah, asshole. Neither is homosexual rape. Do you want to be the lucky one?

2. It's stupid to worry, because elevators have security cameras!
OK, rich boy. First, no, many of them don't - cameras are expensive. Second, many of the places that have cameras don't have them monitored in real time - that's also expensive. And third, even where the camera has been installed (and here's a dirty little secret of the security business for you), they often don't work. It's just that the people in charge don't want you to know that: they're hoping for a placebo effect on crime.

So, fuck you very much, you fat, privileged, self-important pricks. Women get raped every day. And sometimes it happens in elevators.

I hope that nobody you care about becomes a statistic.