Cheerleading for a past that never existed

Have I mentioned that RenewAmerica is an unfettered font of feculence? Well, it's true. They don't allow comments on their articles, probably because the sheer weight of the ignorance, stupidity and paranoia expands to fill all available space.

(In the case of some of these columnists, they occasionally reprint their drivel elsewhere, where they do allow comments. But not all of them.)

Case in point: Selwyn Duke. I guess he thinks he looks intelligent, gazing off into the distance (in this case, the distant past) stroking his chin; I think he's contemplating adding more fiber in his diet. But he, for some reason, spewed several hundred words extolling the virtues of this commercial for the "Gung Ho Commando Outfit."

Every toy gun in the commercial looks (gasp!) realistic; there are no sissified colors, no orange plastic piece at the end of the barrel."

(Let's just pretend that the commercial isn't in black and white, OK? That seems like the polite thing to do.)

Yet, in the times that it aired, you never heard of a child being shot after pointing one of these toy weapons at a policeman.

I suppose that, if I was to be completely honest, I have no evidence that his cognitive impairment has a genetic source. After all, one can only imagine the psychological damage caused by a lifetime spent with the name "Selwyn."

My mother always told me not to argue with the mentally challenged, but when did I ever listen to her? And these stories aren't particularly difficult to find.

5-year-old with toy gun killed by officer

(March 5, 1983) A 5-year-old boy locked in his bedroom while his mother was at work was shot to death Thursday night by an Orange County police officer who mistook him for a possible burglary suspect.

The boy, Patrick Andrew Mason, who stood 47 inches tall, was holding a toy gun in his dimly lit bedroom when the officer kicked in the locked door after twice yelling he was a police officer, witnesses said.

The 24-year-old unidentified officer - on the Stanton Police Department 15 months - told investigators he fired his weapon when he saw a "shadowy figure holding a gun" in the room lit only by the flickering light from a television set.

And that's another reason the rule was enacted. Frequently, a cop isn't seeing "a kid with a toy gun," but a "shadowy figure holding a gun." He doesn't have time to assess age, height, weight, or fucking eye color. He's faced with a person holding a gun.

All that, despite Selwyn's assertion that "As for policemen, they could assume that a child wouldn't target them with a real gun." Which is stupid on a number of levels - as a kid, we had a set of brothers living down the street; one of them shot and killed the other, because they were playing with Daddy's gun.

The story I found, by the way, was not, technically, the 1970s (although arguments can be made), when Selwyn claimed he was a boy. But since the rule that toy guns be brightly colored or have an orange plug wasn't enacted until 1992, I'm pretty comfortable with saying he's an idiot.

Dim Bulbs in Congress

If you are diabetic, die quickly!

I should refer, figuratively speaking, to House Republicans; but this time I am talking literally about light bulbs, as TPM reports:

Given Republicans' public disdain for energy-efficient lightbulbs [sic] and the new GOP majority's earlier decision to remove biodegradable utensils and food containers from the House cafeteria, we thought we might have another Styrofoam cup situation on our hands … Energy-efficient lightbulbs -- "the little, squiggly, pig-tailed ones" -- have long been the subject of the GOP's scorn.

Take Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY):

"I think there should be some self-examination from the administration on the idea that you favor a woman's right to an abortion, but you don't favor a woman or a man's right to choose what kind of light bulb, what kind of dishwasher, what kind of washing machine."

Speaking of false equivalences, perhaps Wall Street should be required to view an ultrasound of your bank account before they abort the economy.  Here is the most galling part:   Who was president when  “Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007" was signed into law?  Not current President Barack Obama, but former President George Dubya Bush. Yet, Tea House Republicans want the public to believe that this is another liberal-commie-big-government plot to control your life and your purchasing decisions.  Another clarification:  The Act of 2007 merely establishes an efficiency standard; it does not issue any mandates.

According to a 2010 energy audit, energy-efficient light bulbs installed in Congressional offices will save an estimated $178,000 per year. What the hell!   It’s only taxpayer money, but symbolism can be priceless.

How many Republicans does it take to change a light bulb and then lie about the cost of changing it?

Update: How Conservatives and Big Oil are Using a Phony Scandal to Undermine Obama, Clean Energy, and Government Itself (Yes, Virginia: The Solyndra loan was originally pushed by the Bush administration and backed by the ultra-conservative Walton family … who now want to divest themselves of all blame).

Next: Snakes on a Plane (the comments are a hiss).

The Gospel According to Bloggingdino

Now, I know Senator Bernie Sanders is a self-declared soshalist and therefore must be ignored at all costs, but who else can you trust to bring up an indecorous subject like poverty in America?  Just as soon as you can find the time between sips of Chardonnay and truffle-bites, have a look at his Huffpost article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/is-poverty-a-death-senten_b_960598.html.  Nothing so sickens me as the virtual banishment of the very words "poor" and "poverty" from American political discourse.  The only class-based reference permitted is to "the middle class."  Now, most of us know that the term mostly refers to working-class stiffs who are merely deluding themselves about their true standing and prospects in contemporary America, but let's leave that aside since it's a commie idea and we don't want to upset the delicate feelings of any of our dear brothers and sisters the 'Baggery who might stumble upon this Marxist-sociopath den of intellectual iniquity that is the SWASH ZONE.

I'm not in the mood for windy analysis this evening as I just want to watch a Shakespeare DVD and go to bed alongside the Jurassic Watering Hole.  (By the way, director Julie Taymor – who has already done a brilliant modern version of the revenge play Titus Andronicus, has a new production of The Tempest coming out on DVD towards the end of the year, starring Helen Mirren as "Prospera."  That should be excellent – strangely, we don't have enough versions of The Tempest, which is, along with Twelfth Night, among the Bard's most beloved plays.)  So I'll just suggest the following as a dino-scriptum to Senator Sanders' much cleverer post; to America's fond supporters of the nearly taxless megarich and the infinite perfection of The Market, verily I say, 

"Everybody else loves you, but Jesus thinks you're an a**hole" (Matthew 19:24).  

How's that for the perfect bumper-sticker as a riff on the persnickety atheist ones that run, "Smile.  Jesus loves you -- everybody else thinks ..."?  I may be a simple-minded khaki dinosaur, but you gotta admit, I have flashes of almost human insight now and then….

Creativity and the human spirit

Some people have shittier days than you. And still there's reason to hope...

Ron Paul: Liberal

Some people like to dismiss Ron Paul as a simple minded extremist loony. I don't think that's fair and not just because I'm often dismissed with the same simple mindedness by the same simple minds. Yes, I think Dr. Paul does take many things to an extreme point, but you know -- sometimes he's right and sometimes so far to the right that he comes back around the spherical universe and appears on the left.

When he was booed at last night's Tea Party "debate," he was booed as a Liberal, not as the dogmatic, theory obsessed, quasi-anarchist and not-too-bright demagogue he's been portrayed as. He was booed for not bleating and re-bleating the recorded message about why "they" hate us, which, if truth ever be told, isn't for our freedom: a thing which in fact has a larger following amongst Muslims that can be allowed by the Jingoistic braying of the party for which the jackass is not the symbol -- but for the reality.

The reality is and the reality has been that not only al Qaeda but others have hated the US government for interfering in Middle East, for rightly or wrongly supporting Israel, for building military bases in places they see as sacred and for supporting oppressive governments because they were "anti-Communist" and willing to exploit their resources for our benefit.

Who else in the Republican Party is willing to step outside the passion play and challenge the formula: they hate us because we're all good and always good and so we have to hate them -- all of them, all of the time?

“This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and their attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true,”

he said last night. But what set the snarling beasts off their feed was

“Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked because you had bases on our holy lands in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment,”

which quite plainly is true.

The Tea Party picture of human and natural events needs to be presented in such high contrast that any smudge of darkness on our pure white character must be erased; there are no grays or colors and one is either the favorite angel of God or Satan's most foul smelling demon. To admit that any of our sacred military endeavors was not waged in defense of our alleged "freedom" puts one on the odiferous side and so yes, the Battleship Maine was blown up by the evil, freedom hating Spanish between bouts of raping American women and God really did want us to have the continent and our conquest thereof was just like the rape of Jericho only slower. It's anathema to suggest that we were not protecting our freedom by killing millions of Vietnamese or destroying Iraq and those who think and those who know must then be devils for suggesting that anything we ever have done might ever have made anything worse for us or anyone else of God's elect.

We have to believe, as we've been told, that "liberals" would have preferred to "psychoanalyze" al Qaeda than to retaliate, that Democrats unanimously voted against the odious Patriot Act when in fact their support was (sadly) unanimous. Facts don't matter and for the Tea Party only feelings matter and the only feelings they have are greed, anger and hate. If you're not unquestionably in support of everything we do; if you don't hate enough and hate whom we tell you to; if you don't think everything we do in anger isn't ipso facto God's will, you're our natural enemy even if you're Ron Paul and even if most people think you're so far right, you're wrong.

This time Ron Paul is right and it's time to question the people who say government is always wrong when they simultaneously say it's always right.

Want to eat? Pee in this, please.

As either of my long-time readers could tell you, I have held for quite some time that South Carolina just sucks. And they keep on trying to prove it.

Latest idiocy: Governor Nikki Haley (R-Obviously) wants to drug test people who get unemployment benefits.



In her words (and channeling her inner teenage cheerleader), "I so want drug testing. I so want it."

But, being a Republican, if the facts don't match the "common wisdom," she's more than happy to make shit up.

"Down on River Site, they were hiring a few hundred people, and when we sat down and talked to them -- this was back before the campaign -- when we sat down and talked to them, they said of everybody they interviewed, half of them failed a drug test, and of the half that was left, of that 50 percent, the other half couldn't read and write properly," Haley said.

Fortunately, the Huffington Post reporter did that thing we used to call "journalism" and asked somebody if she was right.

Jim Giusti, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, which owns the River Site, told HuffPost he had no idea what Haley was talking about with regard to applicants flunking a drug test.

"Half the people who applied for a job last year or year 2009 did not fail the drug test," Giusti said. "At the peak of hiring under the Recovery Act we had less than 1 percent of those hired test positive."

The River Site doesn't even test applicants. "We only test them when they have been accepted," Giusti said.

I'll give Haley a little bit of credit, though. She got the one thing right.

"That's what we have in South Carolina," she continued. "We don't have an unemployment problem. We have an education and poverty problem."

The rest is crap, but she's finally figured out one of the chief causes of unemployment. I mean, it's a shame that she couldn't have figured it out a couple of months ago, when she tried to slash education funding for the state so badly that the state Legislature, Democrat and Republican, overturned most of her budget and overrode her attempts to veto. But at least she knows it now, right?

Of course, Teabaggers don't care about facts; they care about ideology. Governor Rick Scott of Florida instituted a drug testing policy for unemployment, which didn't do the state a lick of good.

The law, which took effect July 1, requires applicants to pay for their own drug tests. Those who test drug-free are reimbursed by the state, and those who fail cannot receive benefits for a year.

Having begun the drug testing in mid-July, the state Department of Children and Families is still tabulating the results. But at least 1,000 welfare applicants took the drug tests through mid-August, according to the department, which expects at least 1,500 applicants to take the tests monthly.

So far, they say, about 2 percent of applicants are failing the test; another 2 percent are not completing the application process, for reasons unspecified.

Cost of the tests averages about $30. Assuming that 1,000 to 1,500 applicants take the test every month, the state will owe about $28,800-$43,200 monthly in reimbursements to those who test drug-free.

That compares with roughly $32,200-$48,200 the state may save on one month's worth of rejected applicants.

The paper went on to calculate that Florida will save $40,800-$98,400, an amount which will be eaten up in staff hours and other resources in administering the program. Oh, and they're going to spend over a million dollars defending it in court. So, Rick Scott just cost Floridians more money that they don't have. So that's some awesome leadership, right there.

Now, if you do the math, the national rate of drug use is about 8.9 percent of the population aged 12 or older. (The majority of those users are 18 or older, but that's like math and stuff, so screw that.) Now, if only 2-4% of the people applying for unemployment are drug users, that means that the unemployed population is actually using less drugs than the rest of America. (Maybe because they can't afford them - that might make sense...)

Obviously, Governor Haley can't do simple logic.

Thanks Rick

I didn't listen to the President's speech Thursday night, partly because I had a meeting to attend and partly because I've ceased caring. Of course not listening to the president's ideas about reviving the economy by putting people to work seems to a matter of pride in this part of the swamp and one squints when asked "didja listen to to President?" with that certain tone. The proper answer is of course, "hell no!" Why should I care about a country wherein this sort of idiocy is called "patriotism?"

Of course I didn't listen to Rick Scott, our Governor/Medicare Fraudmeister either -- hell no. I save such things for later and I prefer to read that kind of news rather than to be waterboarded with it. That way I can take a deep breath when I read that before the speech, he snarked that there wouldn't be anything for Florida in it and my TV was safe from having my foot through the screen when I read that it's likely he'll turn down 7.5 Billion allocated to improve and upgrade our infrastructure. That's money that would employ a lot of people who would spend their income in Florida and make Florida more attractive and accessible to the tourists upon whom our economy depends.

It wouldn't be the first time Ricky has turned away an opportunity. He refused to accept 2 billion to build a high speed rail line - you know the kind of thing other countries we feel superior to have. The kind of thing that, once again, would boost tourism and tax dollars. Oops - I used the magic word tax and Rick doesn't like taxes. Of course he doesn't like employment and he doesn't like the President and isn't about to let him do anything about employment because the only way to get out of a recession is to make sure the state doesn't take in a dime and to fire so many employees and cancel so many necessary projects that hardly anyone has enough income to require them to pay any taxes.

And then you cut costs more which puts more people out of work which means they spend less and so less gets made and companies go out of business and fire more people so there are still fewer with any money to buy anything -- and by and by everything gets better. Don't get it? you must be a liberal, or so the Teabrains tell me and I'd rather argue with a toadstool than with the kind of fungi and pond scum that make up that seething ferment. I mean, who can afford to care any more?

Suppressing Voters' Rights in the Fascist Republic of Wisconsin

In follow-up to my last post, A Damning Indictment of the GOP by a Former GOP Staffer, I quote Mike Lofgren again - this time on Republican efforts to suppress that most sacred and sacrosanct of American traditions - the right to vote:

Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote … This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy … was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.

You can probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote Republican.  As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans.  Racial minorities.  Immigrants.  Muslims.  Gays.  Intellectuals.  Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base … 

Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful:   Subversives.  Commies.  Socialists.  Ragheads.  Secular humanists. Blacks.  Fags.  Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.

In the Fascist Republic of Wisconsin, voter suppression has entered the execution phase. Under a new law, all citizens are required to show a form of photo ID to exercise their right to vote, and the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has been tasked with issuing the new cards.

However, the DMV instructed all employees, in this memo, to provide free ID cards only if people ask for the fee to be waived.  If citizens don’t ask, the charge is $28.  Why keep secrets from the public? To charge a fee is tantamount to …

A POLL TAX

… which is a violation of Federal voting rights laws. To avoid having their precious Jim Crow knockoff struck down in Federal court, state officials have decreed: “Let there be subterfuge!”  More than a scam, the new law is designed to place extra burdens on seniors, minorities, and students - those who vote for Democrats more often than Republicans - to suppress turnout.  Furthermore, the new law gives GOP snakes more wiggle room to game the system, as Lofgren explains:

… in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies …

At least one honest and forthright state employee was not about to let a good con job go unpublished. Chris Larson, an employee in the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS), sent an email to all DSPS personnel notifying them of the fee waiver.  Here is the actual email sent by Larson:

Do you know someone who votes that does not have a State ID that meets requirements to vote? Tell them they can go to the DMV/DOT and get a free ID card. However they must ask for the free ID.  [A] memo was sent out by the 3rd in command of the DMV/DOT. The memo specifically told the employees at the DMV/DOT not to inform individuals that the ID’s are free. So if the individuals seeking to get the free ID does not ask for a free ID, they will have to pay for it!!  Just wanted everyone to be informed!! 

REMEMBER TO TELL ANYONE YOU KNOW!!  ANYONE!!  EVEN IF THEY DON’T NEED THE FREE ID, THEY MAY KNOW SOMEONE THAT DOES!!  SO TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!”

Hours later, Larson was fired.

Republican Ideology and the FAA

RE: House GOP bill would cut FAA's budget 5 percent (HuffPo/AP 9/9/2011)

Now, before you go bellyaching and tooting your horns about the public safety and other abstractions of that sort, I would just like to say to you libs that I concur wholeheartedly with the GOP's approach to this meddlesome agency, the FAA. As a driver of automobiles who considers every stop sign in the Great State of Texas an unbearable infringement of his sacred personal liberties, I can empathize with all the hard-working commercial and private airline pilots out there who are faced with a perpetual stream of orders issued from a bunch of round-spectacled bureaucrats sitting comfortably up in some elitist controller-tower connected to the airport by government fiat. 5% isn't much, but it's a start, I say.

Yes, all government is bad and it's always the problem, not the solution. Because you know, if you're an airline pilot, the most dreadful thing that could possibly pass into your ears is one of those bespectacled bureaucrats' voices intoning, "Hello Captain, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you land that double-decker jumbo jet you've been flying for the last seven hours." Right! As if some guy sitting in a control tower is going to know anything of use to a busy, weary pilot tasked with transporting two or three hundred souls from one end of the globe to another! If you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn that Acorn wants to sell you.  You libs never learn!

Signed,

Baggasaurus Tex

(Name changed to prevent a punch in the snout)

A Damning Indictment of the GOP by a Former GOP Staffer (What the GOP Gains by Sabotaging Government)

First, a special hat tip to Libby Spenser of The Impolitic for focusing attention on this article:

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

by Mike Lofgren (Truthout, Saturday 3 September 2011)

If a Democrat, a pundit, or anyone else had written this article, it might have been dismissed as just another partisan polemic. As the work of a veteran GOP operative, it has authenticity and credibility, and it demands our attention. Here are some highlights:

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe …

Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.

The Debt Debate as an Act of Political Terrorism:

I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages …

Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care …

In recent polls, public opinion of Congress has sunk to a historic low: only 14% approve while an overwhelming 82% disapprove. Despite these dismal public approval numbers, Lofgren explains why the GOP always wins an incremental advantage from its own obstructive tactics:

By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner  (...)  A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters … [their] confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn …

How does our incompetent news media serve as a willing accomplice? Lofgren explains:

This constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters, means that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. The United States has nearly the lowest voter participation among Western democracies; this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions - if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? And if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News.

Lofgren attributes the failings of our news media to right wing bullying, claiming: “the “respectable” media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias.” In my opinion, the problem goes far beyond timidity.

We know the script: A dispute makes headlines; there are competing claims of truth behind the headlines; a reporter reports the conflict but makes no attempt to check the veracity of either claim; the symmetry of talking heads creates an appearance of false balance. Meanwhile, liars and prevaricators gain an advantage when their deceits are legitimized before a national audience. Talking heads journalism yields what Jay Rosen calls a regression toward a phony mean.  Thus, our news media is deeply flawed to the point of gross incompetence, which the GOP leverages to maximum advantage.

Who are these low-information voters so easily suckered by demagogues and legitimized by our news media? Again, here is Lofgren …

Beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file (…) The results are all around us: if the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs. Also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information voter" - or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."

(...)

It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis … where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At "Washington spending" - which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's corporate saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.

Thus far, I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation. Rather, this mindset seeks polarizing division (Karl Rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.

I hope this liberal sprinkling of quotations will stimulate your interest. Although liberal writers have covered similar ground for years (writers of the Swash Zone have certainly touched on many of his points), his essay is comprehensive, brings the most important ideas under one heading, and minces no words. By no means comforting, it is at least helpful to have a GOP veteran of 28 years confirm our worst suspicions. Please have a look and share your thoughts.