I predict

Yeah, sure.  If there's any thing we do that is more likely to be wrong than our political predictions I don't know what it might be.  If we ever get the impression that someone is good at prediction it's usually because we've forgotten or never examined the vast matrix of failure the occasional success is imbedded in. The best we can do is to give odds but somehow that 30% chance of rain never seems to mean much or be of much use when deciding whether to take the boat out today.  That national speed limit was sure to save lives, that drug law was supposed to make life safer and it must be someone's fault or someone's failure when it didn't. Just whose fault you say it is, says much about who you are. Whether it's Obama, the NRA, women, men, the Liberals or the Tea Party, our predictions and the predictions we choose to believe give us away.

Of course the purpose of many predictions isn't to predict, but to scare, to inflame, to mislead, to further a cause and of course to generate ratings. The public loves being inflamed and scared and to be the first to know something scary and all to the point where the authority and veracity of the predictor is ignored. Hell, we passionately adhere to predictions that have proved wrong for thousands of years, telling ourselves "any day now" and we find enough to satisfy ourselves in predictions that "there will be a storm, an earthquake, a war" to keep the fantasy going. 

If anything sums up the human condition I'm not sure it isn't the story of Chicken Little and when a prediction that a giant asteroid would kill us all on March 35, 2041 appeared on CNN, the cackling started before many dumb cluckers bothered to notice that no such date is currently possible or even questioned the authority of the prophet: Marcus575.  NASA says it's a hoax but of course nobody is going to forgive that buzzkill bunch of liars, and after all they're lying about climate change and that face on Mars. Like most thwarted predictions it will end in a witch hunt by angry and ever more intransigent denialists.  I predict.

I will go to heaven - he will go to hell, my enemies will be defeated, truth will prevail, peace and justice will arrive and Congress will make sensible gun laws that will make the number of  suicidal rampages vanishingly small and "not one more" innocent will be killed by a madman. If only we "raise awareness" there will be no more misogynists, if only we shut down their websites.  If only we can identify the witches, these horrible and horribly eternal animosities will go away in the pure land to come. No our problems are not diverse products of  the large spectrum of human nature, our culture, our unwillingness to identify madness in ourselves, there are specific things; large magazines, specific cartridges, certain materials and there are vague, hazy and slippery legal solutions that sane people must agree upon even without being able to define them.

The "world," whatever that means, didn't end in 1982 or 2012 or on any of the countless and continuously predicted dates before or since, but it's nearly always because of some minor miscalculation or some misunderstanding about what world means or what the end means or some conspiracy of  liberals/conservatives/Jews/etc and some prophets go on predicting and making careers out of it, succeeding only when the prediction follows some random event: "that storm hit New Orleans because God doesn't like this or that."  The laws get stricter, more complex, more contradictory and more punishment-oriented but mayhem persists. The laws get more liberal and don't dictate whom we marry, yet the end is still only nigh and God's wrath increases. We wear more rubber bands, say more prayers, hunt more witches -- and we turn to violence.

So to avoid such depressing thoughts about the difficulty in preventing the horrors that have defined human history since before human history we demonstrate, we make up inspiring slogans, we walk around and run around and wave signs and chant hey-hey ho-ho. We hide in our feeling of community and nostalgia for the good old days of protesting real things we could really do something about and we wear rubber bands and ribbons the way we used to sacrifice goats to Yaweh -- and usually we're wrong when we think we're affecting the random nature of existence.

We go to Church, we pray for peace and for aunt Lucy not to die and for rain or for the rain to stop or for our team to win. We punish the sinners, we expel the unbelievers, because without them we'd have to consider our efforts hopeless and our passions vapid.  So sure, assemble in the stadium and shout and pretend some simple "sensible" move will end the pain and when you can't really define what that move, that law, that policy, that program might actually be, why you can just trot our the witches, the straw men and line them up in the blame gallery. After all there is an ample supply of idiots, liars and idiots out there and we must be so right because they are so wrong.

Making Political Hay out of the Misfortunes of a Supposed Hero

Earlier this month, I told my friend Mikeb302000 about a former U.S. Marine from Florida who unfortunately and perhaps accidentally crossed the international border at San Ysidro into Mexico with all of his worldly possessions in his Ford F-150 pickup truck. Unfortunately, these possessions included three legally owned firearms. Understand that guns are illegal in Mexico. I accepted his version of events in his own words. He just got lost looking for a restaurant off of I-5, trying to meet his friends. Even if you do believe his story, the fact that he was driving around with unsecured weapons in the cab of his pickup truck in the city of San Diego makes him a careless scofflaw. Bear in mind that he is a soldier suffering from PTSD, a form of mental illness. I unfairly speculated that he might have been slightly under the influence of alcohol given the fact that he simply continued driving south all of the way to the border without noticing any of the signs about the approaching international border, the last freeway exit into the U.S.A. and even a last ditch U-turn designed to give drivers one last chance to remain upon U.S. soil. Mike was kind enough to create a post from my tip. I was hoping that the regulars would get worked up about the injustice of it all. They did not completely disappoint. Now, three grueling weeks later, FOX has decided to release their take on all of this nonsense just in time for the Memorial Day Weekend. The headline is “Leave No Man Behind.” Obama has abandoned this poor soul, when just one phone call from the DOJ or the American Consul could have released this defender of freedom from the ravages of the Tijuana penitentiary system. The article by a FOX contributor does not seem to agree with the earliest press release from the San Diego Union-Tribune which reported that he attempted an escape and then subsequently attempted suicide while incarcerated. He was reported to have been doing much better in his incarceration when the prison provided him with an English-speaking chaplain. I am sorry, but it is difficult to view the U-T article without a paying subscription. Since there is really no way of confirming or denying any subsequent facts, FOX has chosen to say that originally he was chained by both arms and legs to his bed, and that now he only has to be chained by one leg by the Mexican prison guards. I mean, why not lie, if there is no way to check the facts? Much as the leftist blogosphere thrived under the sadistic presidency of GWB, FOX has no apparent reason to exist other than to spread hatred and lies about our president. This was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. Make hay while the sun shines!

Gregg Who?

It's the Fox Look. You know, like you've just been prepped for your open-casket viewing or in the case of Andy Ann Coulter, for her loonie drag queen episodes on Fox.  Hey, don't laugh, it's a Republican thing.  Gregg Jarrett, like Lyin' Bill and Insanity Hannity and a host of hosts on Fox have that look. Way, too much makeup and perhaps a bit of Botox for that touch of zombie.

I'm sure one needs a shot or two (hypodermic and otherwise) to keep a straight face on the air, but apparently, off camera you'd hardly recognize them.  That's probably something else that's deliberate and particularly useful for guys like Jarrett who get drunk and disorderly in airport bars.  You might remember the same Minneapolis airport and fellow Republican 'Wide Stance Larry' Craig, but I digress.

Are we looking at the same dude here?    Yep, some yellow journalism lighting, some paint, a shave, the fake hair and a fake air of seriousness and he's ready for prime time again -- or will be as soon as the public forgets or a Fox Fable can be concocted about how it's Obama's fault or the Liberals or something.   He's got some personal problems says the Fox and he certainly does, especially now, despite the smile. Perhaps he's fed up with being a subversive and just can't take it any more.  Who knows?   But don't feel sorry for the Fox. Sure they've got a president to slander, a government to undermine, an economy to sabotage, fables to fabricate, Benghazi to shout -- but there are plenty of  others to fill his shoes and desk and with the right light, the right make-up and a full moon the Fox will make a seamless transition and the show will go on.   Gregg who?                                         

THIS JUST IN:

Seems Jarrett had just left rehab where he's been for a while.  I don't want to make light of a drug and alcohol problem and rehab is just where he should have been -- and apparently still should be.  All snark aside, I wish him well and hope he can redeem himself, medically and ethically.

Never Forget?

It's hard to find a coherent picture of Barack Obama in the roar of inflamed rhetoric.  The rhetoric itself is incoherent, mixing accusations and metaphors with the most bizarre results -- and such is the passion for defamation it's probable that no consistent pattern will emerge for a generation.  He is what he is, somewhere behind the halo of  howling hate that surrounds him. 

Whatever you might think of him, it's tempting to plug other presidents of another party and another color into the equation just to test for mendacity and absurdity: such as perhaps to assume Reagan were president during an embassy bombing ( he was) or W.  ( he was) and it's tempting to reverse it by assuming it were president Obama not showing up at the dedication of the 9/11 Memorial Museum last week instead of the notably absent Bush whose 8 year career was floated on the attack and the subsequent War on Terror. 

George W. Bush deliberately stayed away for reasons, possibly good reasons, of his own and was in Arkansas attending a ceremony for Medal of  Honor recipients, but anyone with an unfoxed memory remembers how the Republicans jeered, howled and hooted about flag pins and the size of the flag on Obama's airplane and posted endless doctored photos and forged documents designed to attack his patriotism -- anyone with a sense of irony would wonder what those dancing devils would have done to Obama and snicker at what they certainly are not doing to Bush for staying away. It would have been a three ring, twin tower circus for weeks and months and years if not cause for impeachment.

And of course, I had to find out about this from the foreign press, the mis-titled Liberal American Media being far too concerned with other trumped-up Obama scandals, racist comments by team owners, Benghazi bullshit and other ridiculous attacks on Hillary Clinton, missing airplanes and the various and ever-changing apocalyptic horsemen wearing Obama masks.

Never-Forget George probably didn't forget and he's probably right not to make the dedication all about him, about his going to war with an uninvolved country and permanently giving up important civil rights in the process instead of being about the dead.  Still, it  makes one wonder at all the "never-forget" passion that was and is as transient as the all the "never-forget" events -- but then, forgetting, like false remembering is part of  the game and it is a game after all.  The only real goal of that game is winning.

The myth of competition

I don't think I need Thomas Piketty to point out that massive conglomerations of  Capital and the drive toward monopoly are one of the failure modes of Capitalism in which consumers have not only fewer choices but less money to fuel the system.  Perhaps it's a bit like Stellar evolution where using up all the hydrogen causes bloat and eventual implosion. 

The traditional anthems sing about competition and opportunity, but in truth any capitalist enterprise wants to stifle competition and give competitors as little opportunity as possible and when the enterprise in question is control of information and opinion and even of desire and ambition in the public -- well the prospect of  media consolidation  in a country that depends on that industry for its information and opinion is simply frightening.   We might as well just hand over the keys to the Capitol along with our proxies when elections here become as much of a one party farce as those we used to laugh at in other countries.

AT&T plans to buy out DirecTV in a 67 Billion dollar deal and while current DirecTV customers like me will probably start to worry that my current $170 a month bill will escalate further and my service will decline to U-verse levels of not giving a damn, our real worry should be, as Professor Picketty would doubtless agree, that it's beginning to look a lot like Orwell.

Isn't it time to suggest that all this blather about Obama the Socialist is a smokescreen put up by interests with no other interest than to monopolize the country and reduce us all to penury, inescapable debt and serfdom? struggling to pay for what they want to sell us?  I think it is and I think our biggest danger as a free and prosperous country is to protect what they, the media, the voice of monopoly tell us is our freedom. 

TFN

Seems as though I'm alone in worrying more about Russian aggression in Europe than about rooting out and punishing obnoxious racial opinions expressed in private.  But still -- I'm starting to worry about freedom of speech and it's de facto abuse even though that abuse isn't coming from the government.


Wolfeboro, New Hampshire Police Commissioner Robert Copeland was overheard  sounding off in a restaurant last March, complaining that he hated watching television, because every time he turns it on, he sees “that f-cking n-gger.”  TFN, of course, being the president of the United States Barack Obama.   There has been, as you might expect, a call to have him resign or be fired, but the town just isn't having any part of that and a fellow commissioner claims he's a "very nice person." No doubt he is on matters other than insulting our country and its president, our citizens of African ancestry and basically everyone else who finds such public speech to be unacceptable and particularly by an elected official entrusted with public safety.

Am I the only one who finds that far more egregious than a private phone conversation, taken out of context and without permission and involving a businessman acting jealous with his would-be girlfriend?  It won't get the publicity of course, because it doesn't involve one of the sacred games our nation cares about more than anything else, but whether or not Copeland decides to step down with or without the support of his peers, perhaps the people's right to censure, if not censor such speech will be exercised at the polls and TFR that f-cking racist will have to find an honest job somewhere else.  I strongly defend the right to hold an opinion as well as I defend my right to use any legal means to make sure the holder thereof  isn't on the public payroll.

Honey, we never had kids!

Someone told me that the Church of the Latter Day Saints is the fastest growing religion in the world, but it isn't -- not if one can call a family of beliefs that share the philosophy that nothing you hear is true a religion.  Of course when it comes to Sunday Supplement health and nutrition articles and the books that make diet Doctors rich, little of it may actually be true, but there is no end of things that are really beyond reasonable doubt and should largely be beyond unreasonable doubt too.  I wasted some time last week for instance with a fool who insisted no airplane could have hit the Pentagon because of the "ground effect"  although I certainly know better than to do that.

But no, the winner, the fastest growing most universal faith is Denialism and I think it's time to stop looking at it as anything but a Religion.  It has a canon and a catechism, albeit simple:  Whatever happened didn't happen and I have a conspiracy to explain it.  I have proof that nobody ever went to the moon because the pictures they took would have been ruined by the Van Allen belts.  The pyramids were built by aliens because how else?  The World Trade Center must have been sabotaged because steel doesn't melt at the temperature of burning jet fuel. . .  No, don't go away, I'm not going to explain why this is the purest of bull, I'm more interested at how nothing true is exempt from Denialist interpretation  any more.

Sure, it's a big country and you can find a few people who think anything and deny anything.  It makes them feel important, but like most religions in today's America, they have their preachers and politicians and lobbyists spreading the faith like it was Ebola.  Think nothing is true and they're coming for your shotgun?  Who ya gonna call?   Rand Paul!  

Imagine someone calling you up and insisting that not only did your daughter not die in the school shooting at Sandy Hook, but she never existed!  Birth certificate?  Hey we know about birth certificates, don't we?  And we know about Photoshop too - you can't fool me with your pictures!  Hey, it was all a scam to allow the government to take our guns and you know they have no other purpose than to take your guns!

Rand Paul thinks so too, or at least he wants the nutjobs, nitwits and whackadoodles to think he does because after all, lunatics, idiots and devout Denialists need representation too.  Nope, nobody died, it never happened and if you know somebody who died, you're a liar, because they never existed. 

Stunning, isn't it, but that's the world of Denialists, or "truthers" as they often like to be known.  Who says they're immune to irony?  They're good at it, even if they can't see it. 

Climate Change Deniers and Boiled Frogs: Redux

By (O)CT(O)PUS

Last week, the White House released this 800-page report on Global Climate Change. Its conclusions are disturbing: Global Climate Change is no longer a theoretical construct or a distant threat, but a real and present danger to our country, our economy, and the world. Droughts, intense storms, floods, heat waves, melting ice, torrential rains, wildfires, rising sea levels, and higher levels of ocean acidity – these are examples of extreme weather conditions that have devastated every region of the country. Even more alarming, our infrastructure is designed for the climate we had in the past, not the climate we have at present, and certainly not the retrograde conditions we are likely to face in the future.

Incredibly, the Republican Party remains monolithic in opposition to these findings, and the reasons are several: An estimated $21 trillion investment in current energy technology, $$$ billions in political slush money to protect these assets, and the prospect of changing a deeply entrenched way of life that many people refuse to acknowledge or accept – these account for the ‘Flat Earthers’ and ‘Truthers’ of Climate Change who continue to deny the evidence.

Regrettably, the White House Report did not receive the coverage it deserved by a mainstream media that considers every scandal de jour as more newsworthy than a dire challenge to the future survival of humanity. That is why I consider it a moral imperative to cover it here.

There is no need to write a new post; the fundamentals of climate change science have been known for decades. In the interest of conservation – and brevity - here is a recycled older post that is just as relevant today as it was almost 5 years ago (originally posted December 10, 2009):

Credit: AZRAINMAN

Whatever you call it, a silly anecdote or imperfect metaphor, the boiling frog story serves a useful purpose, and it goes like this. If you place a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out. However, if you place the same frog in cold water that is heated slowly, it will not notice the gradual rise in temperature but will stay in the water until it boils to death. No frogs were harmed in the writing of this post, but the boiling frog story serves as a useful metaphor to describe how people refuse to recognize a threat that occurs gradually.

Climate change deniers are akin to slow boiling frogs. For most folks, the climate change crisis is vague and impalpable. You cannot see it, touch it, or watch it happen on cable news. It lacks the immediate drama of a hurricane or tsunami. Climate change may not be noticed for a decade or even within a lifetime. Yet, it exists today as a set of observations and data points that are too arcane and abstract for many people to grasp. But make no mistake: Global climate change is here … a dark cloud hanging over our lives and future generations. Despite the preponderance of data, there are skeptics, doubters, and boiled frogs. A case in point (source):

When a climate scientist looks at this graph, the most obvious feature is the red trend line [my addition]. This graph plots rising temperatures from different data sources. The skeptical boiled frog might look at these data and say: “So what! It proves nothing.”

There are two statistical concepts to bear in mind. Some data points conform to a pattern while others appear randomly scattered. When data points fall outside a trend line, we call these “outliers,” a fancy word for random distribution. The skeptical boiled frog focuses on the random jitters and ignores the trend line. “So what,” croaks the frog, “Mother Earth has mood swings.” My point: Statistical outliers turn boiled frogs into outrageous liars.

Still skeptical? Next slide (Fossil fuel combustion as a component of total greenhouse gas emissions):

What this graph shows are the various types of greenhouse emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorocarbons from various sources. Most importantly, the graph shows the source of each greenhouse gas: From forest fires, natural decay, agriculture, from waste, and fossil fuel combustion. Notice the large red area dominating the bottom half of the graph. This represents carbon dioxide as a product of fossil fuel consumption. What does this mean?

It means climate change is a man-made phenomenon. People burn fossil fuels in their cars, homes, and factories. Skeptical boiled frogs have claimed that greenhouse gases come from natural sources ranging from forest fires to flatulence, or from the rise and fall of some geologically unknown Dow Jones. These data tell a different story. It means that more than half of all greenhouse gases (56% of total emissions) have a human origin. Hence, the term “anthropogenic,” meaning “caused by human beings.”

One more slide for a skeptical boiled frog (Spatial distribution of greenhouse gas emissions):

This color-coded map shows the distribution of carbon dioxide around the world. Notice how concentrations of CO2 emissions correspond with areas of human population density and, most especially, with areas having the highest levels of industrial output. These data confirm the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and human activity.

Overall, the latest observations show that globally averaged levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) have reached new highs in 2008: Higher than those of pre-industrial times (before 1750) by 38%, 157% and 19%, respectively. Within the past 10 years alone, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased 26.2%.

Admittedly, the boiling frog story employs a flawed metaphor. Experience has shown that most frogs are too restless to sit still long enough for any pot of water to reach the boiling point. However, the definitive experiment was performed in 1869 by the German physiologist, Friedrich Goltz, who was searching for the location of the soul and demonstrated a fundamental truth. Frogs that had their brains removed will remain in slowly heated water; whereas frogs with intact brains will promptly escape.

Thus, I end my post with this observation:  Climate change deniers, unlike their intact amphibian counterparts, have neither brains nor souls.

BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! BEN-FUNDRAISING!

Would the button-popping proud patriotic Gee-Oh--Pee-ers  use a heart-breaking tragedy to fill their political coffers and demean the lives of the men who died in BENGHAZI!?


Would those flag-waving, Kenyan-President-hating Goopers stoop to gutter politics and use the deaths of four Americans to squeeze money out of their gullible base and prolong the investigation of what Charlie Pierce calls "a banquet of nothing burgers?"  Would they continue to Darrell Issalize this terrible misfortune and use it as a grubby tool to raise filthy lucre for the upcoming 2014 elections?  And is Trey Gowdy just another preening hemorrhoid who's emerged from the deep dark fissures of Teabaggistan?

Is it true that the very same people, who condemned the Obambi administration for being tyrannically callous and deceitful over what happened on September 11, 2012, in Libya, would callously and deceitfully exploit that tragedy?

The Gee--Oh--Pee-ers' only goal is to get out their fat cat donors' money bags  the factlings and find out what really happened that night.  Their motives are noble and pure. They seek only the truth--a truth which they've been trying to get their unbiased factlets to conform to for almost two years and which has cost American tax payers millions of minimum wage dollars.  We can be sure that they will report their fair and balanced flying monkey poop, (with absolutely no Hitlery Klintoon or Obummer bias, to the American people, and those factoids will have nothing whatsoever to do with how much cash the they can get the TeaPublicans to stuff into those pure white envelopes and send to the RNCC.

Oh what difference does it make! This is America, and we all love really good scandalesque diversions. 

John Boehner dodges on Benghazi fundraising


"Asked again if it is proper for the National Republican Congressional Committee to use this committee money, Boehner said, “Our focus is getting the truth for these four families and for the American people.”  

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), whom Boehner tapped to chair the committee, has already said it’s inappropriate to try to raise political money off the investigation. Visitors to the NRCC web site who clicked on a Benghazi-related post this week were then asked to donate money to “stop Democrats from controlling all of Washington.” 


Morning Joe Slams GOP For ‘Undermining the Credibility of Benghazi Committee’ with Fundraising

Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House select committee on Benghazi, said Republicans should not fundraise off “the backs of four murdered Americans.” 


House Republican Candidate Fundraising Off Of Benghazi Investigation

$$$$$$$$$$ BENGHAZI! $$$$$$$$$$

How Dwarf Clairvoyants Unleashed the Zombie Apocalypse

In December 2008, weeks before our newly elected president took the oath of office, Rush Limbaugh said, ”I hope he fails.” These words gave the GOP their master plan to nullify a landslide election and kill off what little remained of democracy in America.  Destroy a newly elected president by saying ‘NO’ to everything.  Demonize him with ‘Birtherism” and color him the illegitimate Manchurian candidate from Kenya.  Portray him as unaccomplished in life with nothing to say and nothing to contribute.  Start with this predetermination: You denounce every thought, word and deed - past, present and future - as utterly worthless and devoid of merit.  If you defame and discredit the president-elect in advance before his presidency even begins, then only one of two hypotheses must be true:

One:  You have secret access to his mind, know all there is to know, possess full foreknowledge of all possible future outcomes, and have a crystal ball that portends the destruction of a once great and powerful nation, the nadir of civilization, and the dreaded End Time.  You report your findings to the Guardians of Party Piety and Purity.

OR …

Two.  You just can’t get beyond the fact that president #44 is biracial.  Some will show open contempt by forwarding emails of racist cartoons.  Others will disguise their contempt under coded messages of snicker-n-wink: “He’s the President of Moochers and Takers,” mock the Makers and Job Creators with derision and scorn.  You will be fixated day and night on ways to block his legislative agenda for any reason you can muster with bluster and filibuster, or find ways to impeach him outright.  The Libtard-Socialist anti-Christ must be stopped, says every freedom-loving, God-fearing Christian whack-job fixated on Hellfire and Perdition.

Either way, you unleash the Eumenides of legislative gridlock and deadlock to make sure he fails (and thereby punish the 69 million voters who voted for him, plus the 60 million voters who didn’t). Collateral damage notwithstanding, all libtards and their ilk must be taught a lesson and turned from the Dark Side of the Farce, they vow with reckless abandon.

In due course, corporations morph into people, and money becomes the currency of free speech. You slash funds for education; aid and abet joblessness by declaring war on reproductive rights; let our national infrastructure crumble; allow polluters to poison our air and water; and shut down the government. In due course, all GOP Congress critters anoint themselves as authoritative experts in science - claiming to be even smarter than the best scientific minds in the known Universe.

Will we ever find respite from the Dwarf Clairvoyant Escapees of the insane asylum who unleashed this madness?  Hardly!  The small-minded mediums are still at large.