Quote Of The Day - It Has Come To Pass Edition

April 30th, 2012

"We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."
-- Carl Bernstein in 1992

Quote Of The Day - Here And Now Edition

April 27th, 2012

"If Paul Ryan knew what poverty was, he wouldn't be giving this speech."


-- James Salt, executive director for Catholics United, responding to Rep. Ryan's continued defense of his budget as being in keeping with the tenets of his faith.

Quote Of The Day

April 24th, 2012

"It is always the moralists who do the most harm."
-- Max Frisch

Where Is The Fringe?

April 24th, 2012

Rachel Maddow on the GOP's new normal; attempting to force victims of rape and incest to give birth to children conceived during such crimes.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Mitt Watch: The Replicant Nominee

April 23rd, 2012

I am not alone in the opinion that Mittens Romney is more than a little odd. Alex Pareene cuts to the chase:

"Mitt Romney is weird. When the Obama reelection campaign early in the cycle made the mistake of indicating that its strategy would be to imply that Mitt Romney is weird by repeatedly telling Politico that it planned on calling Mitt Romney weird, Romney’s camp countered by causing a brief and not particularly sincere media brouhaha over whether “weird” is code for “Mormon.” Plenty of Americans think Mormons are weird, yes, but in this case, the simple fact is Mitt Romney is weird, entirely apart from his religion."

Some are calling this bit of honest commentary from Pareene one step "over the line." Nonsense. He still understates the situation. We're dealing with a creature right out of Philip K. Dick. He might be Nexus 6, but he's not entirely "human."

"He seems incapable of natural conversation and frequently uncomfortable in his own skin. He’s simultaneously dorkily earnest and ingratiatingly insincere. He suggests a brilliantly designed politician android with an operating system still clearly in beta. He once tied a dog to the roof of his car and drove for hundreds of miles without stopping and some years later thought that was an endearing story. All video of him attempting to interact with normal humans is cringe-inducing, as a cursory YouTube search quickly demonstrates. (Martin Luther King Day, Jacksonville, Fla., 2008:  Mitt poses for a picture with some cheerful young parade attendees. As he squeezes in to the otherwise all-black group, he says, apropros of nothing, “Who let the dogs out? Woof, woof!”) He seems to have been told that “small talk” is mostly made up of cheerfully delivered non sequiturs."

Electing the first African American President was a great thing.

Sadly, I don't believe the nation is ready for its first Replicant Commander in Chief.

Life Is A "B" Movie

April 23rd, 2012

The following is not the breathless exclamation of some 1950s science fiction character...

"Seventy-six types of unregulated micro-organisms have been detected on the International Space Station (ISS). Though many are harmless, some are already capable of causing severe damage. And no one knows how they will mutate in space."

-- RT reporting on the amazing challenges the ISS faces.

It gets even more frightening and somehow entertaining. If you've ever actually read The Andromeda Strain, this will sound eerily familiar:

"Micro-organisms also evolved and became highly aggressive. Cosmonauts reported corroded illuminator glass, holes in the metallic casing of the control panel, and exposed leads, the insulation of which had been eaten away."

Yup. Microbial organisms which we brought into space have evolved into "highly aggressive" glass and metal eating freaks. 

Cue all Theramin soundtrack.

Quote Of The Day

April 23rd, 2012

"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another."
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton

Signs Of Our Decline, cont...

April 23rd, 2012

Over at Forbes, Steven Salzberg notes a troubling development:

"The University of Florida announced this past week that it was dropping its computer science department, which will allow it to save about $1.7 million. The school is eliminating all funding for teaching assistants in computer science, cutting the graduate and research programs entirely, and moving the tattered remnants into other departments.

Let’s get this straight: in the midst of a technology revolution, with a shortage of engineers and computer scientists, UF decides to cut computer science completely?"

The short-sightedness of this decision would be bad enough on its own merits. But, as Salzberg notes, it gets worse:

"Meanwhile, the athletic budget for the current year is $99 million, an increase of more than $2 million from last year. The increase alone would more than offset the savings supposedly gained by cutting computer science."

If you're asking yourself how this could possibly make sense, you need look no further than the big media contracts such as this one between FU and such corporations as Fox Sports.

This is the current culture in microcosm. Investments with vast yet non-immediate returns are abandoned in favor of the quick buck.

If we truly find ourselves in a losing economic position opposite China or the EU a generation from now, we will need to look back no further than decisions like this one for explanation.

Worth 1,000 Words

April 22nd, 2012

How dare you accuse FOX of using using racially-coded dog whistles.

Quote Of The Day

April 21st, 2012

"We have always known that heedless self interest was bad morals, we now know that it is bad economics."

-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Social Darwinism Explained

April 21st, 2012

How Drudge Operates

April 17th, 2012

Matt Drudge is an ass. Here's a screencap showing today's alarmist edition of his so-called "Report." Scary stuff. Very scary!

Yeah? Well? It's also some serious bullshit. 

The story that inspired this is an actual report on "almost 1,800 people" who are, for the most part, wealthy enough to live off of domestic investments abroad.


1,800 people.

Out of well over 300 million.

So, what's the real story? It's overwhelmingly one of avaricious greed:

"The decision by the IRS to publish the names is referred to by lawyers as "name and shame." That's because those who renounce are seen as willing to give up their citizenship primarily for financial reasons.

There's also an "exit tax" for the very rich who choose to leave. During the last 25 years, a number of millionaires and billionaires have renounced their citizenship. Among them: Ted Arison, the late founder of Carnival Cruises, and Michael Dingman, a former Ford Motor Co. director."

You read that right. 1,800 (mostly) rich people are vexed that the most powerful nation in the world thinks they should pony up for continued access to the toughest consulates and protection from the most heavily armed embassies on Earth while they make a plaything of exploitable economies and simultaneously maintain substantial holdings at home.

In other Drudge propaganda today, an ongoing, anti-terrorism urban-readiness exercise was framed this way...

Blackhawk choppers... over Chicago

"Black helicopters"

In Obama's hometown.

Get it?

Some Surprising Opinions On Tax Day

April 17th, 2012

Here we are again. That most "dreaded" of "terrible" days has arrived. We have reached the annual deadline to collectively pay for our civilization. What's interesting is that, in spite of the ubiquitous hand-wringing in most media outlets, a vast majority of Americans actually believe they are taxed fairly.
Via Gallup

What War On Women?, cont...

April 17th, 2012

Jon Stewart notes that while Fox News fiercely denies there is a "war on women" at all they have equally passionately propagandized that "wars" on Christmas, Hanukkah, Halloween, Ladies nights, fisherman, salt, "spuds" and fossil fuels are all very real.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Privatization Of Everything

April 16th, 2012

Image Via

Just in time for tax day comes another reminder that the race to privatize the public sector, particularly the infrastructure we all paid to build, is an exercise which provides consistently diminishing returns.

The Sun-Times reports:

"Under the $563 million, 99-year deal that privatized four city-owned parking garages in downtown Chicago, City Hall made a promise:

It wouldn’t allow any parking facilities to open nearby.

That was six years ago, under then-Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Today, though, you can park just a block away in a new garage at the 82-story Aqua building — and it’s cheaper, too.

That’s angered the consortium of investors who took control of the garages and thought they were safe from competition. Their group, known as Chicago Loop Parking LLC, has filed an arbitration claim against the city that could leave Chicago taxpayers on the hook for $200 million or more, documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show."

The story goes on to mention the legal mess Chicago is facing from one of Daley II's other privatization schemes, the wholesale turnover of parking meters (to what is also essentially Morgan Stanley, the controlling interest over the garages in the current dispute). They could have gone further and reminded everyone of the Skyway boondoggle. Or, they could have ventured just a bit to the East and examined Indiana's brewing privatization nightmare under Gov. Mitch Daniels.

But let's stop right here. I could catalog hundreds of examples from all over the country. This is just wrong in principle.

Supporters of privatization argue the real issue in this latest flap is that the city seems to have reneged on a legal agreement. With all due respect, this bargain was designed to create a territorial monopoly for an investment firm at the expense of the taxpayers who previously had already underwritten the properties. It was taxes that built and/or at least partially maintained these facilities. Now, Morgan Stanley is demanding that those same taxpayers pony up another couple hundred million dollars because a more efficient private corporation is offering them a better deal down the street.

This isn't rational finance. In nearly every instance of the privatization revolution, terms lasting as long or longer than the modern human lifetime are being doled out with anti-free market guarantees of exclusivity in exchange for dollar amounts that are only large enough to plug short-term budget holes.

This is akin to selling the store to paint the front door. And the taxpayer's formerly owned the store.

Had this parking garage deal been structured as something other than a one-time payment, it would come to a little over 5 and a half million dollars a year. If inflation were to stop dead in its tracks for the next century, it still wouldn't make sense. In fact it's nuts.

We can pretend to be a Capitalist culture all we want. That doesn't make it so. This isn't even worthy of being called "crony Capitalism."

This is Corporatism. Period.

This is also the new American "normal."

So...

As many of you file those last minute tax returns, just think what you might be paying for today that an organization like Morgan Stanley will buy for a song tomorrow. And then, for all intents and purposes, sue you for more.

Quote Of The Day

April 16th, 2012
I was quite ill last week. Please forgive my absence as I play catch up.

" 'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes."
-- Henry David Thoreau

Climate Change, Nasa And Sketchy Astronauts

April 11th, 2012

HT to Oliver Willis

This morning over at NRO, Jonah Goldberg is hyping a Washington Examiner (yeah, they're not biased) article which opens as follows:

"In an unprecedented slap at NASA's endorsement of global warming science, nearly 50 former astronauts and scientists--including the ex-boss of the Johnson Space Center--claim the agency is on the wrong side of science and must change course or ruin the reputation of the world’s top space agency.

Challenging statements from NASA that man is causing climate change, the former NASA executives demanded in a letter to Administrator Charles Bolden that he and the agency "refrain from including unproven remarks" supporting global warming in the media."

Okay, it sounds big and dramatic. In fact, it's as breathless as print propaganda gets. It's still certifiable horseshit. Who is behind this effort? This is who:

"Former Apollo astronauts Walter Cunningham and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt are listed as the main contacts for the letter, and their past advocacy against climate change science calls into question the scientific validity of the petition.

In 2009 Schmitt appeared on the talk show of 9/11 conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and said that he believed that the environmental movement was a front for Communism.

"I think the whole trend really began with the fall of the Soviet Union. Because the great champion of the opponents of liberty, namely communism, had to find some other place to go and they basically went into the environmental movement," Schmitt said." EMPHASIS MINE

Uh huh. 

What's the real latest information on this critical issue? Well, there's this...

And then there is THIS and THIS and THIS (which is especially depressing) and THIS.

But let's be honest. We really have no time for provable, empirical climate science when we are hot on the trail of the far bigger threat... the vast and insidious global Communist conspiracy.

WTF?

Majority View SCOTUS As Fully Politicized

April, 11th, 2012

ABC/WaPo polling shows a majority don't believe SCOTUS will base their health care ruling on the law.

What War On Women? cont...

April 10th, 2012

As a result of the ongoing war on women, which exists no matter how much senior Republicans are now scrambling to deny it, the gap between support among American women voters for President Obama and Mitt Romney has grown wildly. Yesterday, Herman Cain was asked about this on Fox and explained the numbers as follows:

"I think many men are much more familiar with the failed policies than a lot of other people, as well as the general public."

You read that right.

Quote Of The Day

April 11th, 2012

"There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women."
-- Madeleine K. Albright