Race to the Bottom

It's in the nature of partisan commentators, in the wake of an electoral blowout, to spend time attributing the loss of clearly better ideas and candidates to the calumnious nature of the opponent, the shameless excess of their bankrollers, and of course, racism. That's the job. And certainly there's an element of all those things in last week's smackdown of the Democrats.

It's not a coincidence that just about the only demographics Obama didn't win in his 2008 beatdown of Poor Ol' Straight Talk were men, old people, and southerners (and he barely won the white vote, 49-48). So guess who showed up to vote last Tuesday?

So rather than whinging yet again about the pernicious (and yes, all too real) influence of the vile Koch brothers, Democrats have to be honest with themselves about why they really lost:

1. Barely a third of eligible voters showed up.
2. The ones that did show up were the usual fucking maroons that can't wait to cut their own throats electorally.
3. Every one of the Democratic candidates spent most of their time showing how Republican they secretly were. Way to mobilize your base, assholes.

Thomas Frank does have a valid point about how the Democratic party has, in general, become the voice of a technocratic, professional-managerial class. They apparently bought into the Clinton-era NAFTA-GATT-globalization gospel, the one that insisted that the Chinese and Indians would make our crap for five cents a week while we all sold each other ten-dollar coffees and optimized spreadsheets and such like.

It's like it never occurred to them that gutting American companies and outsourcing American jobs would actually result in a tiny, insatiable claque of pelf-grubbing weasels, with a slightly larger class of upwardly ambitious (if not actually mobile) supervisors, with the other 90% or so stuck at the bottom. Did these people not attend high school? Or did they know what would happen, and just didn't give a shit? It doesn't matter -- it boils down to incompetence or indifference (at best), and neither one helps.

If Sarah Palin has ever been accurate about anything she's said, it's about the whole hopey-changey thing working out. Yes, there are mitigating factors. Obama could not get the Republicans to work with him -- but part of that was because he didn't make them respect him. The stock market continues to chug along at record levels, but only about half of American households own stock at all (mostly 401(k) plans and pension funds), and the top 10% own 80% of the wealth. And the median wage is still where it was back in 1974.

Greed has ruined this country, and attempted to placate the masses by alternately telling them that poor people are poor because they're dumb and/or lazy, and that they (the peons) can join the rich man's club someday, if they just keep their noses to the grindstone and don't ask too many questions. But the 10%-owning-80% should be the clue, if Americans weren't so bad at math.

If you work in an office with nine other people, and someone brings in a dozen donuts, and one person takes ten of those donuts, leaving everyone else to portion out the other two donuts, what should the rest of the office think about that one asshole? Even if he's the one that bought and brought in the donuts, it's a fucking dick move, period.

That's what the economy is anymore, and neither Obama nor the next occupant can or will do anything about it. It's a waste of time to worry and wonder, as Frank does, about why Georgia, the state with the highest unemployment rates, just elected as governor a man who is proud of his career as an outsourcer. Sometimes people don't understand the obvious until they get one broken off in their ass. So Georgia, and Kansas, and Iowa, and the rest of them are about to find out what that's like.

Maybe the young Democratic voters get off their dead asses and vote next time; maybe the Democrats find better and bolder candidates next time. Maybe the peons, liberal and conservative, old and young, brown and white, get tired of this shell game being perpetrated on their lives, and the lives of their children and communities, and do something that actually makes a difference.

Cruz Control

Wasting no time in his eternal quest to be Asshole of the Year, every year, Canadian-born Goldman Sachs spouse Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz, Jr. flexes his fake vox populi muscles, taking on those eeeevil regulators who ensure that anonymous dipshits like you 'n' me have the same access to the public internets as he, "Ted" Cruz, has.

This is an issue where Obama is right and Cruz is wrong, plain and simple. In fact, precisely because our telecom system is really just a profit-sucking oligopoly that thwarts competition and innovation, Americans already pay more money for worse performance. Jesus H. Christ, Moldova -- noted primarily for being the poorest, most repressive country on the European continent -- has better performance than the US, like a 50% higher download rate.

I resent this stuffy, squawky little prick, Cruz, with his shrill voice and strident tone, really more of a male Sarah Palin than anything, with his stupid square-peg-round-hole metaphors. How the fuck is net neutrality anything like "Obamacare," which, it should be noted, is more of a success than a failure so far, despite literally half of the entire Congress actively working to ensure its abject failure?

The thing to keep in mind is, if you look at the various worldwide markets for internet service, North America has one of the smallest markets in terms of population, and by far the highest amount of market penetration at 84.9 percent. Europe is next, at 68.3%, followed by the tiny Oceania/Australia market -- smaller than California! -- at barely two-thirds penetration. By way of comparison, the Asian market, estimated to be nearly 4 billion strong, has less than one-third penetration. Africa, whose market is nearly four times the size of North America's has just 21.3% penetration.

That means that just about everyone who wants internet access in the US has it already, while there are other far larger markets out there waiting to be exploited. But where Europe and Asia actually have a competitive environment and government involvement in ensuring affordable, high-quality services, the monopolistic conditions here guarantee the opposite outcome.

Internet access is no longer a luxury, you need it to search and apply for employment, to access news and information, any number of things. Squashing Net Neutrality cements the monopolistic practices already in place, makes a bad situation worse, and more usurious (with, again, even shittier service) for the people who can least afford it.

From radio to television to HDTV to the Internet, the telecom industry has been one of the greediest, sleaziest rackets on the face of this planet. The airwaves, according to the FCC Charter, belong to the people. At least in theory. This notion has yet to actually be put into practice.

Honor Among Thieves

The big problem with modern Democrats is that they learn all the wrong lessons, every time. As Matt Stoller points out, the current corporate-crony DLC model essentially aligned them very close to the Republicans on economic policy, and because they are political mercenaries, they have no incentive to change their operational principles.

So the lesson they'll learn from their electoral ass-kicking is not that they should have shown at least a little backbone, stood by the legitimate accomplishments of their president -- who, whatever else you want to say about the guy, did get elected twice, fair and square. No, what they'll take with them into the next round of the perpetual campaign system is that they weren't Republican enough.

It's estimated that over $110M was spent on the North Carolina Senate campaign between Kay Hagan and Thom Tillis alone. Especially since the "vulnerable" demographics who typically vote Democratic couldn't be bothered to show up, why and how exactly are Democratic candidates supposed to espouse policies that would benefit those groups? They'll never be part of the donor class, and half the time they don't even vote. It's a self-fulfilling dynamic.

But in an environment where the outgoing Attorney General might as well have been in cahoots with the thieving financial industry, it matters less and less. None of the losing Dem Senate candidates would have changed that; not one of them would have held the fort against predatory banks, or greedy oil companies wanting another pipeline, or kept another abortion clinic open, or anything any actual liberal cares about.

The ratchet-pawl system will continue apace, and the etiolated pseudo-libs will engage in the usual hippie-punching of any perceived dissenters who might be thinking about Elizabeth Warren. They will expend profound amounts of energy lecturing what's left of the left on the Importance Of Settling For Hillary, and nothing at all for their erstwhile compadres who, just as they abandoned Gore for Bush in 2000, will waste no time going for Jeb or Ted or Rand or whichever grinning psychopath runs against her.

And people like Al From will still get paid, because that's what they do.

Dingbat Logic

NewsCorpse has a nice rundown on Palin's latest delusional stab. Whether or not it's a good idea for Obama to personally back-channel communications with the Iranian mullahs, even a mouth-breathing dimwit like Palin should know by know that the ISIS thugs and the Iranians are deadly, bitter enemies -- in fact, the whole reason ISIS gained traction in Iraq is because the government, led by the Shiite (and thus an Iranian stooge for all intents and purposes) politically marginalized the Sunnis who comprise the ISIS movement.

And of course, to invoke Saint Reagan -- you know the guy who traded arms for hostages with those same Iranian mullahs -- should drive home the cold, hard fact that Palin is even dumber than you thought. She should stick to what she's good at, which seems to be crashing parties and pissing off her neighbors with her drunk, obnoxious brood.

Karma may be coming in the form of Palin's web channel (started by a lamestream media weasel, doncha know) derping along at low traffic levels, perhaps because her low-info demo actually has at least a couple of IQ points to rub together.

King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime

If there is a creature more lacking in self-awareness than jerkoff emeritus Jorge Fredo Arbusto, I'll be damned if I know who it could be, though there's certainly no shortage of his fellow party members to give him a run for his money.

"....I think you have to earn your way into politics. I don’t think that anything is ever given to you."

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this guy? His name is exactly what got him into politics; no one in their right mind would stake money behind a joker like him otherwise. Bush seems genuinely incapable of seeing what is so obvious to any honest observer -- that if he hadn't been the son of a president and the grandson of a senator (and the descendant of yet another president, Franklin Pierce), and born into considerable means that literally 99% of his fella 'murkins cannot even conceive of, he'd have been some dipshit floor manager at some random retailer, at best.

Shame on our complicit corporate media for giving this asshole a platform. But got into politics because of his last name, got into high office thanks to James Baker and the Supreme Court the first time, and Diebold the second time. He lawn-darted this country, setting off an expensive war that will take another generation to pay for, and is still going on in the region.

And he's got the fucking balls to sit there and whine to Bob Schieffer that poor ol' Jeb won't get a fair shake should he decide to run, because these days, people can say whatever they want without any consequences. What the hell would he know about being held accountable for things said and done? His entire life has been one of escaping the accountability that the rest of the world considers routine.

George Walker Bush should not be listened to on any subject whatsoever; in fact, the sooner he's ignored and forgotten, the better off we'll all be.

Rescue Dumb

I suppose it's a good thing that the Kenyan Moooslim got these two idiots out of North Korea, but at the same time, it would not have bothered me terribly if we hadn't. Traveling to North Korea -- for an American, anyway; people from other countries can and do travel there with no repercussions -- is a foolhardy idea.

Engaging in risky behavior is very much a part of the human experience, it's why some of us ride motorcycles, race cars, fly planes, climb mountains, become astronauts. But for the risk there should be some tangible reward -- automobile racing has led to numerous safety and efficiency improvements in all cars; air and space travel have led to countless innovations.

There is no point to going to North Korea and engaging in deliberately provocative behavior, with its notoriously paranoid and erratic regime, none whatsoever. Just as rescue teams have better things to do than endanger themselves to save morons who chose to climb a mountain in a snowstorm, diplomats have better things to do than grant concessions to psychotic despots in order to save fools who should have known better.

Somewhat (but not entirely) off-topic, this little nugget gave me a grin, though:

A recent United Nations report documented rape, torture, executions and forced labor in the North's network of prison camps, accusing the government of "widespread, systematic and gross" human rights violations.

Aha. Rape, torture, executions, and forced labor. Yeah, none of those things are commonplace here, in the most incarcerated society (both total and per capita) on the entire planet. The North Korean gulags may be hell on earth, but the disgusting, vicious American prison system is not so far behind.

TMI

Not that it was at all unexpected, but I'm sorry to see that Wendy Davis lost her bid for the seat once occupied by the illustrious Jorge Fredo Arbusto, and then by the even more amazing Governor Good Hair. I think Davis would have been fine in an essentially powerless position, and more importantly, I happen to believe that we need more smart politicians with spectacular cans. Instead, the electorate in its infinite wisdom chose to simply throw in more enormous boobs.

Apocalypse How

Remember way back when, how ISIS was sneaking Ebola 'cross the Meskin border into Texas, and teahadi troll fucktards were calling for murdering the infected and napalming villages and such?

Funny how we haven't heard shit about ISIS or Ebola since The Most Important Election Evar. Strange how that works. (I still hope Todd Kincannon gets Ebola.)

Another Bloody Election

On the one hand, it's easy to agree (however reluctantly) with The Pantload that the electoral process should and could be more than self-affirmation for celebrity airheads. On the other, one can be quite certain that Pantload is just fine with the usual salt-of-the-earth maroons cutting their own throats once again, because the Kenyan Moooslim is letting illegals with Ebola sneak across the Meskin border in order to distract from Benghazi.

But it was funny watching a bunch of chickenshit DINOs run like hell from their own party, and still lose. I'll give the teahadis their due -- at least they know what they fucking stand for, and by jebus stand for it. I'm still amazed that working people are dumb enough to vote for it, but it's not like halfwits such as Mark Pryor gave them much of an alternative. So this is what they wanted, and it's what they will get. Although I live in a blood-red county of the People's Republic of Cali, at least I don't live in some flyover dump that really takes the hit from the policies they just voted for.

Reap the whirlwind, assholes. You deserve nothing less.

[Update 11/7/14 6:30 PST:  This is one of the better analyses of the whole sordid thing that's I've seen.]

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any honorable Gentleman will question it. -- John Stuart Mill

Hope this is what you wanted,
hope this is what you had in mind,
'cause this is what you're getting.
I hope you choke on it. -- Tool, Ticks and Leeches

For all you election junkies, this article is as exhaustive a breakdown of your proverbial "swing" states as one could hope to find. Ultimately, though, it is also as disheartening a read as one might suppose. Putatively Democratic candidates who can't run fast enough from -- or hell, directly against -- their duly elected president, because they're deathly afraid of pissing off their rube constituency.

Of course, it doesn't help to have the usual compliant and complaisant corporate media, who in the course of chasing their precious narrative would much rather talk about how Bruce Braley and his wife are kinda jerky about their neighbor's chickens, rather than how Joni Ernst is just another clown-car teahadi in a folksy drawl and a Tupperware saleswoman smile.

The real narrative to be understood here is how the teabaggers overstepped in 2010 and especially 2012, and that they're learned their lesson this time around. There are no clear loons like Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock, just pleasant jest-lahk-us types like Joni Ernst and Cory Gardner. The goofballs have cleaned up their act, while the supposed adult political party stands around holding their collective dicks and running from their erstwhile principles (which most of them would sell down the road in a heartbeat anyway).

It's long been a cliché that the massive sums of money dumped into the political process has been a corrosive influence on the process. But it's also altered the types of people who are willing to run for office, not only to subject themselves to cartoonish levels of scrutiny, but to sell themselves constantly to anyone and anything, because of the sheer amount of money it takes just to stay in office, even for an incumbent. An average of thousands of dollars per day need to be raised to retain a US Senate seat, and most House seats aren't cheap either.

An estimated $4 billion total was spent in the 2012 election. When we start thinking more closely about which industry specifically received most of that money, and proceed and engage accordingly, we might finally start getting better candidates, instead of the candidates we deserve.

Irresistible Force, Immovable Object

While worldwide overpopulation is an obvious concern as this century progresses, this article only captures part of the most likely effects and viable solutions. Even more than supplying various free methods of birth control in Third World countries, it's been demonstrated over and over again, virtually everywhere it's been observed, that educating and empowering women are by far the most important factors to reducing birth rates.

A corollary to that rule -- one that sounds good but turns out to be tremendously inconvenient in the medium to long run -- is that upward mobility for women and families will lock that lower birth rate into place. The thing is, most scientists agree that the majority of observable climate change issues are caused by the resource consumption rates of industrialized nations, and the two massive countries -- China and India, obviously -- who make our stuff for us.

The countries with the highest birth rates are the least developed, the least industrialized, and (most importantly) consume the fewest resources per capita. China and India contribute through the pollution generated by their massive manufacturing capacity, but the other end of that Faustian bargain was that these two gigantic countries would have a rising consumer class. In fact, even a 100% successful, completely benign project to lower the birth rates and improve quality of life in sub-Saharan Africa would simply result in even more people wanting to consume resources at the same rate as the US and Europe. And our level of consumption is simply not scalable on this planet.

Humans are really great at two things, both of which are in play here. The first thing, of course, is adaptability -- we don't have fur or fangs or claws, but we have opposable thumbs and the ability to reason and build. Those enable us to live in just about any climate -- and in just about any condition. Life in a Soweto shantytown, a Rocinha favela, or an unfinished skyscraper would be unthinkable and unacceptable to all but the very poorest American or European. We have each adapted, in seemingly different directions, but as the American suburbanites who got shoved out of their homes and into tent cities found out the hard way, people can find a way to adapt to just about any situation, pushed hard enough.

The second thing, more problematic, is providential thinking, the ongoing assumption that something will come along, because something always has. In the more mystical past, steeped in religion and unquestioned belief, priests of various cultures communed with their versions of god and assured that he/she/it would provide. These days, our modern priests -- futurists and technocrats -- place their faith in technology to solve everything, so that we can continue to consume blindly.

Various conclaves of power-brokers and shot-callers at Davos or the Bohemian Grove filter their talking points down to TED talks and corporate media, and eventually to the masses, who want nothing more than to be placated by what they need to hear. We'll get you cheap gas by fracking in someone else's backyard, poisoning someone else's aquifer, so you can drive your Excursion to the post office, alone. We'll truck your NAFTA berries 1500 miles to you in the middle of winter, so you don't have to think about eating seasonally or locally. We'll build enormous tunnels to move millions of acre-feet of water 500 miles away, so you can wash your cars and play golf.

Two other major factors are rapidly kicking in to affect all of these environmental issues:  longevity and productivity. Crazy, right? Those should be good things, and intrinsically they are. But when you have finite resources, they become problems. We can automate many processes and jobs, with no doubt many more to come. So what do we propose all these humans who are coming, with or without dedicated efforts at population control, going to do? How do they stay busy and productive during their prolonged lives? How many people will still be needed to work and produce, and for how long, to help maintain the systems that prolong those lives?

More importantly, as our Great Society continues its run toward economic stratification, who will those people be? As we return to a feudal system, albeit a technologically empowered, corporatized one, we can easily see how a permanent underclass gets utilized to do all the heavy lifting, and an upwardly ambitious supervisor class oversees them, chasing a non-existent carrot, all for the benefit of a much smaller leisure class. Same as it ever was, just with more toys and distractions, more extreme weather, and less wildlife.

Curbing population growth is still a worthy goal, don't get me wrong. But too many people, with their adaptability and providential thinking, would take any gains gleaned by such efforts as a license to consume and waste more, because they can, because the powers-that-be know just how to placate them.

Evolution

Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you. -- Gospel According to Thomas, verse 3

It's rare that I'll bother with the subject of religion, but here we go with the second religion post in the same day. For regular readers here, this may seem somewhat counter-intuitive, but I'm temperamentally inclined to side with Douthat here on principle -- either you believe the teachings of your church are divinely inspired and passed down to human ears and hearts from The Big Guy Himself, or not.

If you do believe that, then you believe in preserving those teachings verbatim, no matter how outmoded or ancient they may sound to modern ears. Anything else (in that mindset, bear with me) would be presumptuous, akin to saying (and thus somehow just knowing) that God has changed His mind about [fill in the blank -- gays, remarriage, birth control, etc.].

What the Douthats of the world are saying, sticks-in-the-mud that they may be, is that the institution is a structure of permanence, divinely endowed, and not to be altered to accommodate the lifestyle choices of the day. And again, as a devout non-believer, I can get behind that line of thinking.

The idea of a religious system, unlike an empirically observable, scientifically testable and adaptable system, is that things are what they are, not what its adherents would like them to be, and so the followers conform their lives to the belief system, not the other way around. This is what annoys me about cafeteria believers, who profess to a certain, clearly ascribed system, and then chip away at its fundamental premises with their personal preferences. Why not just become a Presbyterian or Baptist or whichever system does encompass those preferences then? Why not just have a harmless half-secular / half-syncretic  personal belief system that involves no church at all, but pays things forward by, say, volunteering at the animal shelter or donating a sack of groceries to homeless families once in a while? Why insist on staying in a club whose rules you don't want to abide by?

Again, the key here to this (or any religious) belief system is that it is dictated by and from an unimpeachable, unchallengeable celestial force, by which one may only commune with in deep, meditative ritual. (And even then, not be entirely sure with whom one is communing.) If you've decided to ignore the rules you don't like, then why play that particular game? This half-assed approach to spirituality does no one any good. What Douthat is saying, to borrow from the Homer Simpson lexicon, is to use your whole ass.

So, on a principled level, I can dig where Douthat is coming from, though he does seem obsessed with original intent, as if an ancient synod of monks attempting to squelch the various heretical creeds cropping up around them didn't have any ulterior motive to federalize, if you will (and you might) a system around which their earthly vested power might begin to accrete.

A practical person would see all that Council of Nicaea stuff as the original Electoral College, smoothing out as close a compromise as possible. But a literalist, by definition takes it as verbum dei, no debate, no modernization. What is eternal does not change, by definition. Insisting that it should change is a different thing.

But as a practical matter, the church is heading toward a potential schism, as Douthat obviously knows, between literalists like himself and modernists like the current pope. Douthat is an exception to the demographic for each, as he is young, college educated, and lives in an industrialized country, all factors that trend toward modernism. The literalists tend to be either old or in the usual impoverished shitholes whose only answer to overpopulation is to keep breeding.

Any organized religion, in the end, is about two main things, if they want to remain sustainable -- numbers and money. You can see where the split is, as far as that goes; the modernists have the money but the literalists have the sheer numbers. Where a schism would occur nowadays, rather than wars or violent conflict, would simply be a drop-off in one or the other, or both.

This sort of stuff reminds a great deal of the "strict constructionist" burblings of Constitutional literalists, preservationist ideas that make sense until you start thinking about them, and realize that, for example, there is no way the Founding Fathers could have remotely conceived of machine guns that can fire dozens of rounds per second. Even more similarly, strict constructionists tend to be the type that insist that the US founding documents were divinely ordained, as if George Washington had been summoned to a burning bush on the swamp of the Potomac and given another set of sacred tablets to bring to the plebes.

The warning and the lesson here is the same, both politically and religiously. On the one hand, you don't want to change your defining documents and premises too easily or regularly, precisely because those things immediately become fair game in the deal-making process. But on the other hand, as always, one eventually encounters a premise that simply needs to be revisited, possibly revised, because the world has passed it by.

In either case, the majority of participants will continue to go about doing what they do, living their lives and flaws, If a schism -- religious or political -- takes place, one thing you can take as gospel is that there's money involved.

Mad Bum Wiki

Here is a snip of World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner's Wikipedia page, until they change it back:

Too funny.

[Update 5:35 PDT -- They've already fixed it. That was fast.]

What's in a Name

Not to stereotype or over-generalize (yeah, right), but one way to tell that someone might be something of a douchebag or a dipshit is when he's a grown-ass man who goes by "Jimbo."

This Must Be the Transparency They Spoke Of

No administration ever turns out to be as responsive and transparent as they promise to be. It's practically impossible, especially for a commander-in-chief with zero military knowledge or experience. It makes sense that Obama will always defer to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on these matters.

There is almost no chance that the ISAF (and jeebus knows my dick gets granite-hard at the limitless ocean of sometimes recursive acronyms that the modern military is truly all about) will be more than minimally "successful," by whatever no-doubt-shifting criteria they choose to measure that. There's probably a variety of reasons, some of them measurable within the overall expenditure in question.

Maybe some of the Afghan Forces trainees are Taliban saboteurs. Maybe some of the money gets siphoned off here and there to grease the palms of local warlords, or Karzai and his family. Maybe all of the above. One thing Afghanistan -- like any other collection of human beings, but two generations of war has amplified it there -- has no shortage of is pelf and power and venomous shitheads who would fuck their own country over for a fistful of dollars.

So let's say that you, Tonstant Weader, are the preznit of these here Yewnighted States, and have a fine degree from Harvard Law but zero military experience. And Stan McChrystal or Peaches Petraeus tells you that the most efficient way to kill American enemies without endangering American soldiers is to deploy a fleet of killbots high above the Hindu Kush, controlled by some guy with a joystick in a trailer in Tampa.

Sure, there's always the chance that the hellfire you rain will kill some people who already want to kill you. But you won't have to send in more troops. That's the choice being presented to you, the president, by people who have a lifetime of experience with this shit. You can't tell them no without a better plan, one that you can take to the press and try to convince millions of people who hate you on a deeply personal level.

Or they tell you that these special military programs operating halfway around the world in an extraordinarily problematic part of the world, likely run by their handpicked protégés, need to remain classified because too much information would undo all the good work they've done, and intend to do. Knowledge is power, and in this case would empower the bad guys.

So what are you gonna do, smart guy? Tick-tock, you have to make a call, and soon, because as the song says, choosing not to decide still counts as a choice.

I'm not in any respect sticking up for Obama or his chickenshit acquiescence to many of these policies, which have only increased in scale and degree, and will only continue to do so. We'll know we're at the saturation point when drones are used to attack (don't worry, it'll be spun in the media as "defending" against thuggery) the next Ferguson riot. But in the meantime, it's not that difficult to see how these wrong-headed decisions get made.

A Bird In Hand

You know, if George P. Bush switched parties and changed his last name, I might almost consider voting for him, if he's really as moderate and reasonable as he presents himself. What young "P" presents -- aside from his own presumed destiny to the dynasty -- is an opportunity to call out the increasingly lunatic element of his party, one that is no longer the fringe but the mainstream of that party.

Instead, since P is running for Texas Land Commissioner, a quietly powerful but nationally inconsequential post, but a useful stepping stone nonetheless, he has resolved not to piss anyone off. In a state that is rapidly browning and bluing, despite its current proclivity for unrepentant mouthbreathers like Louie Gohmert, Dan Patrick, and Greg Abbott, Bush recognizes the need of his party to be at least somewhat inclusive, yet refuses to antagonize the troglodyte base.

It's even more of an opportunity in Texas, because aside from the issue of immigration, Republicans might be surprised to find that Mexican-Americans, not unlike Cuban-Americans, tend to be culturally (small "c") conservative. There is a common and unfortunate assumption on "both" "sides" that minorities will always vote Democratic. But like any other demographic, the more money they make, and the more comfortable and suburban they become, the more likely they are to vote to protect their measly stake in the game.

It's been often said that, given the current tenor of the Republicans, that Richard Nixon and even Saint Reagan, were they to seek office today, would have to run as Democrats. That party, becoming more distinct by rhetoric and sentiment at least, as the Republicans become more driven by id and inchoate anger (even with the establishment bankroll), has its own bench of younger talent to develop. Even in Texas in particular, with the Castro brothers, there is not a need for yet another young charismatic Latino politician.

And yet, should some enterprising Dem convince P to "defect", perhaps with the promise of unseating Greg Abbott in a few years (if, again, they haven't already promised that to Julian or Joaquin Castro), it would be a rather large get, one that the chattering classes, dependent as they are on some contrivance or other, would milk for months or years. In an industry based primarily on connivance and distraction, getting a Bush to switch parties would be huge, not that it would ever happen.

Nothing to Kill or Die For

This rapey-bible pamphlet that a Florida atheist group plans to pass around is amusing enough, as far as that goes. Couple of points, though:

1. While it's good and important that, over the last decade or so, atheists have organized and disseminated their thoughts enough to get out of the margins and into the mainstream radar, some of your more professional atheists -- Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Bill Maher -- might need to pause and ask themselves what their goal is. If it's simply to ridicule the idea of faith, as opposed to pure reason, or to poke fun at people of faith, that's fine. They're doing a pretty good job of all that, and in fact, many of their bolder assertions needed to be said. Hell, I've certainly done that here over the years, countless times.
   
   However, simply reiterating how religion poisons the mind or the debate or whatever doesn't convince or persuade very many people, and in fact probably angers more people than it convinces. That doesn't necessarily mean that the approach must be softened or diluted, but perhaps that the argument might be broadened, and different strategies might be applied.
   
   For example, one spurious argument floated by people of faith is the idea that atheists, unmoored to any codified value system, cannot by definition be as ethical as even the most louche person of faith must be, simply by dint of their professed belief. Now, you know and I know that that's a heroin-pure line of horseshit if there ever was, but perhaps putting some effort into debunking that canard would pay dividends. Can't hurt to try. The odds have to be better than repeatedly insulting people.
   
   Sometimes they need and deserve insulting, no doubt. But if we want to convince any of them -- and when you're as overwhelmingly outnumbered as atheists are, by religious people along the spectrum of belief -- you need more than one predictable punch in your arsenal.
 
2. Like any good American atheist, I find the endless prayers and benedictions, at everything from sports events to school board meetings, to be pointless, tedious, even counter-productive on some levels. However, it's important to keep in mind that aside from Europe and China and maybe some urbanized parts of South America, the rest of the world, whatever their religion, is waaay more publicly pious and insistent than Americans. Here your various professional Christian lobbying outfits will get butt-hurt over the rapey-bible pamphlet, and maybe even take them to court, seek an injunction, tie things up until the atheist group decides to fight a different fight, whatever.
   
   But what do you think would happen if the atheist group decided to go after the Qu'ran instead of the Bible, decided that it would be good fun to put out pamphlets luridly pointing out that the 53-year-old prophet of Islam consummated his marriage with a ten-year-old? I think we all know what would happen in that instance, and it would not involve paralegals and indignant denunciations from talking heads on the nightly news. There would be violent riots and death threats, and the very real threat of violence.

Religion has always made people do and say strange things, and react violently to words and deeds that other people would just ignore and walk around. The promise of the last half-century of freer thought and more permissive, secularized culture, was couched in the idea (at least in part) that powerful technologies and newer ways of governing the masses would liberate them in a sense. In other words, a government that was no longer overly concerned with getting people to church, combined with the advent and democratization of technology, would allow individuals to truly self-actualize, to find their own path, one of many putatively parallel (more or less) paths to being engaged, well-rounded citizens.

Heh. Silly idealism, right? What no one counted on, in our post-scarcity technocratic paradise, was the greedheads pulling every damn thing to themselves, leaving the masses to fight over their crumbs, temporarily sated by their selfies and smartphone games, but mostly scrambling to pay $160/month phone bills and other routinely escalated prices of "normal" existence. No one counted on the median wage stagnating for forty goddamned years and counting, while the one-percenters raked in more than ever. It doesn't matter if the pie gets bigger, if the same few simply take more of it.

While there are certainly religious wealthy people, it seems incontrovertible that radicalized religious beliefs are mainly the province of the poor and marginalized, who have nothing left to lose, and nothing left to believe in or hope for. People who were promised an opportunity to be stakeholders in a great society, and instead given Honey Boo Boo and Bejeweled and a bullshit McJob that can be packed off to Shenzhen or Bangalore at a moment's notice.

G.K. Chesterton (supposedly) famously said something to the effect than if you don't believe in something, you'll believe anything. I would suggest a corollary -- that when your earthly masters have given you nothing to believe in but empty promises and self-serving bullshit, that many people may choose to grab onto ideas that, by their very nature, cannot be empirically disproven, and thus provide solace -- however temporary or false -- that what is around them refuses to.

If we want people to think for themselves, we first need to give them the luxuries of time (and by association, discretionary income) to actually do so. But the fact of the matter is that, religious or not, the people who own this country and own all the systems want compliant wage slaves to take what they're given, pray to whatever suits them, and go on about their way. They rent pseudo-intellectual assholes to lecture the proles on their morality. They know that most people like their useless warm-pink-blanky rituals and benedictions, are conditioned to expect them, and so they give them freely as routine placation.

But the masters are terrified at the prospect of an informed, engaged populace, just as the peons are every bit as terrified of losing their comfort mechanisms, without which they would have to face the fact that they are well and truly fucked. That's a much more compelling dilemma than simply trying to provoke people by flicking them shit for their beliefs.

Cash Cow

Maybe it's wishful thinking to suppose that the garbage of reality teevee, particularly the more exploitative "hillbilly" schtick of Duck Dynasty and Honey Boo Boo, have finally jumped the proverbial shark -- even if, in this case, the hapless selachimorph is in a vat of mayonnaise, with some drooling inbred gibbering and tapping on the side at it.

Slathering the contrived misadventures of these random backwoods halfwits in a greasy film of "family" life doesn't make it any better, doesn't change the fact that (to insert and compare current "conservative culcha" tropes) Phil Robertson was more of a thug than crackers assume Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were (or that he's simply a blithering idiot with way more of a platform than his nonsense deserves), that June Shannon could shame any welfare queen Those People might have.

It's passing strange that, in a 24-hour media system that scrutinizes and ruminates over the most ridiculous, peripheral ideas imaginable, that those inconvenient truths don't get brought up more often, or much at all. Not being part of the audience, I really have no idea who what the demographic for this sort of shit is in the first place, presumably shut-ins lacking any semblance of taste or critical thought. Having made the mistake of sitting through one episode of Duck Dynasty just to see what the fuss was about, and seen enough excerpts of Honey Boo Boo on The Soup to get the idea, I can at least safely posit that these things are not being watched "ironically," that the core audience is genuinely interested in the (again, contrived) comings and goings of these dullards.

Yes, ordinarily these are just the usual chacun à son gout deals, where the smart set can safely curl their collective lip, roll their eyes, mutter something uncharitable about the complete lack of sophistication of the fan base in question, and be on about their way. Might as well gripe about the success of Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber.

But when, in the above examples, you have one "star" using his "fame" to promote his mossback religious and political agenda anywhere and everywhere he can, and the other is a disgusting idiot who has been impregnated by multiple felons, and has partnered with at least two convicted child molesters, it's a little more than just a matter of taste.

Maybe it's time to start boycotting the sponsors of fucktard basic cable outlets such as A&E and TLC -- which, let's recall, used to stand for Arts & Entertainment and The Learning Channel, respectively -- until they can vet their maroons a little better. Not saying we all need to watch Mawsterpiece Theatre and practice our Downton Abbey etiquette protocols, not remotely. But this incessant promotion of idiots and assholes -- isn't that what we have politics for?

Snowblind

I don't suppose you've heard that there's an election in the next couple weeks. "Both" "sides" proclaim it as the most important evah, just like all the other ones which Changed Everything. If 'murka has a more enduring, precious fiction than the one that claims that the one-percenters who own and run this popsicle stand are suddenly going to cede control because The Peepul Has Spoken, I have yet to hear it.

The fact of the matter is that, unless there is a supermajority in the Senate -- and maybe not even then -- nothing at all will change. It does not matter whether there are 55 Republican Senators or 59 Democratic Senators. It should be clear at this point that the defining characteristic of this particular gubmental body is stasis and gridlock.

From the perspective of the peons, and the media monkeys who pretend to be On Their Side, that is a flaw; from the perspective of the Owners, once again, it is a feature. But up to that supermajority point, both parties have dedicated themselves to the notion of using the mighty threat of a filibuster to cow the other side.

(Of course, the Republicans probably can and will take the simple majority in the Senate, so pay close attention to whether minority Dems employ the same tactics that the Goopers have used for six years straight, or if they fold back into their usual "go along to get along" master strategy of capitulation. That will remove all doubt as to who's "on your side," Monsieur et Madame Six-Pack.)

Enter performance artist and connoisseur of Peruvian flake Larry Kudlow, whose screeds only seem to get screedier.

The Republicans are going to recapture the Senate, picking up more seats than most any forecaster expects. And the House GOP is going to add to its majority. But then comes the big story: The beginning of a new conservative revolution.

....

Obama's head will spin with all the new paperwork on his desk. He may even have to cut back on his golf game. 

Of course, because of his left-wing ideology, Obama may veto everything. But if he does, he's setting up a new Republican agenda for the 2016 presidential race. Either Hillary Clinton completely jumps the Obama ship, or she's pulled way left by the Democratic party's Bill de Blasio/Elizabeth Warren/Sandinista wing. Either way, she's in trouble.
 
And maybe some Senate Democrats vote to override Obama's vetoes, with some even converting to Republicanism. An Angus King or a Joe Manchin may cross the aisle after the likely midterm GOP landslide.

[emphasis mine]

Only a complete moron would still call Barack Obama, with his killbots and surveillance and coddling of Wall Street predators "left-wing." In an era when Richard Nixon and probably Saint Reagan would run as Democrats, Obama is a reliably center-to-center-right hack. Whatever Obama's lofty rhetoric has been on this or that issue, his actions have been predictably centrist, dickless and conciliatory.

Not knowing or caring the difference between confidence and chutzpah, Kudlow blindly trucks on through with his bold assertions and predictions, never minding that the general, reasonably non-partisan consensus predicts about a 52-48 R-D split. Which again, should clarify whether or not there actually is a dime's worth of difference between these assholes and those assholes.

If "taker" states want to proclaim their rugged individualism by continuing to vote against their rational self-interest by voting in the usual Republican clock-cleaning grifters, then fuck 'em. They get exactly what they deserve. You think I feel a bit of sympathy for Kansas? Fuck no. Let 'em choke on it, if that's what they want. They'll figure out the hard way when they've had enough voodoo econ, and then they can fucking well bootstrap themselves out of it. Anything else would be sociamalism.

Every one of those teabagger rubes falls for this "I'mma cut me some pork!" horseshit -- except, of course, the "pork" that turns out to be jobs and aid and gubmint subsidies for their district. Then all that principled rugged individualism shit goes straight out the window. Just try touching fucking ethanol subsidies in Iowa, guaranteed you'll draw back a bloody stump. So, you know, Iowa deserves a burbling fool like Joni Ernst. Maybe Steve Braley should fuck a pig at the county fair, just to convince the locals he's the man for the job.

Back to Kudlow. The balls on people like this clown, privileged shitheads who've never had to answer for anything, who were allowed to fail upward where others would find themselves destitute; who were allowed to go to rehab when others went to prison. Kudlow is the standard-issue limo-lib who converted from SDS to supply-side evangelist when he saw where the money was going.

These people have no principles -- and more importantly, no empathy. They couldn't give less of a shit about the very real consequences of the globalization of capital and labor, of the decimation of the American manufacturing base, of the rampant wealth inequality that continues to undermine what could and should be a very smooth running economy that really would lift all the boats, instead of just the yachts.

But they don't want that, they want it all, every last scrap. The metaphor of the one guy taking 11 of the 12 donuts, leaving everyone else in the office to divvy up the last donut in the dozen, only goes so far. What we forget is that, rather than simply skulking off with their ill-gotten gain and being grateful that the rest of the office doesn't beat the shit out of him, the greedy bastard spends all his time trying to figure out how to get the last donut as well.

And he uses guys like Larry Kudlow to make his arguments for him, because Kudlow has literally no idea what a working-class American does or deals with on a daily basis -- and more importantly, like his owners, Kudlow doesn't care. At all.

This country is finished, and the idea that its agonizing downhill trajectory will alter appreciably if, say, Alison Grimes displaces Mitch McConnell, or Mark Begich keeps his seat, is as fine an example of magical thinking as you might find in the viewers and donors of any given glossolalic teevee evange-huckster.

4 Years a Slave

Because the overpaid assholes who run the NCAA don't have enough to do, and they're just not raking quite enough money in with their innovative "you do all the work and take all the hits, we'll keep the money and give you a college degree that isn't worth jack shit" philosophy, star Georgia running back Todd Gurley becomes their latest victim.

Gurley has incurred the mighty wrath of the NCAA by -- hold on to your hats, folks, 'cause this will blow your fucking minds, see -- selling his autograph. I know, right? An athalete selling his autograph. What is this world coming to?

"Well," you might be saying to yourself, "this Gurley man [ed. - see what I did there?] must have made enough money to cause some sort of stir and get the attention of such a busy organization as the NCAA." Nope. Reader, I shit you not -- Gurley stands accused of making a whopping $400. There are no zeroes or commas missing there. Four hundred dollars.

Now, it's true, the NCAA did generously cave in to modern notions of basic decency, and allow athletes access to unlimited food and snacks, after basketball guard Shabazz Napier of the NCAA champeen UConn Huskies inconveniently mentioned that he frequently went to bed hungry because he couldn't afford food. Since UConn basketball jerseys apparently retail for between $50-90 a pop, you know that someone's eating well with this racket.

It's bad enough that some of these poor kids have to worry about getting buttfucked by their closet-case teammates just to play in a solid high school program, and get into a decent college program from there. But then the NCAA just picks up from where the cornhole crew leaves off, helping the schools make truckloads of cash from swag and ticket sales on these kids' backs, with the unlikely glimmer of promise of a pro career. I hope the players continue to unionize, and take these thieving assholes to the cleaners.