Land of Milk and Phony

This week's lame Palin analysis drops, in the context of a half-hearted disclaimer, a truth that says as much about the media as it does about Palin:

Who knows whether or not Palin will run for the nation's highest office. But if she does, comments like this one do little to make her sound presidential. For one, even if it was a joke, Palin was making light of something that has to do with the future of this country--the health and well-being of its children. And even if Palin spent most of the talk discussing deficits, health-care reform and foreign affairs, it's unnecessary side comments like these that will--whether she likes it or not--lead the news.

You know, I think we all got it a looong time ago that Palin is an empty-headed smartass. Running one smartass item after the next is, while entertaining, not terribly useful at this point. If in fact Palin did "spen[d] most of the talk discussing deficits, health-care reform and foreign affairs", even we accept the stupid fact that the media will always lead with the halfwitted jab at Obammy, it might be at least somewhat constructive if at least a paragraph or two were utilized to inform folks about Miss Thang's pronunciamentos on those subjects.

Palin has always been most revealing not when lobbing her cheesy punchlines, but when she tries to elucidate an actual opinion, tries to show she actually knows what she's talking about on any issue of importance. I think it's important to offer up to the public what her "solutions" to the Middle East, Iran, Libya, defecits driven by third-rail entitlements and bloated defense expenditures, health-care costs might be. It would, for one, force her increasingly ridiculous and self-marginalizing supporters to explain the inevitable gaffes and incoherencies, the dearth of ideas or solutions, or even the pretense of same.

It might be helpful if someone in our blessed corporate media thought these things important too, rather than spending their Palin time and space digesting and regurgitating one sub-borscht-belt line after another through its bloated cloaca. That would be too easy, and more importantly, counterproductive to the perpetual campaign industry.

Some $500 million or so was spent during the 2008 presidential campaign, and twice that is projected for next year's. It is in the vested interest of the vaunted fourth estate to keep a horse race going, to harvest clicks and eyes, sell ad space and commercials. The endless "will she/won't she" cock-tease keeps the game going, though everyone knows that she's not viable, incompetent, and probably doesn't want the job anyway. Beats workin'.

Duh, Winning

Onward to the Maghreb! As Hitchens once poetically put it, some people never learn, but then some people never intend to.

Les Mots Justes

Of course M'sieur IOZ is absolutely correct in this week's unceremonious roasting of EnriqueMatt Yglesias. The current era of economics reeks more of careerism and credentialism for self-selecting opinion-mongers and audiences, and less of empirical data-crunching and pattern-theorizing. Consider this paragraph of Yglesias' which IOZ excerpted:

The fact that the economics profession can offer so little in the way of consensus guidance about dramatic, crucially important events like the panic of 2007-2008 is a huge problem and a very legitimate knock on the enterprise, but it doesn’t actually undermine the overall epistemic status of the discipline.

First is that the bumptious prose of this sickly little paragraph may as well be a sixth example for Orwell to present in Politics and the English Language. It is merely a hymn plucked in church to appease the faithful. It is difficult -- at least for me, because life is too short to spend too much time reading Teh Woodchuck with anything approaching regularity -- to really know whether these guys actually believe the guff they spread, or they've simply sunk too far into the sales pitch to divest credibly.

It doesn't matter. Just in that stray paragraph one sees much more fundamental errors, namely the classic Princess Bride issue of words not meaning what the user thinks they mean. Yglesias mentions "the panic of 2007-2008", as if those wascally Hunt brothers had tried to corner the dang silver market and caused a stampede. "Panic" is as inaccurate a term to describe what happened as the more tendentious debate over whether the real-estate collapse caused a "recession" or a "depression". An accurate term would be correction, or perhaps heist. "Panic" merely implies unknown causation producing unpredictable results via mass alarm and random collective action.

As opposed to, say, a bunch of boiler-room shysters pushing loans on people they knew full well wouldn't be able to afford them, just so they could slice and dice and tranche a bunch of derivative side bets, knowing full well that their investment in Barack Obama would be recouped when the mathematical reckoning inevitably came. Causation was known, results were predictable, and on the off chance that the engineering of this mess wasn't flat-out deliberate, it was at the very least sociopathically indifferent.

A lesser, but still substantial, semantic failure to follow through in an intellectually honest fashion is the "knock on the enterprise" line. Look, if economics is not an out-and-out religion, as IOZ calls it, with its impenetrable dogma, its cloistered priests, and laity suckaz like Yglesias, then at the very least one can ham-fistedly paraphrase Yogi Berra and point out that it's 90% psychology, and the other half is mathematical.

The problem is, the math side of it has been perverted beyond all honest recognition by the economists' brothers-in-arms, the rentier financiers, who every now and again pay some Indian kid from MIT to swing by the offices of Lloyd Blankfein's subordinates, dump some esoteric algorithm on a spreadsheet for them, and figure out how to plug in the numbers on whatever scheme they devise for the next round of rubes. The banksters neither know nor care how the formula works, or that it doesn't actually produce a tangible good, merely a new twist on the numbers game they run.

Now, I realize that the "enterprise" Matty refers to is economics, but seeing as how that discipline exists more or less symbiotically with finance, perhaps the current lack of, ahem, "consensus guidance" can be attributed to a poisoning of the epistemic well. Finance is not so much an "enterprise" these days -- a system that generates ever more money for ever fewer people, without producing any tangible goods or wealth, even secondarily (such as loaning that money or creating jobs with it) is not an enterprise, it's a racket.

The financiers are always going to maintain the pretense, especially since they have the government by the balls, and the assurance that when the new algorithm becomes mathematically unsustainable, they get bailed out and keep their goddamned bonuses. This is not about the creation of value or wealth, this is about recoupment by the very few from everyone else.

To the extent that intellectually honest economists realize all of this -- and how can they not? -- they are collegially and professionally constrained from stepping up and speaking their minds, fearing to be recognized as dupes to a street-corner hustle, or traitors to the common cause. Financiers move money around, economists track the results and develop arcane theories about yesterday's motions.

But neither group cares to mention the huge behavioral aspect to both, preferring to pretend that it's all mechanical, and therefore predictable and controllable to some degree. And the biggest behavioral factor is the return of a Gilded Age mentality, a smug, patrician assumption by a shrinking claque of well-heeled rulers that the rest of the population are merely sheep to be fleeced.

So no, the lack of "consensus guidance" is not undermining the "overall epistemic status of the discipline". But that status is being undermined all the same, by the failure of its prime movers to simply call things what they really are.

Orwell intrinsically understood the obfuscatory power -- and intent -- underlying cluttered language. It does not have to mean some firebreathing propagandist trying to conceal his true intent; it applies equally well to professional catechists.

Bringing Crazy Back

With the advent of violent chaos across the Middle East, and chaotic violence in Japan, one might begin to fear that the End Times are near. Au contraire, mon frère! Raving assclown Sharron Angle, last fall's scary-silly entertainment, is preparing to throw her polyurethane foam helmet back into the proverbial ring, assuming she can wrest her arms free from the straitjacket.

It would seem that Sharron Angle is running for a House seat in Nevada. In a video on her Web site, Ms. Angle says she is “running for the United States Congress” but does not name the seat. Presumably it is the one in the Second District, which is being vacated by Representative Dean Heller, a Republican who narrowly defeated her in a 2006 primary run for the position. Mr. Heller is now running for the Senate seat left open by Senator John Ensign, the beleaguered senator who is not running again.

Not that anyone will miss fambly valyews champeen Ensign, who will now and forever be known as the guy who fucked his friend's wife, then tried to buy the cuckold off with some bullshit sinecure. But Heller appears to be cut from the same predictable cloth as the increasingly tedious teabaggers, attaining office during the vaunted Gingrich (that other fambly valyews champ) revolution, and reflexively voting against whatever Obammy's fer.

Not saying that anyone's going to miss a card-carrying asshole like John Ensign, but Heller and the recombinant ascension of Angle would be a statistical offset, and then some. Ultimately it's probably not a huge deal, just Nevada getting precisely what it deserves -- if it really wants it that badly then, to paraphrase Mencken, they should get it good and hard.

More an Art than a Science

You have to hand it to the American media -- Japan gets hit with the twin power punches of massive quake and devastating tsunami, and in mere hours a good chunk of them find ways to make it all about us, and our deep-seated fears of everything except what we should actually worry about.

Your average 'murkin is many thousands of times more likely to die of stress, obesity, type 2 diabetes, substance abuse, depression, auto accident, and many other things, than from radiation from Fukushima, or Islamic terrists for that matter. This is not to say that I know that there is absolutely no danger in the US from radiation from Fukushima; I am saying that I don't know, which is what the mediots would say if they had an ounce of honesty in them. I will go out on a limb and say that a panic run on potassium iodide in Texas straddles that fine line between merely stupid and flat-out hysterical (and not funny hysterical, either).
Fortunately for opportunistic scumbag and all-around hump Glenn Beck (and unfortunately for the rest of the planet), the aphasic venom he soaks in is not fatal. Though one can always hope.

It is certainly bad enough when a fat, bloated, ignorant nation becomes entirely oblivious to its own bad karma, not only from initiating pointless, perpetual wars, but from trading its future for toys on credit to utterly shameless thieves and frauds. One has to ask, if one is so masochistically inclined as to engage with a subhuman prick such as Beck, precisely what it was that Japan did recently to earn this sort of divine reckoning. (One could also ask the Tokyo governor the same thing, since he sounds like the same breed of asshole, but maybe he gets voted out or forcibly removed from office.)

Putting natural disasters in moralistic contexts is never not going to be intellectually offensive. Most of us know this by the third grade. But wallowing around in this solipsistic narcissism of wondering how international catastrophes will affect us is very nearly as awful.

I'm embarrassed for them, really. I mean, somebody should be.

Re-gyptian Strut

Everyone is expected to have formed an opinion on Egypt, on the asshole Mubarak, on the beneficence of him being our loyal asshole. The various potentates and kleptocracies that clutter the Middle East provide something of a tabula rasa for the spectrum of what passes for American foreign policy -- power to "the people" in Egypt, so long as they're the right people, and opportunism in Libya, to get rid of a loose-cannon bedouin colonel whose reach finally exceeded his grasp in a stuporous Castro-like tenure.

Notably absent from the conversation -- indeed, even modest official speculation -- is Saudi Arabia, which has an 86-year-old leader and an 82-year-old immediate heir, literally hundreds of inbred princelings after that, and a young, seething, jobless populace to placate. One would think that with that level of uncertainty, some of the more buffoonish tendencies of American vehicular self-actualization might give way to harsh oncoming realities.

One would, as always, be dismayingly wrong. There will be no shortages of single-occupant Excursions and jacked-up F350 king cabs with the requisite truck nuts, not until gas hits six bucks or so -- and then assholes such as those will be the first ones to siphon their neighbor's Honda, or knock over a liquor store to feed their insatiable addiction. One side preaches empiricism, physics and math, scientific prudence; the other pure id and gall and self-indulgence. There will be no respite from high bozoism, only a shift in its prevailing wind. Some halfwit knuckledragging House troglodyte, more likely than not from Texas, will sooner or later insist on opening the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to contain costs and enable the guzzlers just that much further, just one more hit, man, they'll suck yo dick!

So it goes, while the rest of the country continues its death march into uncharted realms of banana republic disparities, a dwindling cadre of inbred plutocrats manipulating swelling, foundering masses against their own rational self-interest.

Which, of course, brings us to Wisconsin, the latest guinea pig in said plutocrats' ongoing experiment in accumulating the last bits of rotted corpse. Per usual, Chomsky sees right through the Dems' feckless posturing, and refuses to play their dismal game:

The reason why you can’t get Democratic leaders to join [against union-busting tactics] is because they agree. They are also trying to destroy the unions.

The sooner we stop playing this game, enabling the charade of two distinct parties, the clearer the picture becomes. There are no parties; there is a ratchet and a pawl, a device manipulated entirely by vested interests, rentier thugs in $3000 suits who seriously think the peons should fellate them in public for all the wonderful good they do. The amount of contempt people like Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon have for Main Street, for you and me, is almost incalculable; in fact, it would best be calculated simply in direct proportion to their compensation -- the more they profit from their bookmaking ventures and failures, the more they feel you owe it to them. Make sure you send Lloyd and Jamie a thank you card, m'kay, show your appreciation. They're good guys, really, just ask them, they'll tell you.

Wisconsin is just the start; as states get more and more in the hole, and get rolled into short-run schemes like selling off parking meter rights for the next 70 years to raise cash to pay off this year's bills, the public-sector union-busting tactics will metastasize to other, larger states. California politics is pretty much run through the prison-guard union, but if some sort of deal were to be struck that would allow them to keep theirs whilst throwing other public unions under the bus, of course they'd take it.

The lesson should be pretty obvious to all but the most deluded Beckalo -- that we love the "power to the people" jabber, until it actually occurs, and especially when it occurs here. Nothing scares the political and financial classes -- who, after all, own the very modes of communication by which "information" is officially disseminated -- more than the thought of a sufficient number of peons getting wise to their shenanigans. They needn't fear -- in times like these, people can be counted on to revert to the usual devil-take-the-hindmost mean.

Rumors of Demise

You know the drill, slammed to the gills -- working on two different case studies for a management control systems class (that finally ended on a high note, with a one-hour presentation/q&a session) and in the running for a promotion at work (that I didn't get, but turned out to be something of a pig in a poke anyway).

But I'm around, keep an eye out, there will be some non-Carlos Estevez material this week. Stay tuned.

Idiocracy

It's been a couple weeks since this nugget dropped, but it is still hilarious. Apparently CNN has a different understanding of "political" than the rest of the English-speaking world. Asking Snooki Palin anything about anything is less likely to elicit sensible answers than shaking a Magic 8-Ball, but especially a political question.

I'm not entirely convinced Bristol Palin can even put her fingers together in the dark, so the idea of her even knowing about anything enough to care about it enough to run for office and do something about it is incomprehensible. Maybe if The Situation were her campaign manager it would make more sense.

On the one hand, it's hard to imagine someone who was unqualified even to be on a reality teevee show to have the ability or inclination to run for any office whatsoever; on the other hand, the brain surgeons in Arizona just installed Ben Quayle as their US rep, apparently for no other reason besides being the smartass offspring of a notoriously ridiculous (even for a veep) person. Anything is indeed possible here in Jebus' Chosen Land. There are just enough morons to keep literally anyone at least slightly viable.

Super Bowl Shovel

So I suppose the game ended up the way I bet on it -- not that I bet more than a token amount, but I did take the Packers and the points. They tried to give the game back in the second half, but fortunately, Rapelessburger and the rest of them didn't quite take it back. Still, Dick LeBeau deserves some extra-special mention -- the guy runs what is clearly the most vicious, constantly innovative defense in the league. He's a Hall of Famer as a player and a coach, and is not only deserving of both, but is sorely underrated at both.

But sweet Jebus, what is the deal with the Black Guy Pees? It's like an entire nation somehow mutually decided not to hurt someone's feelings. I don't recall voting on this shit, do you? This group (I hesitate to call them a "band", since that would imply that they play and write actual music) of morons sucks so bad, the light from suck takes several years to reach them.

The use of lit crowd formations, to their credit, did evoke impressive formations from North Korean military drills, as did the incessant use of AutoTune to marginally disguise their utter lack of actual vocal talent. I suppose there must be some number of idiots out there who actually use their hard-earned money to purchase Black Guy Pees Music, since they got invited to the big show, but shit, are these people fucking deaf or what?

Anyhoo, the local kid won, that's all I cared about, to the extent I cared at all. But I think most people would rather see yet another washed-up rock band than this warmed-over halftime horseshit.

Parisienne Walkways

Hats off to one of the true greats of rock guitar. Gary Moore was a beast, like Hendrix in that he was untouchable when he chose to flip the burners on. But Moore also had that Jeff Beck-like knack with impeccable tone and taste, knowing the right note to hit and how. I recall being influenced heavily at the start by some of the stuff he did on Corridors of Power, Victims of the Future, and Run For Cover, figures which are now stock metal runs, but which were pretty innovative for the time.

Even the earlier jerkoff stuff resonated with solid tone and passion, which is what it's all about. Anybody who doesn't admit that Gary Moore was one of the most underrated guitarists of all time is just flat-out lying. So while I'm certainly sad that he's gone, there are worse ways to go than on vacation in Spain. Here's to the hope that we all go in such circumstances, preferably in the saddle. RIP, brother.

Reaganomics

Not sure why, with only 200 attendees, Miss Thang's latest bullshit venture into Ventura merits mention, But I guess it fits with the Lucy-with-the-football motif the lamestream media have going for them. With every little fart she poots across the mediasphere, they scramble to cover it uncritically, and she shits on them either way. Sounds like the original recipe for a Wasilla Steamer.

On the other hand, although my dad fucking loathed Reagan, primarily because of his union betrayals en route to political self-actualization (but later relented due to Reagan's Alzheimer-induced fall from grace and ultimate death), I can safely say that, having spent the day chopping firewood and barbecuing steaks for Super Bowl Sunday, I hewed closer to Reagan's ideal on his sainted centennial than did Mme. Palin.

Let's face it, friends 'n' neighbors -- whatever the tiresome jabber offered by Palin and her fuckwitted ilk, the fact is that Reagan, like Nixon, would have to run as a Democrat these sad little days. The sooner people remember that important tidbit, the sooner we might be rid of the tedious guff constantly lobbed by this shit-for-brains snowbilly.

The Big Game

So everybody likes a local-kid-makes-it-big story, and Aaron Rodgers starting the Super Bowl is exactly that story for this area. Pretty much everyone around here -- excepting, of course, Steelers fans -- are rooting for the Pack this weekend, regardless of their regular affiliation. Everybody at least knows someone who knows Rodgers.

It happens that my wife is a lifelong Packers fan anyway, since her family hails from Wisconsin, but as an added bonus, as an oral-surgery assistant a decade or so ago, she removed Rodgers' wisdom teeth, as well as those of his younger brother Jordan, who is currently at Vanderbilt. So we'll be rooting extra hard.

Palinoscopy

One assumes that 85% of the free world is with Milhouse'sMilbank's call to boycott the ongoing public martyrdom of Saint Sarah. I know I'm tired of talking about her, chronicling her misapprehensions, mischaracterizations, and calumniations. There's no denying that her fatuous nonsense has sucked the oxygen out of what passes for rational debate in this country. It's dragged what was already a bottom-feeder's game down to the level of a grub-eating reality-show fametard, which is Palin's true skill -- someone who will do anything for money and notoriety, and is able to get people to root for them, since just about everything in this country has devolved to a spectator sport.

But there is one great lie that can and should be clarified once and for all. That lie is that her detractors "hate" Palin, that they wish her literal, physical harm. Because political language is these days so polarized and polemicized, it's an easy lie to buy into.

I would be seriously surprised if, among all these blogonistas -- including myself -- that have beat up on Miss Thang lo these long 27 or so months, anybody truly hated her. I don't pretend to speak for others very often, but I'll bet money that the vast majority just wish she'd take her winnings and go the hell away. At this point, she's just a cartoon character, and an annoyingly popular one at that, like, say, Justin Bieber. But the difference is, Justin Bieber is not going around the country lying to gullible rubes and house-training them to vote even further against their own rational self-interest than they already do. Nor is Bieber writing books and starring in reality shows, both of which are not-so-carefully concealed platforms for which to spout the usual incoherent word salad of misguided political pronunciamentos. But the upshot is that it's hard to genuinely hate a cartoon character, you just want to not only change the channel, but know that you will see soemthing else when you do so. This broad is more over-saturated than our other favorite show, Dancing With People Who Useta Be Sorta Famous.

Palin has certainly mined a great deal of fandom with her thin-skinned persecution complex, but it's long past time someone called bullshit. The threats and acts of violence, the Nazi epithets and such like, are exclusively confined to the "right", to the extent that the anachronistic left-right construct still has any validity. There is no talk-show host or blogger on the "left" calling anyone a Nazi, or threatening Second Amendment remedies, or using crosshairs on a map/diagram as a checkdown visual. You know who else uses crosshairs? Anti-abortion fanatics, and they don't pussyfoot around with self-serving horseshit about "surveyor symbols". Say what you want about these fanatics, they fucking well mean precisely what they say, and don't try to dodge it.

But Saint Sarah needs to have both ways, all ways. And she is a saint, among her fans anyway, who have already bypassed the usual deliberative process of beatification and canonization, and anointed her outright, primarily for her ability to extend her middle finger to any and all who dare question or disagree with her. The complete lack of anything resembling substance is gravy to these window-licking fuckwits. And, as with Catholic saints, there is a verifiable miracle attributable to Our Lady of the Meth-Addled Welfare State -- she has never been wrong.

Think about it -- since we've gotten to know her, she has yet to say anything true or accurate or in remotely good faith, and despite all that, she has steadfastly refused, with the strength only a modern day Jeanne d'Arc could muster, to acknowledge -- hell, to even budge -- on any of it. Hell, the one thing she does seem to readily recognize is that the more obstinate she becomes, the more her legend grows in the hinterlands, where the unofficial coat-of-arms is a hunchbacked warrior (see what I did there, he's always got his back up! Hi-yo0o0oo!)

So I wish Dana success in convincing his fellow media humps to stop reporting on every twitterfart and undercooked opinion she floats. Usually these sorts of abusive, one-sided relationships are found with pimps and hos, the slapdown followed by the suckup. But it is really the corporate media that have kept her afloat, the bloggerati have merely commented pro or con on either her affability or aphasia.

The latter is definitely, as one might imagine, a full-time job. The fact that she has no clue wtf "Sputnik moment" might mean is just icing on the proverbial cake. Just when you think she's run out of stupid things to say, she goes and entertains you. Just like every other reality-teevee asshole.

Update: Sigh. She really does make it difficult not to loathe her, goes out of her way, in fact, to ensure it. But as usual, the jabbering throngs of dickless closet cases she speaks to are so much more loathsome. Not sure what these losers paid to listen to her shopworn bear-baiting and predictable schtick, but clearly they're not working nearly hard enough for their money. But it is a perfect place for her, evangelizing to a bunch of trophy-hunting freaks, warming up these inbred slobs for Larry the Cable Guy.

Maybe it is (as the anonymous commeter here notes below) time to give hate a real chance. A good place to start would be the Safari Club. I absolutely despise these skeevy fucks. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- hunting is fine, as long as you're filling your freezer. But people who just go out and kill things for the sheer joy of killing are fucking mental, and deserve every misery and tragedy that an entropic, uncaring void can visit upon them. I do sincerely hope that every one of them, the next time they go out to get their rocks off killing something, either the gun jams and blows up in their face, or just jams and allows the animal to step in, rip them limb from excruciating limb, eat their fill, and leave the rest for the vultures and beetles. Fuck these people right in the fucking neck.

Teachable Moment

So now that another tedious, utterly useless Prom Night has come and gone, and we have judiciously observed the meaningless rituals of political comity and kumbafuckingyah, whatever and ever, amen, let us propose a simple observation: somehow this thrashing dinosaur of a nation managed to go three solid weeks of fulminating endlessly about the motivations and ramifications of a deranged idiot slaughtering a crowd at a supermarket.

But I'll be damned if I heard anyone discuss even the possibility of devising some sort of system that might prevent said idiots from just lurching down to the nearest sporting goods shop, and purchasing a Glock and an extended 30-round clip, no questions asked, no nothin'.

Look, I like guns, I believe in the Second Amendment. I own guns, I know how to use them, and pretty much everyone else here in Alabama, California does as well. And it would certainly be unfair to punish the vast majority of responsible gun owners for the actions of a few deranged individuals. But that is quite a different matter than the insistence that everyone, regardless of temperament, should have equal access to them. I like cars, too, but I get that not everyone is capable of operating them (indeed, there seem to be more willfully reckless, stupid drivers than ever). Even an easy-to-pass test is better than no test at all.

Let's go out on a fragile limb and state categorically that a reasonable competency test is a handy, if certainly not foolproof, device to weed at least some of the yobbos out, provide at least some obstacle to mental patients. Of course this would also require a registration system, or maybe just a "moving forward" registration system, which would still leave some quarter-billion weapons out there free and clear. Not much to worry the NRA's purty little mouths about, but might actually prevent the next ward-o'-the-state from shooting up your nine-year-old at a fucking Safeway.

Before we know it, another "national tragedy" will take place, as it inevitably does. Someone will hole up in his mother's living room and take out a few cops, or they'll go public and shoot up a college campus, a shopping mall, whatever. And we'll have our public rituals, then go right back to what we were doing. It seems to be tacitly accepted as the cost of doing business or something. As long as it isn't us, or someone we care about, served up as target practice for the next lunatic asshole with an incoherent axe to grind. It should be a national embarrassment that volatile goofballs are allowed such easy access to such dangerous firepower, and predictably take out groups of innocents with such appalling regularity.

But because we and our betters in the beltway media are much more concerned with ceremonial pretenses of commonality, it is not even suggested. Nor will it be, until one of their asses gets blown apart by the next desert Pupkin.

Moron Better Democrats

Coupla points for the slow kidz out in Dummycratville:

1. When you've shot your legislative wad on, ahem, health care reform (which, like the Holy Roman Empire, may in fact be none of those things), and you lose your supermajority through dickless dithering, and the belligerent new House majority launches a scud across your bow with "Job-Killing" in the title of the bill, your first response should be to call bullshit on that assertion, not whinge about its intemperance. Fucking grow a pair already. This is why people vote for Nader, not to mention Republicans, you cock-gobblers. Talk about bringing a spork to a gunfight.



2. Sarah Palin, more likely than not by pure accident, did use "blood libel" more or less correctly, if you squint hard enough. The smart move in this case is not to spin your wheels parsing over the latent anti-Semitism of the phrase, but to send forth the appropriate media minions to muse aloud at the ability knack habit Palin has for turning even legitimate criticism into this twenty-four-seven persecution complex of hers. Just one (1) person needs to step up and say, "Look, honey, get off your fucking cross already -- the rest of us could use the wood."

Ah well. Maybe next election, or the one after, or the one after. The political system itself is Lucy with the football.

Trash Talk

Now, the Jets have gotten a bit full of themselves, but since my general rule thumb in the playoffs is Anybody But Brady/Manning/Rapelessburger, and Baltimore gave the game back yesterday, the Jets it is. But Brady getting called an "asshole" by a certifiable turd like Antonio Cromartie, who has apparently made it his goal in life to fuck/impregnate everything that moves, I dunno. On the one hand, I got your tuck rule right here, Tommy Boy; on the other, it doesn't seem right to get clowned by a guy with 9 kids by 8 women in 6 states.

So we'll see, but chances are the Jets bandwagon will stall right where it did last year. Pittsburgh's D does not give up rushing yards, so either Dirty Sanchez gets that noodle arm of his dialed in, or Rex "You Gonna Finish That?" Ryan and the boys are done for the year.

But at least they've kept it interesting. Meantime, I'll root for local hero Aaron Rodgers and his Packers to get past an overachieving Bears squad next week.

Angry Lo(ugh)ners

After all the usual hoo-ha over crosshair maps and Second Amendment remedies, and after all the Tucson victims have become useful totems for all sides concerned, perhaps the big takeaway from this weekend's events is how mundane it is anymore. Think about it -- the only thing that gives this story legs is its political context; without that it would be just another asshole shooting up another mall or whatever, and it would already have been forgotten.

The random-shooting-by-deranged-asshole seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon, not that most other countries don't have their incidents of lone nuts gaining notoriety the hard way. But we seem to generate them with alarming frequency, even for a large nation, but especially for a comparatively prosperous one. Violence in Third World countries and American metropolises predominates because people in those areas are frequently constrained in options.

But these suburban and rural commandos frequently have more options, yet choose to steep themselves in the toxicity of whatever's easiest, usually bad drugs and worse ideas. Arizona has always had a deep streak of yahooism, especially in its state politics but also in pretty much every square inch of real estate beyond the Phoenix city limits. It makes sense that something like this, should it turn out to be irrefutably political in nature after all, would happen in that state.

The desert landscape is beautiful, truly, but let's face it -- the people living out there have chosen to spend their lives in a wasteland of dust and scorpions and sweltering heat, while the urban areas live as if their water supply won't be gone in another 20 years, as the Colorado River continues to get siphoned off upstream. It takes a different breed of cat to live in Arizona, and there are some strange motherfuckers out in the boonies.

This useless prick that shot up the grocery store be-in, brave slaughterer of little girls and old women, is presumed to be mentally ill, though he damn sure well invoked the Fifth the second they started interrogating him about a possible Terry Nichols to his wannabe Tim McVeigh (which turned out to be the cab driver who dropped him off -- this fucking clown had a gun but no car.)

And of course on some level he must be, no rational person does this, yet the error is in presuming that his psychosis precludes any and all possibility of lucidity. After being told for several years by self-selected media clowns how Obama is about to institute a command economy and shuttle non-believers off to secret FEMA camps for RFID chip installation, somebody was bound to eventually do something about this imminent threat. Look, let's cut to the chase -- anyone who is sitting through Glenn Beck's teevee show, or buying Sarah Palin's "books", and attempting to glean some sort of coherent political analysis, is by definition mentally unbalanced. Law of averages, people, you get a couple million of these jokers, one of 'em's bound to snap.

In the end, it really doesn't matter what political ideology this jerkoff hewed to, because even reasonable speculation has revealed a great deal about some other folks. Here's the thing -- for the past two years we have watched a procession of increasingly crazy shit, the heightening of already volatile rhetoric, ever more disconnected from facts.

Declaring Obama a radical Moooslim Kenyan socialist, even after he faithfully catered to Wall Street thieves and continued almost all of Bush's most egregious policies. A former vice-presidential candidate schlepping around the country with a bunch of shopworn "don't retreat, reload!" slogans for the rubes, repeated ad nauseam, and endorsing House candidates via a map targeting opponents in crosshairs. A US Senatorial candidate threatening violent insurrection if the losers don't get their way.

Two dismal years of fist-shaking codgers disrupting town-hall meetings by incoherently screaming at their elected representatives. People strapping themselves with AR-15s to attend an event where the president is speaking, a previously (afaik) unheard-of notion. Faux News actively promoting the teabagger cause in a veil of fake populism, and hiring some of the loudest screamers. And so much more. Compared to what, the occasional antiwar protest, with the attendant burning of an effigy or two, and a guy with a Free Mumia tee-shirt.

So you gotta be kidding me that this all happened in a vacuum, that some disjointed and ineffective calls for self-admitted (and proud of it) war criminals Bush and Cheney to be indicted as such offset all this toxic guff these bozos have been leaking from every orifice. There has been an abundantly clear pattern of abusive, vituperative chunder and eliminationist rhetoric, not just at the usual soapbox levels but all the way up one side of this rotted edifice. These dopes try on their little tough-guy poses, getting all Travis Bickle on the full-length mirror before trying it out on unsuspecting passersby. They can't help themselves.

Something will come along, next week, two weeks, to fill this collective emptiness this society has carved between its ears, and out of its heart. And this will all be but a dim memory, another piece of meat for rabid dogs to fight over for our amusement and the Bickles to posture and preen, and pretend that this was a Second and/or First Amendment issue.

The main thing worth remembering is that the real victim here was Sarah Palin. Just ask her.

Hamsters on a Wheel

Let's cut the proverbial shiznit, a'ight? The "downturn" does not affect everyone, only almost everyone. But not anyone who matters. Have you checked the Dow lately?

The rentiers and grifters and credit default swap scumbags who lawn-darted the economy in the first place are making just as much money as they ever were. And fuckin' A if they don't practically seethe with pure contempt at the peons who dare question their deeds, their judgment, the consequences of their noble actions.

They get all bent about how hard they slave for what they earn, as if 70-hour weeks in an air-conditioned skyscraper with a supply of The Macallan and Ketel One and on-demand blowjobs from the secretary is such a tough ride compared to some unlucky schmuck who has to work three menial, stultifying jobs just to make rent. It does not seem to even occur to them how fucking galling that is to people who are not quite lucky or clever enough to have mastered the black art of corporate bookmaking, and therefore must actually work for a living.

The, ahem, "philanthrocapitalism" is all well and good, but perhaps doing things that actually have impact on this nation's most persistent economic affliction -- its banana republic level of income disparity -- might alleviate the resentment that troubles them so. Failing that, they could always make good on their threats to go Galt on us. Really, I just don't know how the rest of us would manage without being forced to bankroll their collateralized debt obligations.

Second Amendment Remedies

Nobody could have predicted....

Of course Mesdames Angle and Palin will rush to absolve themselves from any responsibility in this, and clearly this is a deranged individual (who of course must be allowed full access to firepower). No doubt one of their staunch defenders from the 82nd Chairborne will waddle forth with some sort of tendentious horseshit about how Ozzy Osbourne isn't responsible for every dipshit who kills himself with Suicide Solution playing.

But that is not this. This is precisely what Angle made a point of "rhetorically" warning about; this is the exact metaphor Palin chose to use for the entire campaign season. Well, someone locked and reloaded, honey; someone opted for that "Second Amendment [remedy]". How do you like it?

I do hope they're happy, Angle and Palin, if either of them even possess enough self-awareness to admit (if only to themselves) their role in this. More importantly, one or the both of them may slowly start to realize that they've got a tiger by the tail here, that the nasty guff they and their cohort have been peddling non-stop for two years has consequences when it reaches crazier ears.

But they won't, malignant narcissists never do. They just worry about how the blasting of Rep. Giffords -- and a judge, and a child, and others -- will affect them and their prospects.

Bastards of 2010

[With apologies to the late great Beast.]

Update (1/3/11): Thanks to RD in comments. For months every time I'd tried to access The Beast, I would get an Error 404 message. I had heard that the site was going under at one point, so I just assumed that it had. But the real deal is that my sidebar link was just suffering from a severe case of linkrot, which is now fixed. Thanks, RD!

10. Mark Burnett
Largely responsible for "reality" teevee taking over network and cable airwaves during the past decade. Not that teevee was ever a grand cultural medium, nor have humans ever been quite as exalted as they think they are. But thanks in large part to Burnett's schlocky efforts, anonymous nincompoops consider it a star-making turn to be dumped out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of like-minded assholes, and eat bugs for the amusement of millions of emotionally-stunted couch potatoes.

With his latest entertainment abortion, however, Burnett crosses the line in allowing someone with a lamentable degree of political viability to get paid to pimp themselves -- essentially a two-month campaign commercial in which the candidate gets paid to shill their own happy horseshit.

Sentence: To be dropped on a remote island, forced to eat grubs and deer penises in exchange for life-sustaining basics, only to be shot by Sarah Palin from a helicopter.


9. Fox News
For these guys, the Big Lie is not just dogmatic consistency, it's a proven business model. This year's list alone underscores the fundamental fact that, for a substantial portion of people, "facts" are incidental to the overall narrative they need to remain "vigilant", in the sense that your neighbor is "vigilant" for building a giant cinderblock tower on the side of his house so that he can keep an eye out for unicorns. Has more Republican candidates on its payroll than the RNC, to which it now openly contributes, which at least removes the long-standing pretense of "fair and balanced". Simply calling Fox an irresponsible journalistic enterprise does a disservice to truly irresponsible, yet far less damaging, journalistic enterprises, such as, say, the National Enquirer.

Sentence: To live in the financially, morally, and intellectually bankrupt backwater which it strives to create.

8. The Supreme Court
Ideological handmaidens of corporate rapacity. Purveyors of the periodic charade that Roe v. Wade is the be-all/end-all of jurisprudential knowledge and advancement, whilst bumwipe such as Kelo and Citizens United (not to mention, say, Bush v. Gore) pass through unabated. Possibly an even more sclerotic instituion than Congress, which takes some doing. Home of intellectual reprobates such as Combover Tony Scalia and Long Dong Clarence Thomas, which should be warning enough.

Sentence: Tied to chairs and forced to watch LA Law reruns until they promise to retire.

7. The Democratic Party
The proverbial pawl to the Republican ratchet of awfulness. Considering the supermajority they had after the 2008 elections, pound-for-pound quite possibly the most gutless, ineffectual group of cheesedicks this country has ever seen. Time and again, they found themselves flummoxed by bare minority opposition, undercooked Faux News rhetoric that a sixth-grader could have eviscerated, and a complete lack of internal discipline. It's bad enough when the usual circular firing squad forms, but it seems to be an ineffably Democratic trait to accomplish this feat whilst holding all the cards.

Unless, of course, you happen to be one of the Wall Street rentier scumbags who paid good money to have these chumps look after your bad bets, in which case, they did exactly what they were paid to do.

Sentence: Permanent irrelevance.

6. The Republican Party
From career asshole Mitch McConnell to tanorexic crybaby John Boehner to teabagger godfather Jim DeMint, this is a collection of goofballs and whackjobs right out of a Dick Tracy or Batman lineup. A bunch of moral cretins, acting on borderline treasonous impulses, who would rather stall and further wound an economically reeling nation, just for the opportunity to fuck over Barack Obama. Would probably filibuster a resolution expressing support of Mom and apple pie until they were allowed to attach some district earmarks. Ran two candidates for the US Senate in the last election (Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell) who were so marginal in terms of qualifications and, well, sanity, they made even Sarah Palin look somewhat rational. As difficult as it is to overestimate just what scumbags the leaders of this party really are, it is even more difficult to fathom why supposedly reasonable people would remotely identify with these sociopaths.

Sentence: Unemployment, and benefits have been cancelled.

5. George W. Bush
A solipsistic, birdbrained amateur, who seriously does not appear to understand just how badly he monkeyfucked the country during his reign of error. Still and always a gladhanding butt-boy to the haves and have-mores, if only because he has no concept of anything else. Seriously believes that his biggest failure was his inability to turn Social Security over to ass-raping Wall Street fiends, even after they nuked the economy. A living, breathing, stammering insult to anyone and everyone who has actually busted their ass to earn an honest MBA, or even just worked their way through life. Does not realize or care that most of the shit that's gone down the last several years really is his fucking fault. Still butt-hurt about that Kanye West thing, as if anyone besides Kanye West gives half a goddamn about anything Kanye West has to say about anything. Should stand as a stark warning about putting unqualified morons into higher office, but will probably end up being some sort of totem for the burgeoning know-nothings barnacling their way onto the hull of the ship politic. Brags that he read fourteen biographies about Abraham Lincoln while in office, which may explain why he never got around to learning the nuances of his job.

Sentence: Home mistakenly foreclosed on by predatory slice-and-dice operation that "accidentally" robo-signed his mortgage and tanked his pension on credit default swaps.

4. Barack Obama
In the kingdom of the people without balls, the man with one testicle is king. Constantly treads the fine line between capitulation and collusion. Seems to think punting on first down is a strategy. Not only is unable to garner credit for the few decent things he has accomplished, but has continued many of his predecessor's policies, even after swearing on a stack of Qu'rans that he wouldn't. Has managed to squander a supermajority in less than two years, even with most of the country understanding the enormously bad hand he was dealt. Does not seem to realize just how badly his Wall Street buddies have rolled him, and like Clinton, will ultimately have to hock what remains of his hide to them if he hopes to get what will at any rate be an utterly meaningless second term. May eventually get a clue that the only way to approach a completely thankless job is to say "fuck it" and at least try to take some suckas down with you.

Sentence: Four more years! Four more years!

3. You
You've really let yourself go, yet you don't seem to mind. You've spent most of the last decade watching has-beens and never-weres sort their sock drawers and give each other herpes, and are mightily offended at the notion that someone else might think they're smarter than you. You let smug assholes in DC and New York skull-fuck you at every opportunity, and are enraged that they don't respect you. You think it's always someone else's fault, never your own. If you're a man, you think Sarah Palin wants you to jump her bones; if you're a woman, you think she wants to share her secret moose chili recipe with you. You've convinced yourself that it's your god-given right to have a vehicle roughly the size of a Winnebago to run mundane errands around town. You'll fight to the death to protect your right to guzzle and squander, you might even send a protest letter if Jersey Shore gets cancelled, but not much else seems worth the effort. You know your kids think you're a jerkoff, but you have no idea why.

Sentence: Reap the whirlwind.

2. Sarah Palin
The Oprah dream turned on its head -- a petulant, obnoxious smartass, empowered by pure spite and gall. Let's face it, folks -- a person who knows barely half of what they're talking about, and can't be bothered to learn the other half, is not fit for higher office, as if George W. Bush's rotten tenure weren't proof enough of that. Communicates primarily by crafting catchphrases via incessant twittersniping, then repeating ad nauseam in her fundraising road show, since her audience is generally of the sort that needs shit recited to them over and over and fucking over again. Insists on riding fambly valyews schtick until the wheels fall off, yet has a fairly poor slugging percentage with her older kids, and seems content to use the younger ones as props.

Seems to seriously think that Michelle Obama's initiative to discourage childhood obesity is some sort of conspiracy to forcibly keep Americans from choosing to swim in Cheez Doodles and sodium benzoate (and having the rest of society subsidize their excesses). In a decent society, people like Palin would be relegated to harmless bridge club and quilting activities; here, she's a political rock star for morons. Here is America 2010 in a nutshell -- on a recent episode of Palin's reality show, fellow professional pain-in-the-ass Kate Gosselin made an appearance with her in-vitro brood, and at one point, both women apparently complained about the intrusiveness of the media and the hassle of being famous for being well-known. At no point did it to occur to anyone, including the halfwits who actually sit through this dreck, to turn the cameras (or the teevee) off.

Sentence: After attempting to parlay her heretofore humorous political career into talk-show gravy, Palin is dragooned by her army of gibbering maroons into running for President -- and somehow wins, upon which she instantly nukes Pyongyang (on order from her prayer warriors), and sets off World War III.

1. Glenn Beck
Yet another "only in America" success story -- pudgy alcoholic cokehead finds Mormonism and becomes Fox News' most popular moralizer, surely cable's coals-to-Newcastle moment if ever there were one. Makes a tidy living affirming every John Bircher legend and outright lie to unbelievably credulous audience. Calling Beck a professional calumniator would be like saying Lindsay Lohan might have a little substance abuse problem. As the saying goes, every word is a lie, including "and" and "the". Between the simpering fugues and the messianic delusions, Beck's career arc will make a fascinating case study for some future scholar trying to figure out how millions of idiots bought into Beck's pet notion that Woodrow Wilson turned us all into communists. As with most professional jackasses, Beck's success says more about his followers than about himself. It is actually scary to contemplate so many foaming-at-the-mouth morons willing to pay money for the third-rate product this asshole generates; the only sensible explanation is that they are not working nearly hard enough for their money.

Sentence: Fired, preferably from a cannon.

Random Public Service Announcement

Just wanted to give quick shout-outs to two of the many fine compadres lurking on the sidebar at yon right.

Our good friend The Vile Scribbler at The One True Blog always has an abundance of good stuff cooking, and is really swinging some lumber these days. Politics, philosophy, atheism, what have you, with nasty good humor and at a prolific pace.

Collapsitarian emeritus Dmitry Orlov, usually a fairly intermittent poster (like I can talk), has been throwing down some excellent jeremiads, and added some interesting guest posts into the mix as well.

Birth of a Notion

On the one hand, one understands the administration's reluctance to directly engage the foaming retards demanding that the Kenyan Moooslim produce his papers. On the other hand, it's nice to see someone finally willing to stand up and call "bullshit" on these chumps.

Mr. Abercrombie, who represented Honolulu in Congress until leaving Washington to run for governor, said he has initiated conversations with his attorney general and his health secretary about how he can make public more explicit documentation of Mr. Obama’s birth on Aug. 4, 1961, at Kapi’olani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu.

Good luck with that, but of course the real problem is that the actual document could be brought out at a press conference, and the birther goons would still find something hinky with it. Empirical evidence won't convince them, because they are never evidence-based about any issue, this particular one is just a convenient cover for their baser impulses.

Still, ignoring them hasn't made them go away or shut up, so maybe sunlight penetrating the edges might encourage them to scuttle back under the rocks whence they emerged. At the very least, to stand up and stop taking shit from these bozos on even one (1) issue might prove contagious. It is, after all, the season of hope, n'est-ce pas?

Big Balls

No chance, sadly, that these dickholes would ever learn anything, no matter how long or how patiently you sat explained to them why this is inherently racist. Their Hamlet-without-the-prince reinventions of the causes of the Woah of Nawthun Aggression are so ingrained, it will take generations to weed out of them, if it ever really is. You'd think that they would, at least at some point, bother to read their own founding documents. As with any (by definition anti-empirical) religion, this is unfortunately S.O.P. with this particular sort of mouth-breathing boob.

I suppose we should just consider ourselves lucky that only three hundred of these dipshits bothered to attend; it's almost enough to make you forget that they also most likely drive cars, have kids, and vote. With the sesquicentennial and all, get ready for at least five straight years of this shit, starting with Il Bubba di Tutti Bubbi, Haley "Six Chins" Barbour.

Oprah, Mencken, Mencken, Oprah

So, who wants to break it to Miss Thang that a nation of slack-jawed rubes, that has basically spent the last decade watching has-beens and never-weres sort their sock drawers on the teevee while their pockets were picked and their jobs sent to Shenzhen, is exactly dumb enough to put Sarah Palin in the White House?

Never put anything past the 'murkin public, dearie. Not only is there an abundance of assholes ready and willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces, they also seem to think that noses grow back after you cut them off. Still not sure whether that is better or worse than people waiting for Oprah to tell them what to do or read, or for Barbara Walters to tell them who the "most fascinating" people are (an annual exercise in tedium that somehow manages to exclude even marginally interesting people as a general rule).

It never ceases to be a source of amazement/amusement to me, the people who we choose (or have chosen for us) to dictate the tastes and tempo of what passes for cultural discourse. Oprah's preening dismay at La Palin would have more credibility if, you know, she hadn't had Palin on to pimp Going RougeRugRogue last year, and again with her bohunk pincushion daughter just a few months later. If you aspire to be a tastemaker, start by learning to tell the difference between soup and wastewater.

Update: This guy, who bravely took a bullet for the rest of us and read Sarah's latest two-ply scrawl, hits the nail right on the head: "There is no historical analogue in the political history of the United States because Palin is not a politician. She is Oprah for another segment of the country."

He's right. And fortunately, Palin is just smart enough to realize this, and to realize that she can make Oprah money doing that, rather than Obama money dicking around in politics. Which is a good thing, because America is just dumb enough to vote for her, given half a chance. Let the wisdom of fools trump the spiteful foolishness of mobs. Or something.

Season's Beatings!

You've probably already read this Ricky Gervais piece by now, but if not, you should.

Something to consider in the wake of the Don't Ask Don't Tell law finally being repealed, as people congratulate one another over the US finally joining every other industrialized nation in something, if not health care and education -- an openly gay politician has a much better chance of getting elected than an openly atheist politician (if there are any). Like Gervais, like most atheists, I choose not to pester people, religious or not, about my personal belief system. But I think most atheists could put their senses of morality and justice up against those of any devout person, and come up as good or better in comparison.

Generally we're just quiet about it, because we all have shit to do, and life is too short, and it's tough to talk people out of that particular tree; evidence obviously won't sway them on the subject, so rational discussion is usually not an option. But one could point out that there is only one openly atheist federal legislator (Pete Stark), and that's pretty much it at the federal level. Every time there's a Supreme Court vacancy to fill, the endless "diversity" trolls start counting gender and race as finely as they can, but when you get right down to it, it's six Catholics and three Jews.

It's easy to point the finger at American Christians -- sweet merciful Jebus, is it easy -- since most of them seriously seem to think that their religion was created in toto sometime between the landing of the Mayflower and the founding of the Republic. The idea that it could actually be a hodgepodge of cultures, histories, and traditions that co- or even pre-existed their usual touchstones does not seem to have even occurred to them. This does not, however, let the Euros off the hook, with their carefully sculpted hypocrisies -- state religions, symbols festooning public buildings, yet very little actual keeping of the practices. But very nice seasonal festivals, especially in the Germanic countries. So it goes.

Contrary to popular belief, atheists do have hope -- hope in the rational and empirical, hope that humans stop fine-tuning their traditional belief books to amplify their personal preferences, hope that they can eventually get over themselves and just leave other people the hell alone, instead of telling them what to believe or not believe.

Peace on Earth. Merry Christmas!

Useful Idiot

This has to be one of the most willfully obtuse screeds to litter the NYT in quite some time, and considering the roster of chuckleheads who poop out filler for them on a reg'lar basis, that really is saying something. Certainly the Arab world, as a whole, needs to do a better job in weeding out the regressive nutballs in their backyards, but for one, Persians are not Arabs.

Cohen seems blessedly ignorant of any possibility why some inhabitants of that part of the world, after a couple straight centuries of varying levels of colonialism, might tend to assume the worst of the US and Israel. The question is not that it might sound preposterous that the Mossad would have remote-controlled sharks attacking people at Sharm el-Shaikh; it does sound preposterous. But only because sharks, insofar as we know, cannot be lowjacked and utilized as remote-kill devices, not because there's no way Israel -- who, let's recall, just a few months ago sent two dozen agents into a Gulf State hotel to whack someone, pissing off several countries' diplomatic corps with their counterfeiting of passports -- would ever do such a thing.

It's as if this guy, not even sixty years later, has never heard of, say, Kermit Roosevelt.

Make a Joyful Noise

OK, it's basically an update of Dick in a Box, but that's not a bad thing. One of the more fun things to hit the teevee in recent memory.

Exception to the Drool

Been meaning to touch on this gem for a while, but busy week, blah blah blah, you know the drill. Besides, if this is an article, you know it's a slow news week in Bullshit City.

Anyhoo, let us cut the proverbial crap -- for each and every one of the turd-bruglars mentioned trumpeting about "American exceptionalism", it is a vastly different concept than what most sentient beings assume. The phrase actually used to connote, get this, a certain level of exceptionalism, that even beyond the blood-soaked history of slavery and genocide, there was a common desire to achieve and excel. This, along with serendipitous geography and the sort of gregarious aggression that stupefies Europeans, translated into progress over the last century.

But the exceptionalists have something more sinister, less achievement-oriented in mind. What they really mean is the divinely-ordained right to push inconvenient others around, to dictate the tempo of regional and global activity, to drive the world's bus even as the country itself devolves into an obese corporate despotism with banana-republic levels of income disparity. To such people it makes infinitely more sense to spend $3 trillion to depose and kill Saddam Hussein, displace or kill 10% of the Iraqi population, and leave the country a violent Iranian satrapy, than to spend even one-tenth of that trying to make sure that the public education system actually produces thinking, reasoning people.

They'll throw out some pseudo-populist red meat about those darned bankers, but rest assured not a one of 'em would turn down a fat donation from Lloyd Blankfein or whichever Armani-coated homunculus. But they do get an inordinate amount of mileage from the one-o'-yew pose.

This cheap anti-intellectual posturing always gets traction when one of them (you know which one) misspeaks, then is apoplectic at the prospect of it getting reported. This is the downside of having the cowed corporate media report every blessed thing to fall out yer piehole, dearie -- they regurgitate the fuck-ups as well.

The takeaway from that particular non-story is not whether Palin knows the difference between North Korea and South Korea, anymore than anyone seriously believes that Obama thinks there are 57 states. People misspeak. It happens. (Of course, the responses of each when people make fun of them for it is telling; Obama never says shit, while Palin instantly gets defensive and has a holy hissy-fit that someone is not completely deferential to her.)

Palin probably understands which Korea is which in the context of American interests; that is, she knows which one is designated as "our friend". That's not necessarily an insult; for all his rhetorical furbelows and oratorical vamping, Obama has so far demonstrated precious little real acumen for foreign policy detail. Aside from his stance thus far on Iran, one would be hard-pressed to delineate substantial differences from what he's doing, and what his predecessors or opponents would have done.

If we accept for the sake of argument that Obama does not have over Palin -- aside from proprietary information granted the office -- any substantial advantage in profound knowledge regarding the Korean peninsula, we then have to keep in mind their respective approaches. That is, a leader who does not possess deep insight on a particular subject surrounds himself with people who do. And that is the big difference -- where Obama will at least in good faith try to find someone temperamentally inclined to defuse volatile situations with unstable despots, Palin would pick John Bolton.

This is of a piece with her "commentary" as such, on pretty much any given subject, the predisposition to escalate virtually any conversation with obnoxious guff and mendacious flapdoodle. People who are looking for a problem can invariably create one if need be, the better to rally her legion of angry, ignorant, gibbering morons to the most tendentious arguments.

In the past, I might have been self-righteously offended at yet another god-bothering dickhole overtly insinuating that the religious, despite at least two thousand years of bloody proof to the contrary, are inherently more moral than non-believers, whether or not they practice what they preach, whether or not they know what they're yapping about, simply by virtue of belief. But really, it would be like leaving my dog in the house, and getting angry when she shits on the rug. The dog is doing the only thing it knows how to do; the fault is mine for not kicking the stupid fucker out before I left.

So it is here. The only question is whether we (whoever "we" may be in this case, perhaps folks with IQs above 90) still have the energy to rub their noses in it when they soil the rug.

The Evil of Banality

Is there no blessed end to this vapid cow?

"Of course, we all had to bite our tongues — more than once — as Tripp's father went on a media tour through Hollywood and New York, spreading untruths and exaggerated rhetoric," Palin writes.

Jesus Christ, lady. Project much? Has she done anything over the past two years besides fatten her wallet by traipsing around the country talking shit, bearing false witness -- which, and I may be wrong, since I'm a godless heathen atheist (especially if someone like Palin is remotely a "Christian"), explicitly violates an actual commandment -- and jacking up the rhetoric to a height that even a sizable chunk of Republicans can't stomach in good conscience?

Of course, it's always a mistake to use the phrase "good conscience" in the same sentence as "Palin", since the latter truly has only a nodding acquaintance with the former, having sold whatever soul she may have had for the cheap and easy rewards of fake populism and reality teevee.

Bristol Palin has been featured on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars," but Sarah Palin has a few words for Fox's "American Idol." She refers to "talent-deprived" contestants who suffer from "the cult of self-esteem."

"No one they have encountered in their lives — from their parents to their teachers to their president — wanted them to feel bad by hearing the truth," she writes. "So they grew up convinced that they could become big pop stars like Michael Jackson."

Uh-huh, and apparently an entire nation has decided not to hurt her daughter's feelings, because it's not like she can, um, actually dance, nor is she actually a "star", even by the loosest definition of that term. She's famous for exactly two things -- getting knocked up by an oily bohunk, and being the offspring of an increasingly tedious political bobblehead. But it's nice that America's Sob Sister has the fucking balls to lecture the rest of us on how to set our kids straight, seeing the bang-up job she's done so far.

I think it would actually be edifying -- for Palin, for her supporters, for the people who are sick of her very name and presence at this point and wish she would just take her pelf and scuttle back into the underbrush -- if she ran for president. I still think it's doubtful, if only because she's just smart enough to realize that the real money is in the cock-tease.

But she is also an irrepressible narcissist, increasingly in love with the sound of her own grating voice and peanut-gallery aphorisms on Teh Twitter. The idea of her schlepping around the country for two years, weighed down with her rubber-glue shields and campaign-prop progeny, growing increasingly exasperated at the prospect of only being able to preach to the choir, exhausting herself for the pleasure of self-selecting jerkoffs, is interesting to contemplate.

Perhpas the most telling sign that she's topped out is that, while a bunch of her no-name House dimwits made the cut in the midterms, almost all of her high-profile picks lost. Alaska seems to have launched its own in-house write-in campaign to shit-can professional asshole Joe Miller, almost as a direct rebuke to her, to send lifer Lisa Murkowski (whom they had rejected in the primary) back instead.

After having this braying fool and her tedious jabber halfway up our collective asses for two endless years now, the main takeaway is really not that Palin is offensive, or even especially stupid, in a profession full of card-carrying morons. It's how predictable and tiresome she became quite some time ago, if you think about it. The last eighteen months, at least, have been the same Johnny One-Note schtick, unvarying -- and worse yet, uninteresting. One of my favorite bits is that she has yet to say anything that is either true or correct, but let's add one to the mix: when was the last time she even said anything interesting, as opposed to merely provocative or obnoxious?

Politics is at heart a clown college, and American politics is little different fromt he rest of the world in that regard. Dipshits and poltroons abound. But in America, where things are supposed to be bigger and better, one might expect a higher grade of buffoon. Palin has neither the pedigree of Fredo Arbusto, nor the avuncular charm of Fred Thompson. She is merely the personification of the garden-variety uppity dunce you can stumble across, double-parked in a Sam's Club aisle, any given day of the week.

Just another area in which we've fallen behind. The least we can do is demand a better class of jackass, not this prickly, grudge-nursing hausfrau who, despite attending five colleges to cobble together a fucking communications degree, cannot assemble a coherent sentence.

Bobocracy

It's been a while, but this one is moronic even by Bobo standards:

The economic approach embraced by the most prominent liberals over the past few years is mostly mechanical. The economy is treated like a big machine; the people in it like rational, utility maximizing cogs. The performance of the economic machine can be predicted with quantitative macroeconomic models.

These models can be used to make highly specific projections. If the government borrows $1 and then spends it, it will produce $1.50 worth of economic activity. If the government spends $800 billion on a stimulus package, that will produce 3.5 million in new jobs.

Everything is rigorous. Everything is science.

Conservatives, who are usually stereotyped as narrow-eyed business-school types, have gone all Oprah-esque in trying to argue against these liberals. If the government borrows trillions of dollars, this will increase public anxiety and uncertainty, the conservatives worry. The liberal technicians brush aside this soft-headed mush. These psychological concerns are mythological, they say. That’s gaseous blathering from those who lack quantitative rigor.

Hanh? Lemme get this straight -- one of the most steadfast, indeed tediously consistent, preachers of the technocratic gospel is now protesting the supposedly topsy-turvy nature of What's Going On? Surely a heaping helping of doubleplusbullshit can't be far behind.

It’s been harder to dismiss morality as a phantom concern, too. Maybe in a nation of robots the government can run a policy that offends the morality of the citizenry, but not in a nation of human beings, as the recent elections showed.

Fair enough. Whence the morality, the righteous indignation, against the thieves and scammers who shitcanned the economy, forced the taxpayers to bankroll their "mistakes", are now sitting on hoards of cash that they won't lend out to rejuvenate the economy, and have dragooned a like-minded bunch of abettors to fuck people out of their homes with fraudulent paperwork? No, of course not; Bobo merely hangs his balding pate, shaking his head sadly at the Spock-like bloodlessness with which machine-messiah liberals insist on running our proud, tradition-rich society. This is truly a feat of some estimable proportions, to completely look past and implicitly absolve the destructive, sociopathic greed of a niche of derivatives pirates, and lob dickless wads of disapproval at the management style of -- wait for it -- a bunch of dickless drones who don't have the balls to take on their benefactors.

Lloyd Blankfein could demand a sacrifice of a thousand barbecued live infants for next Walpurgisnacht, and the Democrats would cringe timorously and murmur tepid disapproval, and people like Bobo would berate said Dems for their lack of support for our fine capitalist insect overlords. This is a rotten fucking little system all the way around -- the people who run and rape the finance system, the people who are supposed to legislate and regulate it, and the people who are supposed to analyze and report factually with at least a trace of intellectual honesty -- and it won't change until we set up a guillotine on Wall Street and make an example of some of these humps.

I do not understand why this has not been done yet. Perhaps at some point enough of the folks who are getting ass-raped out of their houses will band together and do or demand something. Or they may choose to wonder instead if Snooki takes it up the poop-chute. (Answer: mos def, but only if the hot tub's hot and the Four Loko is room temperature. A lady has to have her standards, even if said lady is really a transvestite Oompa-Loompa.)

Yes, if only we could just run things with a bit o' common sense, as if wage stagnation, income disparity, and banana-republic-level wealth stratification have not been ramping up and destroying the middle class for three decades now. I have absolutely no clues where Serious Thinker Bobo proposes that the "low debt" and "high savings" are supposed to come from, perhaps that bottomless pit of moxie and/or gumption that well-heeled bootstrappers like himself assume exists somewhere out in the vaunted flyover country that media dipshits constantly champion, but never seem to actually reside in.

With any luck, he'll someday find out firsthand. Really, if the market for corporate butt-boy suddenly fell out and Bobo had to make something resembling an honest living, it's difficult to tell what actual skill he has. Anybody can peddle tendentious "opinion" guff on unsuspecting passersby -- it's called blogging, and there's an infinite variety of better content produced for free across these here intartubez. At some point his toadying may no longer be cost-effective, and his periwinkle-collar commiserating may be put to the test.

The Memory Hole

The Great Revision continues apace, enabled not only by the usual complaisant chattering journos, but the éminence grise himself, a man literally without a pulse, but with a passion for gloss and invention that only a self-serving bastard can possess:

Addressing a crowd of 2,500 supporters and Bush administration veterans, Mr. Cheney said the response to Mr. Bush’s book showed that the country had begun to re-evaluate him.

“Two years after you left office, judgments are a little more measured than they were,” Mr. Cheney said. “When times have been tough or the critics have been loud, you’ve always said you had faith in history’s judgment, and history is beginning to come around.”

....

His dry wit seemed intact as he took a poke at Mr. Obama’s recent admission that there were no such things as shovel-ready public works projects. Referring to the groundbreaking, he said, “This may be the only shovel-ready project in America.”

Yes, and we all know what they're shoveling. They never stopped, really, they just took a break for appearance's sake, and now the shoveling recommences.

Cheney may just very well be genetically predisposed, hardwired to the extreme, to act as hatchet man for whatever slimy boss he toadies for. He's been doing it since the Nixon administration, it's second nature, the way he steps in to let Fredo appear to be above the fray, above the mess that Obama may now officially own, but nonetheless did indisputably purchase on consignment from these two bozos, the continued existence and success of whom is proof enough that karma is a polite fiction.

Humble Narcissism

Remember last year when the Dubya "Miss Me Yet?" billboard popped up out in flyover country somewhere, and most people either laughed or shrugged? Yeah, good times. Fredo has graciously stayed away for two full years, but now he's back pimping some two-ply compendium of lies, excuses, and half-witticisms, naturally with the help of the librul lamestream media. What are the odds on Oprah and/or the Sheinhardt Wig Company having a vested interest in whatever hack factory is publishing this doorstop?

But it's actually been good in a way, Fredo's return, because it conclusively proves that there's nothing to miss about him. He really did, and really does, suck in a very fundamental way. He has never second-guessed a single major decision he made, no matter how tragic the consequences were. Apparently he would have changed the "Mission Accomplished" banner (to what? it was never about appreciating troops, it was about playing dress-up and legitimizing his incompetence), and he was really really butthurt over what Kanye West said about him.

Kanye, as I said at the time, had the wrong end of the stick on that one. It's not that Bush doesn't care about black people -- his diversity record was perfectly fine, and he genuinely seems to be as inclusive and non-racist as anyone could hope.

It's that he doesn't care about poor people, because it is an alien experience to him. Oh, he's talked about his failed congressional run back in the late '70s, when he and Laura were starting a family and had no money. But that is not being poor; coming from an East Coast establishment family means that you may find yourself cash-poor at times, but there is always a fallback position, usually many. Poor means if you don't figure something out, you are well and truly fucked, you're a paycheck or two from living on the sidewalk, whatever.

Ann RichardsJim Hightower had it so right when shehe said that Bush was born on third base but acted like he'd hit a triple. This is a penetrating insight to the man's personality -- it really is incomprehensible to him that actual poor people, who literally cannot bootstrap out of their mess with hard work and/or gumption, because they are overworked and underpaid, and will probably work until the day they drop, that such people exist. His mother's infamous comment at the Katrina shelter in Texas illuminated that whole mentality -- she seems to regard poor people as another species -- so it would make sense that Junior, who literally has never made a fucking dime in his life without the imprimatur of his old man and Nazi-symp grandfather, would just have no clue.

So. A piss-thin excursion into the, ahem, decision-making process of perhaps the most notoriously bad decision-maker in recent history, merely as an opportunity to rationalize them, as opposed to rethinking them, or even assessing their consequences. He amazingly still regards his failure to privatize Social Security -- even after the biggest financial catastrophe in eight decades -- as his biggest miss, rather than the missed bullet that it was. (Oh, and the miscarried fetus in the jar. Holy fucking shit. This explains a lot.)

Bush is one of those people who constantly, almost reflexively professes commitment to principle and humility. But clearly it's all about him, everything is viewed through a prism of brushes with greatness and perceived slights. The decisions that George W. Bush made between 2001 and 2008 cost a lot of people their lives; the number of people affected directly in tragic fashion would be mid-eight to low-nine figures, and the number indirectly affected obviously much greater. We're paying the price right now for his deregulation of the financial securitization system, and will do so for years to come, if indeed "we" (as in, a meaningful percentage of the total population, not the 1% of moral parasites at the top who are doing better than ever, fuck you very much) ever do recover.

Tens or hundreds of millions of lives forever altered, destroyed by unnecessary war, unleashed sectarian brutality, domestic financial chicanery. But it's Kanye West that's kept him up at night. The fucking moral degeneracy of this person, the sheer solipsism it must take to capture and hold a world-view like that, is -- well, I'm not sure the proper word exists for it in the English language.

Speaking of degenerate narcissists who refuse to just fucking go away already, the Wasilla Hillbillies have themselves a ree-alitee show, from the fine folks at the basic-cable sump that used to be known as The Learning Channel, but now trucks in garbage like I Didn't Know I was Pregnant and makes scumbags like Jon and Kate Gosselin into preening fametard assholes. The estimable Tim Goodman, now writing for the Hollywood Reporter, takes this bottomless sack of crap with his usual good cheer.

Perhaps most surprising is that — in the first episode, at least — it doesn’t cast the best light on Palin’s kids. Piper, 9, doesn’t seem to listen much to what Mom asks, and teenager Willow seems moody and defiant, at one point sneaking her boyfriend upstairs to her room after Mom slid the baby gate (for Trig) closed and told him not to go up. You’d think with the whole Bristol Babygate thing, they might have edited that part.

There’s also paranoia about Joe McGinniss, who is writing a book about Palin and rented the house next to her. She talks about him (without naming him) constantly as the camera shows him about 15 feet away on his deck, face blurred out. But though Todd says McGinniss is writing “a hit piece on my wife” and Palin keeps asking whether he’s watching, what he’s doing is reading a book on his porch, oblivious. Todd built a 14-foot fence to give the family more privacy. “By the way,” Palin intones politically, “I thought that was a good example; what we just did others could look at and say, ‘This is what we need to do to secure our nation’s border.’”

Ohohoho, see what she did there? Fucking brilliant. This is definitely the sort of person who needs to be in a position of political prominence, an intellectually sterile soccer mom who hasn't heard the phrase "market saturation", but knows she appeals to impotent old farts and vapid sob sister cows who buy into that moronic "mama grizzly" schtick. The takeaway from Goodman's review is that the producers got the title ass-backwards -- it really should have been called Alaska's Sarah Palin. It's all about her and she knows it.

No one's tuning in to see Alaska scenery. That's what they have Rick Steves and that Travel Channel shit for. They're tuning in to watch this braying jackass affirm their grievances and validate their insecurities. And she eats it up, she loves the attention. I suppose it's too much to ask Todd to throw his back into it once in a while, just so's she doesn't constantly have to seek validation from the rest of the fucking planet.

Anyway, a little cross-promotion from Li'l Miss Humility:

"You're lucky," she said at a Republican rally in Orlando, according to the New York Post. "You're going to get to learn a little bit more about my state here in the coming weeks."

Palin also took a dig at the current President, saying he'd likely get a show called "Barack Obama's Golf Courses"… "sometime [around] November 2012."

See, because Barack Obama is a rich patrician who plays a lot of golf, which is an elitist sport, doncha know....

Wait. No, that was George W. Bush. Not that it matters, facts are useless, ignorance is strength, cokehead alcoholics have inside wisdom on how Woodrow Wilson turned us all into communists, and multimillionaires like Bush (and now Palin) are jes plain folks.

America Drinks and Goes Home

Did we learn anything tonight? Of course not. There is nothing to learn, nothing to prognosticate. It did not, in fact, really matter who "won". The donor classes won, as they always do. They're not in this for their health, you know.

Some will say that because Rand Paul -- an ophthalmologist who created his own licensing board in order to certify himself -- beat Jack Conway, that the teabaggers are ascendant. Others will say that because Casper W. MilquetoastHarry Reid squeaked past the teabaggers' shithouse rat in Nevada, that said 'baggers are not what they (and the media who legitimized them with endless profiles) think they are.

The baggers seem to seriously not understand that politics is a business, first and foremost, that there is a reason that the same conglomerates and people of wealth hedge their bets by renting both parties. It is a money game, and all their Paul Revere bullshit will only take them so far once they're actually in. I'm sure Rand Paul and his toupée think this will be some Mr. Smith Goes to Washington schitck for the rubes back home, but what it will be is stasis, a two-year Mexican standoff between obstinate upstarts and puling lifers who literally couldn't pull shit together with a supermajority.

Comic relief abounds, as always, but pound for pound the biggest humor may be found in the CA goobernatorial race, where eMeg Whitman spent a sixth of a billion dollars of her own money to end up six points behind Jerry Brown, who didn't even start advertising until Labor Day. She would have gotten better results -- and saved a buttload of money -- just by going around and handing three million voters twenty bucks each.

Hilarious as it is to watch Mrs. Griff Harsh IV blow an impossible amount of money for a dismal job no one in their right mind would want, there is an actual takeaway. Every election cycle gets worse and worse in this regard, but the Citizens United decision really sealed the deal on effectively making the permanent campaign a full-time by god industry. This is why toxic yahooism and borderline-retard candidates get covered, validated, legitimized, turned into the latest and greatest.

And in the end, neither Rand Paul nor Barbara Boxer, nor a single one them, really, will do a single thing to address the two greatest issues driving this country into the dirt -- wage stagnation and wealth disparity. Even a nudge of those two factors in the right direction would address a host of connected issues, from jobs to education.

But as the man famously said, it is impossible to get someone to understand something when his paycheck depends on him not understanding it.

Purple (Drank) Reign

From the wacky world of the NFL: I hate the Redskins, and I despise Mike Shanahan, so the fact that they're actually working out Drankenstein as a backup for Donovan McNabb and Rex "Sex Cannon" Grossman is nothing short of hilarious.

Meanwhile, the Raiduhs actually seem to be shaking off a typically crummy start, with their XBox Madden thrashing of Denver Sunday before last, followed by a pimp-slapping of Pete Carroll's crew a couple days ago. It's only been two in a row, but that's more than these guys have put together in a while, and a home victory over the overachieveing Queefs this Sunday would give them momentum into the bye week, and put them just a half-game out of the division lead.

Oh, and Randy Moss getting run out of Minnesota after one month. Fucking haw-haw, Farvonauts. Let the T-Jack era begin! And thanks for looking after my fondest football wish, that Randy never gets his ring. [Update: More on what a great guy Moss is here. Fuck this guy right in the neck.] The only thing that could make it funnier is if Wade Phillips makes a desperation move and pulls Moss off the waiver wire, as Kitna-bait for the soon-to-be-3-13 Cowpies.

With normally reliable (but make no mistake, hardly any less dysfunctional) NFL standbys such as Washington, Minnesota, and Dallas completely imploding, it is refreshing -- no matter how brief it ends up being -- for the Raiders to look, by comparison, positively functional, competent even.