Obama surrenders (over and over and over again)

I didn’t want to post today until a deal had been cut, but the more I read, the more I was hoping a deal wouldn’t get cut. Frankly, I’ve lost track of how many times Obama surrendered, then waited for the new demands so he could surrender again. But finally, despite all odds and not without a little begging, Obama got the Republicans to accept his surrender (on their terms, natch), and so we’re fucked. Not just fucked, but apparently Obama couldn’t even get them to use some lube. Frankly, I’m not sure he even remembered to ask if that was an option.

I haven’t been liking what Matt Yglesias has been writing lately, but I do like this comment he just made:

Suppose Barack Obama and Joe Biden walk into the negotiating room and simply offer to resign. Bam. Let’s all play Hail To The Chief for President John Boehner. What are his odds of re-election?

I think that’s a brilliant idea, and maybe some of our first tier bloggers could be bothered to set up some online petitions calling on both Obama and Biden to resign. The Republicans have made their point and they’ve made it clearly: do everything they command, or they’ll shut the country down.

And we’d better smile while they’re doing us because Colorado Republicans just proved they’ve chased all the sane conservatives out of the party by overwhelmingly picking Herman Cain in a straw poll. Yes, they hate America so much they’d elect Herman Cain just to stick it to liberals.

Not since the Civil War has one group of Americans hated America so much, but that’s not surprising because these are the great-grandchildren of the slave-owning peckerwoods who brought us the Civil War.

Raul Grivalja is furious, and the Progressive Caucus may yet having something to say about Obama’s surrender-then-negotiate bargaining skills. [more] The tweets are even less kind. [Black Caucus to join Progressives in fighting this obamanation] [buyer's remorse (include me in)]

David Neiwert thinks debt had nothing to do with it: this is all about impeaching Obama (not if we can primary the bastard first!)

Teapocalypse?

Digby on the Tea party contribution

Tea fraggers?

Ian Welsh says the Tea party is just a front

Even before Obama’s surrender was accepted, Greg Sargent was posting about the size of the Republican victory (immense, although I still have trouble accepting the destruction of our economic system as a win for anyone, even the oligarchs)

Graphs and charts

I’m not sure, but I think Grover Norquist just said that the Republicans are like teenage girl with their first orchid

Masaccio on the death of Keynesian economics and the resurrection of supply side idiocracy

Steve Benen on the politics of extortion

Glenn Greenwald

Jim Cramer erupts

Naked Capitalism says Adam Smith would have no clue what’s going on

A crude but sincere Obama poster

And, for my money, here’s the soundtrack for what just happened

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Other shit:

A tiny ray of hope from Alaska where a judge just denied bail to friend of Sarah’s (the right will scream, but when you take up arms against your government, it’s hard to see why bail would be justified)

The new big thing? giving up on public schools and buying tutors for your kids (don’t have money for tutors? well then, fuck your kids since you didn’t care enough to pile up wealth while it was there for the amassing)

Scott Walker living down to our expectations

How do you know if a state’s Secretary of State is a liar? Wait to see if they claim there’s illegal voting going on [more]

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After only six years in prison, Mike Hanson may finally be cleared of having killed his daughter. [more] The actual facts of the case make him sound very loving and caring, which must have made the trial a living hell for Hansen to go through. Again, we absolutely have to pass laws making prosecutors criminally liable for pushing bullshit cases solely to advance their political careers.

And, once Hansen’s been freed, maybe the folks behind the Femicide Report will remove his daughter from their carnographic list of child victims. Sorry, I’m sure the list is compiled by well-meaning activists, but there’s more than a whiff of Nancy Grace to many of the folks who think criminals get off too lightly in this country.

I found their list while trying to find the name of the prosecutor who stuck it to Hansen, but that information is proving elusive. If you understand how to find this kind of information, please let me know who the prosecutor was because they’re not the prosecutor now and that suggests they won higher political office, or a judgeship.

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I agree with Jane Hamsher most of the time, but today she totally jumped the rails and massively failed to get Bernie Sanders’ point. Primarying Obama isn’t about Bernie’s huge ego wanting him to be president. Eugene McCarthy never got elected president but thanks to Clean Gene, LBJ had to step down.

Obama needs to step down, but if no one primaries him, he won’t. Not sure where Hamsher’s coming from, but I’ve had more than enough of Mr. Obama. Let Bernie embarrass him, and then let’s see what happens.

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Etc.:

Ry Cooder on banksters [video]

A chart to better illustrate the point of a new study that proves that “pirates” are in fact the labels’ very best customers

Maher on the Bachmanns [video]

Timothy Urbanski is absolutely the dumbest child porn perv ever

Mark your calendars: this year’s Fighting Bobfest will be September 17

The Minnesota Lynx: way better than you thought a pro team from MN could be

Indy bookstores surviving . . . by serving wine? (I commented elsewhere that if bookstores want to survive, they need to provide refuge like libraries used to before they became free internet access centers)

A post marred by gratuitous cursing and excessive alliteration (i.e., more of the usual)

Orange you glad Speaker Boehnerer decided to dabble in Newtian physics? Physic in the sense of a good laxative, and I think just about everyone’s agreed by now on who needs to be purged from our body politic. Boehnerer needs to go. The party of let’s-change-the-rules when we’re in charge needs to go. Eric Cantor needs to be bound, beaten with iron rods and then dropped down a well, preferably one that’s part of the aquifer for a gated community. A pox on all their castles.

Obama doesn’t get a pass, either. 36,000 Twitterers have unfollowed the O-ster in recent days, myself included. My only regret is that we never hooked up on Facebook, so I can’t unfriend him but I take comfort in knowing that Harry Belafonte keeps biting O’s bony ass.

Deal? Do you still even give a micro-fraction of a flying fuck? Every deal mentioned to date fucks us and feeds Wall Street. [Note: I erroneously blogged the other day about some justice for Madoff victims, but Joe Nocera points out just how heinously selective that justice is going to be.]

What’s left? Ratchet up the rhetoric and start calling them all cunts? Which, in the British sense, they all are but that doesn’t take you to 11, which is the minimum appropriate setting for outrage these days. Spelling cunt with a k won’t get you there either, not even with swastika sprinkles. Fookin’ prick-faced, Goebbels-eating, Himmler-fellating, auto-prostate massaging kunts? Even if you graded that on a social promotion curve it doesn’t get you to 12. No, what we need is a shockproof outrage meter that dials all the way up to leventy-seven which, in base Pi, is the number of the beast. Don’t believe me? Try dialing it and see if a Koch brother doesn’t pick up the phone. Or, more likely, Jon Kyl in a French maid’s uniform.

In short:

This is the least best of times, the most fucked of times, the stage rage of Cantor, the faux mage of Obama, the epoch of delusion, the bebop of collusion, the season of Light, the season of the bitch, ohhhhhhh noooooo, the season of the witch.

Crocked or loaded, take your pick, it’s not going to get any better between now and November 2012. Not when GOoPers are running around comparing public education with Nazi Germany.

Check on the lack of debt ceiling progress here. Click it as many times as you like, you’re never going to find what you’re looking for.

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Matt Yglesias reminds me why I don’t like the way he thinks. Overpaid at $175,000 a year? What are you really saying Matt? That people with normal jobs can’t ever get paid well no matter how well they master their field?

I have no trouble with a wage scale that would range from $20,000 a year to a quarter-million dollars a year with $20k the new minimum wage and a quarter million the wage a lot more Americans would earn if only we realized that no one on this planet is worth millions of dollars a year. (OK, maybe some people are worth way more than others, but glory should count for something and if we didn’t overpay them at the top, maybe we’d appreciate them a little more and might actually let them know it but why have a parade down Main Street for someone who owns Main Street?)

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Serious stuff:

Michael Massing: It’s Time to Scrutinize Fox [because they won't stop until we make them stop] [seriously, make them stop]

Power Trip: FDL interviews Amanda Little

James Glick on How Google Dominates Us

emptywheel with video of Anthony Romero sitting next to Alberto Gonzales, and David Cole next to John Yoo

Thom Hartmann on CEOs and jobs [video with scary stats about our "insane trading policies"]

More video: It Gets Better [non-preference based version for the sometimes GLBT but often not socialists]

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Etc.:

Live long and prosper

Breaking: oldest image of Jesus ever discovered (apparently he had a nose like a pig and horns)

Kelsey Grammer plays Rahmbo in his new premium TV show (silly wingnuts: we hate Rahm too!)

Daily Caller smokes some hash tags

Class reunion fail

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Matt Damon, fuck yeah

Another new end of post category. Collect them all.

Post-Boehnerist America

A despicable, fact-bending article from the NYTimes on Jefferson County, Alabama, a place Matt Taibbi’s written about frequently because they exemplify the swinishly rapacious Morgan Stanley’s ruthless way of doing business. The Times mentions Morgan Stanley, but not until you’re 500 words into their story, and then quickly dismiss the Wall Streeters as a secondary catastrophe with a state supreme court decision in first place.

Pettifoggery and skullfucking propaganda from a newspaper that publishes in the shadow of Wall Street. Shame on the NYTimes. I’ll give them a smidgeon of credit for mentioning on page 2 the heinous Bankruptcy Act of 1988 (hellooooo Joe Biden!) that made it all but impossible for municipalities to evade debt but they don’t mention Biden and they don’t bring up Morgan Stanley again.

In the NYTimes, shit just happens. In fact, I almost wonder if they didn’t drag this up just to make Congress look less stupid. At the very least, the Times and Taibbi versions of the same story serve notice that you can’t rely on the establishment media to tell us jack squat about how Wall Street has screwed over the country while competing to see which billionaire can stack his money the highest.

Also:

Americanizing Europe’s finances (oh boy!)

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Nothing new since last night, although the WaPost’s front page story on the debt ceiling seems to be permanently stuck on 3,000+ comments. New story every day, but always showing 3,000 comments. That’s a lot of people writing about the debt crisis, and none of them using the word fuck. That can’t be easy.

Oh, there will be a critical Sunday vote. Really critical. So critical I almost clicked that link, then decided I was better off not knowing. Study this shit too closely and you’ll go blind.

Colby King on Rush’s contribution to all of this (King, btw, is waaaay too kind to Obama but, limited by a stylebook that won’t let him cuss, far too kind to Limbaugh)

Boehner the poster child for Republican dysfunction?

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A George H.W. Bush-appointed federal judge has just ruled that human genes can be patented, reversing a saner lower court ruling. [more from Mike Masnick]

You should not be able to patent nature, but our courts keep letting scumfucking, lawyered up corporations do exactly that. I don’t think we’ll be able to salvage our legal system when this is all said and done, not unless they just up and throw out twenty years of Republican judicial malfeasance and crippling, pro-corporate precedents.

In the lighter side of businesses suing businesses, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has, after 675,000 pages of evidence read, 120 case precedents and 20 federal statutes cited, ruled that you cannot trademark the way you quilt your toilet paper. Neither article says how long each court deliberated, but I’m guessing that if we knew the ratio of time spent on DNA patents vs toilet paper trademarks, we’d have a good benchmark on where this country is heading, and how fast.

All the right ever does is talk about tort reform, as if individually brought law suits are a problem. The vast and overwhelming preponderance of civil suits in our courts are brought by corporations suing other corporations. If nothing else, this is an example of overpaid attorneys sucking all the money out of the system that seemingly only rewards top executives and the legal department.

The worst thing about our legal system? The ways in which the rich and powerful settle, and never have to disclose terms. Once they step foot into a public court, everything should be made a part of the permanent public record.

Oh, and this being Saturday morning, yes, there were some even more hinky court decisions passed down late yesterday to be lost down the weekend news hole. But you don’t care about anthrax terrorism, do you?

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OK, I will grudgingly admit that recently I’ve found Jon Stewart makes more sense than all the rest of our reporters put together. Then again, I don’t watch any televised news, I don’t listen to NPR or any radio, and I’m selective about which print media reporters I read.

So maybe other people covered this as well, but I doubt they did it as well: Jon Stewart on “The Town,” the movie the GOP used to rally their troops late this week.

Fucking stunning. Fucking amazing, too.

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More:

Phoenix Woman on Ass®ocket’s latest conflict of interest buffoonery in the service of oligarchs

Tild picks on Bradlee Dean and Marcus Bachmann (I hear they’ve been dating)

C v C

Bush still making excuses about My Pet Goat

PZ v Chris Hedges

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Aw jeez. There are stories now about rightard religious whackos destroying Native American religious artifacts in some sort of Talibanesque exercise in religious big dickism.

Fucking dominionists. Worst threat to democracy since Henry VIII.

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Etc.:

Rainn Wilson’s top ten SF books (a very old list and one that I’ve mostly read, often the same paperback editions) (also includes a book by Minnesota’s own Cliff Simak) [by coincidence, another blog post I read today that focused on vintage science fiction, and while not written by a Minnesotan, Poul Anderson did graduate from the U of M]

Woven spider silk textile (sounds boring but it’s actually a big deal)

You got helicopter in my airplane

I thought about posting this cartoon upside down just to see if anyone would notice. I think it works both ways.

Boehner’s bill passed and now goes to the Senate where it will be rejected — whoops, I meant to say tabled. More:

Unsurprisingly, Tim Scott [R-SC] voted no (as did Bachmann)

Boehner has been refusing to take calls from Obama (shades of Newt!)

Thursday night characterized (by one who was there) as “buckets of crazy”

How it all played out when Republicans were in charge

Collateral links:

Dave Johnson: It’s not a debt crisis!

Weren’t we investigating Standard and Poors for gross professional malfeasance?

Yves Smith on Third Way horseshit

Jonathan on monetary theory

Dave Neiwert on the Latin American vibe

And the to-be-expected admissions that no, it’s not both sides, but the operative meme is still to make it be about Obama even when 100% of the obstruction is Republican, and incoherent to boot (not to mention Fox’s coverage). The make it be about Obama strategy is smart, because Obama’s poll numbers are cratering thanks to liberals like me who are furious with him for a wide range of reasons. Pollsters, of course, don’t probe the whys too deeply, just the RNC-selected wherefores (whorefears?).

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Bunny Greenhouse gets just shy of a million bucks from the Army Corps of Assholes.

More of this, please.

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Pew Research says the press has pretty much handled Michele Bachmann with kid gloves so far. Let’s see if she gets a pass on the latest fringe right lunatic to come on board the good ship Lesbo-Islamo-Homophobia (gays are so scary you’ve got to mention them twice, both the gay guys and lesbian ladies).

More politics:

A few days old but timeless and hilarious: Jon Stewart on GOP: Special Victims Unit

Driftglass: Parry Hotter

I don’t like Jon Huntsman, but I do like that he’s an actual conservative and not another Fox-watching bonehead

Nothing could be more appropriate than getting the latest update on newly released secret Nixon documents from the AP’s Nedra Pickler (if this topic interests you, use Google News to find more sources as I’m sure Nedra left some good stuff out)

Newt bloviates about the Middle East

Tim Penny unloads on Gov. Bridgefail in the Des Moines Register

Gov. Branstad is, as expected, repolarizing the state with his brand of class warfare (if it’s Democrat, it’s bad for you! Boo! Boo!) (like Pawlenty, he really is a creep and I’m sorry Iowans let him back in)

Harkin busy clearing his name after a drive-by industry flack-attack by Fucker Carlson’s Daily Caller

And ye shall know them by the little things they do when they think no one is watching (if their God is so great, why do they resort to such sneaky strategies? this is strictly punk assed)

Rupergate update

Pat Roberts, partisan prick (there is nothing standard or usual about blocking judges like this, this is new, it’s post-Borkian spite and thousand-fold revenge on moderate nominees in the name of a radical who was rightfully kept off the bench)

Jonnie fucking Marbles convicted (congrats you limey arsehole on getting your pasty ass whupped by a middle-aged woman while making the most evil old men on the planet look sympathetic)

Coming soon to a living room hopefully not too near you

Voter ID turned back in OH

Before you give Scott Brown a pass as a better than average Republican, read this

Ft. Atkinson tells Scott Walker to fuck off (not a bad crowd considering it’s not a big town) [WI 'pugs start their own news service (but forget to tell anyone it's theirs)] [strictly ratfucker stuff]

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Still more Breivik:

Justin Raimondo with some sensationalized implications

Scroll to the very end for a startling bit of news about online interaction between Pam Geller and Anders Breivik!

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Etc.:

Terry Gilliam update

The Republic continues to decline, in Illinois maybe faster than in other places

Rosa Parks update

Using Fox network Islamofascist guidelines, apparently all DEA agents are child porn fiends

The shit that sexually insecure assholes do

Boing Boing on fuck

TechDirt pounds on patent myths with some excellent examples

NBA hardballing themselves into a major shakeup?

I don’t know if he cares, but I’d forgive Scalia for everything if he’d whip a 5-4 decision to invalidate software patents

…And Morrissey is worse than PETA (which is not unlike being found to be lower than a yeast infection in a dead whale lying at the bottom of the ocean)

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The future is here, and corporate America didn’t get an invite.

If you’re on my email list, you just got an invite to join Diglo.com. Do so. Diglo is the first (that I know of) file locker to operate on social networking principles. With Diglo, you can share files of ANY size with your friends.

Yes, I thought that might get your attention. If, for example, you were trying to get a copy of London Boulevard, a very hard to find but otherwise excellent movie, you could get it from a friend who had a Diglo account. Just sayin’.

Not on my email list but thinking maybe you’d like to be my Diglo friend? Email me and I’ll hook you up. Or just join and search for Norwegianity to get on my list. You’ll be glad you did.

No rush, btw. Diglo is getting new members right now at a prodigious rate, and the upload speeds are at a crawl so it would probably be early next week before London Boulevard will be (hypothetically speaking) uploaded (whoops, the upload speed just jumped considerably, so maybe sooner!)(no, hmm, slowed back down again, this could take a while)(um, yeah, quite a while).

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Gregg Steinhafel, fuck you

Don’t know why this hadn’t occurred to me before. Much more fun than R.I.P.s.

A more up-to-date post

Why no one on the left reads the Washington Post anymore:

Lessee, we’ve got Jennifer Rubin, a hopelessly right wing activist; Ezra Klein a very slightly left-of-center former blogger; Chris Cillizza, an old school he said/she said reporter who always defers to the establishment; Charles Krauthammer, a brilliant but morally crippled Zionist; and the Associated Press which has been laundering the news on Wall Street’s behalf for decades.

No Krugmans here. Hell, they can’t even scrape up an actual fucking economist to comment on the biggest economic story of the past few years.

Fail. Massive fail. Ending up in the ER because you threw your back out trying to have oral sex with yourself fail.

Take a bow, Washington Post. This may be your proudest moment ever.

 

 

 

 

 

52 links (& they’re all leftovers but that’s OK because nothing’s changed since yesterday)

Not much new on the debt ceiling, not much having happened other than Megan McArdle getting the weekend off. More:

The collapse of political trust (after thirty years of Republican sappers undermining national unity? who’d a thunk it?)

Reich: this is the worst (right now, here and now, this is THE worst)

Krugman (Digby on Krugman)

Republicans started their Thursday with this exhortation: “Put on your helmet, buckle your strap, run onto the field and beat the shit out of ‘em”

Republican ad clearly states that life as we know it will end if they do not get their way on this, whenever they decide what that way is (and then figure out how exactly this Congress thingamajig works)

Robert Reich: what budget crisis?

Digby on their math

Even the hyperpartisan Chas. Krauthammer thinks Bachmann’s debt stance is “unbelievably irresponsible”(which, of course, just means Krauthammer supports a different Republican)

Taibbi on Sirota on greed (Sirota follows up)

Jon Talton (I don’t think anyone’s more disgusted than former Republicans)

emptywheel on systemic failure

And still more from Digby

Matt Stoller on Republican fail

The platinum coin option (seriously, this could all be fixed by minting just two magic platinum beans coins!) (and that says a lot more about our economy than I care to think about)

Like a dinosaur reacting to that arrow you shot into his tail last week, Eric Cantor is beginning to feel some pain

And there are still more reasons to despise Republicans:

Have you ever noticed that it’s NEVER Newt’s fault?

Bachmann slip slides away from tough questions (she’s been a hypocrite ever since she ran for public office) [video]

Kos on the FAA mess

The notoriously tiny penised Bradlee Dean’s lawyer says, “Rachel Maddow’s career is over” (really?)

Rick Scott fucks with more Floridians because that’s what he does

Charles II with an excellent summary on the latest in Murdoch’s depraved news corpse action [didn't Evelyn Waugh write about this in 1938?]

More on the NYTimes O’Keefe whitewash

The party of personal responsibility (ever notice they always have an excuse?)

MN bloggers didn’t call Bridgefail a weasel just to be mean, Pawlenty really is incapable of admitting error or resisting the urge to take cheap shots at others

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News:

Why do our laws work when it’s Bernie Madoff, but not when it’s Wall Street in general?

Jobs need to be done, people need jobs — what the fuck is wrong with Republicans that they can’t put people and jobs together unless some insanely overpaid douchebag CEO says so? (and only after Congress enables even lower wages, less benefits but more bonuses for the people in charge?)

Sue, Shirley, sue (see Andrew run — run, Andrew, run)

Half the rich fucks MN Republicans just went to the mattresses over don’t even live in Minnesota

For some odd reason, Minnesotans are siding with Dayton over the Republican lege by 2 to 1 (prompting Mitch Berg to tweet that the pollster used was unacceptable, mostly because he wasn’t Frank Luntz, who can always be counted on for a reacharound)

Research scientists discover that when you have a news media that never factchecks anyone, it only takes 10% of society believing something (anything) and that opinion will eventually become the majority opinion (unless it involves smoking pot, keeping abortion legal or not going to war)

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Leftover Breivik:

Timothy Egan on the right’s continuing hubris fest

Jon Stewart on Fox on Breivik

Breivik bought his high-capacity ammo clips from the U.S.A.(U.S.A.! U.S.A.!)

More on Breivik’s online reading habits (no, he didn’t get that way by reading Salon)

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Etc.:

Celebrities on the intertubes, circa 1995 [video]

Modern copyright exists solely to protect the right of corporations to rip off the talented

Minnesota’s new laws

I had no idea Boing Boing is 23 years old! (or that it was inspired by Paul Krassner!)

As Apple turns into Microsoft, cont.

MOMO bumps price of admission to $25 (how exactly does society benefit when only people with money are allowed to see art?)

Turning every game into the 1936 Berlin Olympics, yeah, that’s the ticket [more]

Why I don’t go to parks where there are children, cont.

Stieg’s Stockholm

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Hideki Irabu, R.I.P.

Steinbrenner called him a fat toad. I don’t think he ever got over that.

Bill, the Galactic Hero

Nothing to tie this into since we’re not at war or anything, but I’ve been wanting to share this scene for a long time. For science fiction fans, there are three major novels that speak to America at war: Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (WWII), Joe Haldeman’s Forever War (Vietnam) and Harry Harrison’s Bill, The Galactic Hero (Catch-22/M*A*S*H). We join Bill, a farmer on a hick world, shortly after he encounters an off-world military recruiter who has made a career out of drafting volunteers.

“No,” Bill said, a little amazed at his own firmness of mind. “I don’t really want to. Technical Fertilizer Operator . . .”

“And not only will you receive this lovely uniform, an enlistment bonus, and a free medical examination, but you will be awarded these handsome medals.” The sergeant took a flat box, offered to him on cue by a robot, and opened it to display a glittering array of ribbons and bangles. “This is the Honorable Enlistment Award,” he intoned gravely, pinning a jewel-encrusted nebula, pendant on chartreuse, to Bill’s wide chest. “And the Emperor’s Congratulatory Gilded Horn, the Forward to Victory Starburst, the Praise Be Given Salutation of the Mothers of the Victorious Fallen, and the Everflowing Cornucopia which does not mean anything but looks nice and can be used to carry contraceptives.” He stepped back and admired Bill’s chest; which was now adangle with ribbons, shining metal, and gleaming paste gems.

“I just couldn’t,” Bill said. “Thank you anyway for the offer, but . . . “

The sergeant smiled, prepared even for this eleventh-hour resistance, and pressed the button on his belt that actuated the programed hypno-coil in the heel of Bill’s new boot. The powerful neural current surged through the contacts and Bill’s hand twitched and jumped, and when the momentary fog had lifted from his eyes he saw that he had signed his name.

“But…’

“Welcome to the Space Troopers;” the sergeant boomed, smacking him on the back (trapezius like rock) and relieving him of the stylo. “FALL IN!” he called in a larger voice, and the recruits stumbled from the tavern.

“What have they done to my sonl” Bill’s mother screeched, coming into the market square, clutching at her bosom with one hand and towing his baby brother Charlie with the other. Charlie began to cry and wet his pants.

“Your son is now a trooper for the greater glory of the Emperor,” the sergeant said, pushing his slack-jawed and round-shouldered recruit squad into line.

“No! it can’t be . . .” Bill’s mother sobbed, tearing at her graying hair. “I’m a poor widow, he’s my sole support . . . you cannot . . . I”

“Mother. . .” Bill said, but the sergeant shoved him back into the ranks.’

“Be brave, madam,” he said. “There can be no greater glory for a mother.” He dropped a large and newly minted coin into her hand. “Here is the enlistment bonus, the Emperor’s shilling. I know he wants you to have it. ATTENTION!”

With a clash of heels the graceless recruits braced their shoulders and lifted their chins. Much to his surprise, so did Bill.

“RIGHT TURN!”

In a single, graceful motion they turned, as the command robot relayed the order to the hypno-coil in every boot. “FORWARD MARCH!” And they did, in perfect rhythm, so well under control that, try as hard as he could, Bill could neither turn his head nor wave a last good-by to his mother. She vanished behind him, and one last, anguished wail cut through the thud of marching feet.

“Step up the count to 130,” the sergeant ordered, glancing at the watch set under the nail of his little finger. “Just ten miles to the station, and we’ll be in camp tonight, my lads.”

The command robot moved its metronome up one notch and the tramping boots conformed to the smarter pace and the men.. began to sweat. By the time they had reached the copter station it was nearly dark, their red paper uniforms hung in shreds, the gilt had been rubbed from their pot-metal buttons, and the surface charge that repelled the dust from their thin plastic boots had leaked away. They looked as ragged, weary, dusty, and miserable as they felt.

Much like the U.S. after a Republican presidency. I like all three of those books, but if I could only have one, I’d take Harrison’s. It speaks to our times, even if we’re not at war right now. Or do Afghanistan and Iraq still count?

Protecting your right to be uninformed

At some point you just have to stop and wonder if the so-called conservative wing of the American electorate has a fucking clue, or if they’ve surrendered their cognitive abilities to a higher income bracket.

There is only one thing government efforts to combat obesity have in common: every measure, every guideline, every restaurant regulation is aimed squarely at giving consumers more information about the food they’re eating. There are zero taxes out there meant to discourage food consumption, no government warning labels, nada, zippo. All the First Lady and Congress have ever done is to put more information about the food you eat into your hands.

And the professional worrywarts on the right just can’t fucking stand that.

But a growing chorus of critics, including some conservative politicians, say the government has no business — or hope of succeeding — in the weight-loss arena.

“It’s the individual’s responsibility,” said Steve Siebold, author of “Die Fat or Get Tough.” “For the majority of us, we need to stop putting the pizza in our mouth, and it’s not the government that’s going to get us to do that. It’s about making a personal decision to make it happen, not letting the nanny state take care of us.”

Last fall, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin characterized first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” anti-obesity campaign as an assault on individual rights.

“What she is telling us is that we can’t trust parents to make decisions for their families in what we should eat,” Palin told radio host Laura Ingraham. “Instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician’s wife priorities, just leave us alone.”

No damage is being done to anyone but the churlish assholes who pump up the fat grams and calories and then pretend they’re serving diet platters. The Siebolds and Palins and Ingrahams are whoring for fat peddlers and the ad money hungry media establishment laps up their comments while refusing to apply even the tiniest bit of scrutiny to their obvious hypocrisy.

No one in government has ever tried to stop you from eating a Big Mac. All they’ve done is to try to tell you what you’re doing to yourself when you eat a Big Mac. Just because food education and drug education use the same tactics doesn’t mean they’ll ever pass laws making fatty food illegal but the hysterical side of the Wurlitzer always fears that everyone else thinks like they do, and when the right doesn’t like something, they make it illegal and they punish everyone who disagrees.

Let’s make a list. How many things have liberals made illegal in our lifetime?

Sugar? Nope. Absolutely no restrictions, in fact we subsidize its production.

Grease and fat? Nope again. You could add a shot of vodka to a cup of bacon grease and no federal or state law would prohibit you from selling it to death-seeking morons.

Tobacco? Last I checked any 18-year-old could still buy cancer sticks. They’re taxed, but not prohibited.

Booze? I can’t remember who pushed harder for raising drinking limits again, but I seem to recall more than a few blue-nosed religious temperance types being involved.

Leave a comment if you can think of any vices or products liberals have restricted access to because I honestly can’t think of anything, and I’m really tired of the whining about nonexistent nanny-state behavior. [And check out this unbelievably lame argument for why reducing salt in prepared food is bad (because in NYC, no one is allowed to put a salt shaker on your table!).]

I’m also tired of the hysterical right never finding any problems with the establishment right’s creepy insistence on secrecy.

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Glenn Beck’s big mouth is getting international attention. I’m sure he’s very pleased with himself.

In other news of what evil people do:

Cutting off medical care for 9/11 cancer victims

Aluminum hoarding

Wealthocracy

Republican donors reveal quarterly profits (billions in, a few millions out all in small checks)

Add Black Hebrew Israelites to your list of religious bad guys (use another sheet of paper if you have to but be sure to also add whatever church John Heuer belongs to)

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If the right really wants to balance the budget, why are we still throwing money away on military aid to unpopular juntas?

More on the default eaters:

Terrance Heath

Keith Ellison

Isaiah J. Poole

Batocchio

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Breivik:

Blaming ourselves, round one

Rape jokes start up (the usual source, i.e., people who think rape is a joke and that intolerable prison conditions are funny)

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Etc.:

The kind of motivational talk we don’t get nearly enough of: it’s not about anything except getting off your ass and doing [fill in the blank]

The tiny penis guy (aka, the human-size skid mark), getting more of the attention he craves

John Walker Lindh update

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Bradlee Dean overcompensates for his tiny penis (again) (and again)

I suspect the Rev. Bradley Dean Smith will long look back on today as being the day he went on national TV and made a speech but not until several months had passed learned he hadn’t been wearing any pants. Suing journalists for repeating what you were taped as saying? Oh my.

According to Smith, better known as Bradlee Dean, Maddow and other unnamed news outlets defamed him by tweaking comments made on his radio show about Christians taking a lax stance toward homosexuals.

In an interview with City Pages earlier this month, Smith talked in great detail about his belief that the media has unfairly targeted him.

“It’s hurtful crap people say,” Smith said of the media. “And they say, well, you’re a public person. But then you think about Jesus Christ up on the cross being crucified, and what was he crucified for? He was crucified for their sins. That’s a hard lesson to learn, man.” [City Pages] [more from CP]

No shit, man. I hear you, man. So does the Minnesota Independent’s award-winning reporter, Andy Birkey. Sued alongside Rachel Maddow? Hard to see any career damage coming out of this so far. Everyone being sued is gay? This is so not ever going to see the inside of a courtroom. Seriously Bradlee, you homophobic piece of neurotic self-justifying shit, why don’t you sue me as well for some preference balance? [Yes, I'd love a piece of what Bradlee's giving out even though I'm not really sure what a piece of his ass would be worth once the lawyers get their share.]

MNindie’s coverage

The sueees respond

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News:

Dawn raids? If true, cool!

Meteor Blades on the growing wealth gap (again, I listened to a U.S. Senator outline all of this in 1980 when the right was just getting started with their rewrites of all our financial laws, rules and regulations — this radical transfer of wealth was exactly what they wanted to have happen)

Wells Fargo, doing their part (see previous link)

PP clinic firebombed in Dallas (but it was a Molotov Cocktail so I’m sure it was an attack by lefties, or anarchists or maybe even Muslims) (that or wingnuts have discovered irony)

Franken finally goes SNL on the Senate floor (worth the click, and then the click-thru)

The eXiled on Caterpillar

Click here to see what world class link aggregating reads like (then read this Harper’s link to see how provocative concise facts can be, even without links).

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From my perspective, Gov. Bridgefail is easily one of the most loathsome politicians in America today. So you can well imagine my gratification at learning that Pawlenty’s campaign manager, Nick Ayers, is widely loathed and despised by his peers in the Republican party. [insert gratuitous snark about the leaks on O'Bachmann's migraines to Politico here]

No longer considered a first tier candidate by most, Bridgefail was on the receiving end of a bitchslap extraordinaire Tuesday. That’s when T.Rump, the king of comb-over island, called out Pawlenty as not being a “tough guy.” Ouch.

Yech etc.:

NYTimes lets right-friendly writer interview James O’fucking liar Keefe [Romenesko] [Wolcott]

Team Sarah goes hard sell

We’re gonna hurt some people

It’s a members only thing, you wouldn’t understand

Thick as a brick? It would have to be an especially dense brick

Driftglass: Only Nixon can go to Nixonland

Worse, at the end of the day these folks still own Rush Limbaugh. Completely, totally, indubitably. He’s theirs, all theirs. We have to take the heat for Chris fucking Matthews, the ‘pugs can sure as hell take the rap for Rush goddamn Limbaugh. [Fox] [Glenn Beck] [Bill O'Reilly] [establishment media] [shorter establishment media] [Piers fucking Morgan]

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In my life, the Dept. of Justice has sometimes been OK, but mostly it’s been scum-driven and conflict-ridden. Today? More than ever.

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Breivik:

Charles II with some insightful quotes

I like Weigel and Chas. Johnson’s takes on Breivik, but I’m not comfortable with the unspoken assumption that those who challenged Bush’s legitimacy = birthers

Frank Schaeffer on the Christian right and how he built an ice woman to masturbate into and yes, I think this provides insights into Breivik

Chootspaw

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Joe McGinniss’s eight worst ways I’ve ever spent eight minutes intrigued me enough that I was thinking about putting together my own list, and then I realized that every item on my list involved waiting for the cop who’d pulled me over to get out of his car and walk over to mine (the one with the drugs in it).

Joe’s list is more interesting but I think my waits were worse.

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Etc.:

PETA: Usually you have to be a Republican to be this obnoxious (sorry to be a speciesist, but genocide is always more serious than packing plant conditions)

More proof that free sells

I’d like to emphasize the fact that while I’m a pirate, I’ve never resold anything I’ve downloaded ever because that is stealing

PZ finds a moral code superior to the one used by priests

Kudzu Jesus wouldn’t pee on this man’s shoes if they were on fire

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John Chervokas, R.I.P.

This one made me think of Ed Kohler for some reason.

 

#$%! kids on bicycles

If there is one thing a world-class university is incapable of, it must be quality customer service. For years I’ve chauffeured a friend to the UM Dental School for dental work, and for years the bastards have insisted on scheduling patients on the hour. Big deal? Yes, a very big deal when you’ve got 40,000 undergraduate students walking to classes every hour on the hour.

Needless to say, despite her appointment having been on the books for months, the UM Dental School never bothered to tell my friend that the campus is now ripped apart for light rail construction.

In the private sector, they’d have receptionists working overtime to contact patients to let them know. At the UM they just snarl at you for being late and wasting “doctor’s” time.

If the MN legislature wasn’t such a seething hotbed of malcontents and incompetents, I’d encourage them to audit the UM system to find out just how many ways they fail their students and the public at large. No one at the UM outranks a civilian, especially not a civilian who’s paying them for dental services. Someone really should tell them that sometime, preferably when they’re before some committee, hat in hand, begging for money.

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Even the L.A. Times “gets” that the debt ceiling is all about a small group of immature, inexperienced and overly ideological Republican House members. They honestly (and arrogantly) believe that voters never remember what happened in the odd-numbered years.

Nothing would encourage record turnout next year like replacing Obama at the top of the ticket. No one’s happy, both parties need to make sacrifices: Republicans by being slaughtered at the polling places, and Democrats by ruthlessly purging the party during the primaries. Fuck incumbents except for Bernie Sanders and two or three others but I’m not sure who because even our best and brightest seem afflicted by periodic seizures of obeisance to Wall Street.

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Tim Rutten gets Breivik about right, but the WaPost uses an editorial and a David Igatius column to wash away the sins of the hard core, Mossad-nurtured Zionist right, almost all of whom are covered with the blood of Breivik’s victims.

If some dimwit anarchist hippy blew up an Edward Jones brokerage in upper Michigan, I would have to take a tiny bit of that blame. I am not circumspect in my language, and it is not beyond the realm of the possible that one of my readers might be a screaming nutcake waiting to explode. But nothing I’ve ever written begins to touch the level of nonstop hatemongering and filthy racist lying that goes on at Pam Geller’s blog every fucking day of every fucking week.

No need to arrest her, she hasn’t committed any crimes. But her name should be synonymous with reckless hatred and over the top racism. Zionists should be embarrassed to hear her name mentioned in polite conversation. She should be shunned, but instead she’ll get amnesty from all too complicit Muslim-bashing media.

Until we acknowledge the individuals that are driving our problems and enabling the looters on Wall Street, we’re not going to make any forward progress and, with our heels on the abyss, forward progress would be a good thing.

As for lefty fertilizer bombers, not gonna happen. When our side acts out, it’s usually to make weird videos or to throw glitter at people  (truly, a NOXIOUS form of protest that manages to victimize the victimizers) (Billionaires for Bush, otoh, was always tasteful, always on topic, and always effective, imoh) or, at the very worst, make catty remarks (seriously, it just confuses them, they don’t get clever, and they don’t have the wit to think on the matter more deeply).

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Amazingly, Tim “Gov. Bridgefail” Pawlenty, might not have been the worst fucking governor ever.

But that’s a very close and hard one to call.

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Since the obstructionist right wouldn’t give Goodwin Liu a vote on his nomination to the federal bench, Jerry Brown just got himself a top-shelf Cali Supreme Court justice.

Bork ‘em just once, and they’ll bork every nominee you put forth forever. It’s not that they carry grudges forever, but more a case of being incapable of change. The only fix left remaining to us is the complete and utter destruction of the Republican party so our current Dems can be truly fulfilled and become the new conservative party. And, needless to say, we’ll need the Greens or someone new to step up when that happens.

It would be nice to have a liberal party in this country again.

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Crazy day and it’s not getting any better so I guess this is it. Maybe something tonight. Coming home from errands just now I watched a kid on a bicycle illegally jump the curb and pull on to the sidewalk. I was turning right into my parking lot but because the kid was oblivious to me I had to wait on him which totally surprised the straight truck behind me. I picked up on the truck just in time to quick pull ahead and the damage was pretty light: the turnsignal and brake lights still work, the trunk still opens, but yeah, this would be $1,000 to fix properly.

I’m waiting for the driver’s boss to call me, but I’m very open to a private settlement because this shouldn’t go on the driver’s or owner’s insurance. Seriously, the kid was totally to blame for not using the bike lane. If he’d been in the bike lane, the trucker would have seen him but on the sidewalk he was obstructed by the traffic light. Needless to say, when the car and truck went boom, the kid vanished instantly.

Life in the big city. The important thing is that this gets resolved without some insurance company parasites using life as an excuse to jack up anyone’s rates.