The thrill is gone

You probably missed it, what with all the screaming and yelling that passes for news these days, but they've given us new, higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards for 2016. Here we go again.

Paybacks may be a bitch as people are wont to say, but unintended consequences of half thought out measures are worse. It was the first round of government standards that gave us those big, dangerous hunks of steel we call Sport Utility Vehicles; an appellation I still can't endure without a smirk. Yes, sure, the 1948 Willys Jeepster was an SUV, but when the gummint told the auto manufacturers they had to sell more low profit, low performance and soulless austerity vehicles like Chevettes and Pintos, they cynically took unwieldy trucks and gave them womb-like upholstery. Just the thing to prowl pot holed city streets booming like thunder and sucking up the gas. Enter the Hummer, exit sanity.

No telling what will emerge after 2016, but don't look for some significant breakthrough in engine efficiency. Yes, today's engines make a lot more power per unit of displacement and use less fuel to do it, but making them smaller, much more complex and winding them harder has about run it's course and it's a course that didn't always include driveability. Further improvements have to come from something new, like hybrids where the familiar reciprocating engine shuts down and restarts all the time ( and don't ask what that does to engines.) Electrics have limitations you can't dream away and that means the bottom line is smaller and lighter and slower and maybe a much shorter useful life. That might mean more trucks as an alternative - just like it has from the beginning.

Don't concern yourself with improvements in that thrill of driving 'cause there ain't gonna be none. When I think of the car of the future, more miles per gallon seems like less car. Think Europe. Think Fiat Panda, think pain, think sack cloth and ashes. Don't think aerodynamics, stability, transient response, acceleration, speed or braking performance; think skinny tires, high center of gravity, tiny wheels and lots of electronic gadgetry to make up for your lousy driving ability.

Of course, being a government agency, the EPA isn't staffed by car lovers and it it's saddled by obsolete rules that weren't set by engineers and never got around to being changed. I think of how in the 1930's we began to mandate "sealed beam" headlights because they were better than the prevailing bulb/reflector type. I remember how the technology soon made them obsolete too, but we were saddled with them for decades afterwards to our detriment.

The same applies to the EPA mileage ratings. In short we no longer drive the way the politicians assumed when the rules were set down -- if we ever did in the first place. EPA mileage tests assume a rate of acceleration so painfully slow that it would result in horns honked and shots fired. That gives tiny engines a test score advantage that doesn't apply to real driving. They assume a top speed of 60MPH, when the average on my local highways is over 80 and suburban traffic rolls along at 60 but stops every 200 yards. Don't forget that air resistance increases with the square of the speed, so rolling boxes: SUV's 'Crossovers' and the like seem not to be as awful as they really are and low, sleek, slippery sports cars seem worse.

Although brief stops are included, the results do not include time spent waiting at lights. That can, in urban and suburban driving account for half the time you spend behind the wheel. Some cars use much less at idle - or none at all, while some gulp down the gallons, but the EPA rating doesn't notice. Air conditioning use is at least a 10 month thing here, but again, the EPA doesn't bother to factor in AC efficiency either. So what we're likely to get out of this knee-jerk environmentalism is more of what we have - or much less if you see it my way.

Perhaps it's like the SAT tests: accurate at measuring things that may or may not matter. Perhaps that's why my boxy, 1.5 liter PT cruiser gets nowhere near the highway mileage my 6 liter Corvette does even though the EPA figures are similar, neither does it run 12 second quarter mile times or do 190MPH. It can't cruise around town at 800 RPM and still give you whiplash when your mood changes. The cars this new CAFE standard will produce? It's not too likely to be something my grandchildren will prize 30 years from now when most things are throw-away consumables like beer cans and Bic lighters.

But most of all it doesn't howl like the bloody wrath of God when you need to get that pushy little Beemer off your ass, or that cowboy idiot in his pick up truck is sniffing up your tailpipe like a dog in heat or that hiphop box of brain dead teens with plastic wings and a cartoon face. It can't come off a 1G apex at 6500 Mother of God RPM, tires on fire and screaming Glory Hallelujah either.

But it'll be "green" like astroturf, as exiting as a Lawrence Welk polka and it will get you there, sealed tightly in a steel safety capsule breathing canned air as you transport your dead soul across what used to be America but is now the land of "you can't have that any more - or that, or that."

Turkey in the Straw

What does the Iowa Straw Poll really mean as an indicator of who might actually be the chosen Candidate to bring about the "end of an error?" I really don't know, but it proves that the extremist barn dance is still the thing in Iowa. I'm referring of course to the the fact that, although the lineup (or the menagerie if you prefer) included all sorts of wild things, the Minnesota Gobbler herself came in first. Here's the list as published in the Huffington Post:

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.): 4,823 votes
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas): 4,671 votes
Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty: 2,293 votes
Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.): 1,657 votes
Former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain: 1,456 votes
Texas Governor Rick Perry: 718 votes
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney: 567 votes
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: 385 votes
Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman: 69 votes
U.S. Rep Thad McCotter (R-Mich.): 35 votes

Neither Romney, Gingrich or Huntsman campaigned actively and Rick Perry had announced his candidacy only shortly after the barnyard gates were closed. All of them were thus at a disadvantage, but you'll notice that Ron Paul was only a half step and a do-si-do behind Bachmann. Perhaps Iowan Tea Tipplers think her 'holy roller two-step' dance gives her that ol' show-time religion shamanship the straight-talking Dr. Paul lacks.

Who knows? But it seems Rick Pawlenty is adding 'former candidate' to ' former governor' on his resume. He announced on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour this morning that he was scraping the muck off his boots and going home.

Once again, I have no idea what all this means and who will be the great Republican Hope come next year. I do suspect that if he or she wins, the much wished for end of an error will be the beginning of a disaster.

Gimme that old slime and religion

The Republican circus' Big Top is beginning to fill with snarling dogs, rooting hogs and booming frogs fighting to get into the center ring -- the kind of things once relegated to side shows so as not to frighten young children and more 'sensitive' viewers.

Rick Perry is, as I write this, now announcing his candidacy from the State of South Carolina, where the First Civil War started with the booming of cannons 150 years ago. The Cold Civil War is heating up and so is the rhetoric. Rhetoric just as emotional and just as full of vain invocations of the common divinity. "It's time to get America working again" he says as though his party hadn't presided in ZERO job growth in the eight Republican years and as though we haven't had significant job growth since. Has Perry suggested anything positive or anything other than blind faith in what got us into this mess? Remember he's the guy who thinks the climate responds better to prayer than to carbon dioxide levels. So far it's still not raining in Texas.


Not all the candidates, however, are quite so willing to engage in such a pitched battle on an even field. All the likely female contestants for instance -- like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich seem to prefer to come out slapping and eye gouging but should anyone be so unfair as to ask such inappropriate, unfair "Gotcha" questions as "which newspapers do you read" or just what Mrs. Bachman meant when she said:

"But the Lord said, 'Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.' "

Perhaps since she wears her religion, not only on her sleeve and on her shield like a crusader, but constantly suggests the superiority it gives her along with the right to make peremptory statements about how the rest of us live our lives, it's an appropriate question. It's the same Question President Carter asked of the Southern Baptist Church and not liking the answer, quit the church in which he was raised and spent his life. She'd have us believe she only meant "respect" contrary to the literal word she's so eager to worship. But she didn't say respect, now did she? Nor did the word of God she thinks she's quoting.

Suggesting both that it's offensively inappropriate for anyone to ask clarification of Bachmann and that her explanation would be far too nuanced for us heathen to understand, we have Roland Martin writing on CNN.com today.

Martin tells us she was asked by Byron York:

"As president, would you be submissive to your husband?"

Forgetting the "Billary" gambit directed against Bill Clinton, Childe Roland hesitates not a bit to be offended on behalf of Biblical literalists and for the shy, sensitive and ever-so-subtly nuanced Bachmann who brought the subject up in the first place.

I don't know how old Roland Martin is; whether he remembers the Republicans' question as to whether John Kennedy would obey the Pope instead of the Constitution or whether like the other hand-waving, special pleading, smoke and mirrors artists he can only take refuge in fog shrouded ineffability when someone asks a damned good question he wouldn't hesitate to ask of others.

It's a question asked only because she's a woman, asserts Martin rather tautologically. After all, men aren't ordered to obey their wives in the old books some people confuse with the US Constitution. Apparently he thinks men aren't even asked similar questions about the conflict between their beliefs about the the legitimacy of government, their credos and their ability to administer secular laws in a secular country they may disapprove of.

He's quite wrong of course. These questions are asked and not just by me -- and they are important questions to ask of a party that is insisting in ever louder voices that secularism is a problem and that the country rightly belongs only to those with suitable church affiliations.

Queen of the Damned

And, in few words, I dare say; that of all the Studies of men, nothing may be sooner obtain'd, than this vicious abundance of Phrase, this trick of Metaphors, this volubility of Tongue, which makes so great a noise in the World. But I spend words in vain; for the evil is now so inveterate, that it is hard to know whom to blame, or where to begin to reform.

(Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society, 1667)

_____________

When I got my copy of Newsweek yesterday; the cover showing Michelle Bachmann looking upward as though reading a celestial teleprompter, I fired off a letter similar to the one I wrote when Sarah Palin became the cover girl not long ago. "Indecency or obscenity can be difficult to define" I said, "but I recognize it when I see it."

Somehow, her supporters saw it differently, condemning the wide-eyed lunatic pose as having been selected by the "liberals" to make her look crazy, but scanning the web for other photos, I found it hard to find one where she doesn't look like a two year old who has just, to her great surprise, soiled her diaper -- but that of course, is only my opinion. No offense to incontinent toddlers is intended.

Her stance on "the evils of Government" as the headline blares, is harder to see as being other than obscene unless it's the indecent dishonesty behind her rhetoric that pushes your particular buttons.

I have to wonder: if Democracy is so inherently bad, what kind of government would she then prefer? If Government itself is the enemy of freedom, who or what could be the ally? I have to wonder if the government is really broken or is she trying to break it to prove her point?

Making big noises in Kansas about an oppressive government that makes tyrannical rules about what kind of light bulbs to use and destroys our freedom by inspecting meat, she certainly begs the question of why she nonetheless promotes a "faith based" government that tells us what kind of sex we can have and with whom; promotes poisoning the well if someone can get rich doing it, which encourages us to pray rather than to fix our problems and to be a nation of individuals who owe nothing to anyone.

Then there's also the question of the deceit involved in taking government subsidies under false pretenses and using one of them illegally to fund prayer sessions in the guise of psychotherapy. Really, if we can't call her crazy, what other excuse can we make for her? Ignorant? Malicious? Greedy?

It's a two tier government she dreams about, with one set of rules for 98% of us that exist to preserve and increase the capital and the power of Corporations, Plutocrats and Theocrats. Of course no one with any understanding of Capitalism and what makes it expand would recommend policies that shrink the numbers of people whose spending makes Capitalism work while the one-percenters send capital and jobs abroad, but what made you think the Teabaggers are Capitalists in the first place? The kind of Randian, take the money and run Utopia these people claim to envision is Feudal as well as futile and self-destructive. The rabble-rousing and specious rhetoric smells more of the Brown Shirts and Bolsheviks than Tom Paine or Tom Jefferson.

Of course those who follow the Tea Party Queen like the mice of Hamlin, should be intelligent enough to realize that not only do we not have an oppressive, confiscatory tax situation, but that very low marginal rates inevitably produce bubbles and busts as they did in the 1920's and at the end of the last decade. They should recall that the years of low debt and high prosperity were the years of high marginal tax rates. They should be smart enough to see that all that extra cash in already deep pockets does not create US jobs, but inflates the market and makes hedge funds flourish - but only for a while. They should be, but they're either too ignorant or too stupefied by the pied pipers of the radical right. But like the Shadow, Bachmann knows what rage lies in the hearts of men. Unlike the Shadow, she's hell bent on making a buck for her backers out of it.

Damned if you don't

Even in the mean, scummy world of American presidential campaigns, there are few examples of behavior more scurrilous than the personal attacks on Barack Obama and his wife and children. Central to the defamation were the attacks on his religion, descriptions of which which ranged from radical Christian anti-white crusader to militant, anti-Christian Islam. Of course these attacks are ongoing and virulent even while such a potential candidate as Mitt Romney is feigning shock and dismay at what seems to be a largely non-existent attack against him and his Mormon affiliations.

In a lurid article at Politico, titled Obama Plan: destroy Romney, Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin try to convince us that the Obama campaign staff is planning unconscionable and personal attacks on Romney's religion and character.

Shocking, I know. That sort of thing never happens in America and Republican campaigns never, ever fabricate stories about the war records or terrorist affiliations or high crimes or foreign influences or membership in weird religious cults or even the citizenship of their opponents.

None the less, there was an anonymous source or two we must trust as well as we trust the journalistic integrity of Politico. It's just political reality, says the article. He can't campaign on accomplishments so he has to get dirty and therefore he's already dirty. Seems logical even if it isn't actually the truth, much less fair or balanced reporting.

"And so the candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent."

No, he has little choice so he's already guilty of what we predict he will do: he'll be as bad as we Republicans. Those dirty Democrats want to go after Romney's poor record of getting rich while eliminating jobs as CEO of Bain Capital, for instance. They'd like to portray him as "weird" and personally awkward, and even stiff, perhaps like John Kerry was said to be by his GOP opponents. That's slashing for ya! And what about 'Romneycare' in Massachusetts?

Weird. It's a word used often by Obama campaign headquarters we're told. " there’s not a lot to like about Mitt Romney,” said Pete Giangreco who worked on Obama's 2008 campaign;

“There’s no way to hide this guy and hide his innate phoniness.”

Calling a candidate a phony just for being against what he used to be for? I mean how far below the belt will they punch? An "unidentified" source even suggested that Romney's personal awkwardness might turn off some voters -- outrageous!

"In a move that will make some Democrats shudder, Obama’s high command has even studied former President George W. Bush’s 2004 takedown of Sen. John Kerry."

says Politico. I admit - I'm shuddering, but with laughter.

Of course the Romneyites are already calling Obama "disgraceful" for doing what he hasn't done but they predict he will do since they've backed him into a corner -- and their outrage is justifiable. What could be worse, from a Republican perspective, than Democrats doing what Republicans did? And not actually having done it is no excuse! What could be worse than interrupting the personal attack on Obama with an attack on Romney, even if the personal attack on Romney as a "weird" Mormon is a fabrication?

But perhaps here's the grounds for impeachment they've been looking for since the day the oath of office was administered (improperly, they say.) Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) told a Tea Party rally that impeachment "needs to happen" but when asked for the grounds, he had to dissemble since bribery, treason and such things are hard to substantiate in the absence of guilt. Hey, use your imagination, Mike. Just predict he will!

Right but wrong

You could fault Ron Paul for stating the obvious, but hey, somebody has to do it. Should the country try to save it's triple A rating with Moody's? Why bother when those helium-filled bond ratings proved to be based on politics and greed and by giving investors false confidence, helped precipitate the market collapse of 2008?

“I always wonder about this ratings, the bond ratings before the crash three years ago wasn’t helpful, so sometimes I wonder if it’s political theater to build up the fear.”

said Dr. Paul on Bloomberg TV yesterday. Of course it is, but is he doing the same thing?

But I'm not sure that I agree with the rest of his assessment: that the country is insolvent and bankrupt and got that way by excessive spending on the health and welfare of Americans. It's a bit like telling your spouse that the family could go to Disneyland more often if they weren't saddled with life insurance and a retirement savings plan, but I don't think one can rightly compare the financial problems of an individual or a family with the problems of a country in such a simplistic fashion.

One becomes insolvent and enters bankruptcy because one's income is insufficient to be able to manage one's debt. An individual does not always have control over how much money he makes; can't always find a job, can't always be healthy enough to work, can't always pay medical bills.

That's not so with a government. Our revenue shortfall is in some large part voluntary; an effort to "starve the beast" by thwarting its ability to run programs that the electorate voted for. That attempt is also a bit of political theater with a lot of smokey pyrotechnics and a bit of dramatic hand waving involved so as to obscure the fact that very low taxes on large incomes do not raise revenue, by magic transfer from the people who put much of their incomes into hedge funds and equities to the people who spend most of their incomes on food and shelter.

So yes, Social Security, a government program that did much to create the Middle class and take tens of millions of older people out of abject poverty, is going to run out of funds eventually because they're going to make it run out of funds so that they can do away with it. So yes, it's also political theater designed to create fear and panic, but perhaps the word 'theater' isn't quite strong enough. I'd call it a scam.

Justified?

I'm constantly deleting political diatribes from my in-box that begin with wild claims about something the "liberal press" isn't telling us for nefarious reasons. Nearly always, it's already been in the headlines or never happened in the first place, but here's a story that doesn't seem to be getting enough exposure, considering the rants and tirades coming from Rush and Fox and other people trying to twist the Oslo massacre into something that shows persecution of Christians, whom we all know are never, ever violent -- not like those amoral Mao-loving Stalinist Atheists and devil worshiping Kalashnikov-carrying Muslims.

According to a new Gallup poll, when asked whether they're against violence that kills civilians, Muslims are most likely to answer in the affirmative at 78%. Atheists and agnostics are second at 56%, while only 38% of Protestants and 39% of Catholics would agree with such an affirmation of the value of human life.

Let me repeat it for the benefit of the many-headed beast: over 60% of those who identify as Christians, the overwhelming majority of Americans, will tolerate the slaughter of innocents versus only 22% of Muslims. Would I define all of these people as Christians - or Muslims for that matter? No I wouldn't, but that's hardly the point. It's wrong to absolve people with such a hypocritical ploy. Neither the Torah, the Bible nor the Quir'an ever killed anyone, but there is enough in them to provide a template, an excuse, a justification for nearly any abomination.

My long standing opinion that there are hardly any Christians around still stands and among that few, many would tell you the others weren't Christian either - as history proves, but applied to the question with us today: "is this a Christian Nation, based on Christian principles?" I can insist it's not. To the question of "are those alleged principles the best and only way" I would try not to laugh and offer the suggestion that we could use a large dose of Muslim and Humanist principles if we'd like Jesus to smile upon our arrogance, hypocrisy and pretension.

When asked whether it was justifiable for "an individual person or a small group of persons to target and kill civilians," Muslims still were far more likely to be 'Christian' about it with 89% answering in the negative and Christians again coming in last, behind the godless infidel. Can we begin to understand that the ancient religious wars between Christian, Jew, Muslim, pagan and infidel have little to do with anything good.

Of course, to attempt discussion using terms like justice is like juggling water, but in my opinion, the enormous industry that scripts our opinions for us is showing it's hand here -- or bloody claw, if you prefer. If you want to know why we are the way we are regarding placing blame for violence and hatred, I might speculate that Muslims and Atheists and free thinkers aren't likely to be watching Fox or to follow Beck or Limbaugh or their hate filled and dishonest rants, while those who call themselves part of the Religious Right often do.

A year ago, a Pew Poll found that only 30 percent of Americans in general have a favorable view of Muslims. I think we know why and I think we know who is behind the unrelenting defamation: burning books, carrying signs in the street and opposing basic freedoms for Muslims in America.

After all, who has the most to gain from vilifying infidels or anyone else trying to oppose replacing secular law with Gospel Law? What are the goals of people who condemn humanism and those who assert their reverence for human life?

I have no doubt that the Religious Right will have no choice but to ignore these numbers or attack them with some neo-Ernulphian malediction and a chorus of Liberaiberaliberal and there is less than no doubt that they'll never give up on the notion of their special privileges and special, God-given right to dictate to all of us, lashing out at enemies they create for the purpose of distraction and ignoring the casualties.

With patriots like these, who needs Osama?

You may agree with Florida Governor and former Medicare pirate Rick Scott's oft stated opinion that regulations kill jobs. You might also be an idiot. But at least, our skinhead governor, AKA Fourteen Felony Rick, energized by getting away with no punishment after his company scammed the taxpayers out of the better part of a billion dollars and lost 2 billion for his stockholders, doesn't make national policy based on dangerous and hollow credos and thinly veilled criminal enterprises.

We have to leave that to the Congressional Giggle Gallery and Anarchist Marching Band. In their haste to slash anything worthwhile the government does in order to prove that the Government does nothing worthwhile, they forgot to fund the FAA.

Maybe Ronald Reagan would smile at this second assault on air travel safety, but maybe even the Gipper would gasp at the notion that regulation of air traffic and air carriers is inherently bad. Firing air traffic controllers because they were understaffed, ill equipped and overworked seems questionable, but at least Reagan had the decency to fire them outright rather than just deciding not to pay FAA employees. Airport inspectors (who needs airport inspectors?) are now being told to charge their own expenses to themselves if they insist on being such parasites and after all, that mysterious bony hand will assure that the airlines will do a better job of tightening the wing bolts when nobody is watching over their shoulders.

So far this idiocy has claimed nearly a hundred thousand jobs in the last couple of weeks. Let's not even think about the threat to public safety and call it Personal Responsibility instead. After all, you really don't have to fly.

Speaking of idiocy, is there yet anyone so despicably demented, deluded and just plain dumb to insist that firing people creates jobs? They hope there are that many Teaheads of course, since they'd like to shift responsibility to the air carriers on the theory that foxes do the best job of watching hen houses and do it cheaper ( and maybe pass the savings on to Congress.)

What the hell, let's just forget to pay Congress, cancel those benefits and pensions and privatize the whole snake pit. I mean, it's essentially privatized already and the HMO's and the oil companies and the Telecoms can pay their damn benefits.

But let me make this clear to those who inevitably try to avoid blame by saying "both sides are guilty." The Republicans did this. The Democrats tried to stop it.

Let me explain why. For each week the FAA isn't on full duty, airlines pocket about $200 million from bogus ticket fees — because, thinking you don't know what's going on, which if you're a Fox Following Teasmoker is a safe bet, the airlines hiked up prices and are pocketing the difference. If the Corporate Aristocracy is happy, the lackeys are happy and if the public is broke, so much the better - they'll work for less. Such is the Genius of idiots.

As They Like it

Wake up, little Susie, wake up
Wake up, little Susie, wake up
We’ve both been sound asleep, wake up, little Susie, and weep
The movie’s over, it’s four o’clock, and we’re in trouble deep
Wake up little Susie
Wake up little Susie, we gotta go home.

-Everly Brothers-

___________________________

I'm relatively sure that our new "save your way out of unemployment, no job needed" austerity program will stifle the economy and thwart any meaningful recovery and that a good share of the people who held the gun to our heads to push this sorry debt ceiling bill, not only know it too, but desperately want that outcome so as to help push the Tar Baby out of office and privatize the presidency in 2012.

The Tea Terrorist Great Leap Backward may not let 20 million people starve as Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward did, but it's not only not going to put bread on the table, for many of us, that table may be a park bench.

Victory is so close they can almost taste it. Unemployment is so high so that millions don't have the money it takes to be heard, don't have the money it takes to buy the products that make the economy expand -- but corporate profits are up -- way up. Call your congressman? Write your Senators? Sorry Charlie, teabags come with strings attached and unless your letter is stapled to a million dollar check you might as well save the postage and stationery.

Corporate profits are up, and that's OK. We're selling overseas and manufacturing overseas and American workers are redundant -- and face it, America and what we used to think of as the American way of life, the American Dream, is a millstone around the corporate neck. It's a global economy now and global corporations owe no allegiance to the United States even if they're nominally American companies. They will use every strategy they can to avoid paying taxes in the US or benefiting workers who can be replaced and exploited cheaply in China and India. We're witnessing one of those strategies today. The only people not in danger of being outsourced or laid off or screwed out of benefits and pensions are the legislators and judges and corporate propagandists on the payroll and sorry, little Suzie Teabag, that ain't you. Wake up.

Now all that Social Security money and that Medicare money go right back into the economy, purchasing goods and services immediately. Minimum wage workers spend every dime they make. Nobody hoards food stamps. They don't want that. They don't want money in your hands, since it's money that might give you some political power, since it's money they could sit on and hoard and invest abroad with no taxes paid. Think it will go to creating American jobs? Are you stupid?

Your taxes aren't going down, theirs is. They're not creating any jobs you're eligible for or would accept, and your cost of living will be going up as the Dollar shrivels like Limbaugh's penis and your freedom and your rights and your privacy and your political voice and your retirement plans are dissolving in the rapidly rising water.

And they like it that way.

Listen up, you Tea Party Bastard

For between true Science and erroneous doctrines, Ignorance is in the middle.

-Thomas Hobbes-

________________________________

“the credibility of the United States is now surrounded by uncertainty.”Said Fareed Zakaria on AC360. I don't think so. That the reigns of power have been grabbed by a malicious minority for whom the successful defense of a failed and disastrous economic theory seems damned certain. That even a very large majority of voters have become so removed from participation in decision making is so certain that the Tea Party inmates now dance with idiot glee on the site soon to become the grave of our country. For after all, has that 3% taken off the adjusted gross in excess of $250,000 not been the reason we all did so well during the Bush administration? Wasn't it the reason that private sector job growth was at 0.0% for 8 years?

What remains quite certain in my mind is that the stated objectives of the hostage takers are not to be taken at face value, yet, even if we do, the premise behind it all is a lie and smells accordingly. The real but hidden objective of course is a feudal society out of the sick dreams of Ayn Rand, where a handful of powerful people are unimpeded in their greed and everyone else is destined ( and designed) to serve them while subsisting on their crumbs and leavings. But, these scams, these lies, these frauds are still the fundamental props of that Tea Party scheme, a scheme shown to fail even more quickly than Communism does -- and we're allowing our erstwhile democracy to fall like Jericho to a mob walking in circles and blowing loud on a horn.

"The imbecile bourgeoisie of this country make themselves the accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches"

-Joseph Conrad-

Upper bracket tax cuts do not create jobs or prosperity except for a very, very few individuals and that prosperity comes with a crushing burden on the rest of the populace. While the fake Libertarians rhapsodize about not ever asking what they can do for their country, Mexico sits there demonstrating what it's like when a handful with all the money are absolved from responsibility and often even from the law.

A healthy Capitalistic system, a system that fosters job growth requires discretionary money flowing through the hands of consumers and the "agreement" we now seem to have had forced upon us takes it away while granting favors to a privileged class who spend proportionately less on consumer goods, thus weakening the economy. We've had thirty years of the continuous failure of this long con, although, thanks to the ownership of the 24 hour propaganda system by that privileged plutocratic class, we've forgotten.

The rich man will not hire people to build anything while most of the country can't afford to buy them and as a shark requires moving water to survive, a capitalist economy requires moving money.

Tax cuts do not pay for themselves with increased revenues. much less do they pay for the longest and most expensive wars in American history. We have now had three wars in three decades, all sold as self-funding and the lion's share of our debt is attributable to our having to borrow the funds from abroad to pay corporations who do not pay taxes rather than paying for it. The war that pays for itself in booty is a stinking lie. How much more proof will it take?

Tax cuts for the wealthy do not create jobs, nor boost the economy, nor boost revenue. Only a small fraction of the extra cash in deep pockets makes its way back into the economy and nearly all of the cash from entitlements and paychecks of middle and working class families does -- and quickly. For each Porsche or Ferrari or yacht bought with that extra tax bonus, for every stash of Krugerrands or condo in Marbella, 10 families, maybe 100 families would have bought cars and washing machines and refrigerators and school supplies and some might have bought hamburger instead of cat food. Their money returns to the economy instantly. Yet every day we hear lying voices shouting about "job destroying taxes;" shouting so loud that we forget that our most prosperous and fully employed years featured high marginal rates.

Marginal rates below 50% seem to precede recessions. Don't believe me, look it up and the biggest debt increases have been under Republicans for a very long time -- most spectacularly under the misrule of Bush and Cheney and don't tell me you were against it at the time, you weren't.

“Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter”
-Dick Cheney-

This isn't Obama's recession, it belongs to all of us and Obama's biggest "spending spree" was in his first year, operating under a budget and tax scheme passed by Bush. It's as if Congress bought the yacht under Bush and because Obama had to make the payments, pay for the dockage, maintenance and fuel, he's the spendthrift.

The biggest increase of the debt ceiling in the average American's lifetime was under Reagan, the second under Bush, 200% and 90% respectively. Both presidents created recessions. Clinton raised the debt ceiling 44% and raised taxes and we had record high employment and the longest period of expansion and prosperity - ever. Funny how you told us his success was because of Reagan and Bush the First, but on the day of his inauguration, it was "Obama's recession."

26% under Obama so he can pay "the troops" and keep our contractual obligations -- and the reeking, ignorant unwashed rabble take to the streets and storm Congress screaming about impeachment and the biggest spending president ever since the beginning of time.

"Joy to great Chaos! Let Division reign"

-Pope-

But you won't learn, you won't be honest, you won't stop protecting your fantasy, even if you have to go down with the ship you're scuttling. So keep giggling, keep your nose in the air -- keep talking about tax and spend Democrats and bleeding heart Liberals. You'll bleed too and there will be no one to help, no one to care.

You meet the nicest people in Hell

I'm not Yahweh, The Hulk or Captain America and I'm not into destroying countries with hellfire or even evildoers in hand to hand combat, but If I were, I have a feeling I would have a hard time finding enough good people to convince me to park the thunderbolts and volcanoes and floodwaters and let it all this American hate culture continue. Yes as a humanist and a non-believer, I have a hard time condoning that sort of world-drowning temper tantrum in the first place, but I sure as hell empathize with the old dude. We sure as hell deserve another dunking. Maybe in boiling water, this time.

Speaking of empathy. I walked into a shop today and as I was looking for some hardware, I chanced to hear the voice on the radio ( I think it was Rush) trying to twist the Oslo shooting story into some form where it seemed liberals ( who hate Christianity) were trying to portray the shooter as a Christian when he really was a "neo-Nazi" and they were just calling him Christian because he wasn't a Muslim. Funny how that doesn't work with Muslims not all being terrorists to inside the Rush Bubble, but never mind, amidst the tumult and the roar, I heard old anal-cyst for brains tell us "Barack Obama told us after 9/11 that we have to have empathy with Muslim terrorists"

the owner said to the clerk,

"Did you hear that? Obama told us to empathize with the terrorists" "Oops!"

Well, nail Jesus to the cross, sell your mother to a brothel, piss on everything holy, but never question Rush. It's too big a lie to deny, too tasty not to swallow. It's certainly too much work to check it out. Like so many people I'm becoming disgustingly familiar with, these nice people sit in their little store all day injecting hate, smoking hate, cooking up hate like some junky in a basement room with a needle and a spoon and who gives a damn if any of it is actually true?

Well did I pull out a gun and slaughter them? Drive back there with a car bomb? Did I even say, "no he didn't and Rush makes Satan look like Santa Claus?" Sorry to say, I didn't, not in this town, not in the gun toting, burn your house down, hide your body in the swamp Bullshit Belt. I just said, "have a nice day" and left and won't ever shop there again. I'm not proud. I'm not proud of seeing a fake statement from the First Lady saying she "will side with the Muslims" in another shop not far away and not saying anything. But I won't be returning there either.

Of course what Obama really said was:

"The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. "

The exact opposite. It's like saying "Jesus told us to hate our neighbors"

But you know, these are otherwise, friendly, nice people. The kind you'll meet in Church or civic organizations and out helping their neighbors in times of disaster: the kind Hell must be full of.

Hatred and ignorance and Rush Limbaugh, the primal ooze and petrie dish of evil. Was Brievik influenced by right wing religious intolerance or was he simply attracted to it. Should we call him Christian or a Freemason and should we call Osama bin Laden a real muslim and who gives a shit? This kind of mindless, relentless, evil dripping, malignant and malevolent propaganda is as delightfully irresistible to "felaheen America" as carrion to a buzzard and is as able to wrap itself around facts, digest them and turn them into shit as a snake.

God damn Limbaugh and all his friends and all his sponsors and all his words and all his lies and all his hate and all his wealth -- and that's as close to praying as I've come in these last 60 years.

Billion Dollar Coins and Exploding Options -- oh my!

Maybe the President can't simply cite the 14th amendment and raise the debt ceiling, maybe he can -- but does the Constitution provide a paddle? Must he allow the Tea Party to shut down the government as the more mainstream Republicans attempted to do in 1995 during the Clinton administration?

You remember President Clinton, don't you, the guy that the snickering snarkmongers told us would only serve one term, who would destroy capitalism, plunge us into debt and start fake wars simply to allow him to become a dictator. I'm sure the parallels are coincidental. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

But Obama, even if if no Clinton, ( for better or worse) may still have options, says Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School. The Constitution has as many loopholes as the Tea Party has loonies, although some of them are as arcane as something out of the Da Vinci Code. There's the Platinum Coin gambit and the exploding Option Strategy, for instance.

Even so, all may not be lost for 14th amendment solution protagonists, like Bill Clinton and a few others says Balkin.

"If the president reasonably believes that the public debt will be put in question for either reason, Section 4 comes into play once again. His predicament is caused by the combination of statutes that authorize and limit what he can do: He must pay appropriated monies, but he may not print new currency and he may not float new debt. If this combination of contradictory commands would cause him to violate Section 4, then he has a constitutional duty to treat at least one of the laws as unconstitutional as applied to the current circumstances."

Balkin likens this dispute to recent attempts to topple the president over his ability to use the military to protect the national interest or in emergencies.

"If the courts won't intervene in the Libya affair, they probably won't intervene here."

But regardless of your opinion on the best way to beat back the barbarians, (whichever side you think they're on, Balkin's CNN exclusive interview is great reading and gives a glimmer of hope that the Constitution will do what it was designed to do, protect us.

Taking the 14th

"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

14th Amendment, US Constitution
____________

Now, I'm no lawyer, which means that I generally take such statements at face value and have no knowledge of what pretzels they've been twisted into by various courts in various cases, but it seems to me that if congress can't question the validity of our public debt, then congress can't refuse to pay it or more importantly say it's only valid under a certain amount authorized by Congress after they've already deemed it legal. What do you think?

I hate to bring up the constitution at a time when the Tea Bag Patriots are pretending to worship it while claiming that those who would like to actually conform to it are "shredding it" but the situation is getting serious.

Of course this whole controversy is about "taking down" the president we elected by a good margin and replacing him with a Tea Party Republican of their choice hell bent not on reducing the debt, but killing Social Security, Medicare, all forms of welfare and any protection for the public against the health insurance cartel -- and all to make sure people like me can put an extra tank of fuel into the yacht every now and then thus creating jobs in the Bahamas and Taiwan.

After all they raised the debt ceiling every year a Republican was in office since the beginning of the Reagan administration and authorized Bush's massive debt explosion like a well disciplined private army. Remember when "debt doesn't matter" was the slogan? No? Well I do.

"Obama would be impeached if he blocked debt payments"

says Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and he'd also be impeached if he invalidated the debt ceiling based on the 14th amendment, says Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) Talk about a poker player with a 'tell.' Might as well lay the cards on the table.

It's all about impeachment and all about finding some flimsy excuse or forcing the president into a position where they will impeach him if he does and impeach him if he doesn't. No more revolting, I guess than impeaching one for asking his secretary not to tell his wife he was having an affair. Talk about insurrection and rebellion! No sooner did we lose the Cold War gravy train then we embarked on the Cold Secession.

President Clinton of course told us recently that he wouldn't hesitate to use the 14th to raise the debt ceiling and "force the courts to stop me." You'll remember of course the attempts to impeach him on any pretext and how the talk of the "failure of the Clinton Presidency" preceded the Clinton Presidency and how he would certainly be a one term president and how his tax policies would bankrupt the economy. They hope you won't remember, of course because we're hearing the same damned bullshit again.

"I think the Constitution is clear and I think this idea that the Congress gets to vote twice on whether to pay for [expenditures] it has appropriated is crazy.”

said Bill Clinton to The National Memo last week. No wonder slimy things like the Newt are challenging the constitutional basis for even having a Supreme Court.

Meanwhile that 3% extra tax cut I get on anything I earn over $250,000 is going to prompt me to create jobs for those struggling people now paying for the longest, most expensive wars in American history while losing their houses, jobs, medical insurance waiting for the Voodoo to kick in and save us all -- and all will be fine just in time for a Tea Party president. I can feel it in my bones.

91 dead in Oslo

People have made it very clear to me that Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Murrah Federal building in 1995 was not a Christian, the connection between that vicious, inhuman act and the Waco, Texas incident notwithstanding. He couldn't be, you see, by virtue of the fact that he did such a thing.

It's too bad that Muslims who are horrified by terrorism aren't given the benefit of the same rationale, but I'm still waiting to hear about Anders Behring Breivik. Despite the initial prejudice that had the Oslo bombing and the murders at a Summer camp as the work of al Qaeda, it looks like Breivik, identified by a survivor as the attacker, was a Christian Conservative disturbed by the presence of other cultures, other religions, in Norway. Would he fit in with a spectrum of Americans, from the Aryan Brotherhood to the Tea Party, trying to promote our intentionally secular Republic as a "Christian nation" and perhaps an exclusively Christian nation?

How long can we go on pretending that religious tribalism of any denomination hasn't been and doesn't remain a potentially destructive, oppressive and communicable human vice?

Ex Nehil Nehilo Fit

George Packer writing in the New Yorker about the debt ceiling crisis and the ever more strained fault line running through Washington, reminds us of a quote usually attributed to Vladimir Lenin: "the worse, the better."

I rather think Lenin himself was quoting Georgi Plekhanov, when he wrote his essay Three Crises in 1917, but whatever the source and however Lenin used it, I tend to agree with Mr. Packer that we're looking at a planned destruction of our economy to serve a revolutionary cause that in some ways; in it's ideological blindness to practical consequences, looks so much like the Bolsheviks, it might cause liquid irony to condense into caustic clouds and rain down upon us.

Indeed the worse this manufactured crisis becomes, the more likely it is, at least in the minds of the radical right, to destroy the prospects of Obama and the Democrats as well as our national prospects, leaving the Tea Party, like roaches after a nuclear war, in charge of a withered State sure to become a wildly prosperous unregulated utopia. It seems a fatuous dream of course, to anyone who has read even a little about the aftermath of the 1918 revolution, but if you've read this far I shouldn't have to point it out. Out of a power vacuum, power comes.

Packer quotes Max Weber, writing only only two years later with regard to “the ethic of responsibility” versus “the ethic of ultimate ends” and it seems that little has changed in the course of human events since then -- at least in American events. The distinction

"between those who act from a sense of practical consequence and those who act from higher conviction, regardless of consequences."

describes our current struggle; unser Kampf, if you will.

" These ethics are tragically opposed, but the true calling of politics requires a union of the two."

Is there any doubt about into which group the "tax cuts and deregulation produce prosperity" and "the government is always the problem" people fall? Discussion of practical consequences can't be heard through the roar.

Such a political union is less foreseeable I think, than at any time in American History that I can call to mind and a complete rupture or a complete capitulation of the "ultimate responsibility" forces to the anarchists and nihilists may be the only possible outcome. Ex nihilo, nehil fit: out of nothing, nothing comes, no longer is supported by science, but in the world of governments and power and people, things are different -- and après ça, le déluge, of course.

West world

When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, many of the ugliest Republicans told us that Democrats were "playing the race card" a mawkish cliché which means, I think, falsely accusing them of the racism they do really espouse. In other words, talking anal cysts like Limbaugh were having their pearls of wisdom denounced by the "politically correct" because you can't criticize a black man these days without being called a racist. It's a cheap dishonorable gambit, but like counterfeit money, it can be passed off on an uncritical populace.

An uncritical, astigmatic, angry and greedy American public seems to have had another bit of counterfeit money passed off it. Allen West, the Republican Congressman from the 22nd Congressional District right here in Florida, land of snakes, lizards, Teaturds, pollution and poisonous toads -- Allen West, one chromosome short of a tape-worm, says in his blog:

"I must confess, when I see anyone with an Obama 2012 bumper sticker, I recognize them as a threat to the gene pool."

Well isn't that special? Indeed it's the one feature of that pretentious Club of Fools that keeps it in business: it allows the mentally under-endowed, cognitively incontinent circus clowns to challenge their betters and to assault us with ideas that don't hold water nearly as well as a worn out douche bag. The giggle gallery in the back of the class, mocking the teacher.

Indeed West, speaking from his teabag-buttressed platform of arrogated biological superiority seems to be of an intellect too limited to have noticed the irony of a black man appealing to the snobbery of the uneducated, ill-informed, probably stupid and definitely angry whites, and offering soothing delusions of genetic superiority in a grotesque parody of white supremacists from Montgomery to Munich. But then, when has any American been too stupid and dishonest to be someones hero?

There is indeed a tide in the affairs of men and there is an armada of those now afloat on that full sea of hate, not only using it for their own purposes but seeking to make it rise further until it drowns the land. Allen West is such a man, a man whom under ordinary circumstances would be a nobody, a flyblown bit of flotsam in a stagnant pool; but because of this tidal wave of fury, he can pretend to be a battleship and his flatus a volley of cannon. He can twist, misuse, misquote and invent, he can put on the white-face and wear a red tie, He can grin like Uncle Tom and mock like a monkey, but while honesty is within reach of all, what he pretends to is not.

Women from Planned Parenthood and the activist group Code Pink "have been neutering American men" he says and making them weak. West tells us this with his genetically based intellect still unaware of Dr. Strangelove and bodily fluids. Perhaps he himself is having problems with his manhood and this talk of virility and gene pools tells a cover story. Perhaps his politics serve as verbal Viagra for the intellectually impotent Representative. But I don't need to postulate such questions, the doctored Obama bumper sticker with the hammer and sickle tell us the whole, sick, sad, disgusting tale. Allan West is a whore. Allen West is Count Dracula's rat-eating Renfield, Allan West is a liar. Allen West, and for reasons probably too disgusting to contemplate, is trying to ruin everything good about the United States of America. So what do I do when I see that sticker? You don't want to find out.

The president, despite all appearances and lack of opposition to corporate abuse and capitalist excess is a "low-level socialist agitator" reciting "Marxist demagogic rhetoric." Is West describing himself again, or is he just grabbing bits from the instruction manual like a tent-meeting preacher with his mouth full of Jesus and a mind full of money? Obama is a Communist to the extent that John D. Rockefeller was a Communist and Bernie Madoff was a capitalist.

No, this high water mark of anti-government anger that produces foul and foetid things like Allen West and the Tea Party has little to do with genetics and everything to do with our national ignorance and our manufactured delusions; both fed and cultivated by the people who reap benefits in their billions and trillions by subverting the values of civilization and setting the dogs on the ever expanding masses. It's an old story, but in our new version, not all the dogs have four legs.

Dawn patrol

The last time I watched the movie Spirit of St Louis, about Charles Lindbergh's 1927 flight across the Atlantic, I wondered what he would have done if someone had told him: "hey wait, in a few years you'll be able to do this in a few hours while drinking champagne and watching this movie. That's not how the human ego operates however. We take huge risks to be the first. Risks that would be far, far smaller if we waited a while for technology to catch up.

Of course if it weren't for the Cold War we might never have gone to the moon or built a space station or have our hopes for a verdant Mars dashed in the 1960's and 70's. Sometimes you are better off taking the risk, spending the money; but is that an argument for not moving on with the times?

While the press and much of the public is lamenting the end of the seriously flawed shuttle program, the real science of space exploration is continuing to produce astounding advances that dwarf the advancements to knowledge produced by our manned program. With the rapid advance of semi-autonomous robotics and miniaturization, it's foreseeable that the huge risk and titanic expense of sending people around the solar system and returning them alive and sane may be less and less worthwhile.

What have we learned from the shuttle experience? That space travel is still very risky, still vastly more expensive and difficult than we imagine when we design these things. Expensive enough that we will always make serious compromises in design that eventually make things even more expensive when we have to work around them. The shuttle is a textbook lesson in the perils of design by committee and politicians. It's catastrophes result directly from design decisions driven by economy.

If we are to continue the Space Station project for a while, perhaps there will be sufficient motivation to develop a smaller, lighter, truly reusable, economically sound and more modern supply vehicle, but the Space Station, if it has any justification, is all about practice in sending people to places to do what robots will probably be able to do much better before we get there.

Yes, perhaps we'll be able to support some sort of human existence on Mars for a period of time and perhaps construct a moon base that could, for a time, house humans, but it wouldn't be much of a life and it certainly shouldn't be called a "colony" in the way European settlements in the Americas were colonies. We still lack the money and the technology as well as a reason to develop them. In that respect science fiction tends to be a somewhat cloudy fun-house mirror of the past more than a window into the future.

Would we ever send; would we ever expend the huge resources to send men and women to Vesta, or Ceres much less to the vicinity of the outer planets with their monstrous radiation belts and no resources -- a journey that would force the new Conquistadors to live in conditions we now reserve for pickled herring -- and keep them in constant danger and deprivation for years? No, but we can send and have sent patient, unemotional and replaceable robots whose capabilities are expanding as fast as the universe itself. Would we spend trillions and ask a crew to take a decades long trip in a stinking tin can without a shower, drinking recycled urine and eating horrible food just to orbit Pluto? Will we ever travel to the nearest star? I doubt it, but the technology to send an unmanned vehicle is at least a real possibility, even if we won't live to see the pictures.

Robots can be sent in small vehicles; can be small vehicles, powered by small efficient ion motors and won't suffer from emotional problems or long for the cool, green hills of home. A cheap cell phone now has more computing power than existed anywhere when we first walked on the moon and high resolution video cameras are smaller than the human eye. (remember when color TV cameras were the size and weight of refrigerators and required a two man crew?) The rate of change is accelerating. Think of what we'll be able to do in the 20 or 30 years it would take to build manned rockets and ancillary equipment for a very risky Mars mission.

The shuttle was a 1970's design loaded with so much design compromise that it was obsolete before it got off the ground. Robotic missions on the other hand can go from the drawing board to landing on Jovian moons in fairly short order. The real science is done on places that would incinerate, irradiate, freeze and squash an astronaut, even if he survived the mind numbing confinement and squalor needed to get there and back.

Not so with the Dawn mission, now as of yesterday in orbit around the asteroid Vesta; an object so small and distant that even the Hubble telescope can't see anything but a featureless smear. Expect a flood of hi-res images in the next few weeks. In time it will move on to Dwarf Planet Ceres and surely gain some insight into the formation of planetary systems. That may be less a thing of dreams than small boys and Sci-Fi fans like to imagine but much more of a thing of science. We've already seen the sunset on Mars and watched dust devils cross the endless desert. We've heard the wind blow on Titan and seen its methane rivers and lakes and there's more to come as the technology improves.

It's impossible to do more than guess, but I'm guessing that long before we discover bug-eyed monsters on alien worlds, we'll be building our own in Pasadena and sending them there. You and I can see the dawn rise on worlds more alien than we can imagine and we can do it poolside with a glass of lemonade.

Pants on fire

“The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

-Article III of the US Constitution-

“There is no Supreme Court in the American Constitution"

-Newt Gingrich-

Really, Newt? Are you really a history professor? Do you really think we're that stupid?

It's getting hard to tolerate the stench coming out of the pre-caucus Republican cesspool; from Presidential candidates getting government funds -- our tax dollars -- to teach people how to pray away the gay and advocating the use of Federal might to stamp out all forms of pornography frowned on by their frowning religion and to legislate and limit and punish our personal relationships -- while griping about too much government interference and too much spending and too much social engineering. It's getting damned hard to tolerate morally, mentally and ethically bankrupt creeps like Newt Gingrich, who is quite happy to feed the malignant idiocy now consuming the remnants of our Republic by telling us that our constitution does not "mention" much less provide for a supreme court, Article III of the Constitution notwithstanding.

"We now have this entire national elite that wants us to believe that any five lawyers are a Constitutional convention. That is profoundly un-American and profoundly wrong.”

lies the moral multimillionaire elitist with the million dollar line of credit at the jewelry store and a string of illicit mistresses and abused ex-wives. That's profoundly un-American and profoundly wrong and profoundly Republican. But of course anyone who thinks the highest court is an extra-legal ad hoc assembly of five self-appointed members foisted on the public by "elitists" and with no constitutional authority can hardly be considered an elitist of any kind unless there's a ranking of candidates according to their ignorance and mendacity and greed. Perhaps Newt just forgot that the Supreme Court Justices are approved by Congress or perhaps he's just a lying tub of septic scum who thinks he's entitled by birth and party affiliation to feast on the corpse of America.

You can fool some of the people all of the time: you can fool a lot of them in fact. They're called Republicans. They're called perverts, they're called liars, thieves, embezzlers and saboteurs.

Crocodile tears

Most bad drivers, like the American public in general have no concept of momentum or kinetic energy. Americans are the sort of people who will complain they're still falling after the parachute opens. Americans were the people who lapped up Fox News' "Democrats are pessimists trying to tear down the economy which is strong, strong, strong" and the Administration's "Debt doesn't matter" philosophy and are still the people who remain steadfastly unaware that the Republicans raised the Debt ceiling 7 times in the 8 years they held the White House and asked for a bigger bailout with no accountability or accounting. They're just shocked, shocked, shocked to see what that farleftliberalcommie president is doing and just look at the tears in Boehner's eyes.

Listening to Tim Geithner trying to be re-assuring on Meet the Press this morning didn't do much to dispel the idea that Republicans want nothing more than to allow default so as to give the illusion of Democratic guilt to their "look what Obama did" strategy. If he's right that the government will still pay it's bills after August 2nd, there will still be serious repercussions for all of us. If Geithner is right that a larger catastrophe than the Great Depression has been diverted it makes little impression on those who don't remember what caused the 1930's to be what they were and what brought about the rebound. They don't remember that every experiment in drastic upper bracket cuts has has the same negative result, that an extra few percent on the top bracket puts more back into the economy than cuts do or remember that paying off the debt on WWII brought steady expansion and job growth and infrastructure improvement. The kids in the back seat will continue to bitch until the money they imagined they had five years ago materializes again.

No, it's burn baby burn and the new Utopia will rise from the ashes and far better to let people who need Social Security and Medicare to stay alive die and reduce the surplus population than for hedge fund tycoons to pay an extra couple of grand more and send an extra couple of grand less to to offshore tax havens. If Medicare is indeed bankrupting us, it's by Republican design. If the debt is expanding, it's part of their plan to pay it off by reducing taxes and eliminating things they have opposed for 75 years on "moral" grounds. They look on economic tragedy as an opportunity and are probably quite aware at the Boehner and Koch Brothers and Murdoch level, that the 'lower the income to make the debt go away' strategy will, like pulling back on the stick and cutting the throttle, send us spinning downward instead of climbing. It's what they want.

I would be tempted to give a shit once again if there were any significant number of people who recognized that funny feeling in the rectum for what it is and weren't too easily seduced by the feeling of importance one gets by joining the Low-Brow Brotherhood of Trolls and Tea Smokers Marching Band, but there aren't enough and and no, I'm not tempted.

The thing is

It's not any one thing. It's never one thing. All the things that have led up to my crisis of caring are old things; have been around a long time and I've been aware of all of them all along. Whether things have become so crazy that some trigger point was passed or whether being chronically weak because of a strict diet or a passing virus or whether somehow, the realization that all suffering comes from believing, from having faith that things can ever be all right in the long run, finally seeped through from that repository of things I always say to whatever core of self awareness exists deep down somewhere.

The thing is -- I just don't care. Neither more or less than the last time I said it, but I don't care. Someone apparently got away with murder? What's it to me? My country is making strides toward being neo-feudal, toward a police state, a corporate oligarchy with no collective concern for anything but maximum profit and maximum exploitation by those who can make the most of it? So what? The great accomplishments of science? That's over, unless it's the science of sales and manipulation and the technology that exists only to make people buy it. I don't give a damn. I don't even give a damn that I don't give a damn and I've forgotten why I ever believed in the progress of man and the slow climb up from the insanity of animals toward enlightenment and civilization -- or even decency.

But it's always something.

I got a phone call the other day. It was a recorded voice asking to contribute to the fight against the persecution of Christian parents' rights to raise their families as they saw fit. I have no idea what they meant but I can have some confidence in the assumption that it has to do with interfering with some other group's right to do the same. I pushed the "never call me again" button. I don't care, it's someone else's fight after all, and if they do win, it will take so long they might as well just wait for the next asteroid or gamma ray burst or solar catastrophe.

I got a flier in the mail too. Cover photos of grey haired people smiling like they were drugged under a headline of "happy Seniors." Now I hate like hell to be called a 'senior' and it damned well is a gratuitous pejorative. I'm still a man and no less entitled to be one than when I was an idiot teenager, fulfilling my duty of buying things to be hip. But no, these happy folks were just in Ecstasy because Representative Tom Rooney and his friends Mr. Ryan and Governor "Medicare Fraud" Scott were going to keep Medicare and Social security from being taken over by "unelected bureaucrats" and presumably given over to those entitled by party affiliation to a big Goddamn profit from it. You know, the Republican peerage, the elect. Happy, happy days, but I'm not going to be able to do a damn thing so why worry?

I bought one of these little flat screen portable HDTV's recently. Figured it would be a good thing for hurricane season, but trying it out today, I was was disappointed to find nothing on the air but Jesus and informercials, but I shouldn't be, of course. That's all there really is in this episode of the Truman Show and all there will be allowed to be because all this amazing technology has no other purpose than to sell to those at the bottom of the pond. The people already borrowing at 400% from Wells Fargo payday loan stores to meet the mortgage payment to Wells Fargo Bank and the credit cards they maxed out at Wal-Mart and who just found out they have to die because they have no insurance and can't even get welfare because they can't pass a drug test because they had to take something for the pain and they can't afford a prescription or prescription drugs. Yes, it's gonna be all right after we 'save' Medicare.

Some "Practicing physician" as he continually reminded me had the ultimate cure and preventative for heart disease which "we now know" is only caused by "Toxins" that need to be chelated out of our blood stream with his snake oil pills. " I don't wancha getting a bypass. I don't wancha getting a stent" He just wants to sell pills that will stop the "epidemic of sickness overwhelming all of us." It would take more than a pill to stop the irony, but nothing will stop the two born every minute.

Another channel appeared to be a cooking channel, showing children how to cover apple slices with sugar sprinkles because, as the nice Church lady tells us, "God wants children to eat healthy food" unless of course the fruit contains knowledge of morality. Perhaps that's why so many children are hungry - not enough red and green sprinkles -- or maybe, like me, God doesn't give a shit -- at least not as long as he sells enough air time. And he does sell it. Four stations available on the indoor antenna and three of them have Jesus, or at least so they say. They don't show him, but perhaps he's tied up in the back room while those polyester puffballs strut and parade and chant and solicit money. JEE- Suss! wants you to be rich so buy my prayer towel and my blessing -- call now.

So why feel sorry for myself. I don't need to if I don't care. I don't feel sorry for America either, they're fed all the crap they can chew on and they will die, or at least make sure you do, rather than make anything better. If I feel sorry for anyone it's people like poor old Jesus who not only thought they could, but tried -- only to be defeated, have their history stolen and used to sell product, to support tyranny and exploitation and persecution, the fleecing of the poor, the fearful, the desperate and to stifle knowledge, damn decency and prostitute hope.

But who cares?

Just let it die

“Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too,”

-Michelle Bachmann on Fox News-

John Wayne, I never really liked him; not as an actor and particularly not as something he attempted to portray off the stage: a patriot. No, the only uniform he ever wore came from the costume department at Republic Studios, the folks who got him his 2A draft status during WW II because it would have meant lost profits had he followed so many actors into the military.

But of course by the time the Vietnam war became a tragi-comic opera, he was a Hollywood soldier of long standing, fond of telling many of us we weren't real Americans because we didn't quite see the glory of the whole thing.

So leave it to Michelle Bachmann to claim she's channeling his "spirit" -- whatever that might be. Whether that consists of telling us we're not real Americans because we dare to measure the age of things or don't accept the Biblical nonsense about the "waters" above and below the Earth I don't know, but there are few things that amuse me more than the trolls, public and private, who present their limitations and disabilities and delusions as their strength. Haven't we all had people tell us ungrammatically how stupid we are and spell stupid wrong? Petty irony it is indeed, but then such little moments of irony may provide the most satisfaction one can expect in our kind of times. It costs too much to care any more.

So should we laugh at Michelle for confusing Winterset, Iowa, birthplace of John Wayne (nee Marion Morrison) with Waterloo, Iowa, birthplace of John Wayne Gacy who strangled little boys and buried them in his crawl space? The entire pandemonium of journalists, bloggers and blowhards has been going at it since yesterday morning. Go ahead and join in, but I'm beyond laughter or tears for that matter. When it comes to giving a shit, I don't. I'm all out of givadamn and I'm not shopping for more. As I said, it just costs too much these days.

Father's Day

Things change, everyone gets older. You start to wonder how many more father's days will pass while you still have a father to spend it with. It's good then, to see how some things never change; things like the bitter, miserable, vicious lies that spew from the GOP. Take the current Elmer Fudd of the Party, John McCain, the tortured war hero who didn't have the courage to stand up to the party's support of torture. Take John, who is making this Father's Day so much happier by blaming the Arizona wildfires on illegal immigrants rather than on the drought.

But he has substantial evidence, which he will, no doubt, reveal eventually, or not reveal or simply forget about after the wildfire of hate has got beyond control. Remember when Mexicans were bringing leprosy across the border? Many will long remember Lou Dobbs' accusations but not the lack of evidence and perhaps the wildfire libel will stick long after McCain's slide into dementia becomes all too obvious.

Well thanks John, for all you do and for reminding us of Republican fathers long gone like Joe McCarthy with their vaporous claims of "evidence" and I'm sure your legacy will stink long after you're gone.

War or not a war

"If it looks like a war, it's a war"

said Dennis Kucinich to CNN, but he's wrong. Many things look like wars and many things have been sold to us as wars that aren't wars. Johnson's War on Poverty? The war on Drugs? calling it a war doesn't make it so nor does saying it is when it isn't. The 1968 Democratic convention looked and smelled like a war -- maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.

Of course invoking the War Powers Resolution of 1973 finally gives the dogs something to bark about and they've been looking for impeachment arguments since election day, but is the current hoopla about our support of NATO actions in Syria based on concern for the law or another congressional burlesque show attempt to overturn an election they lost for good reason?

It looks like a war to the Republicans too but then, Birth of a Nation looks like history to them. Reagan's invasion of Granda and Bush's invasion of Panama looked pretty much like wars as well, but although both those presidents did report to Congress under the War Powers Resolution they did so without citing section 4(a)(1) which would require approval to continue after 60 days. In both cases hostilities ceased before the 60 day period even though troops remained in Panama and the question was deemed moot.

The question then hinges on whether American forces and personnel are still involved in hostilities 60 days after the initial air strikes and are still substantially in harms way. Obama argues that they are not, that they are only providing support for an embargo. His opponents disagree, but then they disagree with his presence in office and everything he says or does even when it mirrors their own sentiments. Scandal has been cried more often than Wolf, but while I tend to see the argument in similar light as the White House does, I Wish he could have done what Bush did by taking action when Congress was out of session, but not having had that option, I wish he would simply remove this issue from the spotlight and allow Congress to have their way. If nothing else it would take my Representative Tom "Looney" Rooney off the soapbox and out of my inbox for a while.

I think NATO can do without us and if this is so important to the Arab League, they can use some of that firepower we sold them.

Cicero on Fox News

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."

Marcus Tullius Cicero

A horse of the same color

"I believe this because I believe that and I believe that because I'm a believer and believers believe it." If this passes as anything resembling reason I give up and if it's the argument of someone who feels qualified to be the President of the United States in the 21st century I'm getting out. It's not because I believe anything or believe in believing as either a virtue or a way to run a country, but because I'm simply tired of the sanctified madness.

Take Herman Cain -- please. Take him far away from any office that allows him to rule and ruin other people with his beliefs; allows him to substitute his beliefs for law and invent crimes at will. Cain, you see, says that homosexuality is a "choice" and is a sin and he believes it because he believes it and that makes it true.

“I believe homosexuality is a sin because I’m a Bible-believing Christian, I believe it’s a sin,”

he says and yes, that's just the sort of thing Republicans like to pass off as reason and package this fear of retributive and divine bogeymen with fear of communism and common decency like Wall Street packages bad loans.

Sin, Mr. Cain, is not crime, it's a tool used to tyrannize the mind and because the sin of one frame of reference is not the sin of another and because we are a government of laws and not of prophets and because those laws are designed to protect liberty and property and not to protect your tangled web of beliefs or promote them or ennoble them or sanctify them or elevate them to the status of law and permit them to persecute others: and because sir, you are a man like the rest of us, neither better nor worse nor more to be obeyed because of your beliefs, you should save them for Sunday and leave the rest of us the hell alone with your damned arrogant beliefs. No man is elevated by standing on Bibles.



Preacher Cain of course would be a good choice for the GOP at this point -- evidence that they're not really racists and have only set the dogs on that other black man because he's not Christian enough or as concerned with the things God hates like Medicare or the Minimum wage. A different shade of black man and one more easily used as a tool to get things back to the way they used to be when there was a place for everyone and everyone was in his place.

Koching up some trouble

"Good Lord. These are truly evil people"

says The Impolitic and it's hard to disagree. Of course the people that thought it would be a "conservative" thing to do; giving struggling Detroit homeowners fake foreclosure notices, don't think they're being vandals trying to destabilize civilization and built a "conservative" Utopia on the ruins. In fact the Koch brothers who seem to be behind this prank have a vision for the future that more resembles an Orwellian horror with the part of Big Brother played by corporate robber barons like them and the sinister, black menace portrayed by Barack H. Obama. Their lackeys see it otherwise, I'm sure. A step in the final solution of the "colored problem" that the Liberals and do-gooders brought upon Detroit and a reaction to the stunning affront of ACORN having forced a black president on us -- a man nobody voted for, of course. The new North. It's the old South without the sheets.

It's truly hard to describe this sort of thing in the way we describe rational human conduct, because it isn't any more rational than drunken football hooliganism or beer hall riot -- and a hell of a lot more dangerous. It's all the more dangerous for the lack of attention given. CNN.com today provides a bright colorful farrago of sex scandal, new Facebook features, the exploits of rappers and little else. Indeed what else concerns us?

The Sesame Manifesto

It's impossible for me to watch a Fox "panel" chew a story without thinking of an alligator feeding frenzy or a bunch of mean dogs fighting for possession of a bit of rawhide. Actually it's impossible for me to watch Fox News at all, but for those of a tougher breed, here's a prime example of the ruthless war on reality called Fox.

Listen carefully and you'll spot the message that Sesame Street aims at lower income, Urban kids and you'll smell the racism and you'll hear the Republican anthem that the fraction of a cent per taxpayer that this show costs is "on principle" too much and especially because it tries to elevate the underclasses in direct contravention of Divine Law and Ayn Rand, whichever is the more powerful.

Does anyone really believe that Big Bird is a Communist or that Sesame Street is ruining America and the morals of its children? (perhaps Doctor Spock fans can sigh with relief now that they've moved on to a new chew toy.)

Perhaps you do, perhaps you watch Fox anyway. Perhaps you're a malicious idiot with delusions of persecution, but here it is again:

The Horror

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow-

________________

I had pretty much made up my mind that I wasn't going to grant Sarah Palin any more free publicity or waste any more stress-filled time reacting to the Idiot's Princess, but like the safety valve on a boiler, I have my set limit. Pop goes the weasel, or at least the blogger.

I read her garbled soliloquy yesterday, about how the immigrants who built this country up from an agrarian economy to an economic giant had a terribly hard time gaining entrance and getting citizenship and could not favorably be compared to those today who were raised in the USA from infancy, got an education and became part of our society only to be expelled on some error in their parent's papers. She's right, you can't. It took a matter of hours to go through Immigration in the Ellis Island days and if you weren't Chinese, you were all right. No English required, no guaranteed job, no nothin' -- and they came by the millions. Today it takes years, of course, but we're dealing with Sarah Palin, congenitally stupid product of a fourth tier higher educational system and a lifetime of reading nothing. She's dumber than a pre-schooler and she's a Republican front-runner.

My mother read me that Longfellow poem when I was little more than an infant and I don't think any of my contemporaries did not know by early grade school of that somewhat mythological event, but no, not Sarah Palin who seems to think that the famed Boston silversmith was a spokesman for the NRA and a right wing, saber rattling blowhard whose main concern was promoting gun rights in the American wilderness.

“…he who warned the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and, um, makin’ sure as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free. And we were gonna be armed.” You betcha, gol durn it!

The fact that this perky little peanut brain couldn't graduate 5th grade much less pass a citizenship test -- or even, apparently, read a newspaper isn't just obvious, it's horrifying and what these daily enormities we're subjected to every day say about her is still less horrifying than what this says about America.