Thanks to some mis-firing brain cells and a certain actually good reason I moved to Michigan, Rick Snyder's Michigan. It seems that there is some buyers' remorse setting in. Gov Rick is polling underwater at 56% sucks to 37% approve. I guess I have a couple thoughts... and they're not exactly complimentary to my "fellow" Michiganders.
Which one of you assholes who is sorry now failed to notice the goddam (R) after his name?
Which one of you sorry idjits couldn't be bothered to notice that the (R) designation means "hate unions" among hate other things?
Is it any consolation for you sorry bastards that a whole bunch of those who share your "sucks" sentiment didn't vote for him and get to live with the stupidity of your vote?
Hey, union brothers and sisters who voted for this guy... you really suck bad and I hope you're really, really satisfied with yourselves. Tell that butthead next to you just how pleased you are he isn't paying dues along side you. Yeah buddy, that'll teach them Unions to be nice to gays and browns.
There are enough assholes anywhere without you adding to the quota of stupid ones.
You don't like that kind of talk? Kiss My Ass, I was smart enough to live in Oregon when you elected this twit and his fellow traveler twits. Yeah, they've tried this crap there... nope.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
National Review Gets Sued, Finally Some Good News?
Once, in the dark ages before Blogs, I took a six month subscription to The National Review with the idea that maybe something Buckley had a hand in wouldn't be intolerably stupid. The writing was childish (you get better here, if that's saying anything) and Buckley's only contributions were some sort of "Emeritus Letters" that clearly showed the man was well past whatever prime he had. The subscription ran out... thankfully since that meant that I didn't need to read the waste of my money. It isn't so much that I disagreed with them (I do, pretty much unequivocably) but that I don't care to pay for and read HS Freshman thinking and writing. At NRO the ability to string words together has improved somewhat, but the logic and thinking still approximates the three year old's, "I want this now, don't tell me about facts!" screaming. (I've had kids and I know they don't talk like that)
Now Michael Mann, a Penn State climatologist, is suing NR for libel and defamation of character.
It seems it has:
To be sure, the profit their investors are looking for isn't from $$$$s generated under that "Masthead" but from the benefits of keeping the marks in line and on script so "not profitable" works for them. It doesn't have a damn thing to do with the "Market" they're always on about - it has everthing to do with manipulating politics to subsidize their betters - the antithesis of their individuality fetish. NR is essentially paid advertising for all the rest of the RW grifting and their plutocratic overlords. They're not pointless, that machine managed to get a Mitt Romney sort of close. You only have to think about that in relation to everything else going on for about a minute to be very frightened... or at least a bit ill.
Anyhow, it is an early Xmas gift.
Now Michael Mann, a Penn State climatologist, is suing NR for libel and defamation of character.
filed in District of Columbia Superior Court, Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, claimed that a July 15 article not only falsely accused him of misconduct, but crossed a line by comparing him to Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football assistant coach convicted of child molestation. He also sued the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that ran a piece about Mann on its staff blog, OpenMarket.org.This place right here doesn't worry about calling somebody like Rick Santorum names or even saying Mittens is a liar. Some of that has to do with the fact that they deserve it, but I'm sure I can get away with it because they're quite public enough in their assholery for me to be shielded. I'm afraid that Mann has been enough of a public face on his own hook that NR could pretty much call him any damn thing they pleased, and just claim satire. The part about accusing him of fraud may cause them a bunch of difficulty.
It seems it has:
As many of you know, National Review is not a non-profit — we are just not profitable. A lawsuit is not something we can fund with money we don’t have.You may not know much about NR but I'm pretty sure you do know that they are great whacking bangers of the "Free Market" drum. They are not a news magazine any more than this site is so they don't have the excuse of running a large information gathering staff eating their income. What they have are opinion writers that the market doesn't value highly enough for them to earn a profit. That market would be the right-wing grifting machine that has given us Newt and his plastic wife earning a fine lifestyle and Dick Morris not looking at all as if he's missing meals. You could run down a pretty fair list of right-wing noise makers (Rush?) that don't seem to be poor, though begging is big with all of them. Somebody/s are being over-paid, there is that little matter of deficit spending or even the Right To Work For Less.
To be sure, the profit their investors are looking for isn't from $$$$s generated under that "Masthead" but from the benefits of keeping the marks in line and on script so "not profitable" works for them. It doesn't have a damn thing to do with the "Market" they're always on about - it has everthing to do with manipulating politics to subsidize their betters - the antithesis of their individuality fetish. NR is essentially paid advertising for all the rest of the RW grifting and their plutocratic overlords. They're not pointless, that machine managed to get a Mitt Romney sort of close. You only have to think about that in relation to everything else going on for about a minute to be very frightened... or at least a bit ill.
Anyhow, it is an early Xmas gift.
Conservatism With Age?
I've heard over the years that men tend to become more conservative with age. I have to admit that I'm a bit more chary of some risky actions - I really don't want to go into just how crazy I was when young, my mother reads this thing (she's already past grey, but...). Really, short of reducing the chances of my physical destruction and that of others innocently involved I've not noticed any particularly rightist thinking creeping in. It is generally found that the youth cadre is more liberal in its outlook than the general population and I've watched this with a certain interest.
What I've found is that the young set is not anywhere more liberal than I am. Now to be sure my experience is not a predictor or predicate of anything. I am, however, a bit disturbed. What bothers me is that statistics say this cadre will grow more conservative with age. I admit to being well left of most elected Democrats and, obviously, most Democratic voting people.
While you can make a significant arguement that the voting and dialogue's shift right is not followed in attitudes when stripped of political trappings that does not change the rightward reality. If this is the case, what does the future hold in political policies if these folks do shift right? I do not find this cadre a bit to the left of those of us who were leftish in the 60s and 70s and we are where we are today (it would be easy to over estimate the size of that group).
I don't know, I sure the hell hope people just reaching and just past voting age will do a hell of a lot better running the show when they age than has been managed by the cadre who were young when I was.
What I've found is that the young set is not anywhere more liberal than I am. Now to be sure my experience is not a predictor or predicate of anything. I am, however, a bit disturbed. What bothers me is that statistics say this cadre will grow more conservative with age. I admit to being well left of most elected Democrats and, obviously, most Democratic voting people.
While you can make a significant arguement that the voting and dialogue's shift right is not followed in attitudes when stripped of political trappings that does not change the rightward reality. If this is the case, what does the future hold in political policies if these folks do shift right? I do not find this cadre a bit to the left of those of us who were leftish in the 60s and 70s and we are where we are today (it would be easy to over estimate the size of that group).
I don't know, I sure the hell hope people just reaching and just past voting age will do a hell of a lot better running the show when they age than has been managed by the cadre who were young when I was.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Patriot And Hacks - Guess Which Is Susan Rice
This is what a patriot looks like...
and this is what camera hogging partisan hacks look like.
As for the media... piss on that bunch of weasles.
and this is what camera hogging partisan hacks look like.
As for the media... piss on that bunch of weasles.
Mississippi On The Great Lakes
Many of you (a few) know that until mid-Oct I lived in Northeast Oregon, and then moved to Northern Michigan - Petoskey, to be exact. For those of you not from here and know something about geography the title N MI may confuse you with that big old chunk of Michigan north of here also known as the UP - Upper Peninsula. OK, so here's the deal - this place is socio-economically... divided is a polite word. The Mitten (you get that, right?) is split up into the urban South, the farmlandish central and the lake splattered wooded cooler north of tourism/summer residency. You can get to the UP from the rest of Michigan by boat or The Bridge. The UP was timber and mining, now more toursim but it is sparcely populated and heavily wooded. Frankly it is a socio/economic-geopolitical nightmare. My political pals from Oregon will recognize a bit of this stuff, but here it is really a mess and you can drill even deeper down by noting that the western part is... conservative/farmland.
As you might guess, the more rural the area the more GOPer infested it is. I know my friends from E OR would consider the area I'm in something other than rural considering how many people there are here per square mile but there simply are a bunch of quite small towns. Petoskey is the big town in the area with a population of about 6300 (year around - triple in "the season").
I'm enough of a foreigner that I can't do real specific political analysis, but frankly the urban part of the state is pretty fractured politically. This state was hit hard in a socio-economic sense by urban flight and a bit after that the collapse of manufacturing. The Michigan that was such a driver in Unionism and progressive policies hasn't existed for some time. Charlie Pierce has taken to referring to this place as Michissippi, which I'd have used in the title other than not liking to do complete rip-offs.
I could go into the post-WWII influx of southerners and particularly the rise in black employment as some of the drivers of what is going on here. If you're not particularly aware, while the Unions were busy being a part of the vanguard of social progressivism a good sized chunk of the rank and file were busy voting GOPer dogwhistling, fag bashing, and hippie kicking... and fleeing to the suburbs. Yup, in a lot of ways this place is a lot more Mississippi than it is what you've thought of as Michigan. If you gave me a choice between living here and shit on a stick I'm afraid I'd opt for the stick but for a pretty good reason I'm stuck here. It looks as though the only path to some sort of peace of mind is to learn to ignore the doings of my betters and just not care.
yeah, right.
As you might guess, the more rural the area the more GOPer infested it is. I know my friends from E OR would consider the area I'm in something other than rural considering how many people there are here per square mile but there simply are a bunch of quite small towns. Petoskey is the big town in the area with a population of about 6300 (year around - triple in "the season").
I'm enough of a foreigner that I can't do real specific political analysis, but frankly the urban part of the state is pretty fractured politically. This state was hit hard in a socio-economic sense by urban flight and a bit after that the collapse of manufacturing. The Michigan that was such a driver in Unionism and progressive policies hasn't existed for some time. Charlie Pierce has taken to referring to this place as Michissippi, which I'd have used in the title other than not liking to do complete rip-offs.
I could go into the post-WWII influx of southerners and particularly the rise in black employment as some of the drivers of what is going on here. If you're not particularly aware, while the Unions were busy being a part of the vanguard of social progressivism a good sized chunk of the rank and file were busy voting GOPer dogwhistling, fag bashing, and hippie kicking... and fleeing to the suburbs. Yup, in a lot of ways this place is a lot more Mississippi than it is what you've thought of as Michigan. If you gave me a choice between living here and shit on a stick I'm afraid I'd opt for the stick but for a pretty good reason I'm stuck here. It looks as though the only path to some sort of peace of mind is to learn to ignore the doings of my betters and just not care.
yeah, right.
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
How To Cure GOP Demographic Blues
If you read this maybe you could explain to me why it is that the GOP has Them Old Time Demographic Blues.
“I see that the way we will get the Hispanics and the other groups, the Asians, as part of the Republican Coalition is to get them first part of the great American Coalition. Make them think of themselves, not make but, persuade them to think of themselves primarily as Americans. Restore the overarching, all-encompassing concept of an American identity, which we used to have, which we knew how to bring about and which in the last 20 or 30 years very largely as a result of the democrats wanting to emphasize ethnicity rather than American-ness. We have lost that and frankly one of the reasons we have not regained it and doing very badly at the moment is because the Republicans have neither had the imagination nor the courage to think how they could appeal to these other ethnic groups as Americans and craft an appeal that won them over. They have got to do that.”I think they may be onto something (or maybe on something). You really don't expect me to comment on this... do you?
Saturday, December 01, 2012
GOP And Taxes
Just to get people to think about just how damn difficult this tax and budget business is going to get, I'd like to propose this:
Getting the GOP to agree to tax increases on the rich and not gutting social security and medicaid/medicare is like trying to get a Fundamentalist Christian to acknowledge Evolution or one of you to become an entirely different religion.
You are not dealing with facts and numbers here, you're dealing with a religion. You can't go so far as to call it an ideology because of the faith backed nature of it. Listen up, the Earth was not created six thousand years ago and supply side economics does not work. Neither of them works because they ignore reality and facts in favor of faith. Now why in the hell supply side has become a religion is way beyond me, but then Creationism is also. Now I suppose that since there have been a couple books around for thousands of years that talked about the Garden there is some damned excuse for Creationism still being around, but for Cripes Sake this supply side nonsense only has St Ronnie, not God on its side.
None of that matters because it still is a religion and pushing the GOPers out of it is going to take a hell of a lot more than being nice to them. What it is going to take is a choice between damnation and survival - most of them are way too big of cowards to chose martyrdom. Now, you figure out what that is going to take. Mr President and fellow Dems?
Getting the GOP to agree to tax increases on the rich and not gutting social security and medicaid/medicare is like trying to get a Fundamentalist Christian to acknowledge Evolution or one of you to become an entirely different religion.
You are not dealing with facts and numbers here, you're dealing with a religion. You can't go so far as to call it an ideology because of the faith backed nature of it. Listen up, the Earth was not created six thousand years ago and supply side economics does not work. Neither of them works because they ignore reality and facts in favor of faith. Now why in the hell supply side has become a religion is way beyond me, but then Creationism is also. Now I suppose that since there have been a couple books around for thousands of years that talked about the Garden there is some damned excuse for Creationism still being around, but for Cripes Sake this supply side nonsense only has St Ronnie, not God on its side.
None of that matters because it still is a religion and pushing the GOPers out of it is going to take a hell of a lot more than being nice to them. What it is going to take is a choice between damnation and survival - most of them are way too big of cowards to chose martyrdom. Now, you figure out what that is going to take. Mr President and fellow Dems?
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