Taking Time to Reflect...

I thought I'd take some time to express some of my core beliefs. I believe these statements to be true, statements of fact, axioms if you will:

1) Being a Republican makes you a bad person.

2) Jamelle Hollieway is the greatest college quarterback of all time and in all dimensions.

3) No, you're color blind.

4) Being a Democrat makes you a sucker.

5) All australian shepherds should be named Sydney, Sheila or Muriel.

That is all.

Pat Buchanan

is an asshole. Pat Buchanan is a bad person because he thinks what's works for him must work for everyone else, therefore anyone not as successful as him is not trying. This lack of comprehension of micro-realities of the human condidition is pandemic in the republican mind.

This lack of empathy combined with the empirical data that minorities in America are impoverished at a rate much higher than thier WASP nieghbors has led the Pat Buchanans of the world to believe that minorites are either incapable success or have decided en masse as a population to engage in a parasitic cultural experiment wherein the Pat Buchanans support them.

This is where racism in modern day America has its roots. This lack of empathy for the varied individual relationships to their environment and a world view crafted via logical falacies such as post hoc ergo proctor hoc are the origins of the epidemic of republican doushe baggery in our society.

Pat is a racist, a classist, an anti-semite and a facist.

But, despite what a recent article claims, he is not an anti-semite because he is anti-Israel. He is anti-Israel because he is afacist and an anti-semite. The mere existance of the political entity of Isreal is one of the top five most destructive forces on the planet. It is demonstrably apartheid. It is empirically an illigetemate government. It is a profoundly illogical recipient of American foriegn aide. The policies that Israel has promoted in the last 50 years are prima facia the source of most Islamic terroism today. The settlements in Palestine are monstrous acts against human dignity and international law, Isreal being sanctioned by the UN by an order of magnitude more than Iraq ever was.

Criticism of Isreal is fair and just. Defimation of the Jewish people because of their Jewishness is why Pat Buchanon is anti-semitic.

Get it straight, minion.

It's not always about you, Minion...

I'm writing this because if I write it I'll remember it and I know I'll need to recall this at some point.

Some numbers all in 2007 dollars:

____________________1968____2007____Increase
Median Household income..$39000.......$50000......20%
Average tuition and fees......$4000.........$8000........200%
Average home price..............$115,000....$195,000...60%

So we see that through this very narrow lens income has not increased at a rate even close to the increase in the costs of middle class living. I have not included a couple facts which illustrate the point even further.

First, that it's difficult to quantify the increase in health care costs over this period because before 1968 it was illegal in most states for hospitals to be anything but non-profit organizations. Second, the median income number is a bit skewed because of a massive consolidation of wealth at the top of the income scale over this period. If you remove the top 5% of income earners from this calculation the median income adjusted for inflation has actually gone down.

The point being everybody you know who went to school in the 60's and thinks people should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps has confirmed my guiding principle of the contemporary republican party: Republicanism is not a political ideology it is the never ending search for the justification to be a dick.

Joe Scarborough Officially Announces Candidacy...

...for Lord Douche Earl of Scumbag Duke of Ignorance, Esq.

This mornings exchange between Joe Scarborough, some insignificant character and Rudy Giuliani settles it. Joe Scarborough now officially believes the following:

1) Because Jesse Venturi noted that we have only tortured Muslims Jesse is suggesting that our policy is to torture Muslims.

2) That torture is eminently effective, and that there is no body of evidence, existing, growing or established that suggests torture is ineffective.

Just debunking the simple "because you disagree with me, you hate America" technique that seems to be embedded in Republican psyche seems an excercise in futility; its been done repeatedly in this venue and both the factual inaccuracy and the intent of the technique are well known to you, Minion.

Instead, my exercise has become to evaluate carefully the statement and determine potential truths.

Obviously torture worked if the point of toruture was to establish a rationalle for invading Iraq.

I'm done with this post....moving on.

Liz Cheney: A Primer in Invalid Argumentation

[ Minion, I'll spell check after I get to work, so don't bother pointing out my errors and typos.]

Oh, Morning Joe, if all the world be a stage then those who play at vacuous spew use Moring Joe as their green room. Liz Cheney this morning is continuing her media tour promoting the patriotic heroism of her father. Here's a stripped down summary of her talking points:

So it's just a difference of oppinion. I mean, intellegent men can disagree, and this is just one of those times. Sure torture is illegal, but that's the thing, see water boarding is not torture.

So that's part one of Liz's by proxy defence of her super villain father, that the act we are debating simply does not qualify as torture and therefore as not illegal.

Part two, the OLC wrote legal opinions telling us that these techniques that the intellegence community desperately wanted to use were perfectly legal.

Also, it worked. These "techniques" (which is a word Obama has chosen to use to describe these acts) produced "actionable intellegence".

That's part three, that by doing these things attacks on America were stopped.

Further, what would you do if you thought an attack on your wife and children was eminant? Wouldnt you use every technique at your disposal to stop that from happening?

That's part four that after 9 Eleven, we thought another attack was iminant and that we made the decision to use every technique at our disposal to keep another attack from happening.

Let's just go through this real quick. This is a pretty easy debunk:

Part 1: Waterboarding, the subject "technique" was illegal when the United States prosecuted Japanese soldiers in WWII, and US soldiers during Viet Nam. So there is a precedential chain that establishes the illegality of waterboarding. Further there are no, not one, case of the aquital of someone chaged with waterboarding who has been found not guilty of torture. To be precise, not everyone accused and found guilty of a crime is guilty of a crime, but everyone found guilty of waterboarding is not guilty of waterboarding they are guilty of torture and a war crime. It was torture during the spanish inquisition, it was torture during WWII, during the reign of Pinochet, and during the race wars in the Balkins. It is decided law.

Part 2: The memos were recinded. They were recinded by subsequent Bush administration OLC lawyers and not because a policy had shifted but because they were irresponsible and a poor excuse for legal opining. Further, that as Eugene Robinson argued, if the standard for legality is a memo from a lawyer, and that that opinion is only invalid if it can be proved the opinion was a departure from the lawyers genuine understanding of the law, then I am 1) proposing that I may rob banks with impunity, and that I have this right because of a very important but subtle component of Texas community property rights, that I won't go into now and 2) I'm going to law school 3) I'm going to start writing memos.

Part 3: The more information we get our hands on, the more memos that are released, the more we believe this to be false. It is becoming clear that we got all the information we needed from FBI interogators before the CIA started with torture. We also know that torture victims will say anything to make the torture stop. If this is not the case I'm suggesting we extradite Senator John McCain to Viet Nam to stand trial for the war crims he claimed to committ while a prisoner there in the sixties and seventies.

Part 4: This is the ultimate Republican judo look at the shiny thing technique. Judo because it takes their own cowardice in the face of crisis and attempts to apply it to the democrats who they believe are to cowardly to break the law or to "do what it takes". It's the shiny thing in the same way that the nuclear smoking gun meme was so powerful. Really though, how do you know another attack is eminant? What are the grounds by which we come to this conclussion? And what is eminant? Is eminant by 9/21? Is eminant by 9/11/02? How long can a terrorist be in custody and still be in possesion of intellegence on eminant attacks? A week? A month?

One last point, the right thing to do would be to find every single individual who had a hand in facilitating torture and prosocute them. We can prosecute Nancy Pelosi AND Dick Cheney now, in American courts, have the investigations and the trials right now under our control, or they can happen 10 years from now in Germany, or Spain or Holland. There will be accountability on the democratic and republican sides, and the choice we have is weather we want to control that acountability or leave it to someone else.

IMPORTANT UPDATE

I was going to blog about the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, the apparent preference for these operating models on each side of the political spectrum and the ramifications of these tendencies on cultural norms and social institutions, but I have decided to write a sonnet dedicated to my wife's mucus:

Minion, behold the nadir of the lyric:

Dreams and pathways I have known

The times of man eons peak and eras trough

Cacophonous yalp as virally sewn

Still lyrical I hear my dear love's cough

Harmonious day flees panoptical night

And a green phlegm rubicon traverse

Viscus, cascading snot affright

Fly, silent fever embrace the inevitable adverse

Forgotten roads through rooky woods meander

Cursed cough, thy name is emerald molasses

Among fallen timbers and brush forever wander

Pray, find your place amid begotten corpses

And time, immortal guardian of aged, ailing genus locus

A dimming light, we say goodnight to all my Love's disgusting mucus

Note to Shark, re: Jumping

Oh, dear sweet baby jebus. Morning Joe has done it. That's it. They've laid out in very clear terms the structural diagram, or playbook if you will, for the architecture of douschbaggery.

1) Apparently we were one country on September 11 and a different country on September 12.
2) Apparently we all gave up our entire philosophy of governance on September 12 in order to shift our allegiance to the federal government. This includes "libertarians" and "small government conservatives" like Joe.
3) Apparently anyone who thinks we should prosecute our "leaders" for past acts of "laywers for issuing legal opinions" is a pure ideologue.
4) Apparently the fact that SERE school exists is proof that there is a precedent for "enhanced interigation techniques" in the world and therefore there must be a "gray area" concerning the legality of the acts.

Did I say douschbaggery? What I meant was cowardice. The limbic brain manifest. American exceptionalism writ large, amoral familialism just came into the MSNBC studio at Rockafeller plaza looked straight into the camera and took a dump in Mika Brzynski's shoe, the allegator Bruno Magli's with extra high heel.

MSNBC, what the hell are you doing with these idiots?

I've just learned....

... a new word: Atavistic. It has reminded me that I had proposed a muse-fest on the distinction between arcadian and utopian. The report concerning compensation in the executive class last year might be an adequate vehicle with which to drop some knowledge.

Minion, remind me to get back to that later.

I tend to eschew...

...polling data for a couple reasons. First, one can never underestimate the deep and profound ignorance of the American people. As a collective they can, therefore, not be relied upon to understand the complex nature of their surroundings, the human condition or the process where by sliced bread is place in proximity to a radient heat source and becomes toast. Second, polls are not just a reflection of our collective ignorance they judge only the relationship of our collective ignorance to historical events and constructs and not the relationship of the events to the constructs. In other words, polls tend to record our ignorance of our surroundings more than the nature of our surroundings, but as this flaw in polls exists within the surroundings we collectively cannot comprehend, in some ways we change the outcome by measuring it.

None the less, this poll is interesting, precisely becuase the trajectory on which American ignorance can be judged would suggest a different output. Apparently only 53% of Americans believe capitalism is better than socialism. That's suprising, nes cafe?

Dear Ms. Noonan

WOULD YOU JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Sincerely,

Thoughtful People of the World

---

What is the point of Morning Joe? I'm struck now with the realization, finally, that it's not that they're bad at what they're supposed to doing, its that they're really good and doing something bad. For fifteen minutes now they've been talking about how Obama did in the G-20 in terms of style... Style. Did he look presidential, seems to be the main point of discussion. Branding 101, truly, but idocy in the extreme for political discourse. And of course Joe has to slip in the occassional negative remark regarding France.

I don't even know why Republicans don't like France, I quite literally do not remember what the problem is. I thought it was that they didn't think we should invade Iraq, but that can't possibly be it, because surely they'd be vindicated for that view. It's hard to say now.

Back to Morning Joe

Praise the lord and pass the Fleischman's Bagels, maybe with a little cream cheese, just a light schmeer, you don't want to get all schleferdik  this early.

I don't know who the woman was they just had on but she understood the economy, she understood the difference between fiscal and monetary policy in the long and short term, and she could explain her views on past and future mistakes and triumphs.

It didn't seem like she was hocking a book or show.... Pat Buchanan the grand wizard of the Du Dousche Dan spoke to her with respect. This does not portend well.

If You're Here, That Means....Uh-Oh

The Federal Reserve is about as federal as Federal Express. They perform several services that should be the perview of the federal government, but they are contracted to perform these services, printing money, but not minting money, being among them. But still a private company whose origin is the result of federal charter but whose power comes from being the clearinghouse for all member banks for which they are the source of currency.

The treasury department's primary purpose is to recieve and account for debts, taxes and fees owed to and owed by the government of the united states.

For the past thirty years the head of the federal reserve has been an academic economist, typically of some conservative flair, but not without standing or credibilityor a "civil servant" who has worked in NGO's, regulartory agencies or quasi governmental agencies. During this same period the head of the treasury has been a banker, money manager or finacier....

Doesn't it seem like this should be reversed? Why is Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sach running the treasury, presumably directing the method by which goverment revenue should best be collected and accounted for and Greenspan, the Objectivist pure intellectual is the head of the banking system?

Minion...I asked you a question. Why?

BTW....

I'm aware that I have already called William Kristol the white rider of revelations on the Projective Caste blog, so don't bother pointing that out. Maybe Kristol is the rider and Friedman is the horse?

We'll work on it.

An Open Letter to the Inteligencia

February 12, 2009


Dear Pundettes, Coumnists, Talking Heads and Partisan Spew Monkeys,

You may have misspoken when you said "... that's what you have to do to get the super majority needed to pass things in the Senate." It would have been more accurately put to say "... that's what you have to do to END DEBATE in the Senate."

Either as a meme strategically crafted by political actors with nefarious intent or as casual intelligencia shorthand this micro-narrative has become ubiquitous. It is at best misleading and at worst deceitful. This suggestion reinforces the idea that the Democrats are powerless in this situation and without ANY more options. They can make the Republicans filibuster in the traditional sense. Below is my post script, of which, all points you are already aware.

Otherwise thanks for the great work,

E. Mickey Peavler

Post Script

1) The senate needs 51 votes to pass a bill; they need 60 votes to end debate. The endless repetition of this misstatement is starting to make me believe the Democrats would rather loose a policy battle than win after a filibuster.

2) The nuclear option is nuclear, but it is an option.

3) The problem with Republicans is Democrats. Harry Reid is the bad actor in this scenario and we should not blame Republicans for acting like Republicans.

4) I've seen and heard it reported that the Senate of the 110th congress broke the record for filibusters, but not one of them did Harry Read force to the floor. They were "technical filibusters" which gave the Republicans all the benefits of obstructionism with none of the downside of the optics of obstruction.

A is for Apple.

Milton Friedman. Not pictured here: his white horse, bow or crown.

Deconstructionism is want to eschew binary arugmentation. As a deacon in the church of DeCon, I am reflexively opposed compartmentalized conceptual categorization, but I find myself more and more often slipping into the easy peezy lemon squeezy technique of dialectic in an eternally clamant holy quest of introspective paradigmatic alignment.

An open secret in post-post-modern-deconstructionist circles, is that while reason, in either inductive or new minty fresh deductive flavors are insufficient foundations for dualist theoretical constructions to support paradigmatic watersheds within Greenbergian/Tafurian artificially circumscribed cultural consensi, reason can be used to identify flaws in otherwise sound logical strings.

Political actors are fond of the binary because a polarized populace is more easily led...Insert Goebbels quote here for cheap appeal to minion's fascism gag reflex. This week I heard someone say that compromise is difficult when one of the parties is patently insane. Another pundette said compromise in Washington has become like a conversation about where to have dinner, where party one says "I feel like Italian" and party two says " I feel like arsenic and broken glass".

I have recently been struck by the abject indifference to accuracy in sausage making and reporting this week and I am hoping that my most recent shift in deliverables will not further alienate my minion. Subjects I'd like to cover soon:

1) tax cuts create jobs. we know this to be false, but I'd like to go into specifics, including asking your boss which tax cut occassioned him to hire you in the first place, why it was a tax cut and not an increace in demand that caused him to hire you, and if it was altruism or a head injury that lead him to hire you without an increase in demand but only because he had loose capital resulting from a tax cut.

2)the fucking fillabuster. If one more Senator says we need 60 votes to PASS A BILL I'm going to pull out my freaking hair. I'm becoming convinced that the democrats are more concerned about winning after a fillabuster than they are loosing withouth. Everyday I'm a little less sure that Harry Reid is not either a grifter of messianic levels or the greatest coward since Charles Kuralt.

A Holding Penalty in the Bottom of the 5th Inning.

Bud Selig: Commissioner of Baseball and the cause of the Iraq War

The particularly prodigal dissection of the gordian rhizome that is the Crawfordian psyche is uniquely ubiquitous in this space. Alas, despite the persistent delivery of acute insight the immodest proposal that Bud Selig is the cause of the Iraq war is, no doubt, want to illicit incredulity even in my minion.

Hear my yalp, minion, there is no Iraq war if Bush is not president. Twenty maniacs changed the world forever September 12, 2001, among them Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz... the list goes on... for at least 16 more people, like I just said.

But these recitivists get no closer to power than K Street without ample useful coat tails to hold and wakes in which to swim. No Bush, no Cheney. No Cheney no PNAC confluence with Cheney's energy task force. No collapse of corporate interest into the singularity of jingoist ferver and tribalist bloodlust, no invassion of Iraq.

So why Bud Selig? Ask yourself what W. was doing before he becoming appointed president by the supreme court. Governor of Texas. In 1996, as part of the republican Newt Gingrish revolution he defeated one of the most popular governors in Texas history. Keep in mind the governor of Texas is a figure head with less power than the monarch of Great Brittain.

What about before this? One of the owners of the Texas Rangers. He loved it. He was bad at it. He's a born failure. He traded Alex Rodriguez. Forget Arbusto. Forget going AWAL. Mofo traded Alex Rodriguez. But he was a glad handing millionaire dousche, who liked to glad hand with other millionaire dousches and hang out with players who are also millionaire dousches.

But Bud Selig got there first. He was comissioner during the season lost to strike. He's been commissioner during the ENTIRE steroid era, and the consistent reduction in baseball's ratings. Bud Selig should be out of a job. He probably never should have got the job, and on several occaions he should have been fired.

If George Bush becomes commisioner of baseball, he never becomes governor. If he never becomes governor he never runs for president. No campaign, no supreme court appointment. No appointment no bastardization of justice by Cheney.

Bud Selig caused the Iraq war.

Of Mice and Binary Oppositions

St. Jacques, Tarvu Be Praised.

As a self appointed deacon in the Church of Deconstructionism I'm dogmatically opposed to argument structurally dependant on binary opposition. Contemporary political punditry and public intellectualism, however, is dependant on a methodology of argument dependant on a black/white framing. I will eventually revisit this post and attempt to reframe the architecture of this post in both traditional and deconstructed terms, but for now, I'll leave you with the preliminary outline.

Manacheaen

Glenn Greenwald props

American exceptionalism

Amoral Familialism

Arcadian v. Utopian

Progres is impossible

Historic revisionism becomes willful ignorance

Inductive v. Deductive

Bad poker players

Brilliant analysis without relevance

Smith vs. Marx

An Open Appology to My Fan...

I've taken you for granted. I've assumed that you would stay here and wait while I entertained myself with other enterprises, why would you? Is what we've had here so special? The abject hubris you must see in every vowel I type... I can't even imagine.

Let me say I'm sorry for being gone for so long without explanation and I'll try to do better in the future. I'm going to try an experiment to get back into the writing spirit.

Every morning as I sit here drinking my coffee and scratching Cuba's headbone, I'm going to live blog about what's going on on Morning Joe.

Today, all I can say is Peggy Noonan is fucking insufferable. Her analysis is as superficial as any freshman polysci student, but its not bad its just valueless; it is her ridiculous patrician superiority that is so awesome. The blueblood chortle she evokes when prompted with a political inside joke is distracting in the best case and infurriating in the worst.

Let's say payment for unique analytical constructsm even though I disagree with the foundational premises, was suffering through her anoying personality disorders (read as ala Pat Buchanon) that would be one thing. But having her sit there with her superior sideways look terminate in a poetics of meaninglessness is frustrating in the extreme.

Right now she's musing on Bush's final speach... mind numbing.