The People's Liberation Frontpage

Taking Time to Reflect...

2009-09-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-04T05:07:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-06-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-05-19T05:34:00.000-07:00

...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

2009-05-12T05:26:00.000-07:00

[ 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

2009-04-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

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....

2009-04-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

... 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...

2009-04-09T18:01:00.000-07:00

...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

2009-04-03T05:04:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-19T05:34:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-18T18:42:00.000-08:00

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....

2009-02-13T12:30:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-13T08:42:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-02-12T08:36:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-02-03T17:42:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-24T09:14:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-01-16T05:18:00.000-08:00

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.

You Never Send Flowers Any More

2008-12-04T05:39:00.000-08:00

Several auto industry ideas that are dead before I post them:

1) Solidarity ratio. Bob Nardelli, the poster boy for the cancer stage of capitalism, can get paid as much as he wants as long as its not more than 20 times what the lowest paid Chrysler employee gets paid.

2) Focused federal healthcare. Right now, today, everyone with UAW retirement benefits is on medicare. Admittedly, with the hope that this is a slippery sloper toward single payer universal coverage.

3) Trust busting. Too big to fail means to big to exist. Remember if the Standard Oil Trust had been named The Standard Oil Corporation we would have anti-corporation laws today.

4) Allow foreign ownership. Honda, meet GM. Toyota, meet Ford. let nature take it's course.

5) end petroleum collusion, Exxon could buy ford with approx. 85 hours worth of PROFIT

Another adventure in wordsmithery gone awry.

2008-11-29T10:25:00.000-08:00

I've reference many times my historic affair with Derrida. In this

What is always forgotten in what has become the binary debate in american punditized economics between Marx and Smith is the breadth of the discourses. What is always landed on is the prescriptive elements of thier treaties, and what is always and necessarily overlooked is the analytical chapters which establish the assumptive truths from which the prescriptive notions originate.

The analytica chapters are necessarily overlooked because an intellectually honest appraisal of these components of the Marx v. Smith debate requires that we award Marx with the insight into the mechanism of capitalism and Smith be relegated to the ranks of foolish dogmatics, stuck in unfounded ideological merrygo rounds or con artists hocking snake oil to willing rubes and usefull idiots.

What is it boy????

2008-11-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

When I was in architecture school, there was a point in many conversations concerning design, art and the practice of cultural production when the name Jacque Derrida could be used as a punctuation mark. Within that particular paradigmatic sliver of architectural theory that we were trained in, the very specific method of deconstructionist thought encompassed When William talks about lowering spending as a policy, dog ears perk.

I have to start writing in better shorthand. I love the turn of phrase in this, but every once in a while I should try to finish a thought.

The Golden Age of Libertainianism

2008-11-25T05:23:00.000-08:00

"I'm from the libertarian wing of the party." William Weld on Morning Joe 11/25/2008

Ask any conservative dousche why they're still a republican and you're going to get a response like this. William is not necessarily a dousche but the stock response does remind us that republicanism was never, ever about conservativism, it has always been about coalition building in the service of consolidation of power. I'd never even heard of William Weld before this morning, but he's struck a nerve so I'm going to work out my frustration with some very silly mythologies through him.

I'll get back to this. But let me say as a jumping off point, as disappointed as I am that there seem to be no liberals in Obama's cabinet so far there are economists are specialists. This is a step up from the Republican theocracy that we've lived with for the last eight years.

Here's a list of some liberal positions we will not see with Obama:

1) minimum wage=living wage.

2) single payer universal healthcare.

3) immediate withdrawl from Iraq.

4) policies that promote unions. By the way, number 1 on this list makes number 4 at lot easier.

5) much more restrictive federal regulations on commodities trading, which would remove the spectre of speculation from the foundational markets of the economy.

6) elimination of tax exempt status for churches [some of you know I'd probably loose my job if this happened]

7) war crimes investigations concerning the invasion of Iraq, Gitmo and related "terrorist detention facilitites" around the world.

8) two state solution at the '67 borders

9) end of corporate personhood, revolving around the revisitation of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific.

10) the end of non-salaried executive compensation systems.

You will see none of these 10 things in the next 4 years.

One more thing....

2008-11-18T11:34:00.000-08:00

...if a majority of Californians decided former Speakers of the US House of Representatives with Irish surnames should not be allowed to be married in California, would Newt Gingrinch support this?

Couple More things

2008-11-18T11:29:00.000-08:00

First, I had this idea about the difference between conservatives and liberals. Republicans are willing to give up democracy to save capitalism, liberals are willing to give up capitalism to save democracy. This is clearly over simplified, and the profound confusion Republicans seem to show on what both capitalism and democracy are, are enough the refute the proposal.

Also, a fantastic history of the current financial meltdown can be found here:
http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/20081108_financial_meltdown_101/

Round Up...

2008-11-18T06:53:00.001-08:00

I've been busy with the painting but let's just get into the record some ideas I've had.

With the passage of Prop 8 in California do gays still have to pay taxes and do they get a full vote in elections? Are they counted as 3/5ths in the census?

Joe Lieberman should not loose his chairmanship because of the election, he should loose his chairmanship because he sucks. Because the committee he chairs should have investigated Katrina, it didn't. It should have investigated Blackwater, he wouldn't. It should have investigated why FEMA responded to the flooding in Iowa but not formaldehyde filled trailers in Mississippi, it won't. This reminds me of one of my biggest problems with the American voter. We assume campaigning and governing are the same. The faults of Jomentum in the presidential campaign make him a bad chairman of the HS committee when in fact he's a bad chairman because he's a bad chairman. On this subject, wtf is Evan Bye doing on tv, ever? Until there's a Senate Committee on mediocrity and meaningless platitudes, could we just pretend he's not there?

There's more, I lost my train of thought.

URGET OBAMA NEWS!!!!

2008-11-06T05:29:00.000-08:00

This video has revealed some shocking revelations about the president elect. Discussion below

Free Counter

No Real Thought Behind This...

2008-11-05T10:58:00.001-08:00

So what do we do now?

2008-11-04T20:42:00.000-08:00

Let's have a look at our checklist:

1) Elect a non-retard...check.

2) Elect a fillibuster proof majority in the senate...yeah, nice work kentucky (assholes)

Anyhoo, what else...

Repeal the REAGAN tax cuts and return to a 50% top marginal tax on earned income above $1 mil.

Offer medicare to anyone who wants it

Pass card-check unionization

Make the minimum wage a living wage for anyone filing as head of household

Reinstate the entirety of the post-depression banking and commodity regulation regime, reinstate Glass-Stiegel, repeal commodities futures modernization, make it legal to kick Phil Grahm in the nuts at will

Cut defense spending in half and make every public school a golden palace....

okay he's talking now.

On Second Thought...

2008-11-04T20:09:00.001-08:00

...fuck it. He won. Let's just celebrate all that's good in that.

The Republican Brand

2008-11-04T19:38:00.000-08:00

"...uh, Ted, I think what we're seeing here is a wholesale rebuttal of the Republican brand."

A lot of you know I consider myself expert in the field of the sociology of the brand. So take it from me, it's not the brand that people are voting against this time, it's the republican product.

In short Republican ideology sucks. It cannot suceed. More on that in another post, but this election may be one of the very few elections in my lifetime where people are not rejecting a brand. They are rejecting the very clear, very identifiable policy prefeences of one of the two available american parties.

We should talk sometime about the specific meaning and psychology of the phenomenon of the brand...And tattoos. We should talk more about tattoos.

I Hven't been posting...

2008-11-04T19:37:00.000-08:00

...lately because I've been working on some more indepth posts. I've decided to just start talking about the election night coverage to fill in some of the gaps.

The Problem with Republicans, Chapter 2

2008-10-31T07:56:00.000-07:00

David Plotz, Matt Miller, Madeline Albright, Robert Rueben, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Even Bye.

The Problem with Republicans

2008-10-31T05:36:00.001-07:00

Nancy Pelosi: Lord of the Underwold

is democrats.

I think we need to have a talk.

2008-10-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

...and I've been putting it off for a long time because, well, I just didn't know how you were going to take it. I don't like to make waves, rock the boat, whatever, but we just can't go on like this.

Being a Republican makes you a bad person. I'm sorry it's come to this but I just don't know what else to say or how else to say it. I have serious concerns about your ability to empathize, your understanding of the fundamental institutions of our political system and your pathalogical maintenence of superstitious ritual and supernatural mythologies. The ease with which you encourage amoral familism, historical amnesia and the constant redefinition of Republicanism in support of your profoundly egocentric worldview is trending rapidly toward a sociopathy that would require any alien anthropologist to conclude there are no standards by which you could be judged "a good person".

Now, let me throw you a bit of a lifeline. Being conservative does not make you a bad person. Being conservative may mean that you're wrong. Being conservative may mean that your personality developed in an environment which promoted a belief system which, though no fault of your own, encouraged suspicion of the civic, a deep soulful fear of things you don't understand, and a type of absolute confidence in your constructions which disallow the introduction of information which contradicts your suspicions, fears and confidences.

A whole other flavor of conservative believes in something called "free market capitalism". They believe in this concept so fully that they will conspire with other citizens who may or may not share their belief in order to create a coalition to with the triumph of the will to maintain the disemination of the construct.

You and I know Republicanism is not a uniform belief system. It isn't even necessarily the conservative party in America. I know, I know, the democrats aren't really the liberal party, but look this isn't about them, this is about you. The Republican party is only a collection of people who are not liberal. It is a negative project by defining itself not by the sundry hypocracies that stand in as campaign promises but as the anti-Democratic party.

This collection of anti-democrats end up being America's greedy and America's ignorant. The ignorant, would they give thier environment a second thought would realize the fantastic screw job they've been getting since at least LBJ gave them a choice between their own economic interest and really rolling up their sleves and letting thier fear of brown people set the agenda for a generation of crackers. The greedy would gladly sodomize their own grandmother if they thought it would eliminate the capital gains tax.

These identities, the fear of the ignorant and the avarice of the greedy are intrinsically tied. The greedy capitalize (as they're want to do in all occasions) on the irrational particulars of the ignorant at every turn. In short, the Republican party cannot exist if the ignorant do not believe the greedy are the leaders of their campaign to spread reductive puritanism and identify new targets for the externalization of thier personal shortcomings.

The greedy know this. They know unemployment isn't related to illegal immigrants or welfare, or any other bullshit idea. But the greedy have to maintain all myths that maintain and grow the coalition.

Let's end with this for today, and I want you to think about it after you go home. Your friends and loved ones care about you and want you to evaluate your life. We want you to stop what you're doing and come to your senses.

Please

The archetypal postmodernism of Mrs. Palin

2008-10-17T15:00:00.001-07:00

The White Horse of the Appocolypes (maybe Red), William Kristol

[Note: cross posting today at www.projectivecaste.blogspot.com]

This week the prevailing framing from Democratic media outlets is that National Review founder and grand wizard of douschbaggery William Kristol is responsible for the nationalizing of Sarah Palin. It seems facile in the least to suggest one dillhole, no matter how mightely he might suck, could be responsible for pandemic platitudes, but let's continue under the assumption that he could. Further, lets allow that there is ample evidence to substantiate the claim that the beacon of the retardation can represent to a constituency their tribal ideal.

There have been numberous left leaning writers from Scott Horton to Andrew Sullivan are suggesting that the talented Mr. Kristol culled the G.I.L.F. not in spite of her empty suitness, but specifically for her vacuity.If her uncharacteristic character were cardianal among her endowments Bill Kristol's douschbaggery is tendind toward absolute truth. However, beyond the obscene anti-republican power to control such decisions the effect of political burlesque in this style represents either mastery of postmodernity with the cool menthol taste of deconstructionism or a rorschoch test which I'm sorry to say is going to lead to many more sessions, maybe bringing in some other members of the family, but let's do a couple more sessions one on one and see how it goes.

Peter Eisenman, Bill Kristol and Jacques Derrida. What do these characters from history have in common? They are all masters of the semantic school of the deconstructivist wing of the postmodernist party. (I think I've used that "wing of the party" gesture before...damn you Howard Dean and your lyrical word smithing)

The post Derrida-Eisenman break up to me signals the begining of the end of proper pomo, but in a way is the deconstruction of deconstruction. Somol-ien cool moves into or crafts the intellectual vacuum left by the collapse of criticality cum disciplinarity, and injects a theory of the thing dripping with faux zeitgeist optics and yearning for a criticcality of the uncritical. All this as a lyrical pathway toward expressing that postmodernism was shown to be a characture of itself, cliche and dogma dependant, stagnant and referential not of a historically crafted embeded system of knowledge but of a means of practice and a mode of product.

Damnit. I have to start writing these things earlier in the day. I've been absolutely wasting precious blogging time with this working that's been going around.

Cliff's Notes: She has substance and meaning and she is a symbol of her meaning. The meaning, sign and symbol are the same. there is no collapse of the meanings and valent representations, they develop in space coincidentally. The sign must then be emptied of it's meaning, the sign refilled with new meaning, and the sign becomes signifier of new meaning.

Anyhoo, the homework for if I decide to comeback to this: Notes Around Conceptual Architecture, The Seven Crutches of Modern Architecture, Notes Around the Doppler Effect, Christy Canyon Unleashed (the Anabolic one not the Vivid Video release), Simulations (Buadrillard), The Myth of the Red and the Brown

Screw Flanders

P.O.W. Presidents and Detainee Prime Ministers

2008-10-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

We've all seen the videos by now. When confronted by questions he cannot answer, positions he cannot defend or the unfortunately unpopular privilege of his biography John McCain has and will always present as proof of his indisputable membership in club every-man his time as a P.O.W. in Viet Nam. As surely as the seasons will turn, the Buckeyes won't live up to their hype, and Democratic leadership will always shy from a fight, the genuinely tragic reality of his time in Viet Nam will always be presented as and reported as unequivocal proof that his motivations are beyond reproach and more importantly that follow up questions would be in poor taste.

Two recent examples of the technique. When the editorial board of the Des Moines Register noted that John McCain had lived his entire life with federally funded healthcare and then asked if that disqualified him from understanding the difficulties of the private health insurance system he replied by not really answering the question and then noting that he had no health insurance while he was a p.o.w. When he could not remember how many houses he and Mrs. McCain owned his campaign reminded us that he only lived in one house for five and a half years.

Constant reference to this chapter of McCain's life is not a reflexive response to uncontrollable environmental stimulus, nor is it the punctuation mark on a well crafted argument. It represents a calculated tactic intended to create a shield of credibility. The intent is to establish a direct causal link between his experience as a prisoner of war and his motivations and his policy catalog. That is, because he was a P.O.W. he must be working in America's best interests, and because American exceptionalism is the foundation of republican tribalism, being a P.O.W. will make him a good president.

All this is a lengthy bit if history to establish the appropriateness of the following question:

Which of the prisoners in Guantanamo who have been or will be release without charge does John McCain feel is most qualified to be Prime Minister of their country of origin?

Joe Fucking Scarborough

2008-10-03T05:24:00.000-07:00

"...if this election was about experience Barack Obama would lose." This is really the alpha and omega for not just Joe, who is basically a douschbag trying to sound reasonable, and in some ways the tripping point for contemporary Republicanism.

It starts with their belief that we electe leaders. I've never voted for a leader. Most people I know have never voted for a leader. I have on several occasions voted for a representative.

Now, it's always difficult to craft a logical aegis in defense of liberalism when combating republicanism because there is a unified political front, but no unified theoretical front. That is, as I've said many times before, republicanism is a coalition of disparate constituencies who do not agree in any way except that they are not Liberal.Its a perverted form of tribalism.

I digest, The phraseology, the Joe Scarborough debaters are searching for is "we don't vote for leaders with experience, we vote for representatives with judgement."

If you are coming from a point where you must have a leader. Where your starting point is cowardace and tribalism then leaders are necessary. When your starting point is faith in system, then representation within the system is adequate.

At Least 3 Moves Ahead...

2008-09-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

Perhaps too often analysis of Republican strategizing devolve to bitch sessions over Rovian tactics. I think we frequently err in our application of the fallback "oh, how Rovian" label to seemingly dirty politicing and, I believe this for two irreconcilable reasons.

1) Bad poker players
2) Meta Rovian politicing of scale in time and space.

to be continued...

I'll tell you what's really scary

2008-09-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

Today at 2:39 PM Central Time, there is a 43% chance that starting January 20, 2009 Phil Graham will be the sole individual charged with disbursing funds to stem the financial crisis.

can't be fixed

2008-08-26T11:32:00.000-07:00

I usually use as a statement within any connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition (read as part of an argument) that contemporary repubilcanism, is not so much the conservative of the two evolved American political parties, but rather a coalition of triabalist cliques who self-identify as us, identify other republican cliques as near-us, and democrats as them.

The contemporary Republican coalition is demonstrably unconservative. This is irrelevant. The point of republicanism is increasing the access of the republican political class to federal funds.

The result of this tribalism, is policy indifferent, and focuses on us maintenance, focusing solely on the continuity of the tribe.

Typically, the tribe has policy specific origins, but the focus of the efforts has shifted among the atribal, amoral political class to maintenance of the coalition.

Let's say the coalition has 5 main parts. We could define the tribes within the Republican coalition

enough for now.

Last Night...

2008-04-23T06:43:00.001-07:00

Hillary Clinton officially lost the presidential race...for Barack Obama.

When I wrote many months ago, that the loss of John Edwards was the line in the sand that we could someday point to as the moment John McCain became president I maintain that I was correct, but not for the right reasons.

Modest Proposals

2008-02-26T08:30:00.000-08:00

Let's take the capital currently controlled by the wealthiest 1% of the United States citizenry and distribute that capital equally among the remnant populace. This is not revolution, this is freeing trapped value from an underperforming asset.

Scalia on Torture.

2008-02-14T14:40:00.000-08:00

The quote from Scalia:
"Well, a lot of people think it is, but I find that extraordinary to begin with. To begin with, the constitution refers to cruel and unusual punishment, it is referring to punishment on indefinitely — would certainly be cruel and unusual punishment for a crime. But a court can do that when a witness refuses to answer or commit them to jail until you will answer the question — without any time limit on it, as a means of coercing the witness to answer, as the witness should. And I suppose it’s the same thing about “so-called” torture."

This all from an interview with the BBC on Februar 12, 2008.

So again the conservative movement engages semantic gymanstics such that the conclusion they started with allows them to artfully craft the argument. He makes actually an interesting point. That the torture as we assume it has been inflicted is not retributive, it is profolactic. That is, the torture is intent on discovery of evidence or prevention of crime which may at this time be only conspired. Except that:

1) the fifth amendment :provides that an accused person may not be compelled to testify against themself.

2)The geneva conventions explicitly prohibit the use of torture

3) The precedent at law in the United States establishes that waterboarding is torture and a war crime, as the United States has prosicuted German and Japanese soldiers for this act.

This is not contradictory amid a theoretical conservative construct because:

1) the world changed on 9/11

2) american exceptionalism posits that all American actions are defacto good acts.

Battle For the Soul of Capitalism

2008-01-31T12:29:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Bogle's book over the last week, and I've come to a conclusion ithat he writes around but doesn't actually hit on. That's that the real commodity in our economy is stock. The definition of stock as a representation of a piece of ownership in a corporation has changed, and that the ownership of stock, and the trading of stock is an economy unto itself. Not in the way that stock is traded on the expectation that partial ownership of a corporation engaged in a particular set of industrious actions will increase the price of the stock in the future, rather, there is a "deep branding" effect, where a perception of a fictional other's place in the market of stock trading effects the willingness of a stock owner to purchase at a given price. Deep branding in this case being something I've just made up which suggests a brand unawareness so embedded in any micro-culture that it becomes a pseudo fact.

All this is said in addition to Bogle's commentary on managers capital and municipal complacency.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

2008-01-25T08:13:00.000-08:00

"Bush doesn't know anything; he doesn't want to know anything...but he's not stupid"--William J. Clinton (citations in the ether)

This is consistently the meme that has developed among the political elite in this country, and in a triumph of trickle down theory, which has permiated into the ranks of truck stop dialogue. So we must ask ourselves: what is stupid?

Stupidity defined might most easily slip into a clinical description of intellegence quotient and or IQ extablishment testing methodologies. Let us accept first that an expeditionary stupid hunt with origins in this arena leaves the nacent Bushologist stepping away from the intended proposition vis a vie "stupid is defined as..." and turning instead to plant a flag some where on a positivist, anti-positivist, postpositivist type spectrum. I propose that this clinical technique identifies more clearly the Bushologists biases and inevitably diverts focus from the task at hand,namely, how can the Bushological community claim and apply the term stupid.

In this forum we propose that the most apt strategy is comparison in binary oppositions, on the one hand fictional character Forrest Gump and on the other fictional POTUS George W. Bush.

Paper to follow

WHAT AN EMBARASSMENT OF RICHES

2008-01-22T12:25:00.001-08:00

The Democratic party is in a position where a woman or a minority will be the titular head of the party. What a gift.

Imagine if either of them were democrats.

The Rationality of Rational Irrationality

2007-12-17T08:45:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the NIE concerning Iran's nuclear weapons plan the speculation has been arroused concerning the history, success and future of our foriegn policy visa vie Iran. So just for a lark let's summarize our Iran policy and see what we can make of it:

A statement:
As rational actors, the United States and its allies, trying to curtail the threat from an irrational actor, Iran; we must act irrationally to force them to act rationally.

Let that sink in.

Here's how I come that that conclusion.

1) The United States, et al. are rational actors:
The United States are rational actors, because we are for freedom. Since we have a positive freedom agenda we are also for Democracy. These are not two sepparate argumentative statements, because we propose that given freedom democracy always follows. And because democracy is proposed to be the only rational form of government and we are promoting democracy via our pro-Freedom agenda, we must be rational.

2) Iran is an irrational actor.
Iran desires a nuclear weapon so they may attack sovriegn nations without provocation and without regard for the consequences. This desire is irrational, ergo Iran is an irrational actor.

3) The United States must act irrationally
The attack of Iraq was not the result of a direct provocation or threat to the United States and was therefore irrational.

4) Iran will react rationally to an irrational act.
The United State's irrational invation of Iraq is what caused Iran to rationally evaluate their desire for a nuclear weapon and therefore cease their program.

We'll flesh this out more later.

John Edwards

2007-12-13T11:17:00.000-08:00

Hillary will not be the POTUS.

Barack will not be the POTUS.

If John Edwards is not the democratic candiate for President of the United States, in 2009 we will swear in to office a pro-theocratic phsychopath.

I just want to go on record with this prediction.

A FEW THOUGHTS

2007-12-12T07:01:00.000-08:00

The mortgage industry is bigger than the construction industry. If the mortgage industry is actualized around the profitability of interest based lending and fees for providing lending services, how in terms of annual revenue, is the interest based lending market larger than the construction market?

Let's say a house is built for 100k and sells for 150k.
Some of the 50k goes to the builder.
Some goes to the real estate agent.
None of this 50k goes to the lender, in fact the lender buys the house. A mortgage is actually a rent-to-own system, where the lender buys the house and you're allowed to live in it provided you pay off the 150k plus some interest to make this worth the lenders time.

Now there are two "products" floating around, both of them owned by the lender. A tangible asset, the house, and a "collateralized debt instrument", the interest expected to be paid on the loan.

Now, how many times have you heard anyone mention the house in discussions of the credit crissis? Never. We only discuss the agreement to pay interest on a loan, meanwhile thousands upon thousands of tangible assets sit there collecting dust, because the lender makes way more money on the fees involved in mortaged lending and even more in "bundling" mortgages as investment vehicles for people who have nothing to do with the tangible asset.

What's happened to the houses? Are the prices comign down so the pool of potential buyers could increase, or rather so the people who bought them when they couldn't afford them now can afford them? No, becuase the neo-conservative free market has nothing to do with buyers of products, producers of products or even servers of services, it has to do with rubbing money up against money and producing more money.

The result being the pyramid scam that our global system has become.

ONE PARTY SYSTEM ALERT!!!

2007-11-30T10:04:00.000-08:00

H.R. 1955 The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorist Act.

Keep your eyes on this one. This bill will be moving to the Senate soon and the debate will either be non-existant or scary as hell.

A CORRECTION

2007-11-30T06:22:00.000-08:00

The Pentagon is claiming that the enlistment and re-enlistmen bonus revokation letters that were mailed out a week or two ago are not Defence Department policy. They are claiming that this is a beurocratic or possibly a computer snafu and that no bonuses will be recalled in part or whole. See also the post at VA Watchdog.org, a non-partisan Vet's rights site

http://www.vawatchdog.org/07/nf07/nfNOV07/nf112807-1.htm

The Most Awesomely Perfect Death by Cop Move Ever

2007-11-20T13:57:00.000-08:00

The pentagon couldn't get people to sign up to go to Iraq because, well, the obvious reasons. So they offered "enlistment bonuses" of up to $30,000. Now they're asking soldiers who were injured in Iraq to return pro-rated portions of thier bonuses, because they left the military earlier than planned...because they were injured...in the military. It's right wing poetry. Absolute genius.

It's got to be more death by cop, right? I mean, this is exactly the kind of horse crap that's so egregious, so outrageous, that it has to be another desperate "please stop me before I kill again" plea?...Right?

http://kdka.com/video/?id=34237@kdka.dayport.com

Quotes of the day-

2007-11-14T13:17:00.000-08:00

But not this day.

"the politics of excluded alternatives" -Walter Dean Burnham

"downsized politics"- Jim Hightower

Some Names to Remember

2007-11-14T13:02:00.001-08:00

Glass-Steigel

The Home Ownership Equity Protection Act (1994)

Hawley-Smoot

Investment Company Act (1940)

Sherman Act (1890)

Iran Should be Attacked Because...

2007-11-05T13:30:00.001-08:00

The march toward an attack of Iran has been growing as of late, seems that the increase in the volume of this meme seems tied to electioneering more than rational discussions of policy and international law. None the less why are the proponents saying we should attack and are these reasons true or valid.

1) they are trying to get the bomb

2) they support the killing of GI's in Iraq

3) they are state sponsors of terrorism.

I've decided not to waste time with the argumentation and or debunki-fying, let's end with this:

1) dropping the bomb on Japan was necessary only to further US economic interests, not to end the war

2) Saddam Hussein accepted an offer of exile from the US before the invation which was denied by the Arab League, not the US

3) Iran helped overthrow the Taliban in 2002.

The 9 Most Terrifying Words

2007-10-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."-Ronald Reagan.

I like that conservatives like to think about the government as some
"other". It's this thing separate from us over there that we compare
ourselves against. It's like a tacit admission that our constitutional
republic is just a democratic kabuki intended to veil a dense
tapestry of statutory bribery. To develop an ideology which allows an
individual to run for office under the banner of "the government is
bad"...wow.

The whole "government bad" component of conservative mythology is one
of those grand unifying structural elements I think is so fascinating
about the contemporary Republicanism. The whole thing is like an
incredible rhizome composed of competing information packets that
is truly miraculous in both complexity and success. Complexity in that
it requires a re-engineering of traditionally accepted American
cultural, political and economic norms that would have been
unimaginable before the proliferation of the Chicago School philosophy
but which can only maintain its structural integrity through something
like "the government is bad". Success in that it can maintain
political power by consistently performing the most fantastical
rhetorical gymnastics in order to sculpt a functional coalition out
of the religious right and the capital class...amazing.

It's like the democratic party isn't even participating in the same
discipline or they're trying to play the same sport but the
Republicans are the Yankees and the democrats just got thier first
mitt. The skill with which the republicans can craft thier message, no
matter what is at the core of the message is enviable to say the
least. I'm deadly serious when I say the contemporary Republican party
is a work of pure genius, a revelation of applied science no less
significant than relativity or the discovery of dna.

The Free Market

2007-10-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

This article describes why the greed works philosophy of free marketeers is fraudulent at best.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119103046614343129.html

Illegal Imigration

2007-08-09T07:06:00.001-07:00

In reference to an email that's going around about Illegal Imigrants:

Is there another way to become an American citizen? Seriously, can you become an American citizen "the new fashion way...illegally and outside the system"? Can you do that in Norway? in, dare I say the "F" word...France? Those socialist countries must be so inefficient, and burdened by red tape, that they can't possibly control who works with and without documentation.

I can't stress this enough: We do not have an illegal immigration program, we have an illegal employment program. For all the rhetoric that surrounds the mass delusion implicit in the Chicago school, the hypocrisy of the trickle down of benefits, trickle up of responsibility is perhaps the most ironic and socially destructive. Give the owners of capital economic benefits that ensure growth of their population remains static and shift the risk to the owners of the means of production. Tax breaks to the investor class, cut social programs for the CHILDREN of the poor. The goal of this ideology is not capitalism in the broad meaning of the term in western vernacular, it is feudalism.

Illegal immigrants do not file for benefits.
They pay fica and payroll but DO NOT take advantage of the rest of the government services, because they would have to produce documentation, which, by the nature of their "illegal" status they do not have. Therefore, if they qualified for the EITC they could not possibly be illegal. This is a neat little trick the right has picked up on: " Illegal immigrants do not pay income taxes". Well, neither does the working poor... but they are taxed. They are taxed when they buy "cell phones" and clothing for thier dozens of children. They pay property tax which is included in their rent, which is inflated because, while the landlord isn't going to rat them out to INS, he is going to charge them more not to check any references or id's. By the way, since we long ago decided to screw the poor with our educational funding system, this is how they pay for thier childrens education, through property tax.

The great risk shift
If "illegal" immigrants are still getting paid 5 or 6 dollars an hour there are no less than 3 criminal acts taking place, and only one is at the level of the worker, the other two by the employer. The undocumented worker is committing a misdemeanor by working without a visa but the employer is committing a felony by employing that undocumented worker and not paying the new minimum wage. But it would be bad for business to opperate this way.

Is the invisible hand at work or not?
If free marketeers and global economists are so sure about the ability of the market to solve any problem...then there is no problem. What illegal immigration problem? American employers who hire "illegals" are simply freeing trapped value from an under performing asset.This is the market at work, lower priced labor has out competed the higher priced, and therefore, inefficient American worker.

Of course none of this matters. Try to unionize or collectively bargain and we'll call INS. try to sue me for not paying you the minimum wage, we'll call INS. take a lunch break and we'll call INS. Resperartor? Resperator?!?! You'll breath fumes and you'll like it...or I'll call INS.

The supply side that the neo-liberal economic dogma preaches seems to disregard the fact that the supplied commodity in this stupid, unbelievably, retarded debate, is jobs, ergo the responsible party should be the supplier/employer, who keeps hiring illegal immigrants. You like efficiency? Then arrest the 1 employer who hires 100 illegals. BAM you just cut your prospective tax burden for this "problem"down to 1% of projected expenses. Now, there's "your tax dollars at work."

The contemporary conservative movement is a joke. Seriously, it has to be an ellaborate fraternity prank gone awry. It is now a loose patchwork of the very, very greedy and the very, very stupid. And it's a marriage made in heaven. If the Republican Party were to stay at the Hotel Illegal Immigrant for a long weekend, you know just some us time, to get away from the kids, it would come for the cheap labor, but stay for the ignorant xenophobia and hate speach.

Death by Cop

2007-06-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

There is a phenomenon known in law enforcement circles as death by cop, where an individual wishing to commit suicide, but not to self inflict damage, with engage the police in such a way that they are required to use deadly force.

Key members of the Republican Party may be engaged in this act in a political manner. That is to say, they have seen the possibly irreperable damage the neo-conservative movement has done to the Republican Party, The United States and the international community in place of employing that age old method of redemption: appologizing for thier mistakes; they have chosen to up the dosage of conservativism they inflict on the world in the hopes that some couragous Democrat may finally call them out, and begin an unraveling of the neo-conservative experiment.

So far though, these devious few Republicans are still brandishing thier metaphoric weapons and shouting into a disinterested night.

The New 1% Doctrine

2007-06-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

What are the odds that given the opportunity Dick Cheney will invade Iran?

Is it 50/50? Is it 5%? There may only be 1 chance in 100 but even then, this slimest of possibilities requires his removal from office.

WHO WILL POLICE THE POLICE?

2007-05-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

Can a police officer be held criminally responsible for not stopping a crime if it were within his power to do so? And who would charge him?

Can the justice department charge congress or members of congress with deriliction of duty for not investigating the justice department for deriliction of duty?

Let's say the president has admited to criminal acts, for instance breaking the FISA law, and congress does not draft articles of impeachment, can the whole body be charged with commiting a crime of either deriliction or abetting?

Would not the ultimate cosmic retribution for the Democrat's cowardace to be found criminally liable by those they were too fearful of charging themselves.

Uh, Google, WTF?

2007-03-31T08:02:00.000-07:00

WARNING: Non-critical colloquialized logic content ahead.

What is it about my content that makes Google think the "Are you gay? Take the online test" ad is appropriate for my readership? Is it my consistent use of the topic labels "Republican" or "Rove"? Is it the repeated questioning of the rite ( that's not a typo ) of executive privledge? I haven't even mentioned the Republican penchant for playing dress-up.

Equal Opportunity...

2007-03-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

It's long been my opinion that both major American political parties are populated by narcisists with borderline sociopathic tendencies and useful idiots (to borrow a term from the bolsheviks) who are controlled by powerful and, sometimes, evil men collectively forming a political class hell bent on personal glorification over the promotion of the American republican ideal. During the Bush 43 administration I ( and I would imagine many other anti-establishmentarians) briefly turned pro-Democrat as a reflexive response to the abject corruption AND incompetance of the current manifestation of the Republication party. One could applaud the Bush II administration for achieving excellence in corruption and launching a new level of corruption simultaneously, but I digress.

The main stream media's recent overt promotion of two closet corporatist Democrats (Clinton and Obama) over genuine progressives (Kucinich and possibly Edwards) has forced me to re-examine my positions and so while doing some research for the PLF I came accross the quotes I link to below.

I now officially return to my traditional belief system, proposing that the (R)'s and (D)'s are equally reprehensible, with the caveat that the Bush administration is neither (R) or conservative in any intellectually consistent sense. They should more likely be described as an unholy union of dominionists and neo-feudalists and therefore I plan to continue my unabashed criticism thereof.

http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html

xoxo

The House of Cards...

2007-03-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

A bit off topic, but exciting nonetheless: The closer you get to Rove the closer you get to indictment.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002927.php

What is the PLF?

2007-03-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

There is an insidious undercurrent in contemporary conservativism that manifests itself in daily e-mails. Despite the popular view that FOX, The Washington Post, etc. are the key distributors of conservative talking points, they, and media outlets like them are actually only billboards for the immediate manifestation of the Republican party. The truely dangerous messages get passed around at the grass roots level of the conservative diaspora, and gain thier popularity and credibility through the perception of thier origin in the populace.

We all get emails from conservative friends, co-workers, relatives, etc., and I know my standard response is, in this order: skim, get angry, start a response, decide responding would be fruitless, and go get some coffee. But perhaps instead of passing on the response to the sender we can come together and disect these e-epistles that get passed around, and see where the right goes wrong at the grassroots level. The big boys, Air America, Move On, they've got Fox covered.

So here the Peoples Liberation Frontpage is dedicated to an attempt at critical analysis of these emails. I will not be publishing the names or accounts of the orignators, but I do welcome submissions of conservative emails for disection.