Archives for February 2008

Bush says no. So what? He’s no better at predicting the future than anyone else. There is a formal definition of the thing: two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. We haven’t yet posted a negative quarter.

Now, setting aside all the shenanigans that comprise the broad makeup of our rather fascistic economy, by which I mean lip-service is given to the concept of "private" property but the State overseas and regulates virtually everything, do you know of many relationships amongst complex inputs and feedbacks that goes in one direction forever?

If you try to loose weight, do you expect  every step on the scale to be less than before? If you’re building a business, do you expect any setbacks? Ever found you needed to change your approach in your personal finances because of problems, unforeseen difficulties, mistakes?

Recessions, whether caused by the State’s meddling in economics and markets, normal feedbacks from markets needed to adjust themselves to various factors including new technology, or simply self-fulfilling prophesy, it seems to me that what would be strange and dangerous is not to experience economic recession. We’re probably in for one, if I had to guess. The Democrats need it to ensure the election, and really all that’s needed is for people to believe they’re minutes away from standing in the soup line and that’ll probably be enough to set one in motion. Of course, whether we’re in really in for one or not, or even whether the economic conditions are bad for most people or not is entirely beside the point. There’s no honesty anywhere in the election process, or in the voters themselves. It’s an exercise in tribal ritual where everyone is on the warpath for the most plausible lies to believe and tell others, so as to most effectively promote their tribe and its leaders. It’s how facts get "utilized."

I suppose it’s "evolutionary" in a sense, in that it’s just as primitive as ever on principled grounds; only the trappings, glitter, and sophistication have changed.

Coupla posts I’d been intending to getting to.

First, this cite of H.L. Menken on Public Enemy Number One. Note: the "police officers" you see today are of the same character makeup as those Good Germans who — as Billy himself puts it — "didn’t listen to their own conscience as they loaded Jews into cattle cars." Go read the whole cite, but here’s the essential:

What the common man longs for in this world, before and above all
his other longings, is the simplest and most ignominious sort of peace:
the peace of a trusty in a well-managed penitentiary.

Next, some old notes on our beloved Constitution.

…the very height of what America was all about was stated in the Declaration of Independence.

And it was all downhill from there. Read it.

Here’s a guy determined to get himself fined $2,500 and potentially subject himself to jail time in Illinois because he audaciously claims that his business belongs to him, and that smoking is allowed.

What nerve. Freedom comes with responsibilities, you know.

(Balko link)

First, to preclude the emails.

Second, a little "Law & Order," complete with a pool of blood. The World’s Most Important Blogger has the details.

Next up, something I was going to blog the other day when I first saw it, but didn’t get to it. Here, the Scrofacracy, numbering seven "men" and "women," rape the female victim of an assault in a jail cell. They go about it real pro, latex gloves and all.

Here’s Part II of that news report. I think this is actually the one I saw the other day, and it includes one of the male assailants gingerly slipping her panties off her ankles and feet. You draw your own conclusions about what was in it for them, later, in their own private space. I’m pretty sure I get it.

Now do you understand why I think "conservatives" and their incessant "thin blue line" Scrofacracy cheerleading can all go straight to hell?

…Fuck Obama and His Stupid Bitch.

I meant it. And here’s the latest from Michelle Obama, the stupid bitch.

“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you
shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out
of your isolation and that you move out of your comfort zone. That you
push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never
allow you to go back to your lives as usual – uninvolved, uninformed –
you have to stay at the seat at the table of democracy with a man like
Barack Obama not just on Tuesday but in a year from now, in four years
from now, in eights years from now, you will have to be engaged.”

Fuck you, bitch. Who the fucking fuck do you think you are? And Tell Barack he can take his "require[ments]" and just fuck right off along with you. Understand: I hate people who talk like that.

That’s via Billy, who de-euphemizes that pretentious "seat at the table" bullshit and rot. That Protein Wisdom link has a lot more.

Later: Here’s another one, from that Protein Wisdom piece:

“in 2008 we should be in a place where children can dream any kind of
life for themselves regardless of their race, their gender their
socio-economic status. They should be able to dream big dreams and know they are going to have the love and resources of this entire nation behind them. That is the least we can do for our children. But the truth is we are not there yet.”

Vacuous, contemptible bullshit.

More later: Krauthammer:

There’s no better path to success than getting people to buy a free commodity. Like the genius who figured out how to get people to pay for water: Bottle it (Aquafina was revealed to be nothing more than reprocessed tap water) and charge more than they pay for gasoline. Or consider how Google found a way to sell dictionary nouns — boat, shoe, clock — by charging advertisers zillions to be listed whenever the word is searched.

And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.

This kind of sale is hardly new. Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity — salvation — for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a “salvational fervor” and “idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria.”

“We are the hope of the future,” sayeth Obama. We can “remake this world as it should be.” Believe in me and I shall redeem not just you but your country — nay, we can become “a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest.”

Charles is only partially right, though. Yea, you can get people to buy something that’s free. You can also get them to buy even more, and more, of the very thing that is at the root of their despair. Government is the problem. There will never be an ounce of solution in any measure of it, in any reconfiguration.

Not that the Doprahs preening after Obama are considering anything at this level. They’re too busy being "hopeful" for "change." But it’s what you asked for: democracy. In practical election dynamics, it means that less and less substance will be necessary to con more and more voters.

Even more later: Do I really think she’s "stupid," or is that just ad hominem? Yes, I think she’s stupid, as I think anyone is essentially and fundamentally stupid who has either lost, or never gained the ability to think, reason, and integrate facts proceeding from general principles as it is the human capacity to do. I don’t think she ever had the ability. These are people — her especially, from everything I’ve heard — who "principally" hold facts and their logical relationships to one-another as mostly irrelevant. What’s important is merely a whole slew of feelings, whims, desires, inspirations, hopes, fears, dreams, passions, and so on; and of course they all come in conflict with one another from the perspective of an integrated, hierarchical, rational view of the nature of man. That’s stupidity, and the most charitable I can be to her is that she’s in good company; in the hundreds of millions, perhaps billions.

If you’re into that sort of thing, a pretty interesting commentary by Martin McPhillips on Hillary’s apparent demise.

That was via Beck, who delivers on insight of his own.

Perhaps the end of the world as we know it.

…all the travel documents were in order.

That’s right, and it was "the job" of the Borderbots to make sure. No life is as important as "the system," not even a baby’s with a heart condition. All hail the system.

Stay calm, relax.

(Balko)

Appears someone has inevitably bowed to awesome U.S. Power to wage economic sanctions, trade embargoes, and travel restrictions. Only took 50 years.

Listen: I get not doing business with scoundrels, but since I’m delving into practical geopolitical realities, look at this: We’re dealing with a puny island nation that couldn’t get off it’s ass to produce much of anything anyway (though the cigars are fab), so what we essentially accomplished was not to cut them down, but if anything, to keep them from rising up (economically, as international traders), which would have made it increasingly difficult for Castro to hold power. Now, one could understand doing something like that to a Japan, a China, a Taiwan — but Cuba? The former would undoubtedly be harmed tremendously, so sanctions would have real practical clout. For a Cuba, all it did was empower "them."

I have believed for 20 years that U.S. economic sanctions are essentially what kept Castro in power. The U.S. handed him his half-century fiefdom. Our actions made it easy for him to play David, and who doesn’t love David?

To play Devil’s Advocate with myself, Cuba was unique, being a Communist nation 90 miles from our shores; and The Cuban Missile Crisis undoubtedly etched quite a scar on the American psyche for a generation, at least.

Well, I for one will welcome some sort of détente, even if it isn’t in the manner I’d go about it.