Wednesday, October 14, 2015

why did the gop do everything they said they would do?

why did the gop do everything they said they would do?
BY the magical dream ride of mister brooks

I can't believe it. I simply cannot believe it. After more than 3/4 of a century of trying to destroy Social Security, 1/2 of a century trying to destroy Medicare and 'peace with honor', 1/3 of a century of poverty-inducing Reagnomics and a 'war' on drugs that has created a permament under-class out of the existing under-class (though it did enhance freedom by giving creating a penal system the size and scope which would have been the envy of Josef Stalin), a decade-plus of fruitless wars in Asia including one in which we still can't extract ourselves even though the situation is obviously clearly hopeless because our 'allies' are so motivated to fight that they must flee in the opposite direction of the Taliban--we can only surmise that their plan is to circle around the globe and attack the Talibanners from behind, yes, they are that dedicated) and of course doing absolutely about climate change except making it arrive as quickly as possible so that our grandchildren will experience a global apocalypse even if can only catch a glimpse of it and doing nothing about firearms even when it happens right in a classroom full of middle-class white children and the dominance of our age by the new lords of finance...

...So aside from those--and about fifty thousand other exeptions which will not be mentioned due to considerations of time--the Republican Party has been doing a splendid job. Namely, of not aying what it really wants to do.  But now our congressmen are actually telling the public what they want to do. This is rank incompetence. The job of putting a cheap coat of nice-looking paint over the inequality, wars, exploitation, corruption, and environmental catastrophe should be left to people like me. For example, I would say something like this:

By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions. They also see the nation as one organic whole. Citizens may fall into different classes and political factions, but they are still joined by chains of affection that command ultimate loyalty and love. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/opinion/the-republicans-incompetence-caucus.html)
You see, Republicans? After years of disaster in Iraq, I said it was just fine with me, because Shrubya had character. Sure, he spoke like an ox that was trying to learn English As A Second Language, and he projected himself as an insecure bully who knew that he owed his status in life and pretty much everything to his father's last name, and yes he showed poor judgement over and over and over...but Shrubya stayed the course. And as Rabbi Sienfeld once in his 17th century commentary, Humor in the Torah: How to Succeed While Really Laughing, "Never admitting you're wrong is the true mark of wisdom."

And thus it was with Shrubya, and so it shall be with Fiorina. Sure she's compltely full of shit, but so am I. And let's face it, I'd vote for Gengis Khan if he ran for president. Just as long as he promised to lower taxes on the people for whom I really work, and had an "(R)" after his name.

So please, please, Republican Congressmen, do your job, and let me do mine: Finding a way to defend everything you do--as long as it benefits me as well.

Monday, October 12, 2015

KRUGMAN ON PAUL RYAN: OH NO HE DI'NT!

OH YES HE DID!
What makes Mr. Ryan so special? The answer, basically, is that he’s the best con man they’ve got. His success in hoodwinking the news media and self-proclaimed centrists in general is the basis of his stature within his party. Unfortunately, at least from his point of view, it would be hard to sustain the con game from the speaker’s chair.
Mind you, this is pretty much what everyone outside of the Tealandia or Washington D.C. already knows, but...

 #paulkrugman
#paulryan

MYTHTERIES WITHIN MYTHTERIES: AUTISM, GUNS, AND EVERTHING ELSE


Remember the good old days when "myths" were something that came from Ancient Greece or Scandanavia or nasty little folk tales about witches and wolves from the Brothers Grimm? Well nowadays the turn-around time between "established fact" which becomes "disproven myth" is less than the time between your grandfather's bathroom visits. Kids these days...grumble grumble grumble...

But I digress, so onwards. With every rash of gun massacres (welcome to America bitch!) comes a rash of articles about what to do about it (generally, nothing), whom to blame (the mentally ill who persist in such activities as opening firearm factories, manufacturing firearms, the sale and distribution of aforesaid firearms, buying off and/or intimidating congressmen in order to sell more firearms and generally flooding the nation with as many guns as possible because that's how we solve problems such as school massacres), and of course, defining mental illness.

Which in the case of autism, appears to be just about anything.
Such prejudice arises in part from confusion about autism, which manifests in a multiplicity of symptoms, making generalizations difficult. Some people with autism cannot easily guess what other people are thinking, and therefore act without socially appropriate nuance. This perplexity is often conflated, unfairly, with lack of emotional empathy or even unkindness. Autistic people run the same gamut as other people: Some are kinder than others. Some find social interaction extremely taxing; others evince joy in trusted friends and family. Whatever anyone’s particular constellation of symptoms may be, however, autism is not associated with brutality. Failing to intuit certain aspects of other people’s inner experience does not equate to disdain for human life (Myth of the Autistic Shooter,http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/opinion/the-myth-of-the-autistic-shooter.html).

As someone with a background in social science (which could mean just about anything from digging up bits of pot shards to a Jungian veteranian), I've found this to be rather disturbing. What is, exactly, "autism"? Or is it simply that, as Aldous Huxley is supposed to have said, medicine has its own fads? I have to go with Huxley: Human nature being what it is, we all want to be cool and hip and down with the latest fashion. None of this, of course, has anything to do with firearm regulation: Expecting any human to have a reason to be angry, or sad, or happy, or unhappy, makes as much sense as expecting someone to have a reason to breathe or sleep or reproduce or feed of his little E. coli pals living in his small intestine: At some point someone will do something for no apparent whatsoever. The brain is just too complex to have one simple answer.
#nowyouknow

 How did autism become the latest fad disorder? - straightdope.com

Autism advocates and parents of kids with honest-to-God cases of the disorder may say: OK, maybe ASDs have been overdiagnosed. So what? There’s strength in numbers, and the publicity has certainly raised autism awareness. The answer to that is: yes, but at the cost of obscuring the actual condition.
On the one hand you’ve got people thinking Asperger's syndrome is the mark of a future tech genius and thus nothing to worry about; on the other hand, if there actually were an environmental cause of autism, with so many false positives being reported we’d never know. The biggest favor activists could do for the objects of their benevolence is to make people understand: here are the signs you’ve got an autism spectrum disorder, and, equally important, here are the signs you don’t.

FACEBOOK KILLS AND OTHER THINGS WE CAN LEARN FROM THE NEW YORK POST


THINGS WE CAN LEARN FROM THE NEW YORK POST

(a) Facebook will kill you, because before Facebook, no one hid (b) Dumping...
Posted by Shaun Gates on Sunday, October 11, 2015

Friday, October 2, 2015

Meanwhile, In GunMasscreLandia, Guess What Happened?


Hmmm, I just can't imagine what the problem could be. What could possibly allow a person to go on a massacre with a...
Posted by Shaun Gates on Friday, October 2, 2015

Hmmm, I just can't imagine what the problem could be. What could possibly allow a person to go on a massacre with a loaded firearm? (Hint: It's liberals or feminists or sluts or all of them combined...some liberal-feminist-man-slut who hates his own penis (thanks Obama) and doesn't want to be forced to gay marry (thanks Big Gay) or otherwise be a slave to Tyrannosaurus Obama, not to mention the filthy, filthy, depraved mainstream media which fills our society with consumerism and the urge to buy buy buy the newest meFone or whatever gadget they are pushing. PS: Buy buy buy, it's what keeps the economy going or we'll all be unemployed.)
‪#‎mymorningrant‬ ‪#‎NRA‬ ‪#‎seriouslyWTFamerica‬ 

Stay Hydrated With The Sweet Sweet Elixir of the Apocalypse

So good, you'll resent it's absence!
(source: tshirtlaundry.com)
You'll never be thirsty again! (Because you will probably be dead.)

#immortanjoe #successfulCEO
S

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Afghanistan: Worse Than Mississippi

A reader comments:
"Afghanistan is a mostly rural nation with very low population densities. It does not possess the cultural, physical and social infrastructure of a modern nation. It is a bunch a of villages, loosely connected through tribal alliances, that live off the land. There are not large factories and industrial centers. There are not powerful institutions of higher learning. They barely have schools for kids.


The people are loyal to their family, their village, their tribe, and probably in that order. Our concept of central government is foreign to them. Our concept of nation is foreign to them. I have seen many news reports that reveal that the locals don't understand why American troops are even there. 

We have imposed our Western ways upon them which the people have rejected. They don't want to fight in our war. They want to go back to their villages. 

This does not excuse Taliban cruelty, but these questions must be asked. If we weren't fighting the Taliban, would the Taliban not be fighting against the villages? Do the Taliban wish to drive out the infidel Americans and our proxy puppets instead of killing villagers? Do the villagers really care if the Taliban rule?

We have no allies in the region, just nations that use us to further their own gains. The situation has always been hopeless for a military victory. 

We should take a cue from the Afghan forces running away. There is nothing to stand and fight for. So they run. So should we."

#afghanistan 

Self Help Non News

Yet not a word about where masturbation fits into this. Come back when you have a testable hypothesis!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/opinion/do-we-value-low-skilled-work.html

Only if it's prostitution, pole-dancing, or a mud-wrestling pit near LAX. (So really it's just a question of what degree you're willing to degrade yourself for money.) (Caveat: Unless you're a sex slave, but we can't cover every contingency in this argument.)

Afghanistan, Special Director's Cut

This was Vietnam II waiting to happen, With Iraq being Vietnam III. Frankly both of these sequels sucked and I blame George Lucas--I hope he isn't directing the Vietnam IV. My god someone must be out there shopping a prequel around D.C. The horror, the horror.
#Kunduz #Afghanistan #SuckFest #GeorgeLucas

NY Times op-ed: The Many Failures In Afghanistan