02.07.12
Thank you very much, Republicans
Did I say “thank you”? I meant “Fuck You”.
06.15.10
Rand Paul, “board-certified opthalmologist”
Okay. Didn’t we discuss this before?
Salon has a lovely article this morning updating us on Rand Paul’s current position on his board certification for opthalmology. You remember how he started his own certification board because he thought having to pay money to that other board was wasted, and he didn’t want to have to spend his time getting training or continuing education or taking tests when he could just jump in there and start operating, the free market at work.
His own certification board has no website and apparently no paper documentation. It is nothing but a PO Box in Bowling Green, KY. He did recently claim to be certified by that “other” board, which is nothing but a lie.
He’d like to get rid of government programs. But he thinks doctors are different. They should be guaranteed a comfortable standard of living by the government.
Does he inform his patients when examining them that his “board certification” is by himself, so they can make those “informed decisions” that lead to success or failure at the hands of the free market?
I wouldn’t want a doctor who had no need of certification and was unwilling to discuss his qualifications cutting open my eyes. Would you?
The guy is a liar, a creep, a fake, and a douchebag. Medicare ought to stop paying for surgery he does.
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12.30.09
What you can do about the banking crisis
Do you have money in a big bank that you, as a taxpayer, are bailing out, yet it continues to demand more money—nothing but extortion—from the government so it doesn’t…well, what? They’re not lending money to individuals and businesses, they’re raising credit card rates through the roof in an effort to squeeze an extra dollar out of some while driving others into bankruptcy. They’re not giving homeowners with crushing mortgages a break. But they are giving gigantic bonuses and paying themselves huge salaries for taking that government money. And they’re using the money to buy off legislators with lobbying $$$$$$$$$, all paid for by you and me.
At the same time, small local banks and credit unions that are doing everything they can to help people like you and me are getting squeezed to support these big, profligate institutions that caused their own problems with investments that any fool could have seen would be a bad idea.
That’s the problem. It’s not just fools, it’s a special class of fools that are running these financial giants. They think that you and I are even more foolish than they are.
What the hell do you owe them? Nothing. Stop doing business with them.
Take your money out. Move your money to a local financial institution. You owe it to yourself and to your local economy.
They are trying to destroy us for short-term gain, with the blessing of the government. Don’t let them do it. Starve them.
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07.08.09
Black Sarah Palin
All right, so I was beside myself today when I read that someone asked Sarah Palin how she was going to withstand ethics accusations as President, if she couldn’t take them as Governor.
And she said that the “Department of Law” would look at those complaints and throw them right out.
Like, excuse me? The what? Now I am really, really glad she is completely out of politics. Seriously, gladder than ever.
And did you hear the one about how some Alaskan has filed another ethics complaint against her? Remember back when it came out that she had charged the state a per diem for staying at her own house in Wasilla and showing up to work at some random state office building in Anchorage, when the state capital is actually Juneau? And they made her pay back taxes on the money, as income?
The new complaint says that it was not legitimate income, that she should never have gotten it in the first place, that the only reason she did it was to pad her salary. Because no other employee of the state of Alaska would have been permitted to receive that money or keep it, especially since the “commute” to Anchorage is 45 minutes and the minimum to receive any expense money is 50 minutes.
Anyway, the complainant wants her to pay back the ill-gotten gains. That’s all. Sounds reasonable enough to me. They’d have made me pay it back. I’m pretty sure about that.
But rather than photoshop another face on Sarah’s head or another head on her shoulders, I thought you might like to see this cute video of a black woman doing a spot-on impression of Sarah Palin.
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04.16.09
Best NOM ad parody
Why do right wingnut groups come up with such bizarre self-consciously serious propaganda that people can’t help but parody it?
We could blame the failures of the school system. But it could also be that some things are just ineffable.
My little parody:
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04.13.09
Fox News from the other side of the pond
For all of you who were thinking that Fox News it a bit on the overexcited side, here is how a Brit portrayed it in a little documentary.
And a quote from Robert G Kaufman, speaking at the 61st Annual Conference on World Affairs on what Republicans should do to advance their party…
The fifth thing that Republicans have to do is understand the problem of communicating in a world where much of the television media, particularly, is hostile…If I had to recommend one single thing that the Republicans should be doing to help articulate the message, it is to acquire another television network so that there is not just FOX, but multiple sources of alternative information that will do a much better job than we did in 2008 to keep things honest.
Admitting that Fox News was bought and paid for by the Republican party.
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04.07.09
The Ted Stevens prosecution: the sequel
Last week, when the case against Ted Stevens was dropped for prosecutorial mishandling, we heard about evidence that was withheld from the defense. It happens all the time, but rarely is it so severe that anything comes of it, at least not influencing the disposition of the case.
As in the Coleman/Franken case, the judge usually finds out about it and chews out the lawyers. Occasionally the judge will throw out a case.
Now if you were one of those defendants who doesn’t have a lot of money for expensive lawyers, you’d never even know it happened to you. They’d probably get away with it every time, which obviously is not the way the justice system is supposed to work in this country.
But for the case to be completely dropped, rather than merely seeking a retrial of some sort had to mean that the case was so ‘poisoned’ by whatever had been done that it could not be retried.
There was even speculation that the Bush administration was responsible for making sure that the case would inevitably be thrown out on appeal, thus being an embarrassment for everyone involved, except of course Ted Stevens, who is claiming that this is proof he never did any of the things that they said he did.
Not hardly.
Well, of course we assumed that maybe somebody would get a slap on the wrist, or some Bush appointee would get pushed out of their job a bit early and end up getting wealthy writing slanted books rewriting history as fiction and giving interviews on hate radio claiming persecution by liberal fascists.
Not so. It seems that we really will find out wtf was happening.
“In nearly 25 years on the bench, I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case,” U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said.
And then he appointed a special prosecutor to figure out exactly what happened and bring the criminals in the department to justice.
YES!
In case there is any confusion about what “justice” might mean in a case like this, they are looking at disbarment and prison time.
The word is that the Bush administration has salted the employment rolls of the current administration with hangovers who are ‘moles’, undercover operatives waiting to take orders from Bush, Cheney, Rove, and the Republican caucus and sabotage whatever the Obama adminstration tries to do.
Let’s get the criminals out of there. Now.
Stevens case closed, case against prosecutors open
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04.05.09
Cramer: the Depression is over
Yep, Cramer has declared the depression over.
What Cramer is saying is that the only consideration in determining the economic health of the nation as a whole should be stock market prices. This is an interesting perspective. Clearly a great many investors feel this way. That is why the administration has been putting so much effort into boosting investor confidence. The media, locked into worship of the market as a be-all and end-all, has responded by declaring that the depression is over and it’s back to normal for the country. It takes the pressure off announcements of continuing job losses, foreclosures, corporate corruption and looting, etc.
The administration “fixed” the stock market to get the media off their backs.
The stock market “creates wealth”? I thought that was the problem with investment in this country, money from nothing creating bubbles.
Bill Moyers did a show about the real problem, which is nowhere near being addressed: corporate fraud.
Finally, the full-length video IOUSA.
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03.31.09
Why Republican voters vote against their own interests
I hang out on Yahoo Answers, which is a great place for people who tend to become addicted to things like competitive speed-answering.
The Politics & Government categories are full of right wingnut trolls, many of whose questions are patently foolish and merely intended to waste the time of real people trying helpfully to point out to someone the error of their ways.
Hanging out on a site like that has fine-tuned my BS meter. But anyway, I sometimes put so much effort into answering a question that I think I should repost it here. So here goes:
Question:
Why Do Republicans Voters think the Rich need Handouts(aka Tax Cuts)?
Answer:
They have fallen for what I would call The Great Republican Lie of Income Redistribution”, which is, “Rich people work hard for their money, and people who work hard for their money deserve to keep it.” This lie is based on false premises and leads people to internally inconsistent conclusions. Here are the arguments, as you can read in the thread.
1. “Rich people work hard for their money”
Implied: How hard a person works can be shown by their income, so a person who makes $20,000 a year is working 2x as hard as someone who is making $10,000 a year, and the person making $10 million a year is working 1000x as hard.
False conclusion that the listener is supposed to draw: “People who don’t make much money aren’t actually working hard and are lazy, but I work hard for my money, too, so I am like a rich person.”
Truth rating: False. Most rich people do not work any harder for their money than anyone who works a job and does it well. The hardest, dirtiest, and most dangerous work out there is some of the worst-paying.
Not only that, but most rich people started higher on the ladder than poor people. They had someone to pay for their education at a pricey school where students hobnob with the wealthy and well-connected, and their connections that enabled them to get a job that a person born poor could never hope for his children to achieve, even if he borrowed enough money to pay for their college. Or like many rich people, they were already born rich.
2. “People who work hard for their money deserve to keep it.”
False conclusion: We should lower taxes for people like the rich who work hard. I work hard, so therefore I will get a tax cut, too.
Inconvenient fact: Historically, Republican “tax cuts” have resulted in huge tax cuts to the wealthy and much smaller if any tax cuts to the rest.
Hidden inconvenient fact #1: Lowering taxes disproportionally for one group of people means increasing the tax burden for all other groups. During the past generation the tax burden in real dollars on the working poor and middle class has risen while their incomes have fallen.
False conclusion: We can just lower taxes, and nothing will be affected, or the government will cut programs to those who don’t deserve it. (Remember, we have defined “undeserving” above as “not making as much money as a rich person”.).
Fact: Money invested in speculation rather than production of goods and services does not result in the creation of new wealth, but rather in a bubble effect.
Fact: Government policy over the past generation has encouraged the abandonment of our manufacturing base and funneling of money into high-risk investments and fraud schemes based only on the ability of the designers to get away with what any other citizen would be charged with a crime for doing.
Fact: Following this path has brought the country to its knees. Continuing to do more of the same will destroy us.
Conclusion: The Republican establishment has been manipulating their voters to vote against their own self-interest for a generation. Without not only the support of these voters but their complicity in attacking their fellow workers, government would have long ago had to answer for their crimes.
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03.23.09
Not getting it: more examples
I was rather disappointed to hear that the administration has decided that zombie banks should be saved so that the people that ran them into the ground can enjoy continuity of employment, even though there is no evidence that they will start lending anytime soon.
It hasn’t worked yet, so we need to keep throwing money at them. Sooner or later the economy will suddenly snap back where it was before the crash.
The administration is pretty gung-ho on this. Even Christine Romer said that they want banks to lend like crazy, which any sane outsider would probably say is part of what got us in this mess in the first place.
Me? I read some of these articles, shake my head, and say, “Yeah…”
Here‘s a little story for you on J.P. Morgan’s upcoming purchase of two luxury jets and construction of an $18 million state of the art hangar.
Two quotes from the article:
“It’s a remarkably boneheaded decision,” said corporate watchdog Nell Minnow, the editor and founder of The Corporate Library, a group that provides independent corporate governance research and analysis. “It’s completely tone deaf.”
Alright. We all get that one.
But this one…
But on March 11, the chairman of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, said he could not understand why corporate America has such a bad image.
“When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America I personally don’t understand it,” Dimon said.
Dimon, whose 2008 compensation package, according to SEC documents, was worth more than $19 million in salary, stock and options, declined to speak with ABC News about the proposed plans.
Hello? A sure sign that he thinks he is a member of the Financial Wizards class, basically different from you and me.
Finally, a Rasmussen poll has been released showing that overall 24% of Americans have a favorable opinion on how Geithner has been doing his job, and 44% have an unfavorable opinion.
What is especially telling is that of what Rasmussen deems the “Political Class” (“Financial Wizards” and wannabes, according to my terminology), 76% are favorable, while among Populists, 12% have a favorable opinion on him. The divide is not between Democrats and Republicans, it is between those who are well-connected and those who see them as out of touch with reality.
Finally, another article from Rasmussen, this one on their concept of “Political Class” and “Populist”. Very interesting. The Populists are the great majority, unrelated to party lines. A smart political strategist might be able to do something with this.
I posted this on the DailyKos, where I got a lot of snark from people who are opposed to the fact that everybody doesn’t agree with them. Hardly anybody even read the Rasmussen article, and they apparently didn’t need to do that to tell me that scientific polling means nothing if the results do not agree with your own opinion.
Disregard polling at your own risk.
Now for a little lecture on the psychology of cheating. It’s a little long, but it’s extremely engaging and very topical.
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