Throw papa from the temple

It wasn't the crime researchers' fault. Nothing in their education or institutions should be changed to make them more resistant to being paid to prostitute their credentials in the service of a long train of criminal conspiracies and abuses.  Poor little victims of society...

They were surrounded by a culture of bullshit, and they were insufficiently trained to deal with the huge appeal of making shit up and pawning it off on credulous readers as if it were factual.  It's not just that 87.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.  They were far more methodologically sound than that.  They took in voluminous data from the very hierarchy that protected the perpetrators and accepted it as gospel.  And I don't mean that metaphorically.

With everyone around them taking the money to produce a thin tissue of rationalization, why wouldn't they join in?  Take the money and run, babeee!

Never mind when secondary sex characteristics become visible.  Those altar boys had increasing levels of testosterone - it's scientific! - and the poor entrapped victim priests simply couldn't resist it at a time when college kids were openly lustful and the one true unalterable word of the lord was, uh, sorry, I lost my train of thought.

Ten years old?  No longer a child!  Oral sex with a fifth grader couldn't possibly be pedophilia.  Any sensitive man of god could tell he was about to break out in adolescent acne any day now.  Isn't that a little peach fuzz in the armpit?

The so-called researchers from John Jay College of Criminal Justice - what a misnomer! - concocted rationalizations for the very same fig leaf theory their sponsors had made up of whole cloth.  What a coincidence!  No, they were paid to uphold these despicable lies.  Until John Jay College dismisses the authors of this study, it has made itself the Heritage Foundation of boy-buggering, an institution with zero credibility and even less moral worth.

And what could redeem the Catholic hierarchy?

Privatization of your taxes

First, charter schools cost more with lesser results for a student population that should have had higher achievement.

Now, it's true of prisons too.  Privatized prisons in Arizona cost more than state-run prisons.  And they don't take the most expensive inmates, which should make it easy for them to have a lower average cost.  The libertarian advocates of all things private could then have made a bogus claim that they were saving money, and they would have been able to make a bullshit argument that they had complied with the law that requires cost savings for taxpayers.  But, no, they have Republicans to defend their extra costs, so no worries.

Charter schools, private prisons, both ways to transfer money from unionized public employees to wealthy investors, screwing middle class taxpayers.  If that's not a perfect microcosm of Republican policy, I don't know any that's better.  Winner take all!

Clearing the field

Lost between the end of Trumpapalooza and Arnold's proof that steroids didn't turn his junk completely to Raisinettes, Mike Huckabee dropped out.  Despite persistently polling as a contender.

Why?

Perils of moderation

For three decades now, three facts have been true:

• Republicans have been determined to have no adversaries to their right.
• Democrats have been willing, sometimes eager, to take any shit-ass deal that they can spin as half a loaf, even if it's really just a moldy crust of bread that no one in his right mind would eat, lest he get ergotamine poisoning and suffer Republican accusations of witchcraft.
• The village media of provincial Washington D.C.has made a fetish of calling for bipartisanship.

In response, Republicans have continually moved further and further to the extreme right.  If the press is going to call for a Solomonic division of the baby and the Democrats are going to cave and go along, why shouldn't the Republicans stake out an extreme position?  It's rational - in the feeble sense that economists use.

Democrats need to stop playing along.  Republicans are our adversaries.  They can't be reasoned with.  They can't be bargained with.  And they will not stop until they kill the New Deal.

Trump 2016

Four years from now, when Donald Trump needs his undeserving ego stroked, when the asshole vote is up for grabs (unless Chris Christie is in the race), when he has PR to do for a shitty, ritually abusive television show that exhibits all the worst ugly aristocratic features of 21st century American society, will the media once again take him seriously as a candidate for President?  Even though he has been through divorces and bankruptcies like trailer trash?  Even though he has no experience or organization or policy?  Even though he couldn't make money with a casino?  Even though he has the personal magnetism of a piece of carrion too ripe for a vulture?  Even if he has less control over his own message than the most afflicted, unmedicated sufferer of Tourette's?

Of course they will!  They're the media, after all.  It's their job to suck up to rich people.

I don't think the TV talking heads are all stupid, though many of them are, but they definitely think we're on average stupid.  Trump's polling trajectory proves they're right about that.

Untrustworthy

Republicans are not about reality.  They're about sales pitches - and fever pitches.

 It turns out the six-month spending bill Congress passed in April increased discretionary outlays through the remainder of the fiscal year by a bit over $3 billion. In other words, total direct spending will be higher by the end of September than if Congress had just set spending on autopilot for the remainder of the fiscal year back in April.

and:

Republicans got done in a 10 year time-frame a bit more than they hoped to accomplished by September.

Repeat after me:

• You can't trust Republican facts.
• You can't trust Republican analysis.
• You can't trust Republican good faith.

(h/t Tom Levenson)

Balkanizing the net for fun and profit

Business continues to pose a greater danger to democracy (and especially to privacy) than government.

Mission impossible - chimera

Click image for full John Cole/Scranton Times/Tribune cartoon.

Only encourages them

You can't save old people's or poor people's lives:

"I don't think I can vote for someone like that," Pennsylvania Republican Eric Tolbert said. "He says he's sorry, but how do I know that's the real Mitt Romney? What happens if he gets elected and tries to help sick people again?"

"I like Michele Bachmann now," Tolbert added. "Because what this country needs is a president who doesn't give a fuck about helping people.

That's just an incentive for them to get sick more and more.  Are we going to have to save their lives over and over again?

Democrats blow the media

The Daily Show - Who Killed Osama bin Laden
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Democrats once again prove their incomprehension of modern American big media.  You would think that, in the past 30 years, they would have figured out that the media makes no judgements whatsoever whether the Republicans are obviously bullshitting.  The so-called non-partisan political media is a meeting facilitator.  The talk show yappers won't check facts.  They don't interview skeptically.  They ask what appear to be challenging questions, but they won't follow up to flag obvious lies and lying liars for the audience.

The yappers think that's fine.  They view their job as giving the sides the opportunity to make their cases, nothing more.

Their performance reveals this.  Starkly.  Democrats, who haven't yet cottoned onto it, are slow learners.  Or too lazy to show up on Sunday mornings.

Of course, I'm only writing about those talking heads who regard themselves as objective.  Everyone on Fox and the other right-wing propaganda outlets does their biased best to make Republicans look good.

See no evil

Click image for full Randy Bish/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review cartoon.

Meaning in bullshit

Vanity, thy name is Rudolph.  Giuliani...

[I]f Giuliani turns out to be the best Republican for the job, the 2008 candidate for the GOP nomination said, "I could probably be talked into doing it."

No one with a normal ego could even consider a run for President.  Rudy wants to be talked into running.

Yeah, right, a groundswell of support will prove once and for all that Donald Trump and Chris Christie are mere pretenders to the asshole vote, that they remain not only a potent part of the Republican base but also now and forever Rudy's most gaseously effusive supporters.

Of course, the big media role in all this is clear too.  They have Rudy's number in their cell phones, and he'll take their calls.  Flattery goes both ways in the elite electronic village.  Accountability?  Not so much.

There is one small excuse for CNN giving Giuliani a platform.  They can tell that there's not a credible Republican candidate yet in the race.  Trotting out their old warhorses is just a way to vamp until ready and fill the vast desolate air time with some kind of familiar noise.

Signifying nothing.

Word made flesh

Update: Better title.

Why Republicans bullshit

Need a dozen good laughs?  See this satire.

Tango's down

Just a little Brain-Out on the carpet

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The next wingnut contrive-versy

Sharia burial!  Give it a few days...  The birthers need a new so-called issue.

Never mind that the consensus seems to be that burial at sea accords with some Muslim customs and not with others.  The wingnuts don't care about facts.  They have an entire disinformation apparatus to make up any bullshit they need.

And they need to go through the day in a constant state of outrage and alienation from everyone who's not in their tribe.

Yesterday morning, they resented Osama bin Laden continuing to breathe.  Today, they resent that President Obama directed the effort to find and capture or kill him.  And they're thanking Duhbya, whose every major move and attitude gave punishment of al Qaeda the short shrift in his failed geopolitical game of Risk.

No comment necessary

Garbage in garbage out

Click image for full Tom Tomorrow/DailyKos cartoon.

Née to the groin

Coincident to the much televised marriage of another horse-faced Windsor to the lovely commoner Kate Middleton, I've been reading Common Sense.  Here's a sweet excerpt:

England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones; yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one.  A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original.  It certainly hath no divinity in it.

It's about as sound a basis for a system of government as strange tarts lying in ponds distributing swords.

And then:

Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.

I'm a little-d democrat too.  I have no patience for pageantry at the price the British pay for it.  These fantastic leeches need an honest job for the first time in generations.

Just as I have no patience for the divine right of Wall Street...