Random Barking

So... What?

Whether this observation bounded by the strictures of religious belief, or as open as any question in quantum mechanics -- it can't be denied that we live on a single planet, its atmosphere captured by gravity, orbiting a single star in a universe so vast that we can't conceive just how large that vastness is.

So.. what? What is all this for? Religion will insist on one answer, science another -- though unlike religious leaders, scientists (not ones paid by the Koch Brothers™, or some other bored billionaire, anyway) will tell you their answers aren't absolute. But though you can debate about the purpose, the facts of where and how big can't be argued. So, what's it for? What are we for?

And from that perspective, President Boner's toupee, Obama's support for Banksters™ or 'National Security', or "Bucky The Beaver" Brooks' rat-toothed giggle doesn't mean much.

Obligatory Toupee Photo In Middle Of Existential Rant: President Obama Graciously Ignores The Incident Of President Boner's Hairpiece (Photo: People/Newsroom; TPM; Inset Detail By Mongo)

In the face of the unanswered Big Questions, many of the things we consider so important, aren't. There are obvious things which are important, but much of what captures our attention in this place we inhabit -- as Ellen Ripley reminds us, "all this, all this bullshit you think is so important" -- isn't.

We should be asking The Big Questions. But, I'm only a Dog, and no one listens to me.

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Hubble 22

Years Of Deeper Vision


Area Of 30 Doradus, In The Large Magellanic Cloud

NASA recently celebrated the 22nd anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Deep Space Telescope by releasing the image above of a large (as in, tens of light-years across) star-forming area in a satellite galaxy to our own.

You can see the official slide show, created for the twentieth anniversary of the orbiting telescope, of the best of the images from Hubble, at NASA's website.

We live in a big place. We also make it difficult for ourselves to remember that.

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...Am Grünen Strand Der Spree

A River Runs Through It


Bodemusee At North End Of The Museums Insel; Monbijou Bridge
At Left, The Pergammon Museum And Neue Galerie Further On;
Fernsehturm At Alexanderplatz In The Background (per.ch)

If you know much about Berlin, you probably remember that the river Spree curves up through the city from the south, tracing a lazy S[pree]-shaped path back down before turning north again; eventually, it makes its way to the Baltic. It was the main reason Berlin came to be; the city began as two trading posts on either side of the river, southwest of what is today the Alexanderplatz.


Tour Barges Navigate Locks On The Spree At The Friederich
Bridge; Berlin Cathedral In The Background (per.ch)

For hundreds of years, rivers in Europe like the Spree were the principal means of getting trade into the city -- everything from fish to timber, beer, hides, cloth and vegetables -- before the advent of the train and the automobile. Today, the Spree is a highway for tourists and some private traffic -- and the Wasserpolizei, of course.


UBahn Station At Wittenbergplatz; KaDaWe On Tauentzienstrasse
In The Background. (per.ch)

...And aside from a river running through it, another kind of river travels through the city -- but that's for another post.

(Incidentally, these pictures of Berlin were taken by a vacationing Czech (or Slovak) in July of 2010. You can see their full photo collection of their journey around Berlin here.)

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Japan Will Burn Fukishima's Radioactive Debris

What Is Past Is Prologue: We Regretfully Express Regret

(I originally saw this on Barry Ritzholz's The Big Picture and was more appalled by the criminal stupidity he was reporting than I can express. Much of this post is based on his article and the links in it; go and read Barry's post.)

In May, Japan will begin burning approximately 25,000 tons of highly radioactive debris created by the March 2011 tsunami, then irradiated by the disaster at the four Fukushima nuclear reactors.

Members of the international scientific and regulatory community said while the Fukushima catastrophe was taking place that the management of Tepco, the company which owns and operated the reactors, and the Japanese government, was intentionally downplaying and covering up the extent of the crisis.

They're still doing it. The Japanese government has artificially lowered their own public standards for what is considered 'permissible' in exposing human beings to radioactivity. Their standards are no longer those used by the international scientific community.

If you want to eliminate an embarrassment, the expense and responsibility of dealing with it, then simply deny the reality. Drive in private cars to large, expensive private homes and sit in a peaceful garden. There; no more bad things -- at least, not for you.

As reported in the Japanese press, the debris contains up to 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram.

FUKUSHIMA (Kyodo) -- The state will start building storage facilities for debris generated by the March 2011 tsunami as early as May at two locations in a coastal area of Naraha town, Fukushima Prefecture...

Debris created by the tsunami largely remains untouched within a 20-kilometer radius of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant from which residents have been forced to evacuate in the aftermath of the earthquake-triggered disaster.

About 2.5 hectares of land have already been secured at the two locations, a large portion of which lies within the exclusion zone, and about 25,000 tons of debris are expected to be brought into the facilities beginning in the summer, according to the officials...

If more than 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium are found per kilogram of debris, the debris will be transferred to a medium-term storage facility to be built by the state.

But if burnable debris contains 100,000 becquerels of radioactive Cesium or less, it may be disposed of at a temporary incinerator to be built within the prefecture, according to the officials.

The American NRC and international nuclear experts have said that debris with even lower levels of radioactive Cesium, twenty times lower than what the Japanese will allow to be burned at Fukushima, would need to be buried underground for thousands of years.

Burning radioactive debris only spreads it. Particles from the burning will end up not only in other parts of Japan, but will travel with prevailing winds across the Pacific to fall in Hawaii, Canada, Oregon; Washington and California.

Effectively, it recreates the Fukushima disaster by releasing a huge amount of radioactivity on the ground back into the air. Again, from The Big Picture:

It is bad enough that radiation from Fukushima is spreading across the Pacific to the United States through air and water, that the Japanese are underplaying the enormous threat posed by the spent fuel pools, and that the Japanese have engaged in a massive cover-up of the severity of the Fukushima crisis.

But intentionally burning radioactive debris to try to cover up the problem – and spreading radiation worldwide in the process – is an entirely separate affront.

Postscript: In addition to burning radioactive debris, Japan intends to build tents over the leaking Fukushima reactors. While this sounds like a way to contain the radiation, it would actually funnel it straight up and spread it globally:

But nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen said that the tents – while helping to protect workers at Fukushima – will actually increase the dispersion of radioactive gases. Specifically, Tepco will pump radiation out through stacks, which will push radiation up to a higher elevation, dispersing it even further around the world.

A commenter to Ritholtz's article noted (paragraphing added for clarity):

I have Hashimoto’s. Basically my thyroid died and went to heaven and I was lucky I didn’t. The interesting thing is that my specific manifestation of the disease is endemic to left handed midwestern males born in the mid 50′s. One could directly correlate it to open air nuclear testing if one wanted to, but Eisenhower’s favorite complex might take offense.

We already have excellent data on worldwide particulate transmission as a result of Krakatoa and Pinatubo.

Now we will have excellent data on various aggressive radiation induced cancers.

I find it interesting that this slow motion train wreck has been going on for quite a while and only now are we disturbed? There were plans to evacuate TOKYO. This is a tragedy of the commons of the first order and there is nothing we can do about it. Fait accompli.

Even so, we know there has been a cover-up of the disaster so far; there's nothing we can do about that but shun those responsible and publicly shame them, if you're into that sort of thing. But, unlike the disaster that followed the earthquake and tsunami, we know in advance what will happen. This is a completely avoidable catastrophe.

But the United States government won't do much. Why not? Another commenter to the same article at Ritholtz's site said, "Yeah right , threaten *permanent sanctions* with one of the few allies we have" to counter a rising China, beginning to flex its armed muscle. No; our leaders won't do more than "express concern" to the Japanese.

And when it's all done, and in years to come when the damage is obvious and public; those Japanese scientists, government officials and all the fun boys and girls at Tepco will just bow a few times for the cameras. They'll say, "We express regret". Everyone will just have to understand, and that will just have to be enough.

Again: This is avoidable. It does not have to happen. Is anyone doing anything to stop it?

Didn't think so.

As a species, it's a wonder that humans can remember how to breathe.

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Dog Dog Dog Dog

Friday The 13th

All kinds of stuff out there give me the sense that all is not well.

However, I recommend going and looking at this courtesy of "Sad And Useless", a site whose owner uses a photo of David McCollum (in his appearance on the second season of The Outer Limits in the mid-60's) as his little avatar.

And you thought we wouldn't notice. We are a smarter species than you realize. Anyway, given the pervading sense of doom I'm feeling, I needed the laugh.

MEHR: My friend at the Place Of Witless Labor™, El Rog The Magnificent, walked up to me with a grim expression. "Heard the news?" I allowed that I had not, but it didn't look good. "Two fully-loaded 747's just collided over Warsaw."

"Oh, my God; that's -- how could that have happened?" I said.

"Dunno." El Rog shook his head. "One 747 carries about six hundred people -- want to hear the ironic thing? They both crashed into a cemetery."

"Oh, Criminey."

"Yeah." El Rog nodded, then looked at me. "So far, the Poles have recovered over fourteen thousand bodies," he said, and smiled a little as he walked away, leaving me with the understanding that I'd just been Had.

"It's still Friday the 13th, you know," I said to him.

"All day. You're expecting something bad to happen," El Rog said. "It will -- just not today."

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Kulturschande *

John Derbyshire's Public, Total, And Irreversible Loss
Of Bowel And Bladder Control

John Derbyshire, a conservative pundit and gadfly at the National Review (originally founded by William F. Buckley, and later run by unindicted war criminals), author of several books, including We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, provided us with a spectacle last week: Virtually dousing himself with gasoline and lighting a fantasy match, via this post at the Takimag website: "The Talk: Nonblack Version".

Apparently, John-Boy had read several articles that referenced a "talk" which at least some Black parents purportedly have with their children about living in a society dominated by non-African Americans (I've preserved some of the links to them from Derbyshire's original below):

[Derbyshire quotes:]“Sean O’Reilly was 16 when his mother gave him the talk that most black parents give their teenage sons,” Denisa R. Superville of the Hackensack (NJ) Record tells us. Meanwhile, down in Atlanta: “Her sons were 12 and 8 when Marlyn Tillman realized it was time for her to have the talk,” Gracie Bonds Staples writes in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Leonard Greene talks about the talk in the New York Post. Someone bylined as KJ Dell’Antonia talks about the talk in The New York Times. Darryl Owens talks about the talk in the Orlando Sentinel.

Yes, talk about the talk is all over.

There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too. My own kids, now 19 and 16, have had it in bits and pieces as subtopics have arisen. If I were to assemble it into a single talk, it would look something like the following...

Herr Derbyshire said, to paraphrase, Blacks are generally less intelligent than Caucasians or Asians, whom Blacks simply lump together as "white"; are more likely to be undeservedly promoted into management positions in the workplace; and are prone to violent behavior against "whites", if only on the basis of statistics. All this, and more like it, is what he tells his own children.

He tells this to his children. And where, pray, do people like him believe that racism comes from? Not only in the images and attitudes children unconsciously absorb from the world around them -- but because someone teaches them.

It's What They Do

Some pundits with a large soapbox to stand on, or their own site -- precisely because they publish lies and drivel, and use the Net to sling their own feces beyond their cages -- deserve to be ignored, vilified; to have their IP addresses blocked and sent to dwell in the land of Little Rupert, East of Podhoretz, with the crying, and the wailing, and the gnashing of mandibles (and the hey hey hey, as Professor Frink might tell us).

A few obvious examples of public masturbation are Drudge, Malkin; Goldberg, Erikson; and Breitbart (a Grand Public Masterdebater); but it's a long list. Thinking human beings recoil from the junk that spills out of their addled minds and into the rinse-cycle whirl of the Intertubes (Or, we laugh our asses off. Or both). They deserve our contempt, and receive it -- but they won't leave. They won't perform a swan song -- a GBCW! post: Good-Bye, Cruel World!.

However, the GBCW doesn't tend to happen in Right Blogostan, where the operative principle is to lie, and outrageously. As (for example) Breitbart and O'Keefe have shown us, don't just strain credulity, piss on it. And, Right bloggers have automatic support among a large community, willing to swallow every wingnut, asshat, echo-chamber fantasy of the moment.

Because, you see, the Right must stand in solidarity. They see a hostile world, dominated by elite Liberals and their Media; Jews; non-white people; and the undeserving poor and undocumented aliens, all supported by the taxes of honest working Americans (Also, there are giant radioactive scorpions being trained by the UN to bring about a one-world government headed by George Soros).

So You Wanna Be One Of The Kool Kidz

Sometimes, the GBCW is purely voluntary. At some level, the Blogosphere -- Left or Right -- mimics high school. Bloggers and regular commentors tend to affiliate, and like any other association of humans can be exclusionary. On occasion someone appears whose style in posting comments is grating, awkward. They insist on being right, on dominating a thread; they just don't express ideas well. They may be off-topic, and are thin-skinned when teased -- as they will be (humans are humans, and anonymous ones even more so).

Usually, these people have a blog of their own. They want to be one of the Kool Kidz, too, and have lots of site traffic -- to be popular. To "be someone". The problem is, they already are someone, and that they've confused the raison d'etre of their blog, or commenting on someone else's post, with wanting to appear on something like the old Gong Show.

So, when no one reads their amazingly important, detailed, lengthy blog posts; and they're ignored when adding to threads on other sites... finally, they may write that GBCW post, clomping off the Internet stage with a final, long soliloquy explaining ad nauseum why they are right and the rest of the world is wrong, wrong, wrong; and also, bad. If they are religious, they may hint darkly that god (somebody's god, anyway) will punish everyone for not eagerly lapping up their vomit.

(For some reason, I'm reminded of R. Crumb's Everyman character, Flakey Foont, constantly looking to Mister Natural for enlightenment, befuddled; angry at his mistreatment in life. In one final panel, Foont weeps as, in a thought bubble, he imagines his tombstone's epitaph: Here Lies Flakey Foont / A Beautiful Soul / Crushed By An Uncaring World..)

Wingnut Self-Immolation

Then, there's the other category of GBCW, almost unique to the Right, where a Rightist pundit's mask slips and the true reptilian horror is shown for all to see and wonder at. This sort of thing happens all the time -- you can't get through a week without a Rightist politician, or self-proclaimed pundit like Lard Boy, saying something insulting or incendiary.

So, when a wingnut pundit like Derbyshire can't maintain the Right's cherished fiction of bipartisan cooperation, or that they believe non-white persons are their equals, for anyone on the Right to take notice their outburst has to cross a line that is damaging for conservatism in general -- particularly in an election year.

A recent example: Lard Boy's public ridicule of a young woman as a slut and a prostitute, over her appearance before Congress on the subject of contraception. After enough heavy-hitters on the Right strongly hinted he'd stepped over a line, El Fathead reluctantly made a self-justifying half-apology -- as good as you'll get from a pathetic bully like Rush.

Trent Lott Flies The Bonny Blue Flag

But an example more to the point is then-Senator Trent Lott's fulsome praise of Strom Thurmond at his 100th birthday party in 2002: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him," Said Trent. "We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either".

Thurmond had run for president in 1948 as a 'Dixiecrat', expousing what Wikipedia notes as "an explicit States' Rights platform that challenged the Civil Rights Movement and later, the Civil Rights Act as illegally overturning the Separation of powers under the United States Constitution." In other words, Antebellum 'Southern values'.

In the appropriate storm of criticism that followed, Lott was forced to resign as Majority Leader of the Senate in 2003, and blamed the evil nasty Intertubes bloggers for keeping the story alive (Lott resigned from the Senate in 2007, and opened a lobbying firm a block from the Senate offices).

Missy Laura Talks To The Nation

On August 10, 2010, Laura Schlessenger, right-wing radio commentator "Doctor Laura", had an exchange with a Black woman who had called in to her syndicated program to speak about a personal issue: Occasional racial slurs her husband (who is Caucasian) and his friends would make in front of her.

CALLER: I'm having an issue with my husband where I'm starting to grow very resentful of him. I'm black, and he's white. We've been around some of his friends and family members who start making racist comments as if I'm not there or if I'm not black. And my husband ignores those comments, and it hurts my feelings. And he acts like --

SCHLESSINGER: Well, can you give me an example of a racist comment? 'Cause sometimes people are hypersensitive. So tell me what's -- give me two good examples of racist comments.

CALLER: OK. Last night -- good example -- we had a neighbor come over, and this neighbor -- when every time he comes over, it's always a black comment. It's, "Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?" And, "Do black people really like doing that?" And for a long time, I would ignore it. But last night, I got to the point where it --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist.

CALLER: Well, the stereotype --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist. No, I think that --

CALLER: [unintelligible]

SCHLESSINGER: No, no, no. I think that's -- well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says -- we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here -- the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, "White men can't jump; I want you on my team." That was racist? That was funny.

CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around --

SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n----r, n----r, n----r.

CALLER: That isn't --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing. Don't hang up, I want to talk to you some more. Don't go away.

I'm Dr. Laura Schlessinger. I'll be right back.

It continued in the same vein after "Doctor Laura" returned. "Yeah," Frau Schlessenger said; "We've got a black man as president, and we have more complaining about racism than ever. I mean, I think that's hilarious". When the caller disagreed, the good doctor responded, "[You've] got a chip on your shoulder. Can't do much about that."

Frau Schlessenger spent much of the next week trying to defend herself on air, and on August 17, announced on Larry King Live that she was leaving commercial AM radio, moving to subscription-only Sirrus to continue her special brand of joy without "some special interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent."

Old School Dog-Whistle

Derbyshire is originally British, a naturalized American citizen; well-educated; his wife is Asian, and his sons are mixed-race Amerasians. You'd think he knew exactlywhat was about to happen as he clicked "Send" to upload his article to 'Takimag', and it did: The National Review terminated Derbyshire; the NROnline's editor, Rich Lowry, posted:

[Derbyshire's] latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways.

(I so like Lowry's use of the nickname, "Derb"; it smacks of Groton or Andover, of lacrosse or crew at Yale. Just kind of tone the NR likes to have amongst its own; so "Our Crowd".)

I don't agree with Lowry that Derbyshire's views are such that the NR "would never associate ourselves otherwise". I believe the Right perpetuates racist perspectives, the common assumptions that Derbyshire is so willing to teach his children -- but assumptions only admitted to quietly, between the "right sort" of people.

One Cardinal rule of the wingnut tribe is not to embarrass the Right by admitting to its true shared values, particularly about how icky Blacks and The Poor are (they're so -- well, so Black, and so poor). Derbyshire's irretrievable sin was to say so, openly and in public.

But in calling him 'Derb' (both affectionate and dismissive at once), Lowry showed he didn't repudiate an old friend and member of his class; only that he was uncomfortable with Derb's statements. Lowry will meet Ol' Derb, buy him a drink and say, "What were you thinking, Derb? I mean, we all know about 'Those People'; but you had to go and say it. I had to cut you from the NR; you didn't really give me a choice, old man."

(Think this is a stretch? Possibly. But I doubt it.)

The Right is eager to play the race card with a sitting Black President, but they have to do it through innuendo, metaphors, verbal allusions. I understand that I'm offering no examples, but I believe Lowry and people like him on the Right tacitly support Derbyshire's "views" concerning the comparative intelligence, aggression and "otherness" of Blacks in America. And, so they can't be accused of overt racism, they'll just make oblique references. They'll use the dog whistle.

Race is an issue in America. There's been a tremendous amount of racist garbage, blog posts and comments, crudely-drawn cartoons, aimed not at Obama's policies but at his race (One of the first comments I heard after the 2008 election from someone at work was, "Guess we can't call it the 'White House' anymore!").

And Right blogostan has never stopped baying about the 'conspiracy' around the legitimacy of his birth certificate. Breitbart's last super-secret, stop-the-presses video was about Obama giving someone a hug -- proof of his radicalism, that he is (hint, hint) a Black man first and an American second.

You can barely hear the National Anthem any longer for all the dog-whistling on the Right that's been going on since 2008. And none of the Good Ole Boys repudiates it; I see Sessions, Haley Barbour, and Saxby Chambliss (who crawled into office by calling a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran a traitor) whining on television and want to puke. People like this are a shame on my country.

We're a badly polarized society -- possibly more so than at any time since The Great Depression, certainly since 1965 -- and at a time when we can least afford to be so divided. Asshats like Derbyshire (aber natürlich, only for the purest of reasons) have pushed and escalated our society's divisions and put us at each others' throats. They'd like to keep us there.

Race is an issue in America. Electing Barack Obama as president didn't solve it. I'm not happy with Obama as a president, or a Democrat -- but it would never cross my mind to believe his public policies or decision-making are the product of his being Black.

The Right, on the other hand, seems to think that is the case -- and while Derbyshire will be publicly repudiated by conservatives for his remarks, many of those same people on the Right will attempt to perform a quiet, virtual lynching as they attempt to 'save' America from ... the Justice in Equality, I guess.

Auf Nicht Wiedersehen, Derbyshire, you Lumpenhund nutter.

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( * "Kulturschande" Is more than just bringing shame upon one's culture, because the concept in German of Kultur encompasses much more than that. But, trust me; it's pejorative.)

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Random Barking; Greg Williams NFL Edition

Scumbag

It takes a special kind of person to (1) Organize a pay-for-injury system with their little NFL team, including targeting the previous injuries of specific players; and then (2) Plan to appeal the NFL Board's decision to suspend them for a year for inciting and directing in such activities.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but these people need to be suspended from the game for life. They should be made to pump gas at a CitGo or work on the back of waste management truck. They offered $1,500 to hit some players, to produce injuries that could end a player's career? That's like saying, "This player's career is only worth fifteen hundred dollars."

Professional football has always been a physical contest, and for professional athletes the risk of injury is always present. People in high-risk occupations accept that as part of the job. But, consider -- you're a player with potential, who's struggled and made your way on to a national team. You're supporting a wife, children, a mother, and other relatives. You have a chance to earn more during your professional career than ten regular men will in their lifetimes -- and you're there by the grace of God, by luck and chance and fate.


Obligatory Cute Small Animal Picture In Middle Of Blog Rant

Then, suddenly, you're hit in a game, and your career is sidelined, or worse, over. But you consider that it was just the breaks, man; it was fate, chance. Things just happen. And then you find out it wasn't like that : Your career, your ability to provide for others, is over because you were targeted. It wasn't fate that took you out, it wasn't just 'the breaks'.

If I were one of those targeted players, I'd be consulting with counsel and filing a civil action. If I were a DA, I'd be wondering about filing conspiracy charges. And frankly, if I were one of the stupid scumbags individuals who perpetrated this weasel scheme, I'd be less concerned about my future with the NFL, and more concerned that the players injured at their direction might have a few unstable family members who are upset about what occurred.

As a friend of mine once observed, you can do anything in this life you want; absolutely anything -- so long as you understand that you have to pull the freight behind the actions you take or the decisions you make.

MEHR: It's been pointed out that Big Greg Williams was suspended from the NFL indefinitely, where Mr. Peyton was given a one-year suspension. I still say ban these morally bankrupt individuals for life. Period.

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Random Barking

Deep Thoughts

I've said it before: If you want to bite into what Little Rupert has to sell, fine.

Just don't blame anyone but yourself if it tastes like you're sucking Joseph Goebbels' underwear.

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Yep; We're Boned. Any Questions?

More Enlightened Self-Interest

Some men see things as they are and ask, "Why?"
I see the same stuff and say, "Yeah, yeah; whatever:
Bender Bender Bender / Bender Bender Bender...

-- Bender

Viva Cut-Rate Europa

The march of Austerity continues in The Europa, as the rightist government in Spain announced a new budget -- one day after an estimated one million people across the country protested against exactly such an event.

"We are taking extraordinary measures because the situation is extraordinary," the budget minister, Cristóbal Montoro, said before announcing €27bn (£22.5bn) in spending cuts and tax rises.

Markets and fellow eurozone members increasingly fear that Spain – whose economy is twice the size of that of Greece, Ireland and Portugal put together – could be the biggest threat to their future.

"Spain is going to stop being a problem, especially for the Spanish people, but also for the European Union," finance minister Luis de Guindos said as he prepared to explain the austerity measures to concerned eurozone ministers who were meeting in Copenhagen.

How is "Spain is going to stop being a problem, especially for the Spanish people", when its government is forcing everyone who isn't already rich to lower their standards of living? Ah... Excuse me? "Spain is going to stop being a problem, especially for the Spanish people". What exactly the fuck does that mean?

And isn't this really one of the central questions about the global economic crisis: Why are the people and institutions not responsible for it being made to pay to "fix" it, while financial institutions, which are responsible, and the wealthy are not made to pay to fix it??

[Montoro] insisted that, with Spanish unemployment at 23% and climbing, he had tried to avoid hurting the economy's chances of recovery. But economists have warned the deficit-cutting measures ... will take two percentage points of GDP off growth, pushing the country into the second part of a double-dip recession.

Yet, for Little Angela and Nicky, and Davey "Friend Of News Corp" Cameron, and so many other EU politicians, the only way to stop the pain of Europe's people is to beat them more savagely.

[Spanish c]ivil servants, whose salaries were cut by 5% in 2010, were among the biggest losers: Their wages were frozen again this year.

MEHR: ... and The Paper of Record tells us:

Europe’s long-running euro crisis may be cooling. But the economic distress ... is pushing a rising tide of workers into precarious straits in France and across the European Union. Today, hundreds of thousands of people are living in campgrounds, vehicles and cheap hotel rooms. Millions more are sharing space with relatives, unable to afford the basic costs of living... a growing slice of the population that is slipping through Europe’s long-vaunted social safety net... trapped in low-paying or temporary jobs that are replacing permanent ones destroyed in Europe’s economic downturn.

Now, economists, European officials and social watchdog groups are warning that the situation is set to worsen. As European governments respond to the crisis by pushing for deep spending cuts to close budget gaps and greater flexibility in their work forces, “the population of working poor will explode,” said Jean-Paul Fitoussi, an economics professor at L’Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris...

Any questions?


Get Ready

Watching the presentation of the Administration's defense of the Affordable Care Act (dubbed "Obamacare" by the Thugs) this past week, many legal reporters made the observation, one way or another, that the Act was already history -- it's all over but the celebratory Texas duck hunt of "Fat Tony" Scalia and 'Dick' Cheney, whose new heart is allegedly as black as his old one.

The arguments all seemed to center around how much the ACA would be declared unconstitutional -- in toto, or just the individual mandate. Which would, if thrown out, effectively gut the Act anyway.

And, the Supreme Court is packed, 5-4, with right-wing morons.

On that glorious day, when persons who have no idea what it's like to live in Everyday America hand down their decision, we can expect to hear about 'blistering retorts' in the Minority Opinions, but so what?

Only incidentally is this about constitutional interpretation or legal scholarship. It's a crowning moment of glory, a time of triumph for the Right, because they can sabotage or steal something from an unassailable position -- as in Bush v. Gore -- because kicking the ACA to the curb will be one more step down the road towards completely reversing the social safety nets of Roosevelt's New Deal.

Fat Tony, in his typically repugnant and didactic manner, will probably write the Majority Opinion and take yet another opportunity to lecture America about Things, since he considers the rest of humanity to wallow far below his towering intellect.

It will be Tony's, and Clarence's, opportunity to bellow Va Fan Kulo to America. It will be the chance for Roberts, Alito, and Kennedy to join them in saying The Law Is Made By Those With The Power To Do So, and as Tubby Tony scrapes his fingers beneath his chin at us, crows We Win, Liberals; So Fuck You. I'll be happy to be proven wrong, but don't think it's in the cards.

Unfortunately for everyone else, that kind of ideologically-driven decision will end up tarnishing even further the legitimacy of the structure of law in the minds of ordinary American citizens -- after Bush v. Gore, and then Citizens United, people understood that Money Talks, and that principle is now openly enshrined into law. With every decision that favors the few with money and influence, the spirit of the Constitution and the people who crafted and debated it -- the same Framers which people like Fat Tony hotly claim to emulate -- is diminished.

We like to believe Justice cannot be purchased. We like to claim that the principle underlying America's 'Big-D' Democracy is the rule of law -- impartial, fair; applying equally to all, regardless of our position in society or on an economic scale. And every decision made by an ideologically skewed, partisan Supreme Court, turning our beliefs in the Law on its head, gives another piece of our birthright away.

But, so what? The Scalia Court doesn't really care what you think. Get back to work and keep your whining mouths shut, and remember to take your caps off when Your Betters speak to you.

MEHR: The New York Times reports this morning:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that officials may strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by the court’s conservative wing, wrote that courts are in no position to second-guess the judgments of correctional officials...

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the four dissenters, said strip-searches were “a serious affront to human dignity and to individual privacy” and should be used only when there was good reason to do so.

Things look bad enough without having to look closer at 'em.
-- Bender

Any questions?


Countdown To Super Special Fun Continues

One dog's opinion, but I still have the feeling Iran will be hit by Israeli airstrikes in the next six to eight weeks. And after that, things will be All Different.

In addition to everything else that's happened so far, the state of Azerbaijan has granted Israel access to several of its airports. They're only of use for launching strikes on Iranian targets.

Further UN-sponsored talks are scheduled with the Iranian government about it's nuclear development on April 23rd. As the UN says, the Iranians have used sessions like this to do nothing but delay, obfuscate, and buy more time.

It's certainly possible that the airport arrangements are long-term, forward-looking -- or, that Israel's obtaining rights to use them is one more indication to the Iranian Mullahs and Revolutionary Guard how serious the Israelis are; as if anyone had to tell them. But perhaps someone does. Azerbaijan is generally upwind of any potential Iranian targets that involve its nuclear industry.

And, part of the contingency planning for any operation is weather. The dark-of-the-moon period over the next eight weeks is April 21 to 23, and May 19 to 21, with north to northwesterly winds. The United States has or will have the majority of our aircraft carriers in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf during these times.

Not that this means anything; there's a tremendous amount of feinting and saber-rattling going on via leaks in national press and military assets moving around the Gulf. Think about the events we can't see, of cabinets and advisors talking with heads of state, of military planners going over operational orders, diplomats and intelligence types having hushed conversations in out-of-the-way places.

They're trying to avert disaster, ensure the security of their nations, or prepare for what some of them see as inevitable. In the end, the most visible parts of all this -- ships and armed men facing off against each other -- is the more important, because this is about brinksmanship. Diplomacy may represent reason, but at base the Iranians and Israelis want their opposites to blink... and that means getting closer and closer to the Fabled Edge; which isn't about reason, but fear and rage and pride.

In any event, if airstrikes occur, we (that is, us; the American Guy and Gal in the Street) won't like what comes afterwards. Some people may be strongly tempted to protest if America gets involved, which we likely would be compelled to. Russia and China also have an interest in anything that happens to Iran, since it will literally take place on their doorsteps -- and while we might be able to deal with the Russians (the Mittster's recent comments aside) frankly, the Chinese don't like us that much anyway.

Well... it will be interesting, as any slow-motion train wreck is; you can't look away. Deeply saddening, it is already.

Any questions?


MITT!!!

The Rethug primaries continue. They're the equivalent to that episode of Futurama ("Mobius Dick"; Season 6), where the Good Ship Planet Express goes into the Bermuda Tetrahedron, braving the Tickle-Me-Elmo's Fire, and on into a wormhole after a giant, off-white, Killer Space Whale.

Inside the black hole, time runs sideways; Fry says "Poop!" forever, and America is treated to an uncountably infinite number of rude-talking robots in a circular Conga line, singing Bender Bender Bender / Bender Bender Bender... (Which finally explains that ham-and-cheese version of the RFK quote at the top of this post.)

Well, watching the GOP Race To The Bottom™ is pretty much like that, but the writing isn't as good. It has a majority of the Republican Party slowing transforming into Mittwissers (sic; sorry, folks; and for you Deutsch-Englisch bilingual types -- I couldn't resist).

Little Ricky has tried valiantly to turn Rethugs everywhere into the Party Of No Sexytime and Prayer For All, and Ron Paul tells reporters to shut up when asked why he's bothering to appear and talk about UN black helicopters and why Vince Foster didn't know enough and so had to die. Or some damn thing or other. (I'd like to hear more about the giant, UN-trained radioactive scorpion in his basement.)

Meanwhile, Randyman is somewhere being tubby, but no one cares. So long as nothing happens (like bombing Iran, for example) to deep-six the so-called recovery -- which will eventually be deep-sixed by the Attack Of The Giant European Austerity -- President Obama will probably be re-elected in time to bail out Goldman-Saks-Squid a third time.

Or, not. Cynicism is running high in this country. It's an open question whether it matters that The Mittster, Obama, or A Large Rock is elected to the Presidency in November. And in that cynicism is a distrust of a central, Federal government, an apathetic resignation to living in a Russian-style 'Republic' dominated by Oligarchs and corporate power.

And, I suppose enough people haven't yet realized that this distrust and apathy is exactly what the Rethugs want the ordinary citizen to feel.

"Yep; we're boned!" And that's 30 for this edition.

Any questions?

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Fünf Schwein Ruft Mich An

If I See One More Picture Of 'Fat Tony' Scalia, I'll Throw Up In A Bucket

We're in amazingly deep water, now; it's getting hotter -- and all the frogs around us keep looking at each other, exchanging glances (Hey, if this gets much hotter, we're cooked). Balloon Juice:

Burn Down The Mission
By DougJ, Head of Infidelity
March 29th, 2012

If SCOTUS voids the ACA, (I agree with John that they’re reasonably like to) there’s going to be a lot of talk about how liberals need to moderate their attacks on the court for the sake of the sanctity of our institutions, how even the liberal Joe Nocera and Kevin Drum agree that all the problems started when Bork was Borked and so on.

Fuck that.

If Republican judges void ACA, liberals need to launch an all-out assault all the credibility of the Roberts courts (I have to think more about this). It can’t always be liberals need to bend over and take it to keep our society from unraveling. It already is unraveling anyway.

And, John Cole notes (paragraphing added for emphasis):

News flash: Right wing hacks tend to act like right wing hacks. We’re talking about a conservative bloc [on the SCOTUS] whose wives openly work for tea party groups, we’re talking about hacks that speak privately to the tea party. We’re talking about people who lie on their disclosure forms for decades to cover up the money their wives are receiving from wingnut welfare organizations.

Every one of these men was a member of the Federalist Society. Every single one of them was groomed for exactly what they are doing right now. This is their time to shine, to do what they have been groomed to do.

When you train soldiers to fight, and drill their mission into them every day, and drill the rightness and correctness of their mission into them every day, and assure them they are fighting for truth, justice, and the American way, only a fool would be surprised that they are eager to go into combat.

And, over at The Great Curmudgeon, a guest poster reminds us that we've been here before:

Precedent

Bush v Gore.

by Jay Ackroyd at 00:53
168 Comments

Any questions?

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