Where's my Government Subsidy!

I too wish the benevolent hand of government largess would visit me.  Subsidies, bailouts, and friendly handshakes as the taxes of the minions are redirected into my coffers.

Why shouldn't I with my friendly neighborhood politician be able to run a business model solely predicated on how much I can extort out of the public?

Why care about customer relations, effective management, cost-controls, and all those petty matters, when I can have a member of the legislative branch simply re-write the laws so I don't have to pay taxes, don't have to concern myself about environmental or labor laws, and don't have to worry about those things that all those small people have to.

Banks, energy companies, utilities, telecommunications, military industrial, surveillance state, big pharma, private education, corporate agriculture,... etc, all feeding handsomely at the trough.

Stephen Harper and the Abuse of Power

I'm loathe to affiliate myself with Mr. Ignatieff, who has in my opinion been one of the most incompetent leaders of Canada's Liberal party in years. Given how bad things have been since Jean Chretien was pushed out of office, that is not an insignificant matter.

However, I cannot stand Mr. Harper and all the faux-patriots and ignoramuses of the Canadian Conservative Party. Their deceit, incompetence, indifference to the truth and their slavish want for power and authority over the lives of Canadians, is unbearable. Why the opposition parties haven't been taking the boots to the crotches of these so-called conservatives is beyond my understanding. Everyone knows Harper is a thug. So why then engage in a strategy where they play the role of the village idiot who gets his ass kicked every morning by the town bully.

If these right-wing wannabe crypto-fascists want to go medieval on us, the people, then I have no problem with the opposition parties dragging Harper's bloated and corpulent carcass across the television screen.

Quote of the Day: Sanctioning American Torture

Between the political obstacles to criminal prosecutions, and the willingness of the courts to dismiss civil lawsuits whenever the government invokes the "state secrets" privilege, we essentially have a class of people operating in our intelligence services who are not bound by the law in any meaningful sense when it comes to actions they take in the line of duty. They're promoted rather than sanctioned when they act out of line, eliminating even any internal incentive to play by the rules.

- Adam Sewer, The American Prospect

h/t Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish, "Torturers: Failing Upwards"

Fighting for the liberation of mankind: Egypt 2011

Why are Americans such assholes?

The above billboard was in Tucson, Arizona!

Gawkler reports:

A reporter in Arizona tells us, "KNST tells me they took that billboard down at 9:30 a.m. Monday morning." Not quite quick enough to beat the internet.

If images and statements associated with violence didn't have anything to do with what recently happened in Tuscon, why did they take the sign down?  Shouldn't these same people re-double, in fact "re-load" their campaign against the evil liberal empire and stand their ground in their honest attempt to sell hatred and violence to the indolent and ignorant?

When are Americans going to stand up to the extremists in the right and label those who pursue a violent and nihilistic vision of politics as the real "anti-Americans!"

Stating the Obvious about Tuscon and American Politics

In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous.

- George Packer, "Arguing Tuscon"

(h/t Kevin Drum, MotherJones.com, "Quote of the Day: No, Both Sides Aren't Equally Guilty")

Andrew Sullivan on "The Rhetoric of the Right"

I am not horrified by the rhetoric and love of violence on the far right because I have some attachment to the Democrats. I am horrified because it is horrifying, because for years now, this kind of thing has become commonplace at the very top of the conservative political apparatus, and because the invocation of violence in a political context is inherently corrosive of democratic values. When you add to this a party committed to the use of military force as almost a first option, and to torture as a legal method of interrogation, it is irresponsible not to worry about where this is headed.

- Andrew Sullivan, "The Rhetoric of the Right"

I profoundly agree with his analysis. 

Paid partisans in the corporate media, want us to accept the incredulous claim that the right-wing is simply engaging in vociferous arguments to further democracy and freedom of speech.  They make the equally absurd claim that this hatred and climate of intolerance is bi-directional and Mr. Obama, himself, has been a conduit for the current atmosphere.  Their immediate response was to call all criticism of their daily vitriol "stupid." Their second act was to feign victimization and demand that all further insinuations stop, because it's starting to hurt their feelings that people may actually see them for the depraved and immoral sociopaths they are.

For the greater part of two decades, there has been proclivity on the right to dehumanize their opponents and marginalize any criticism of their complicity in debasing the public sphere. I have listed numerous cases (here, here, and here) arising in the past two years, where America's right-wing, in a petulant hissy-fit, demands that the world conform with their unstable worldview. The ultimate result will be that the nation will continue its current decline, will eventually falter in a fatal manner, and will end up as every empire that has existed before it.

Quote of the day: Gabrielle Giffords on language

"They really need to realize that the rhetoric and firing people up, and, you know, even things for example, we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, you gotta realize there's consequences to that action."

- Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D, AZ), March 2010 in response to Sarah Palin's crosshairs graphic.

The "Hammer" sentenced to the Slammer!

Tom Delay, former Republican majority leader, was sentenced yesterday to three years imprisonment for his involvement "for illegally plotting to funnel corporate contributions to Texas legislative candidates." The Washington Post has a complete report on the sentence. Additional discussion of Republican party corruption can be found in these previous posts: here, here, and here.

Delay to the very end complained he was an innocent man, who was simply doing what everyone else was doing. Maybe that's the problem Tommy! All you assholes up on the hill are doing everything, but what you're supposed to be doing; which is being public servants engaged in running the government on behalf of the people and not the corporations.

Consider what Texas prosecutors had to say about Delay and Delay's request that he only be subject to probation and community service.

"Conservative values . . . are supposed to include obeying the laws of the state and taking personal responsibility," [Lead prosecutor Gary] Cobb said. If DeLay received only probation, Cobb warned the judge, he would "wear that probation" like Jesus and call himself a martyr.

A colleague, prosecutor Steve Brand, separately claimed at the hearing that probation would not only send the wrong message to other members of Congress, but would signal to working-class citizens that DeLay was treated lightly just because he wore "a suit and a tie." He said that DeLay's repeated claims in a recent memoir that he did nothing improper were "the equivalent of a 'screw you' to the system."

Delay's unethical behavior and institutional corruption serve as a reminder as to the true nature of the system of governance that exists in Washington.  Although his arrest, prosecution, and sentencing are a small victory against the forces of corruption.  The beast still lives on with venal politicians -on both sides of the aisle- doing the bidding of their paymasters, lobbyists flooding the hallways of congress, a revolving door between government officials and businesses, and an electoral system that is hijacked by both parties.

Krugman on the toxicity of American Politics

Paul Krugman talks about the toxic atmosphere created by the right-wing and their corporate supporters in the media, that has lead America to this current and deadly state of affairs.  In the article he exposes the primary source for the vitriol.

The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary.

And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

He realizes that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh provide people who watch and listen to them exactly what they want; an endless stream of drama, in which they play the victim in their own pretentious and morally debased theater of the absurd.  However, that does not imply that just because the obscene can be monetized, that it should be given public disclosure.

But even if hate is what many want to hear, that doesn’t excuse those who pander to that desire. They should be shunned by all decent people.

This tragedy, isn't about limiting free speech.  This is about dangerously ignorant people, pursuing an ideology that demands the liquidation and elimination of all opponents and persons, who do not faithfully adhere their warped and deranged version of reality.  Krugman summarizes the critical conceit in this whole sordid affair.

It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. Politeness may be a virtue, but there’s a big difference between bad manners and calls, explicit or implicit, for violence; insults aren’t the same as incitement.

If there are those who do not believe the above, then they should ask what countries and explicitly, what Western democracies, allow their media and politicians to engage in such lawless behavior? The answer is that no Western European nations nor countries like Australia, Canada, or New Zealand, would tolerate the type of incitements to public violence as what routinely occurs in America.  On the other hand, third world countries with limited experience in democracy, failed nations engaging in sectarian conflict and ethnic cleansing, and countries like Venezuela and Iran, which are subsumed in managing their population through class and ideological warfare, are the ones in which America's political landscape most resembles.