Dog Bites Man

…water is wet, kittens are adorable, ice cream is delicious, repressed, gay-hating, fundamentalist fire-’n'-brimstone preachers get arrested for spanking the monkey across from a kids park.

Nothing new to see here, folks. Move along. ;o)

Wisconsin Thuggery – Wingnut Style

If you go to “Right Network” or (especially) to any of propagandist Andrew Breitbart’s “Big _” sites, you’ll hear the phrase “union thugs” tossed around a great deal. No links, because I’m not interested in giving those guys any traffic, but if you remember the ‘09 health care reform fight, you’ll be familiar with this phrase. Breitbart seems to like such phrases a lot’.

In fact anyone who’s paid even the slightest attention already knows Breitbart’s entire raison d’être is posting stories that prove his worldview is correct…and if he can’t actually find enough (or any) evidence to warrant such stories, ol’ Andy Looney simply makes it up.

It’s part of the whole “parallel universe” that right-wingers have been constructing for themselves for decades. Remember those rich “welfare queens” of Reagans, supposedly riding around in Cadillacs and lording it over the working folk? Yeah. But in the last several years, since about mid-way through the second George W. Bush term, when it became clear that not just Bush but the majority of the conservative articles of faith about the way the world works were starting to be revealed quite starkly as the abject failures they are, conservatives such as Breitbart have been working overtime in the propaganda sweatshops in an attempt to keep the delusion alive.

That’s why it’s both important and instructive to note stories like this one over at Political Carnival about the whole “union goons/thugs” meme the right has going for itself. Gotta Laff starts out by linking to this LA Times article which quotes Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain as saying that there have been none – that’s right, ZERO – arrests of protesters in Wisconsin in nearly two straight weeks of between 30k-100k people there (depending on the day), many of them sleeping in the capitol building itself.

Yet, according to Andy Looney, “union thuggery” is rampant in Wisconsin’s capitol. One possible reason why Breitbart is seeing thuggery everywhere: he’s been reading his supporters’ Twitter feeds. Gotta Laff catches this gem:

Just as in the teaparty rallies of the summer of ’09, the angry, fearful, hateful rhetoric is coming – again – almost exclusively from the right side of the table. Breitbart clearly wishes it were otherwise. But – again – he and his staff’s “reporting” on the subject reminds anyone watching the actual reality on the ground in Madison vs what’s said at Breitbart’s sites of the old third grade observation: he who smelt it, dealt it. Kudos to Laffy and her crew for the amazing screen grab. ***edited to add*** that Laffy reminds me to credit the screen grab to Twitter user Theresthatbear

Welcome Back To The Bubble Years

A.K.A, the “conspiracy of optimism.” ZeroHedge lays it out for us:

As regular readers know too well, one topic Zero Hedge enjoys ridiculing with the disdain it deserves is groupthink of any form. The phenomenon, which is nothing but transference of laziness by those who manage other people’s money with complete disregard for the consequences of their actions, was among the main reasons for the Great Financial Crash. As nobody was willing to engage in any form of critical thought, and with the market “only” going up, any investment thesis was predicated solely on what the “other guy” was doing. Of course when it all blew up, it was time to blame the evil rating agencies. After all, heaven forbid someone actually think about the logic behind the credit ratings of hundreds of billions in synthetic CDOs, or worse still, take responsibility for their own stupidity and laziness. We are now precisely in the same place we were when the market peaked last time around, with groupthink rampant, with any attempt at opposing thought squashed for fears it will end the party early, with sellside analyst optimism at all time highs, and with the administration actively encouraging rampant lies and perpetuation of the myths that take hold in the market with no factual footing whatsoever. The “conspiracy of optimism”, as dubbed once by James Montier, has once again fully taken hold. As SocGen’s Albert Edwards points out “despite another post mortem on forecasting failure, nothing has or will change”: this is true… until the next crash. Then the finger pointing will begin anew, theatrics about the change in the Status Quo will resume, and once again the Fed will attempt to reflate the latest bubble crash. Only this time there will be no reflation, as the central planning committee’s reign of terror will be over, and the fiat monetary system will have ended. Below we present Edwards’ most recent solemn and very troubling thoughts on the latest break out of the great groputhink malaise, which will only last as long as the great chairsatan has some control over events. Luckily, with the amplitude from a stable market equilibrium shifting ever greater in either direction, and as the Fed’s very existence (remember: the whole point of the central bank is to contain price stability) is repudiated, the time until the reset is now shorter than ever before in history.

More, much more – including the all-important supporting evidence – at the link.

Meanwhile, In Iraq

You remember Iraq, right? That first foothold of “revolution” in the middle east, imposed from without by the United States? They must be a stable bed of prosperity and relative calm amidst all the violence and confusion of revolution going on in that region today, right? I mean, Iraq has had an almost eight-year head start on freedom and self-governance, so that should make them way ahead of the game by now, shouldn’t it?

You decide:

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s “day of rage” on Friday ended with nearly 20 protesters killed in clashes with security forces. Dozens more were wounded, and several local government offices lay smoldering and ransacked.

But in the floodlit calm of Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, where baton-wielding soldiers had chased down protesters just hours earlier, two high-ranking Iraqi officials took their seats at leather chairs and, with cameras rolling, discussed the day’s events with a reporter for state-run television.

Their alfresco round table was among the Iraqi government’s attempts to demonstrate that it was in control after a string of violent demonstrations convulsed the country, challenging the tenuous security situation. The rallies in more than 10 cities were modeled after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and they brought together a chorus of anger at local and national governments. The protests were the largest public outpourings in Iraq since last summer, when thousands raged against the country’s decaying electricity grid and regular blackouts.

The country you paid a trillion dollars to liberate, pacify and bring democracy to: still not pacified or democratic.

Scott Walker BOOED Out Of Madison Restaurant

AWESOME. Submitted without comment.

One Of The Things That’s Wrong With Our Democracy

 

…is that citizens don’t take the time to educate themselves about what is going on in it. Here are the results of a just-released poll by the Kaiser Foundation. It looks like they set out to gauge Americans’ attitudes toward the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (tagged by the GOP as “Obamacare”), as well as towards health care reform in general. And indeed, such results can be found in the survey, neatly tabulated and professionally presented. But the importance of such findings is weakened to the point of near-total irrelevance when one takes into account the very first result Kaiser discovered regarding the public’s thoughts on health care reform:

In the wake of the health reform repeal vote in the U.S. House and the ongoing legal challenges over the individual mandate, nearly half the country either believes that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been repealed and is no longer law (22 percent) or doesn’t know enough to say whether it is still law (26 percent). Roughly half of Americans (52 percent) accurately report that the ACA is still the law of the land.

Got that? Only 52% of your fellow Americans know that “Obamacare” is, in fact, the law of the land. Here, let me (or rather, let Kaiser) communicate that visually for you:

(click to enlarge -note: not actual Kaiser Family Foundation Image. They’re all genteel & mature & stuff) ;o)

Roger Ailes Doesn’t Just Instruct Employees To Lie On Air, But Also To The Feds

From the department of ‘no one could’ve predicted’. Via Political Wire:

When Judith Regan was fired in 2006, she claimed a senior executive at News Corporation “had encouraged her to lie to federal investigators,” the New York Timesreports.

The investigators had been vetting former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik, who had been nominated to become Homeland Security secretary and who had had an affair with Regan. The executive wanted to keep the affair quiet to protect the presidential aspirations of Rudy Giuliani, Kerik’s prime supporter.

According to affidavits — and a tape Regan made of the conversation — the previously unnamed executive was Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes.

Hands up, anyone who’s surprised. Outraged, sure. But actually surprised? At this stage of the game in the FAUX “News” Channel’s transition from a conservative news outlet to an outright political propaganda PAC? Is ANYONE who hasn’t been living in a cave for at least the last half-dozen years truly surprised?

WI Governor Scott Walker Gets Punk’d By Blogger Pretending To Be David Koch

BWAHAHAHA!

Normally, I wouldn’t bother re-posting this, if it were merely a (decidedly delicious) case of “gotcha.” By pretending to be billionaire conservative puppet-master Koch, however, and by succeeding in having a 20-minute conversation with Walker in which Walker was convinced he was actually speaking to Koch, a great deal of interesting information about Walker’s mindset and intentions and other inside information is revealed. Go listen to the audio at TPMMuckraker, since the brilliant blog who dreamed up and successfully executed the plan, Buffalobeast, appears to be down right now. To whet your appetite, here’s just a small sample of the tidbits of Walker-”wisdom” you’ll hear:

Walker: Oh yeah, but who watches that? I went on “Morning Joe” this morning. I like it because I just like being combative with those guys, but, uh. You know they’re off the deep end.

“Koch”: Joe—Joe’s a good guy. He’s one of us.

Walker: Yeah, he’s all right. He was fair to me…[bashes NY Senator Chuck Schumer, who was also on the program.]

“Koch”: Beautiful; beautiful. You gotta love that Mika Brzezinski; she’s a real piece of ass.

Walker: Oh yeah.

Enjoy!

Why I Don’t Respect The Wingnuts

Because they may speak before cameras and microphones about public union benefit plans, and sometimes even I think “hey, you know, that’s at least rational-sounding.”

But this is what they sound like when the cameras aren’t rolling; this is what really animates them.

That way lies bat-boy and 300lb. talking hedgehogs. And I’m sorry, but anyone who talks this way and means it needs to be handled very carefully, like a vial of explosively volatile liquid, but on no account given a place around the table where people entertain serious solutions to real problems. A person like this might spend his life calmly interrogating his cat…or he might go all Jared Loughner on us. There’s no good way to tell for sure, often. But one thing they’re quite unlikely to do is begin seriously discussing issues – even if it may almost sound sometimes as if they had done so.

Republicans – One Set Of Rules For Thee, Another For Me

This is a local story, so most people probably won’t be aware of it – or, perhaps, care. I’m posting it because it fits so neatly into so many other, similar stories of GOP rule-skirting, corner-cutting and outright entitled lawlessness that although this affects mostly just Georgia, it has a national resonance:

Oxendine’s Actions Assailed

In his last full day in office, Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine issued himself several licenses to sell insurance and adjust claims, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned.

Oxendine did not take the mandated classes or licensing tests, using his authority as insurance commissioner to waive requirements for himself that apply to other Georgians seeking to sell insurance.

State lawmakers accused the former commissioner of an “abuse of power,” and his successor said Oxendine used “very, very bad judgment” in granting himself the licenses.

But Oxendine, who left office in January after 16 years, said late last week that he had more than enough experience regulating the industry and helping to write insurance law to qualify for the licenses.

“If 16 years doesn’t give you a little bit of insurance experience, I don’t know what does,” Oxendine told the AJC. “I think that’s [worth] a little bit more than taking a test and taking a class.

My wife happens to work in the very same sort of insurance for which Oxendine granted himself several of those licenses without taking the tests to pass them. I know only as much as your average consumer about insurance, but that’s not the case with my wife, who has taken two of the exact tests Oxendine felt himself entitled to skip. Contrary to Oxendine’s claim that his on-the-job experience was even better than, you know, actually studying the material and stuff, my wife assures me that the tests are extremely specific and that she, as a 20+ year professional, had to study fairly hard to pass them. Her guess is that due to the exacting specificity of knowledge required to pass these tests, few people – if any – could pass them without studying for them. I take her at her word, and that leads ME to guess that Oxendine granted himself the licenses in what amounts to the dead of night on his last day as he was headed out the door because a) he wanted to be able to get in on the gravy train by trading on his name through working in the field he’d been regulating, and b) he estimated that he might not be able to pass the test without studying (and most importantly, of course, c: he didn’t really want to study).

I don’t know John Oxendine. Never met the man (though my wife has, several times, in the course of business, and says he’s the kind of stereotypical southern GOP neanderthal you can probably imagine), so I want to be clear that it’s not my intention to suggest that Oxendine would not ever be capable of ever passing the tests required for the licenses he granted himself by fiat. One can’t be a complete idiot and do the job he did. If Oxendine studied up just like everyone else has to (and considering that he does have experience in the field), he likely could pass the test. That’s not really the point, though. The point is that John Oxendine, Georgia’s outgoing insurance commissioner, wanted those licenses so he could enrich himself in the private sector, but didn’t want to do the work likely required for him to earn the license under his own steam. Then he  saw a loophole or gray area in the law and, like so many other GOP politicians seem to be doing these days, he just exploited it to its fullest extent. Legal? In contrast to the end result in the Delay case…probably, technically. But ethical? Do I really need to answer that question, if the story made the AJC (not to mention several other news outlets)? Even leaving aside the legality question, would you really want someone as an insurance broker or underwriter who might be a recognizable name, but was trading on that name instead of on actual professional credentialing? You might, at first; it might be cool to say “the former insurance commissioner himself did my policy.” But later, when you have a claim and find out that because the former insurance commissioner didn’t know enough about what he was doing, and as a result, you’re not covered for something you thought you were – to the tune of perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more? I’m guessing that novelty would wear off quicker than the lead paint on cheap Chinese toys.

My favorite part of the article, though? The part when Oxendine “also said he decided against taking the tests because he worried his presence would be a distraction to other test takers.” I know. These Republican officeholders. So selfless. Always thinking of the other guy. Never wanting to inconvenience anyone.

Except perhaps the folks in his own administrative offices:

At the time Oxendine applied for the licenses, it was taking the agency nine to 10 business days to turn around such applications, according to Hudgens’ office. So, on average, Oxendine’s application wouldn’t have resulted in licenses being issued until more than a week after he left office.

“The Ox” (my new nickname for him!) says it’s OK, though, because he “said he doesn’t plan to sell insurance, even though he registered a company called Oxendine Insurance Services with the secretary of state’s office five days after he gave himself the licenses.”

I dunno how he’ll do as an insurance agent/broker…but I sure wouldn’t buy a used car from the dude.