Those American thighs

Anne to the Lizay and reader P have already covered Bobo’s “when will Obama make Republicans stop hitting themselves“, but….

I often wonder show much conservative punditarama is stuff the pundit truly believes and how much is propaganda. Obama as evil genius makes for poor propaganda. So I think Bobo honestly thinks that Obama is employing a cynical Machiavellian divide-and-conquer strategy, possibly because some straight-arrow Republican Senator told him so.

Well, good, it is better to be feared than respected. If these morons think that Obama is a gay Kenyan wizard whose magic cannot be resisted, they’ll surrender that much quicker.

Saturday At the Movies: Our National Role Model

I have yet to see Lincoln (the Spousal Unit & I saw five movies in theatres during 2012, and 43% to 100% of them were cartoons*), but we’re finally seeing reviews that go beyond the anodyne. Roy Edroso at alicublog takes a professional interest:

… If you thought Tony Kushner’s involvement might make Lincoln an elevating experience, well, it certainly elevates the tone. Kushner’s a serious writer, but so was William Faulkner and I don’t see the Library of America publishing a handsome edition of the screenplays he worked on….

The plot centers on the fight to pass the 13th Amendment, in the course of which Lincoln is revealed to be a consummate wheeler-dealer — but that has always been part of the Lincoln legend; as Tad Gallagher observes about Ford’s Lincoln, he’s “not above a bit of dissimulation, cheating or force to get things done.” Maybe this is part of why we love Lincoln — he shows that even when your ambition is a little engine that knows no rest, you may still do great things that can justify it. That Lincoln’s ambition was turned toward ending slavery makes it easier to believe; you probably couldn’t get the same kind of drama out of a battle to pass the Revenue Act.

Munich was about idealists who wade in blood but somehow keep their souls clean, and Lincoln is about a man to whom the muck of politics does not adhere even as he clambers through the filthy roominghouse attic of his political fixers. Abe is practically magical; at one point he suddenly appears in Edwin Stanton’s war room, unobserved till he breaks his silence. Several times (or maybe it just seemed like several times) his cabinet is near rebellion, and Abe defuses the situation with some cornpone humor (which, frankly, must be magic as the jokes aren’t that good). Much of William Seward’s dialogue could be boiled down to “Ooooh, you’ll be the death of me yet, Abraham Lincoln!” Lincoln confounds friend and enemy alike, and finally gets the big job done…

Thomas Frank at Harpers (subscription required, but at $17 for a year’s worth of good reading, well worth it) is more explicit, and more angry, at Kushner’s/Spielberg’s political gloss:

…[T]he movie Spielberg actually made goes well beyond justifying compromise: it justifies corruption. Lincoln and his men, as they are depicted here, do not merely buttonhole and persuade and deceive. They buy votes outright with promises of patronage jobs and (it is strongly suggested) cash bribes. The noblest law imaginable is put over by the most degraded means. As the real-life Thaddeus Stevens, leader of the Radical Republicans in the House of Representatives, is credited with having said after the amendment was finally approved: “The greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.” More »

If Guns are Outlawed, Only Morons Who Are Outlaws Will Accidentally Shoot Each Other

Today is “Gun Appreciation Day.”  An event created by right winger with penis issues, and so called because “Insensitivity To First Graders Being Slaughtered Wholesale Day” doesn’t roll as glibly off the tongue.   It also gives the game away, but I digress.

At gun shows across the country, the hicks and goobers line up to look at and buy all sorts of guns, and more guns and still more guns instead of getting the roof fixed, buying a used truck less than eight years old, or saving up for Billy Bob’s and Jolene’s tuition at the junior college that might have allowed them to not work at Walmart as adults.

So today, on this day where we are supposed to be seeing examples of law-abiding, safety conscious gun owners engaging in the patriotic past time of purchasing mass killing implements just because they can, what do you suppose has been happening?   Wait for it… More »

No More Creepy Scans at Airport Security. Huzzah.

Remember a couple of years ago when the TSA decided to use Rapiscan Systems backscatter scan technology at the airport, and we all laughed and then were promptly horrified because “rapiscan” and “backscatter” didn’t sound like anything we wanted to be involved in?

Welp, turns out that the TSA is dropping the use of those machines because the company Rapiscan (seriously, guys — fix this) couldn’t provide the software needed to make sure that creepy TSA agents aren’t checking out your jiggly bits as you pass through airport security.

Score one for modesty.

[read full post at ABLC]

Open Thread

I went shopping and saw this (click to embiggen). Yum. Looks like the rest of the front pagers are AWOL so here’s an open thread.

Secrets and Lies

There’s obviously been far too much reliance on “it’s a secret” to hide government screw-ups post-9/11, but you know what should be a big fucking secret? The security arrangements for the Obama girls and their schoolmates. Goddam the NRA for bringing that up, and I don’t think Glenn Kessler did the world any favors by reporting that Sidwell Friends doesn’t have armed guards. Those Sidwell kids did not pick the epidural-deadened vagina they were dragged out of by the best OB/GYN in the finest birthing center. Nor did they choose to go to a school that’s a big fat target for crazy fucks with guns. Those Bushmaster man-card carriers don’t give a shit how many goddam stupid Pinnochios Kessler gives the NRA, but their years of playing Call of Duty and masturbating to old war movies makes them think “soft target” when they hear “Quaker school with unarmed guards”. (And why Sidwell couldn’t have just stuck to “no comment” on security is also a good question.)

I’m obviously over-reacting, and the NRA’s ad has been covered here already, but the NRA wrote themselves out of the script when they chose to start talking about the President’s kids. It was a despicable move, and I don’t see how any self-respecting human, gun owner or not, would want to be associated with an organization that would stoop so low.

Update: As Hawes pointed out, their doulas wouldn’t recommend an epidural, so I’m taking out that part.

McPaper Dumps McPollster

After twenty years together, USA Today kicked Gallup to the curb yesterday, probably because Gallup blew the Presidential race and people are starting to expect pollsters to do better. Chalk up another win for the gay wizard–the last couple of paragraphs of this piece tracing Gallup’s errors over the last twenty years are a fairly harsh boot up Gallup’s ass.

I wonder who Gannett will hire to replace Gallup. I’m not a big reader of USA Today, but as far as I can tell the main bias of that paper is towards superficiality and brevity. Even so, a lot of conservatives read it, and if they pick PPP, which is both cheap (because they robo poll) and good, expect gratifying howls of outrage.

(Thanks to reader Dan for sending this in.)

Der Kinderfuckenlieder

The country changes but the song remains the same:

A report about child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, based on victim accounts and released by the church this week, showed that priests carefully planned their assaults and frequently abused the same children repeatedly for years.
[...]
The church’s credibility regarding its commitment to an impartial investigation suffered a fresh blow last week when the bishops canceled an independent study into the abuse scandal amid allegations by the independent investigator, Christian Pfeiffer, that the church was censoring information.

Also, too, rape babies are a present from God:

Germans were further outraged by reports this week that two Roman Catholic hospitals in Cologne had refused to carry out a gynecological examination on a 25-year-old suspected rape victim. An emergency doctor who had helped the woman told the newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that the hospitals cited ethical objections to advise women on unwanted pregnancies and on steps that can be taken to prevent them, like the morning-after pill. The Archdiocese of Cologne denied that the church refuses to treat rape victims. The hospitals blamed a “misunderstanding” and said the matter was under investigation.

World Book Night (the Interactive Version)

A PSA, for book nerds. Paul Constant, at Seattle’s Stranger, says “You Should Sign Up to Give Away Free Books“:

Last April, I took part in World Book Night, a program sponsored by publishers and local booksellers, in which participants each get boxes of 20 books to give away to non-readers. On the advice of Slog readers, I delivered copies of A Prayer for Owen Meany to the VA hospital on Beacon Hill, Books to Prisoners, and Urban Rest Stop.

On April 23rd, people all over the world will give away hundreds of thousands of free books to worthy causes. If you want to take part in World Book Night this year, you can sign up to be a giver right here. The deadline for signups is January 25th. It’s absolutely free to be a giver. I highly recommend it.

World Book Night home page here, and a list of the 30 books chosen for 2013 here. With choices ranging from Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to James Patterson’s Middle School: the Worst Years of My Life, there’s something on the list to annoy practically anybody who needs vexing…

Late Night Open Thread: Indiana’s New Guv, As Seen By A Native

In honor of the Blogmaster’s current travels, local politics from Doghouse Riley:

INDIANA inaugurated Mike “Choirboy” Pence its fiftieth governor earlier this week– apparently we had to–and while I can pretty much swear I’ll have nothing nice to say about the man from here on out, I will grant that he gave every impression of a man who was wearing a tuxedo for the second time in his life.

I’ve lived here most of my life–in my defense, I am congenitally indolent–and Mike Pence is the sort of man I’ve been expecting to have to survive the governorship of for most of the last forty years. He’s a religious huckster with no other discernible qualities. He was essentially ushered into the Governor’s mansion by his predecessor–who gave then Lt. Governor Becky “GED” Skillman the same chronic and asymptomatic disease Mark Souder’s wife came down with right after Souder was caught dipping into the office help and needed to spend more time with the family–so that Pence wouldn’t either a) come back to Indiana and challenge Dick Lugar in last year’s primary or b) come back to Indiana and wait out Lugar’s last term.

Pence had been the #3 Republican in the House, in case that tells you anything you didn’t already know about Republicans in the House, but quit his post after the 2010 elections because the party wasn’t mixing enough Religious with its Mania anymore, and said that would be his final term. [...] The talk at the time was that Pence was planning his own Presidential run, perhaps as a stalking horse for Herman Cain, at a time when Daniels was still milking his own non-candidacy. Then, suddenly, the whole thing arrived like Athena. Or the 2000 candidacy of George W. Bush. Pence suddenly wanted to be governor, Skillman suddenly wanted to be barely ambulatory, and Daniels wanted to tote up some more “campaign” contributions.

Pence’s campaign for governor basically consisted of him assuring concerned Hoosiers that he was a practicing heterosexual. As a result he managed to win by 70,000 votes in a state Mitt “Remember Me?” Romney won by a quarter million….

Friday Evening Open Thread: BoBo Brooks Stripped Bare

Trespassing on DougJ’s turf, for your amusement: Jon Chait in NYMag explains that “David Brooks Is Now Totally Pathological“:

Moderate Republicanism is a tendency that increasingly defies ideological analysis and instead requires psychological analysis. The psychological mechanism is fairly obvious. The radicalization of the GOP has placed unbearable strain on those few moderates torn between their positions and their attachment to party. Many moderate conservatives have simply broken off from the party, at least in its current incarnation, and are hoping or working to build a sane alternative. Those who remain must escape into progressively more baroque fantasies.

The prevalent expression of this psychological pain is the belief that President Obama is largely or entirely responsible for Republican extremism. It’s a bizarre but understandable way to reconcile conflicting emotions — somewhat akin to blaming your husband’s infidelity entirely on his mistress. In this case, moderate Republicans believe that Obama’s tactic of taking sensible positions that moderate Republicans agree with is cruel and unfair, because it exposes the extremism that dominates the party, not to mention the powerlessness of the moderates within it. Michael Gerson recently expressed this bizarre view, and the pathology is also on vivid display in David Brooks’s column today.

Brooks begins by noting that the Grand Bargain on the deficit, which he has spent the last two years relentlessly touting, is not actually possible. Why is it impossible? Because, he writes, “A political class that botched the fiscal cliff so badly are not going to be capable of a gigantic deal on complex issues.”

Oh, the political class? That’s funny. In 2011, Obama offered an astonishingly generous budget deal to House Republicans, and Brooks argued at the time that if the GOP turned the deal down, it would prove their “fanaticism.” Naturally, they turned it down…

What Obama should be doing in response, Brooks argues, is push for policies that provoke no opposition even from the craziest of the Republicans: “We could do some education reform, expand visa laws to admit more high-skill workers, encourage responsible drilling for natural gas, maybe establish an infrastructure bank.” Brooks argues that these issues would be uncontroversial enough to “erode partisan orthodoxies and get back into the habit of passing laws together.” Then, maybe we could pass some laws under a future president.

Note that solving actual problems is besides the point here. Brooks is almost explicit about this. He begins with the need for initiatives that he thinks will lead to happiness and comity between the parties in Washington, and then comes up with policies that might fit the bill. Not surprisingly, viewed from the standpoint of an agenda designed to make life better for Americans in some way, shape or form, Brooks’s proposed agenda is strange….

Seriously, y’all need to go read the whole thing, becasue the fisking is entertaining as well as epic.
***********

Apart from pointing & mocking, or perhaps implementing one’s inaugural party plans, what’s on the agenda for the weekend?

Oh, BTW

Everything I ever said about Lance Armstrong I would like to retract. I watched that interview last night, and the only thing I saw was a complete and total sociopath. Not one bit of remorse. I kept waiting for him to admit that he used to eat body parts with Jeffrey Dahmer. He said the words, but he just didn’t give a fuck. Now I know why the investigators never stopped when it came to him. He was infuriating and crazy.

In this uncertain world with everything changing so rapidly, it is refreshing that I can be counted on to be wrong about everything. Always.

BTW- the glasses in my hotel room are so small I am drinking vodka tonics out of the coffee pot. Indiana fucking blows.

GOP Discusses Minority Outreach at a Hotel Where a Plantation Used to Be

What do you do when your party got trounced by the other side because women and minorities magically showed up to vote against you, and you just can’t figure out how to get them to stop doing that?

If you’re the GOP, you hold a panel on minority outreach in the “Burwell Plantation” conference room at a hotel in Virginia, where Lee Burwell’s actual plantation used to be.

Genius.

[read full post at ABLC]

The Debt Trap

The Very Serious People are once again shocked, shocked, to discover that being poor is an exhausting job:

…. The usual explanations for reckless borrowing focus on people’s character, or social norms that promote free spending and instant gratification. But recent research has shown that scarcity by itself is enough to cause this kind of financial self-sabotage.

“When we put people in situations of scarcity in experiments, they get into poverty traps,” said Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton. “They borrow at high interest rates that hurt them, in ways they knew to avoid when there was less scarcity.”

The psychological burden of debt not only saps intellectual resources, it also reinforces the reckless behavior, and quickly, Dr. Shafir and other experts said. Millions of Americans have been keeping the lights on through hard times with borrowed money, running a kind of shell game to keep bill collectors away. The average debt for households earning $20,000 a year or less more than doubled to $26,000 between 2001 and 2010, according to the Urban Institute. The averages for households in slightly higher brackets grew by 50 to 90 percent in the same period.

People dig deeper precisely because they long to escape….

In a paper published in November, a trio of researchers led by Anuj K. Shah of the University of Chicago’s school of business showed how pronounced this effect can be.

In one experiment, participants competed in rounds of the game “Family Feud,” a trivia contest in which each question allows for multiple guesses. One team was “poor,” allotted only 15 seconds per round; another was “rich,” having budgets of nearly a minute per round. Both groups could borrow time against future rounds, but the poor borrowed far more, progressively shrinking their future paychecks while the rich mostly avoided debt.

The research team, which included Sendhil Mullainathan and Dr. Shafir of Princeton, demonstrated that same effect in a series of related experiments. Scarcity by itself — independent of personality or any other factors — fuels a drive to borrow recklessly…

An Update on History’s Greatest Monster

Republicans are right- Jimmy Carter is just an awful person:

A rare tropical disease called Guinea worm is closer to being eradicated, according to former President Jimmy Carter and other experts.

There are now only 542 known cases of Guinea worm left worldwide, as of 2012, representing a 48% decrease from 2011, officials said Thursday at a news conference.

“We cannot rest until we get and contain the very last case,” said Dr. Donald R. Hopkins, affiliated with the Carter Center in Atlanta, which has been instrumental in the effort to wipe out Guinea worm.

The World Health Organization this week said in a report that Guinea worm, also called dracunculiasis, has a global eradication target for the year 2015.

So far, only one disease has reached the status of worldwide eradication since 1980: smallpox.

They hate Carter, and loved Bush. That really says everything, doesn’t it?