7/18/2012

"I Was Right! Damn."

The country is hotter than it has been in recorded history. Temperatures are high and rising, rainfall is dribbling to record lows in much of the nation, crops are failing, and Al Gore is hidden in media-obscurity somewhere saying, "I was right! Suck on it, you wingnut biaches."

I guess there is some justification to be had, knowing that the wingnut mainstream media got it wrong, as usual, but since wingnuts are still in charge of information everywhere, only the literate know about it. The majority of the Marching Morons are just as delusional, incoherent, and fucked up as they have always been. Nothing changes but the names on the mastheads.

In a country where "God is punishing them" is considered a rational argument, God seems to be punishing the Red States aggressively. If he/she is out there, it must be frustrating to see how the religious zombies mistake their own punishment for something done to others that happens to spill over on to the "righteous." The high price of poor design; Intelligent Designer, my ass. You forgot the brain, fool. Next time, create a bill of materials before you start playing in the mud. If God had been Japanese, he'd have had better quality control. Since he is, obviously, European he missed the entire manufacturing revolution and is more of a marketing guy than a manufacturing guy. That explains my crappy knees and hips and the entire Repuglican Party and the weird Romney genetics.

Humans have missed the boat so many times, you'd think we'd be better swimmers. The 2000 presidential election is going to be viewed, for a few years, as one of the most catastrophic events in human history. We allowed five senile assholes to overturn an election and stick us, and the rest of the planet, with a pair of characters who couldn't outsmart an inflatable Bozo the Clown doll and we wasted eight precious, unrecoverable years packing the pockets of the most corrupt people in human history while one hell of a lot more than Rome began to catch fire.

My advice, if you haven't reproduced yet, don't do it. If you have, start apologizing now. Unfortunately, being right means that we're all in for a nasty future.

7/11/2012

Who Are the Job Creators?

Wingnuts want us to think the idle rich, corporate executives, military-industrial companies and the rest of the elite corporate welfare crowd are the "job creators." I don't think so. I came up with a game to test who is really economically important in the country and world. It's called "Who Can We Live Without."

First, let's play this game with the right wing crowd. If some blessed biological catastrophe were to happen to the caviar-eating crowd, everyone Romney and Bush have ever known for instance, what effect would that have on the nation's economy? All of the little rich kids who life on Daddy, Granpa, and Great-Great-Great-Granpa's money come down with a case of the mother-of-all diarrhea. The clowns to inhabit the top floors of the nation's corporate headquarters spend their last hours in the executive bathroom, emptying their money makers. The entire investment banking circus vanishes in a bubble of oily excrement. Most of the entertainment industry does what Hollywood usually does, makes shit, but this time no careers rebound from the disaster and we're left with independent artists for out diversions. Everyone who has eaten caviar (or some other rich asshole staple) in the last month is gone in a few weeks. How does that effect the nation's gross national product?

It's not like it's hard to find another CEO, so the loss of the executive class would result in a momentary burst of business productivity, until the usual assholes filtered to the top of the corporate toilet bowl and everything businesslike returned to "normal." Nobody but the people who serve the idle rich would know the rich douchebags were missing and those servants would probably find something useful to do fairly soon. The South's slaves ended up on the Detroit production lines after a few years of assimilation. George and Ann's butlers, maids, and gardeners can probably find productive work in time. Bankers just beg cheap (free today) money from the public and sell it back to us with interest. We can live without them. The difference between major stars and everyone else who plays an instrument, pretends to be someone else, or chases a ball in clown costumes is . . . not much. They will be replaced faster than we can forget their last performance.

If the right wing elite isn't mission critical to the country, who is?

How about scientists and mathematicians? If exposure to calculus and statistics caused aneurysms, how would that effect the economy? First, all of the rich people in the previous paragraph would be broke overnight if someone didn't manage their money, do their taxes, create tricky investment portfolios to maximize profits and minimize effort, and invent the products  and services that keep the 1% in control of 95% of the country's income. Without scientists and mathematicians, the idle rich would starve and have to find work asking if we "want fries with that?" The rest of us would be in trouble, too; especially if the US was the only country to have lost its scientists and mathematicians. We would go from being a shriveling first world economy to a third world disaster zone in a few months. Most of our productive industries would have seen their last new product and many wouldn't be able to continue producing their current products. The only competent federal government agency, the General Accounting Office, would become as stupid as the military and the military would be in capable of targeting anyone but Canada and Mexico and we'd have to drive the bombs to those places. Anyone but a wingnut can see scientists and mathematicians are job creators.

If we drop down the social ladder to the fastest vanishing career in the United States, farming, how does that play out if farmers and their support industries get Mad Cow and Corn disease and spend their last hours clawing at their skulls? The US food reserves are already lower than they have been for decades and fuel costs are likely to drive them lower. Doing stupid things like converting farm land to energy production (ethanol) will push this safety margin even closer to disaster. Even without killing off farmers and the ag industry, we might see the effect of these producers going away in the near future. Disregarding reality, if the food producers of the country vanished, so would most of us. With food reserves in the near-non-existent territory, most Americans would starve in a week. Grocery stores would empty on the first day and we'd eat our way through our personal reserves in a few days, those of us who have any. The streets would be on fire and the rioting would make the Civil War look like a block party. Obviously, farmers are job creators and life sustainers.

You can, hopefully, think of a few other occupations that are actually important to the country; medical providers, fire departments (especially forestry fire fighters), teachers, and the list of underpaid, overworked, unappreciated economy-critical jobs goes on. The ruling elite are not among that group. We can get along without them under any conditions.



7/06/2012

How to Know if Your State Is an Armpit

Regardless of the wingnut slant to modern United States, there is a fairly easy and reliable way to tell if your hometown or homestate are reasonable and, at least, contains a few rational people. There is one community organization that has been a place for a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning" Since the founding of this country, this one organization has been an ethical and moral, logical and spiritual community for the best and brightest the country has produced. Political leaders such as John and Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Calhoun, Horace Greely, Adlai Stevenson, William Taft, Paul Douglas, Kent Conrad, Mike Gravel, Roman Hruska, and many others were and are members. More brilliant people than can be listed in a short rant are famous members. The organization I'm talking about is the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations community. They don't even call themselves "churches."

I'm not religious, superstitious, spiritual, or slightly interested in the future of humanity, but I absolutely respect the Unitarian Universalists' congregations and organization. They are consistently on the right side of every major moral and social issue. Unlike evangelistic and traditional religion which claim to speak for (and control) the mind of gods, Unitarians Universalists talk about what they know. They work to improve their communities. They are a reality-based organization and, therefore, are progressive and liberal (as were the country's founders). They support the sick, the weak, the old and anyone who needs their help. The two churches, Unitarians and Universalists, can fairly claim to have been the original American churches. They have been on the leading edge of American independence, abolition, women's rights, civil rights, world peace, science, and world-wide human rights.

For the last 50 years, Unitarians Universalists have been on the decline; along with every other positive attribute of this country. In some states, like South Dakota, the remnants of once-substantial UU communities are relegated to senior center meeting rooms. That should be all the evidence you need to know how backwards those cities and states have become. It's not necessary that everyone in an area be intelligent, progressive, and rational. But when people with those qualities have declined to the point that the community can not support a UU organization, it is a very telling sign. It means the marching morons have driven the area's intellect below self-sustaining levels (also indicated by the usual Red State's inability to live off of the federal tit) and the place is unfit for intelligent life. 


If you want to know where to live or find out if where you live is populated by idiots, use this search: http://www.uua.org/directory/congregations/results.php?state=?? (replacing the last two question marks with your state's two letter ID). Not surprisingly, red states are just as dependent on federal welfare as they are devoid of UU organizations.

"You may notice that UU's tend to take a couple of months off during the summer with some churches completely closing. Other denomination might question this practice, saying 'God never rests.'


"The right answer is that UU's are the only ones that God trusts enough to let out of his sight for a while."

7/05/2012

Amazing Dual Standards

The coolest thing about being Repuglican is that the wingnut media can made a Democrat riding in a tank look wimpy, but a girlyman Republican clinging desperately to a parked jet ski that his wife is piloting gets no crap from anyone (except me).