Would You Rather I Think You Are Wrong, a Fool, or a Liar?

A couple of years ago, I was traveling in a car with some friends (remember when we did that?) listening to the driver tell us about his alien encounters, paranormal abilities, and his paranoid delusions that Big Pharma possessed cures for practically every major disease from the cold to cancer but were suppressing them for fun and profit. Normally, I zone out when this kind of noise is going on, but that was tough to do on this trip. I tried though, trust me, I tried.

Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked, “Which is less insulting, being called wrong, a liar, or a fool?” I seriously wanted to know because I do not know the answer, even for myself, at least I don’t know the absolute answer. Liars are often out for some kind of gain, but this wasn’t that kind of situation, and fools can be educated if they want to be. Just being wrong is the human condition. So it seems to me that "wrong" or “fool” would be the better option, but admitting to either is tough on the ego. Especially when you are convinced you are extremely intelligent. I am not cursed with that delusion, at least. So, for me it’s "wrong" or “fool” over “liar.” I might have said “bullshitter” rather than “liar,” but the difference is academic. You could substitute “uninformed,” “misinformed,” “delusional,” or “easily misled” for “fool,” too. Likewise, there are lots of substitutes for "wrong" that apply, but they are no less irritating. Again, the difference is semantic rather than quantitative.

Not surprisingly, my friend did not like the question and I’m still hung out to dry as to which is the worst of the options. No, I’m not kidding. It’s a serious question, or as serious as I’m capable of being. Remember, I mostly think humans are the dumbest least sustainable animal in existence.

One of the funny aspects of this conversation/confrontation is that I’d talked this friend into reading Sagan’s A Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark a while back and he loved it. He read statements like “I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.” And my friend agreed with Sagan and saw no contradiction between Sagan’s ridicule of alien invasions, magical hidden-away “cures” and technologies suppressed by an all-powerful government or corporations and his own claims to unrepeatable and unvalidated paranormal abilities and anything Sagan said to the contrary.

Another friend is absolutely unconvinced that motorcycle helmets contribute anything useful to motorcyclist safety. This is in spite of the most recent “experiment” in Florida in 2000, when the state exempted riders from required helmets. “The interrupted time series analysis (1/1994 to 12/2001) estimates a 48.6% increase in motorcycle occupant deaths the year after the law change.” Other states contributed to increasing motorcycle deaths in the same general period when Arkansas, Texas, Kentucky, and Louisiana weakened their helmet laws. He made some pretty extravagant claims about his lifetime riding mileage, which (probably irrationally) I had to doubt because of his anti-helmet stance. Riding a motorcycle for long hours without a helmet is just not something I’ve ever witnessed in my 50-some years on a motorcycle. The helmet-less biker crowd are usually pushing their extreme limits doing a 100 miles between long bar stops, which usually results in staggering homeward, a crash, an arrest, and/or calling a friend with a pickup or trailer for a ride home. I get that, too, since you really take a sonic and physical beating on a motorcycle without some kind of head protection and a windshield isn’t even close to useful for that purpose.

Like many from my generation, math isn’t this man’s strong point. We hear words like “million” and “billion” and “trillion” tossed around by the media so much that they become familiar-seeming concepts. However, familiarity breeds not just contempt but incomprehension when it comes to numbers; specially at the really large and really small extremes. Likewise, another acquaintance is constantly barraging me with left-wing economic silliness. He admitted that his consumer math skills are so poor that he couldn’t balance a checkbook or a family budget if his life depended on it. (His wife is stuck with that responsibility.) However, with that disability firmly in hand he is convinced he is an expert on the US Fed and the World Bank’s function and the economic solutions to the world’s many complicated dysfunctions. He is really tired of my laughing while he jabbers away about pure nonsense. Again, and likewise, a Libertarian acquaintance has equally nonsensical “solutions” to problems that are so far beyond his economic, mathematical, social-system grasp that they are pure comedy and he also stopped talking to me in person because I can’t stop laughing when he kicks the mini-Koch propaganda in gear and I blurt out, “You know, your heroes were first in line for government handouts when their real estate ‘investments’ and other gambling debts blew up in 2008, right?” People in glass houses, even glass mansions, you know?

So, my question stands and I’d love to hear a response (in the comments, not in a direct email) from anyone who stumbles on this blog. Is it better to be thought simply wrong, a fool, or a liar? What does it mean about someone who picks one over the other? And why do you think one is better than the other?

#171 Conserapedia, A Place for All of Your Dumbest Ideas

There is a new place for morons to look for "information." It's called Conservapedia. You'll find brilliant bits of nutty misinformation such as this description of "kangaroo": "Also according to creation science theories, after the Flood, kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia. There is debate whether this migration happened over land^[2] -- as Australia was still for a time connected to Europe by a land bridge similar to the one that connected Asia to America^[3] -- or if they rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters.^[2] Another theory is that God simply generated kangaroos into existence there."

Is that freakin' hilarious, or what? You'd think this was a National Lampoon joke, but conservatives aren't bright enough to have a sense of humor. It's not a joke, it's too stupid to be really funny. In case the site was in some way consistently wacky, I did a search on "monkey," "zebra," hippopotamus," and "panda," but found that conservatives have no opinion or information on those animals. Their entry on "gorilla" is predictably hilarious, though.

There's more. Here's the mission statement for the site, "Conservapedia is an online resource and meeting place where we give full credit to Christianity and America. Conservapedia is student-friendly. You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise, clean answers free of 'political correctness'." The incorrect use of punctuation is directly lifted from the geniuses at Conservapedia.

"Concise" it is. Some entries are so brainless that you'd think they were written by simpleminded children. This is the place where geniuses like Rush (da Doper) Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Willy O'Reilly go for reference material. Of course, no one is more politically correct than conservatives. With their thin skins, tiny minds, terror of everything complicated or real, and superstitions,

There is an upside to all of this, though. I was exposed to Conservapedia through a particularly stupid NPR interview with the doofus who funded the site. As you might expect, he's an idiot. However, he chanted some statistics that give me hope. The reason, he claims, for starting Conservapedia is that he claims Wikipedia's editors are 80% "liberal." Based on the nutty description of the kangaroo, we can all guess what his parameters for liberal might be: scientific, intelligent, sane, educated, and so on? 

The Conservapedia wacko said that the nation needed a conservative information resource because studies show that "two out of three Americans are conservative." Tending toward pessimism, I would have figured that nine out of ten of everyone is an idiot, so two out of three is substantially less depressing than my estimate. Public education must be doing some good if the country is 24% smarter than I expected.

Be honest and you'll know that conservatives don't want information, they want their pet fantasies repeated as often as possible. Conservatives don't have "theories" (as in "creation science" theories or God theories), they have dogma. They look at the world, see swirling shapes and colors, and interpret all that confusion in simple,  fantastic stories, in the same way their ancestors explained the earth, the stars, and space in terms of magic, irate and jealous gods, and sentient inanimate objects. Humans have been religious as long as we have had the ability to think about death, the past, the present, and the future. There must have been a million religions on earth by now and they've all been based on fear and ignorance. Until the next comet strikes the earth, wiping humanity from existence, I expect that we'll continue inventing gods and such. As long as there is a market for stupid ideas, there will be people to sell them. And Conservapedia will be there to document whatever insane meanderings that issue forth from those stupid ideas.

As a parting note, I thought I'd leave you with a few word definitions. Words are important. Their meanings are often lost in propaganda and political gibberish, but the actual meaning of words are more permanent.

Webster's Definitions:

Superstitious: 1 a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition 2: a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary

Religion: 1 a: the state of a religious <a nun in her 20th year of religion> b (1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance

Insanity: 1: a deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia) 2: such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility

Science: 1: the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding 2 a: a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study <the science of theology> b: something (as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge <have it down to a science> 3 a: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method b: such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena : natural science 4: a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws <cooking is both a science and an art>

All study comes with homework. A word that gets drug through the mud an awful lot is "theory." On your own, I'd like for each person who reads this column to look up the word "theory" this week.

March  2007

#149 A Foolish Immigration Policy (2006)

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day

The recent stupid chain of events in Europe and the Mideast have illustrated how incompatible Islam (and, probably, religion in general) is with democracy.  Islam has a long, primitive, painful history as a repeat theocratic offender.  The best government all of the Islamic nations has managed is a collection of corrupt kingdoms and a much larger collection of dictatorships.  The worst they have managed is the trampling of the free speech rights of most of the world's democracies.  The recent rampage of ignorant fools raging across Europe over the "abuses" of the free press is all the evidence I need to know that it's time to send Islam's children a message. Like Christian conservatives, Islamic conservatives are afraid of their own shadows and freedom is a concept that they view as subversive and heretical. 

I can not, for the life of me, imagine a good reason for why we have allowed ourselves to become so degraded that we care about the opinions and superstitions of a pack of retrograde desert hillbillies who haven't managed a moment of technological success or a single cultural achievement since long before the time this country separated itself from England.  I lie, I know why we do it.  We do it for the oil.

I wrote, way back in 2001, that the best way to get revenge against the people and cultures that attacked this nation on September 11, 2001 was to wipe out their primitive economies.  I still say that's the best tactic.  After the complete failure of Bush's primitive fight-fire-with-fire tactics, I'm more convinced that I was right five years ago.  It's not like they have anything other than oil to sell.  They don't have intellectual properties.  They don't have an education system of their own among the entire lot of Islamic nations.  To learn even the most basic modern skills, they must send their children and the children of their slaves to the universities of the nations that they hate.  We are among those nations.

Do we really have so little respect for our culture, our history, our science, our democracy, our nation that we would sell it for a few drops of oil? 

Apparently.

However, I'd like to propose something different.  I'd like to suggest that we all, every single western culture, stop wasting cash on trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's asshole and turn our attention to divesting ourselves of Arab oil.  Brain-dead Bush has blown almost a half-trillion dollars trying to convince Iraqis to consider becoming a civilization.  The current "plan" is to burn up at least another one-and-one-half trillion dollars before we give up and go home with a religious dictatorship left behind.  It ain't gonna happen.  After centuries of illiteracy and corruption and superstition, Iraq and the rest of North Africa is not going to flip directions and become enlightened.  And, honestly, I don't know why we should worry about it. 

Sooner or later, we have to consider our own self-interest.  Closing the boarders to students from terrorist states and religions is a start.  Shutting off commerce with those countries is at the heart of closing down the terrorist states.  Once we have completely wreaked their economy, we can expect considerably more cooperation in hunting down bin Laden and any other fruitcake we want to talk to.  But my advice is that we take as little of their help as possible.  They want ten times the value of everything they offer, so we need to wean ourselves from them to get their price down to what it's worth. 

As a collection of cultures, they have demonstrated that they are intolerant of every freedom held dear to a free society.  Their violent reaction to the horrible threat of . . . cartoons proves that they can't be trusted with sharp objects of intellectual stimulation.  Let the "guys sitting around" continue to sit around until they starve to death.  The reason there seems to be no shortage of idiots willing to strap on a bomb and walk into a crowd is that these fools have no other options; nothing to lose.  We need to lock them down and lock them out so that the discover they have quite a lot to lose.  Once the oil money dries up, we ban their ruling freaks from civil society, eliminating their ability to be playboys and perverse freaks outside of the constraints of their own countries.  Make all the whackos live together, with no avenue for escape from each other, and they will implode.  The few intellectuals their cultures generate will be driven to do something to fix their countries, because they'll go nuts having to live with the fools who make up the majority of those places.  Until they are valuable contributors to the world community, the world's majority economies will be encouraged to boycott these places and their citizens, and refugees.  They will be forced to suffer the consequences of their fantasies and corruption and they will become another example of "the destructive meme." 

In the meantime, we've focused all of our energy on fighting terrorism by ripping the funding from the terrorists.  We've also freed ourselves from the tyranny of oil and oil money.  We might save the world from the side effects of world-wide oil use, if it isn't too late for that.  We could punish three perfectly evil groups at the same time; Islamic terrorists and American oil executives and the politicians they own. Seems like all the motivation a country could need.

We will be creating a peaceful world for our children to enjoy, instead of a never-ending war that will only get worse.  We will free ourselves from this Orwellian future that the conservatives seem to want to create.  They want it so badly that they are willing to sacrifice everything good about humanity, about our way of life, about life itself. 

We can't continue to fight ignorance with ignorance.  We have to use the tools of science.  Tools that democracy invents faster than any system in history. 

February 2006

#140 Why Do Conservatives Hate the United States? (2005)

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Thomas W. Day

Ok, I admit it.  This rant was inspired by conservative propaganda that begins or ends with statements like "why [Michael Moore/Liberals/The Liberal Media] hate(s) America."  But at the core, I believe that conservatives, especially the radical (is there any other kind?) religious right, hate the United States and the representative democracy that it represents.  I don't mean "dislike," "mistrust," or have a reasonable disagreement among patriots and well-meaning, honest men and women.  I mean hate. 
First, our current herd of neo-conservatives are stupid.  The "America" that they imagine liberals hate doesn't exist.  It never existed.  "America" is a pair of continents; not a country, system of government, or a collection of ideals.  We have North America, of which the United States of America is a part and we have South America where US corporations have a lot of financial interests but no honestly held rights or morally earned privileges.  The bulk of the folks who claim to love "America" don't even know where the United States ends and where America becomes other countries, cultures, and economic systems. 

Even more to the point, I doubt there is anyone living on this continent who hates the soil and the continental shelf upon which they live, liberal or conservative.  "America" is a pair of continents (with an often-contested sub-continent, Central America, connecting the two larger land bodies); not a culture, social or economic system, or a flag-symbolized nationalistic god-fearing corporate prison camp.

Hell, most of the nationalist right-wing "Americans" don't know much about the United States geographically, historically, politically, or in any other critical specific.  They chant about "America, the Christian Nation" and babble their foolish notions of capitalism, taxation, and defending the homeland in exactly the same words (other than the actual language) as did their idealistic predecessors, in Nazi Germany.  When it comes time for them to demonstrate their understanding of the foundations of the nation, the principles of economics or democracy, or their legitimate rights and responsibilities, they are often and usually found to be missing in action.

In modern history, these radicals, misnamed "conservatives" have been on the morally wrong side of every national crisis since before 1776.  Conservatives opposed the Revolutionary War and the concept of representational democracy.  The first conservatives to pollute the New World's political thinking fantasized that Kings and Queens and inherited wealth and power was vested by the gods and mere mortals were incapable of divining the gods' will in matters as complicated as creating a civil and just society.  Dumb-asses, all of them.  Our first conservatives were known, by the country's patriot forefathers, as "Tories."  If you are interested in finding yourself on the morally right side of practically any disagreement in the history of humanity, determine which side the current breed of conservatives has selected and join the opposition.

Following the footsteps of the country's first conservative dolts were slave owners.  They were the second American wave of god-fearing conservative big thinkers and they fantasized that their ability to terrorize other people, initially including other white folks, somehow illuminated their moral superiority.  This pack of inbred hillbillies were willing and nearly able to disassemble the Union in favor of an economically degenerate system based on slaves and serfs with a collective government that mostly resembled Jolly old England from the previous unenlightened centuries commonly known as "The Dark Ages."  Fortunately for us, them, and the rest of the world, the liberals of the 1860's decided that living next to a pack of moral decadents was unacceptable and we had a Civil War that put to the test upon which side the gods actually stood.  Again, conservatives turned out to be on the down-slope of cultural and human evolution and they had their asses kicked by bleeding heart liberals and the power and creativity that is commonly found only in liberal cultures. 

The gods weren't on their side, either.  If gods exist, it's hard to imagine their preference being for evil, selfish, vicious, and simple-minded humans.  I could more easily imagine a god only interested in cats than one who would pick Karl Rove or G.W. Bush as an eternal neighbor. 

However, if conservatives can't do anything else they can breed like vermin and they kept reproducing their progeny, misinformation, and ignorance all over the country, especially in the south and the hillbilly segments of the Midwest and west also known as "the Bible Belt."  Even after having their asses kicked and their ill-founded faith in their gods' will proven to be false, they continued to imagine that white people had some inherent superiority over other cultures.  Shortly after the end of the Civil War, economic and social discrimination against everyone but rich white people became the southern standard. 

The sludge at the bottom of the intellectual pool, dumb poor whites, somehow managed to become convinced that they had some interests in common with dumb rich white people.  Dumb whites dedicated themselves to protecting rich folks from non-white poor folks.  This misdirection resulted in the Civil Rights Movement and we wasted nearly one hundred years in making our national intention semi-coherent.  In the meantime, we have had Civil Rights Acts passed and ignored in 1886, 1957, 1964, and 1991.  All the while, conservatives still battled to preserve discrimination, segregation, and outright hostility toward people of varying races, religions, and political beliefs.  Just another example of how much conservatives hate the democratic intentions of the United States of America. 

World wide conservatives did their best to allow their fellow true believers in Nazi Germany to complete the extermination of Jews and other "undesirables" deemed to be imperfect non-Aryans in the 1930s.  Eventually, liberals became irritated enough at this vicious and inhuman activity and, once again, conservatives had their asses kicked.  A fair number of conservatives are so disturbed by this ass-whipping that they deny the existence of the entire period of history, commonly known as World War II.  Many of these inbred morons wear swastikas on their clothing and body art and claim to be "Americans" while hating the government of the United States of America and doing everything within their limited mental capacity to undermine the process of democracy.  More examples of conservatives hating the USA.

Conservatives drug the nation into Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and Iraq, twice.  Not in the interest of spreading democracy, but in the interests of the military-industrial complex that desperately needs wars to sell it's products.  Of course, the bonus was international corporate access to Iraq's oil resources.  Hardly a moral issue. 

Every issue with an attached real moral value is, and has been, opposed by American conservatives.  From women's rights to ecological conservation to racial equality to public education to the social safety net, conservatives have consistently come down on the side of international corporations and the interests of the ruling class.  Conservatives, without fail, have fought against progress, justice, freedom, peace, and common sense since the founding of this country.  Most likely, conservatives have argued against all of those things since the first group of cave people decided to band together. 
The great migration of southern whites to the Republican Party, which became blatant during the Carter Administration and resulted in white backlash and Reagan's election and the current radical Republican domination of the federal government, was all about racism and the long, ignorant history of poor white trash whose irritation is easily misdirected by international corporations and idle rich white trash.  You can't fool "all of the people all of the time," but you can fool these dumb fucks without putting up much of a show. 

The "values" represented by the Red States are limited to gun ownership, anti-feminism (thinly disguised as the "life" issue), the establishment of a national religion, and white power.  Not one of these issues could be described as central to the founding of the United States of America.

Conservatives protect the status quo, by definition.  Conservatives do not invent, improve, or initiate anything for the betterment of the country or the world.  They inhibit, repress, and regress at every junction of human, and especially the United States', history.  The reason they hate the United States of America is that this union of citizens, under the banner and protection of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, is liberal by its foundation and nature.  Liberals are progressive, conservatives are regressive.  The United States of America was a progressive, innovative, liberal idea. 

England was conservative in 1776 and still is, today.  The Soviet Union and Germany's National Socialist (Nazi) Party were conservative.  Iran's Assembly of Experts is conservative and so was Iraq's Arab Baath Socialist Party and Hussein's  Revolutionary Command Council.  These government systems were "loved" by the local conservatives and hated by the same countries' liberals. 

In this nation, when the government is obeying the law and serving the interests of the majority of its citizens, conservatives hate their government and want it changed by any method possible.  When the government is trampling personal rights and representing international corporate interests, conservatives are happy as hogs overdosing on PCP.  American conservatives have never loved the concept of the United States of America.  From the cocaine fields of Columbia to the Aryan Nation's compounds in the Pacific Northwest, conservative Americans have found things to hate about the United States of America.  The ideals they hate are what all intelligent citizens should all love about this country.  Freedom is a liberal goal.  Justice is a liberal ideal.  Equality and prosperity is the result of a liberal culture.  Those are the things conservatives hate all over the world and those are the things liberals must fight to protect. 

August 2005

You Are Here

"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.

Progress as Consumption

"Why's it got to be built? It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses . . ." And with that Douglas Adams describes all of human intelligence on the subject of "progress" and consumption. Growth and consumption and progress are all linked together in the corporate social model. You have to build, population has to grow, and all of this bulding and growing is somehow linked to the progress of humanity as a species. Nevermind the mountains of trash, the acres of abandoned buildings, or the mass of the population who can't keep up with progress and end up on welfare or homeless or living on the margins of society. That's the price of progress.

In a country where less than 1% of the population owns more of the nation's wealth than the bottom 95%, progress seems to be defined by pushing that statistic further apart. Anytime a politician questions the human and social cost of marginalizing the overwhelming majority of the population that politician will be accused of "social engineering."

Of course, social engineering is what every tax system, economic system, and government does. It is social engineering when you tax one set of activities and don't tax another. There is even more social engineering happening when you reward a set of activities with government handouts (think "oil"). In short, social engineering in a socialist society (like ours) increases taxes to restrict the activities it wants to discourage and reduces or eliminates taxes on the activites it wants to encourage. The dramatic difference between a theoretical capitalist society and a theoretical communist society (two imaginary social systems that have never been and will never be practically applied) is that Adam Smith's magical "invisible hand" or Marx's equally unlikely wisdom of the "worker state" corrects the steering of the social system. A short experience with big business will destroy any faith an intelligent person has in the brilliance of the invisible hand and any experinence in or with government employees will do equal damage to the hope that big government can do anything efficiently or intelligently.

So, we keep building bypasses, bigger and more expensive freeways, trinkets and useless gadgets, and (worst of all) adding to human population with the speed and intelligence of termites. The closest thing we have to a philosophy of population is that the population needs to increase because there need to be more young people in order to support the growing population of old people. Of course, this argument means that as the population increases and old people become more demanding and expensive even more babies have to be made to provide support. Obviously, this is an insanely selfish social system, but it's also stupid. When it comes to human reproduction, the smart multiply cautiously and the foolish reproduce like rats in a sinking ship. 

Only radical conservatives are dumb enough to believe that resources are endless. You have to be completely math-deficient to imagine that a finite planet can provide infinite resources. Fortunately for our economic system, there is no shortage of radical conseratives or math-phobes. (They are usually the same characters.) We are well-stocked with people who believe that they can possess "family values" and greedily use up all of the world's energy resources in a single generation. This is the basis of an idiocracy. 

Factual Statements

The dumbest state in the Union appointed one of its many idiot residents to jabber on the floor of the US Senate until his monkey-talk becomes common "knowledge." Yes, Arizona's junior three-term moron senator, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (whose parents were incapable of spelling either of his names correctly), stood slope-shouldered on the floor of the senate and claimed that abortion was "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does." Of course, Kyl is as clueless about Planned Parenthood as he is about every other subject the Senate might address. CNN's Don Lemon described Kyl's response when he was asked why he made up these "Republican statistics" (politispeak for "lies"),"We did call his office trying to ask what he was talking about there. And I just want to give it you verbatim here. It [Kyl's response] says, 'his remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions.'"

As Stephen Cobert rightly exclaimed, "this is so liberating!" We can say anything we want, just like Faux News, and explain it all away by claiming what we said was not intended to be a factual statement. Or, in more plain words, we were lying.


So, with the playing field wide open here, I'd like to enter the following information into the public consciousness:

First, Jon Kyl is an alien. Not the kind of alien that Arizona wingnuts are terrified of, but the kind of alien that Arnie fought in Predator (the kind that killed Governor Ventura just after he said "I ain't got time to bleed."). The kind of alien that killed off a ship full of astronauts and practically molested Sigourney Weaver in Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and I'm not sure which of his relatives were which in Aliens vs. Predator. I suspect that last documentary was produced by Kyl's alien Republican bosses to confuse the issue. Kyl's species was even more accurately depicted in John Carpenter's 1988 masterpiece documentary, They Live, which exposed the infiltration of of aliens into the ranks of the Republican Party, trendy yuppie grocery stores, and corporate middle and upper management. 


The 170-year-old Kyl announced in February that he would be giving up his seat in the senate because he had been recalled to duty in the Klingon Air Force. Insiders suspect this is an early sign that the Klingons will be attacking Earth in the next century. Kyl served four terms in the House before invading the Senate in 1995, under the leathery wings of John McCain. Terrifyingly, Time Magazine labeled Kyl one of the 100 "most influential" people in 2010, a clear sign of the alien apocalypse.

 As is obvious by his picture (at left), Kyl was the inspiration for television's favorite zombie,Gomer Pyle. From his dopey, crooked face to his "gollee, Sargent" and the phrase he always uses when he remembers that Arizona voters were dumb enough to send someone of his ilk to Washington, "surprise, surprise," anyone could see that the braindead alien executives who cobble together network television comedies were inspired to create a carbon copy of Arizona's boy idiot senator.


Kyl's easy political successes in Arizona politics has led some to feel that the state may no longer boast of any triple-digit IQ residents. The more obvious conclusion might be that all of the carbon-based, humanoid residents have been terminated by Kyl's alien relatives.

Of course, it goes without saying that some of the above comments were not intended to be a factual statements but rather to illustrate that Senator Jon Kyl is the dumbest, most dishonest, enemy of rational thought produced by the state of Arizona; probably the world's hub of dumb ideas and irrational people.

The Daily Show - Countdown to the Next Countdown - Jon Kyl's Planned Parenthood Statistics
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Sad Times for the GOP

The Gay Old Party is having a tough time with getting its act together. The crazies in the House of Representatives pledged to focus on the economy ("It's still the economy, stupid.") and immediately turned their toilet-tube focus on abortion, union busting, and jabbering about socialism (a form of government that their hero, Reagan, badmouthed and loved at the same time). The crazies at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) wrangled publicly about who was going to sponsor the event; crazy religious freaks or self-destructive pseudo-conservative gays.

 The CPAC event is wrapping up showcasing the micro-intellects the Republicans have to offer for the 2012 presidential campaign: the corporate criminals' best friend and the poster boy for everything-not-family-values, Newt Gingrich; Abramoff's buddy and medical tort reform hypocrite, Rick Santorum; the trust-fund baby with the dead squirrel comb-over; and the Minnesota state bird masquerading as a US Representative. Palin was probably there, too, but I can only digest so much crazy before I lose all faith in my country.

 Eventually, you'd think these loony memes would self-destruct and the species would begin to rebuild. Wouldn't you?

I am often accused of being a pessimist. As soon as my constant downgrading of expectations begins to prove wrong, I promise to accept that label. As long as expecting the worst from my fellow human is a reliable predictor of future behavior, I'm sticking with what works.It's a sound investment strategy, too.

NPR drew some sort of idiotic conclusion from interviewing some "young Republicans" at CPAC. That bunch (NPR and the spoiled brats at CPAC) confirmed my expectations from that crowd. Supposedly, these were "college students," but when asked about their field of study the response was repeatedly "business," "communications," "theology," and other fluffy subjects barely suitable for an adult's afternoon recreational reading. Not a science, engineering, or pre-med student among them. This isn't higher education, its a continuation of the K-12 babysitting service. I know that reflects the "education" distribution in the general college public, but that is nothing to brag about. The dumbing down of the American public began with the watering down of "higher education."

The only upside to all this nuttiness is the entertainment value. Suddenly, Republicrats are as disorganized as Demolicans. The only thing that has allowed me to pretend that Demolicans slightly represent my positions is the lack of lock-step marching from members of that party. While both parties are corrupt, inept, and corporate sponsored, the Demolicans occasionally show signs of independence. Republicrats are wholly-owned subsidiaries of international corporations and, therefore, useless as the tits on my chest. Is it possible that actual citizens of the United States have crept into the GOP?

Crazy Is As Crazy Does

The Department of Homeland Security linked Jared Lee Loughner to a collection of right wing hate groups that the DHS called "anti-government, anti-immigration, anti-ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government], anti-Semitic.” Sounds like Fox, doesn't it?

The wingnut bin has been trying, predictably and desperately, to separate itself from responsibility. That's the beauty of being conservative; you can be wrong on every issue and still claim you're Right. When you're Right you're always right.

Of course the other side of that position is it's hard to tell crazy from stupid. Rush and the Bimbo Führer are both crazy and stupid, but they aren't foolish. In our idiocracy you can be a moron and still be powerful, corrupt, and completely unhindered by any form of civility or common sense or any interest in the common good. They are anti-democratic, pro-corporate, and sponsored by elite money that has no loyality to any country, let alone the United States.

Limbaugh, Palin, O'Reilly, Beck, and the Faux News cast of fools and lunatics are running from their own words in terror of taking any responsibility for their constant hate agitation and fear mongering. In a just world, Faux News would be held accountable for all sorts of national disasters, not just the most recent tragedy. As the sheriff of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik said, “When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government—the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country, is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

If we were a country ruled by laws, these people would be immediately held responsible for the damage they do. We are not. Obama and the Justice Department are pretending that a "lone gunman" (when have we heard that one before?) is responsible for this assassination attempt and the associated murders. Screaming "fire!" in a dark auditorium is no longer a criminal offense, even when lives are lost. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' father replied, when asked if his daughter had enemies, "The whole tea party." "Enemies," not opponents. Palin and her gang of ignorant "patriots" considered Giffords an enemy because she disagreed with their nutty, perverted mutation of what a society should be.

When taking a political position is sufficient to become a hated enemy, you know crazy has taken over and rational discussion is beyond hope. When a national figure can generate a hit list, publish it nationally, and talk about "reloading" in reference to defeating an opponent, rational dialog is not on the table.When our government stands by and allows this kind of rhetoric to contaminate the tiny minds of fools like Jared Loughner and pretends that those who incited murder are above the law, we are that much closer to becoming the kind of country the Bimbo Führer dreams of.

Look at this map littered with gun-sight bulls-eyes. Tell me you think those are anything but a call to shoot the opponents Palin has listed here. Give it your best shot, but you are only deluding yourself. Of course, if you think Palin is anything but a dangerous fool, you're pretty good at delusion.

Interpreting News

The more media we have, the more sources that appear on the web, the more cable "news" channels we have, the more dense the new digital on-air world becomes, the harder it is to figure out what's going on. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. Ever since crazy Ronny Wrinkles abolished the "Fairness Doctrine," the media has steadily gone downhill. Of course, that was the intent behind eliminating the one thing that held the American media accountable so Reagan could have claimed "mission accomplished" if he had been able to put together two such obscure words into a single sentence.

With the advent of all of these news "sources," American citizens are all the way back to those days when being more than 10 miles from the event is the equivalent to being across the ocean from useful information about the event. If you didn't see it, you can't know what happened. Even pictures lie, words are valueless. This is a serious problem for democracy. "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." - Thomas Jefferson

Clearly, today we are not to be trusted with our "own government." Our government, our world, belongs to corporations and their representatives in governments all over the world and they don't trust us, themselves, each other, or humanity at large. All my life, I've realized that two things float to the top of the toilet bowl: cream and turds. In the corporate world, cream isn't often produced. Which means that the people who are running the world are the lazy, inbred, retarded children of the people who have been running the world for decades. George W. Bush, for example. (No, by the way, I don't miss him.)

Until a solution like the one the Fairness Doctrine represented is found, the integrity of our democracy, the quality of discourse, the value of our actions, the usefulness of "information" will be minimal. If that seems unimportant to you, you are not alone. Reagan's FCC henchman, Mark Fowler, argued that abolition of the Fairness Doctrine was a First Amendment "matter of principle." The principle was the "right" of corporations and the elite to have their position strongly made over all objections. You have to give Republicans credit for consistency.

Obviously, the authors of the First Amendment would have gone to war to defeat that sort of argument, but Republicans have freely interpreted the Constitution for their own purposes since Teddy Roosevelt fooled the party into being responsible to all citizens for 8 short, incredibly productive and progressive years. Of course, TR had to invent his own party (Bull Moose) to try and hold together the people who were honestly "conservative" and ethical after Taft returned Republicanism to it's rightful, corrupt, inbred roots. The Taft administration was intellectually lazy, administratively incompetent and corrupt, and personally gluttonous (sound familiar?) and set the nation and the world up for the first World War and 1929. The Republican Party has been repeating that formula ever since. The intention and end result is redistributing wealth from the many to the few: socialism and wealth for the elites, capitalism and disaster for the rest of us.

But this kind of discussion is blasted out of the MSM with the irrational "class warfare" argument and as far as Faux News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Murdock and Sun Myung Moon's media conglomerates, and the rest of corporate wingnut America's "news sources" are concerned that is the end of the discussion. Of course, the American Revolution was the ultimate class warfare and our Constitution was supposed to be the platform from which that battle could continue throughout the life of the Union of States. The classes will battle, regardless of the illusions and fantasies of propaganda, and the only real issue is "are both sides equally armed?" Today, the rich and powerful have all the weapons.

Reagan and his cynical and corrupt henchmen and heirs fired a fatal shot to the heart of democracy in 1985 and there has been no sign of democratic life from the corporate media since. Despite the fairyland wingnut whining about "left wing media," the media is overwhelmingly far right. Apparently, any sign of responsibility, integrity, fairness, or curiosity displayed by reporters is taken as evidence of political apocalypse by the wingnuttery. While it is true that the majority of intellectuals are liberal, it is equally true that most corporations are owned and mismanaged by the inbred children of inbred children of robber barons and ancient royalty. Those true "elites" hold the purse strings and money is what makes our world spiral down the toilet.

Without the protection and balance provided by the Fairness Doctrine, fairness is the furthest thing from the mind of corporate America. Without honest, balanced news, corporations like Murdock's and Moon's are free to distort and pervert "information" until it is as credible and useful as the babbling of priests or miracle cure peddlers. Once that task is complete, democracy has a half-life measured in minutes. The cynically misnamed "Patriot Act" was an example of that sudden death as were G.W.'s grotesque overuse of the State Secrets Privilege and Cheney's secret "National Energy Policy Task Force" meetings. From where I stand, it looks like the ride is all downhill from here.

Our Crazy Teabag Lady Is at It Again

Nutty Michele is scaring kids all over the country, again. With that withering death's head grin, the look that makes serial killers nervous all over the world, Bachman planted her crazy face on Faux News and in a leadership position at the head of a protest march of angry call-center employees and mid-level insurance executives and a few oddly anti-public-option Medicare recipients.

Exhibiting her usual ability to see the world in a distorted perspective, she touted her crowd of 10,000 to be at least 40,000. I wonder if her quadruple vision is politically motivated, since she regularly managed to under-count Bush-era anti war protestors and still can’t manage the numbers for pro-public-option voters?

From the words of our local Loony Lady, in front of the US House of Representatives, “The American people overwhelmingly reject the government takeover of our health care. Last Friday a couple from Hawaii decided the time was so short they needed to get on a plane, come to Washington, to beg their representative to vote no — from Hawaii. What sacrifices freedom-loving Americans are making to get their government’s attention. And how big our government has gotten.

“They brought me this beautiful, precious lei and I’m reminded that the one who created this lei also created our freedom. Are we so insensible to the high cost our forbearers paid to purchase our freedom? Tonight, would we foolishly bargain those freedoms away? The American people, our forbearers, generations yet unborn are crying out to us tonight, for us to preserve their freedoms. Vote no on the government takeover of health care?”

Aaaahhh, what? Tom Paine, Ben Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson made leis? Or did her mythical Hawaiians happen to be employed by one of those real Hawaiian patriots, HMAA (Hawaii Management Alliance Association), HMSA (Hawaii Medical Service Association), Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Summerlin Life & Health Insurance Company, United Healthcare Insurance Company, or UHA (University Health Alliance)? Pretty likely since Crazy Lady is the 21st biggest recipient (of 435 House members) of swag from the insurance industry. The health care providers aren’t nearly as impressed with her, since she is 230th on their list of graft-takers.

One of Nutty Lady’s biggest promotions is the plot to stuff Intelligent Design (sorry, Brad) into the science programs of public schools. If she really wants to do that cause some good, she should put some serious distance between Intelligent Design discussions and herself. She is one-woman evidence that that Designer wasn’t particularly intelligent. Any reasonably competent engineer would have tossed her into the factory seconds pile and stuck an alternative label on her so nobody would confuse her with the quality brand.

(Note to myself: I'm waffling between Faux News and a new one I discovered while Googling the Minnesota Nutty Lady, "ClusterFox.")