Tiffany, smite this motherfucker. Smite, Smite, Smite. Have nutria invade his underpants...
This is what's wrong with intellectuals as a general class of asses. Just what kids need more of -- regimented time and thought. This dweeb is about as much of a totalitarian as Benny the Rat, only without the Gemutlicheit...
“Last Spring , I got arrested in Greencastle, Ind., for pot,” Mr. Snider said amiably, seated in an East Village bar during a trip to New York. “Most people don’t care if a singer smokes weed. But this one kid did. The sheriff ended up telling me he was the Barney Fife of the town. I was more embarrassed about getting caught than doing it. I’m getting in my 40s. This kind of stuff is getting old. I thought maybe it was behind me a little bit. And I think it is.”He shrugged and sipped at some wine. “Probably.”
Economic considerations favor higher [traffic] volumes and more obstructed levels of service. However, political considerations favor less obstructed levels of service. - Civil Engineering Reference Manual
I happened upon this quote six or so weeks ago while studying for the P.E. I think it sums up the defeatism that is politics in this country. (This also frustrates me most at my job: the Borough should never look bad. The Borough must answer all queries as irrational as they may be. The Borough covers any and all complaints.) American politicians are tasked with selling the lie. See, in the above quote, what they're saying is that if you want to get more cars moving through a finite space you're going to need A and B. That's the hard reality of it. Politicians can only sell A though, and soften or mask or dress up B. A is more people moving. B is more intersections and rotaries and such which allows more people moving together to come together with more people moving together. You can't sell B. B is the "may cause suicidal tendencies" at the end of the Ativan ad or whatever.
People with a utilitarian outlook that want numbers and metrics and such are not going to get very far in this country. Nor should they. Throughout history people have come to this country because they can, with some basic restrictions (thou shalt not murder, etc), practice and worship their crazy religion as they choose. There are of course exceptions to this rule, but hear me out. So it is not unfathomable that a population that has come to expect to live their own little lies would then be satisfied with leaders selling vast webs of lies that tickle their fancy. Not coincidentally, a visit to a Progressive website or blog will only yield an alternative lie. That's the truth. That is what Krauthammer and Brooks are on about: maintaining the status quo, boilerplate American lie. Organization is as organization does. Mobilization is as mobilization does. It might be the worst, most vanilla, plain propaganda you have ever read, but these two bookends are in the National Media because it works: because Joe Blow taking a dump at the office gets a slightly harder half boner while on the pot, not because of the movement that just passed near his prostate, but because he gets to read someone defending him and his values in the Metro or whatever. BOOYAH.
if american jurisprudence really rests on fictions, and not only fictions but fantasies, might there not be a bit of a problem? and it's one thing to to say that the fiction is useful, another thing to show that it is. in fact, though its results might be useful on some occasions, the whole haze of mythological claptrap is devastating. for example, the delusion of impartiality disguises massive prejudices, and one might think that if brooks were black or poor or under arrest, he might think about this sucker a wee bit differently. people whose actual motives or decision-making procedures are opaque to themselves and disguised from the public by clouds of hooha are liable to do terrible things, and the best approach is surely to know as much as possible about how one is actually making decisions, which is the only way actually to try to filter for irrational prejudice.
[F]rom the first historic forms of the State, the State has always formed and will always form alliances with certain individuals and segments of society -- to which the government bureaucrats will provide favors and special dispensations, and to the severe disadvantage of those individuals and groups that are not so favored.
You can unravel the Spectacle but you're only left with pieces of Spectacle, and they can only go back together as Spectacle. There will always be winners, there will always be losers. That's the Defeatist part of it all.
Earlier today Cursed Sadist Axe emphatically passed this piece along to a group of failure hounds and included these highlighted Defeatist passages:
"Another ideological god has failed. The assumptions that ruled policy and politics over three decades suddenly look as outdated as revolutionary socialism.
“'The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Thus quipped Ronald Reagan, hero of US conservatism. The remark seems ancient history now that governments are pouring trillions of dollars, euros and pounds into financial systems.
“ 'Governments bad; deregulated markets good”: how can this faith escape unscathed after Alan Greenspan, pupil of Ayn Rand and predominant central banker of the era, described himself, in congressional testimony last October, as being “in a state of shocked disbelief” over the failure of the “self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity”?
In another, later instance of pre-destiny, Frederick from the GFA51 shared this piece on liberal minded culture jamming gone awry. Witness:
When some liberals attacked conservatives for being hypocritical, future New York Times columnist Ross Douthat brilliantly exposed their own hypocrisy. "Suppose that social conservatives hadn't rallied around the Palin family after news of Bristol Palin's pregnancy broke," he wrote. "If anything remotely like this had happened, all we'd hear is satisfied chirping about how the response to Bristol Palin's pregnancy proves, once and for all, that social conservatives don't give two figs about the rights of the unborn; what they really care about is controlling women's sex lives and reinforcing patriarchal norms, full stop…. They're mad that religious conservatives aren't fitting neatly into the stereotypes that liberals have spent years cultivating." In other words, liberals would have attacked us even if we had responded the way they thought we would based on what we have said in the past, so by responding in a completely opposite way we proved how hypocritical they are. But although Douthat gleefully pointed out liberals' hypocrisy, he seemed reluctant to point out why conservatives were not being hypocritical even though the answer was staring him in the face.
Why is Bristol Palin different? She is different because she is a conservative.
Now as resident founder and CEO of The Defeatists, I have to say that ideologies will always fail people. That's not a big surprise. People are going to be flailing away at these things long after we reach Mars or whatever. They will shape society and shape the people in them and people will continue doing human things. Failure is not so bad. Now there is a lot of unchosen baggage that we each carry around with us that cannot be helped. There is also the human reflex to strive and suffer that scars us and bends us and makes us into the persons we are. I would not idealize the world remade into a Safe Space. A Safe Space with a boxing ring, gloves and so on? Sure, why not. You have not lived until you have been concussed. I forget if I have. Maybe that's a sign I have been.
What is interesting is how people fail their ideologies. What is interesting to us now - the royal us - is how we will crumble. We are not wanting for material these days, are we? This is harvest time, Defeatist boys and girls. Here is an ideal I can get behind:
"Mark Twain said, "Those of you who are inclined to worry have the widest
selection in history." Why complain? Try to do something about it - you know,
it's [been] goin' on nine months now, since I decided that I was gonna declare
that I am a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Oh yes, I'm
going to run.Shopped around for a party. Well, I looked at the Republicans. Decided
talking to a conservative is like talking to your refridgerator. You know, the
light goes on, the light goes off, it's not gonna do anything that isn't built
into it. But I'm gonna talk to a conservative any more than I talk to my damn
refridgerator. Working for the Democratic party, now, that's kind of like
rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.So I created my own party: it's called the Sloth and Indolence Party. I'm
running as an anarchist candidate in the best sense of that word. I've studied
the presidency carefully. I have seen that our best presidents were the do-
nothing presidents: Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding. When you have a
president who does things we are all in serious trouble. If he does anything
at all: if he gets up at night to go to the bathroom, somehow, mystically,
trouble will ensue.I guarantee that if I am elected, I will take over the White House, hang out,
shoot pool, scratch my ass, and not do a damn thing.Which is to say: if you want something done, don't come to me do it for you,
you gotta get together and figure out how to do it yourselves. Is that a deal?"Utah Phillips - http://www.jeddy.org/moi/utah.txt
Crusader AXE is struggling with "Administrative publications," that is, the policies and procedures and forms used by Ginormous Defense Contractor to manage the complexity of the business. They post the stuff on the Intranet, which is wonderful, keeping the competitors from stealing our crown jewels like the fire evacuation plan for the headquarters. However, over half the conglomeration is not able to interact directly with the intranet. We get to use keyfobs through the internet and try to make it work that way. I have yet to succeed with somethings...
So, our solution has been to take the command media and just download it into a shared file. Insane, of course. The table of contents is pages and pages and pages. The PDF name of the file is a number. So, we need to find an alternative solution. This is really not my thing; but, I decided to take the lead and schedule a working meeting on it. (AXE's 2nd theorem: Nobody is inherently in charge, but if the system requires that somebody be in charge, take charge or trust your fate to idiots.)(AXE's Corrollary to the 2nd Theorem -- You' re an idiot.) However, in order to schedule a meeting, I need to get Outlook to work. Outlook is on strike on my computer. I could have one of the nice people who work for me do it except that would make me bad person if someone at Shakesville found out about it, since most of the people who work for me are women. Controlling, type A women. So, because a middle manager can't schedule a meeting, we can't figure out a workaround that makes sense for a problem that is caused by complexity.
Complexity sucks. It really sucks. However, as you get bigger, you get more complex...and more things happen, some of which are bad things. And then, a flock of geese get sucked into your engines and you're pulling off a perfect water landing with no power...
My only argument with this is the "could." "Will" is more correct...
there's been a whole lotta blawg! going around this neck of the Innernet woods lately, and I think Pastis has been reading IOZ.
I think this strip accurately captures the essence of every single argument, confrontation, or issue that has ever been raised on the Innernet. in the final panel, Rat provides us with the only true Solution, while Pig pushes past and defeats even that idea.
what a day for Defeatism.
There's some bad mojo for lower to mid level office holders and appointees when their party becomes dominant in this country. To a certain extent, the apprehension of a Wisconsin Mayor for baby-raping is actually kind of reassuring. Life will continue, and we will be able to remain enraged at people for being the polar opposites of what they purport to be.
Now, I heard a great bit last night on either Countdown or Maddow about Mr. Incredibly important Treasury Secretary, where one of the talking heads basically indicated that this guy was too important to not be approved, nay, carried into office as the Next Hank Paulson. We're in a different place than we were in 1993, said Finestone-Alder-whomever. This is the only guy who understands TARP, in the whole world. Yeah...
I remain unconvinced. Yesterday I was moderately supportive. Now, after that crap, fuck him. With a Wisconsin mayor. Toss his ass in jail. If he can understand this fraud, then he can rationalize it. I'm fed up with rationalizing crap, particularly through the false alternative of " we do this or the entire western world ends and we all end up as cannibals. " Yeah. Toss his ass in jail.
Short answer, no. There are a lot of other possibilities - Pakistan has potential, there's always Myanmar, most of the -stahns are always there, Bosnia and Kosovo are always contenders; China could go utterly south, Bangladesh is certainly a hedge bet on the craps table of countries with minimal luck...hell, Africa south of the Sahara is totally upgefucked, and the only reason we don't know how bad Latin America south of Mexico is remains that we really can't tell the difference between a Mexican and a Chilean...Now, Zimbabwe is definitely an up and coming total clusterfuck, but for totally irrelevance and misery, Somalia is this year's winner. Hell, didn't I read something about the main reason the pirates are so eager is because it helps them get chicks...
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