"And we’re going to hurt some people"

Movie quotes that apparently motivate GOP huggy times:

"House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the party's vote counter, began his talk by showing a clip from the movie, "The Town", trying to forge a sense of unity among the independent-minded caucus.

One character asks his friend: "I need your help. I can't tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later."

"Whose car are we gonna take," the character says.

After showing the clip, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), one of the most outspoken critics of leadership among the 87 freshmen, stood up to speak, according to GOP aides."I'm ready to drive the car," West replied, surprising many Republicans by giving his full-throated support for the plan."

One of the things that always struck me about how the GOP presents their policies is the frequency in which they rely on the idea that the ends always outweigh the means (the most glaring example of this, in my opinion, is the propaganda leading up to the Iraq War, in which the 9/11 heartstrings that were tugged and the misinformation regarding the threat that Saddam Hussein posed was all really in the name of regime change rather then making the US "safer"). Now, for the most part, this is intentional: The Iraq War was hard enough to sell to the public as it was, and the idea that we needed to go bomb a country that had nothing to do with our current state of affairs probably wouldn't fly except among the most tribal of the GOP's party. If your ends and your means are both useless and damaging, you probably aren't going to get a ton of takes. So "trust me" becomes the only option.

But even if you assume it's a genuine sentiment, that sometimes you just have to shut up, not ask questions, and just go along with the scheme because in the end it will pay off, it still doesn't really follow when you look at the GOP's own dogma. Essentially the GOP is asking their members to pipe down and go along with it because the GOP establishment knows what's best for them, and assumes everyone else is too stupid to understand the complicated means that take us to a desirable end, so just trust that your betters have your best interest in mind and will take care of you.

Which, as astute observers of political rhetoric know, may be fine if it's Republicans, but could you even imagine the screeching that would take place if this sort of "Trust us, we are doing what is best for you" rhetoric was manifesting on the left? All our favorite talking points about liberal elitists would be rampaging across the internet and various opinion columns of Very Serious newspapers.* We've heard that type of accusation before, in fact, it's a major staple in the rhetoric that paints the GOP as the defenders of the little guy, the people, against Washington busy-bodies (and conveniently masks that they are really the party of the aristocracy). So I can't help but be a bit amused by a party that constantly accuses Democrats of being composed of elitists that yearn for a nanny state to control the masses and thumb their noses at those stupid American folks because they are just too simple-minded to understand what's at stake here, then turns around and actually supports just such an effort, and probably for dishonest means and ends to boot. Once again, the GOP shows itself to be a master at psychological projection tactics**.

And all this is just an observation assuming the movie quote from the WaPo is correct. It gets worse, because the WaPo actually misprinted the quote (and if this was done intentionally, we are actually starting to get all inception-like up in this shit here, aren't we?). Here is how Ben Afflick's line actually reads:

I need your help. I can't tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later. And we're going to hurt some people.

There really isn't much to add to that. No wonder the Republicans are all fired up about it. We are ruled by grifters and sociopaths.

(via MNPublius)

*And should I get started on the Hollywood aspect of this? Funny how liberals and Hollywood are always sittin' in a tree, and warpin' the minds of the folks, yet it seems to only be the GOP that seriously uses movies as political arguments (they did this with the whole "We must torture, because it worked for Jack Bauer" talking point as well). I could seriously do this all day.

**I really need to start a series on this. You can take pretty much any talking point Republicans use to slam Democrats and discover that it's actually something they are already doing themselves, or really want to start doing. It's so predictable at this point that it would almost be comical, if it weren't so damn effective.

Stabbing the baby before throwing it out with the bathwater seems to be the current strategy

---

Gilda: Would it interest you to know how much I hate you, Johnny?
Johnny Farrell: Very much.
Gilda: I hate you so much that I would destroy myself to take you down with me.

---

My emotions the past several days have been volleying between blinding rage and cautious optimism what with the shutdown here in Minnesota and the debt ceiling talks in Washington. The rage stems from what I already knew - we are dealing with a Grand Old Party of grifters and sociopaths, who have managed to wrap themselves so tightly in their own ideology that they are suffocating themselves. They really have very few choices now aside from sinking the country or losing their precious little jobs (and obviously, they chose their own jobs, because they know damn well how badly they've been fucking the unemployed and wisely want no part of that).

It never should have gotten to this point. The tongue-bath the media has been giving the Tea Party the past few years has been an utter and complete joke on the country, and I'm sure Tim Russert's great grandson will tell us as much in about 70 years while assuring us that all the Very Serious people in Real America agree with cyborg-McCain's plan to blow up the moon to defeat the terrorist alien babies.

At the same time, I'm a bit optimistic. David Brooks of all people came down hard on the Republicans this week:

But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

Richard Cohen in the Washington Post simply sums it up by observing that the modern GOP has become nothing more then a cult. Are these opinion columns all that significant in and of themselves? Not really. It's nice that they've finally caught onto what some of us have been pointing out for over a decade now, but these guys have always been weak idiots that illustrate perfectly why old media is dying. What I think it does illustrate, however, is that the latest antics from the GOP is beginning to cause concern for what is normally their largest group of apologists, the Very Serious Elite Pseudo-Moderate DC pundits.

The GOP is getting so outrageous, in other words, that the pundits can't find any comparable Democratic proposal to misinterpret in order to play the false equivalency game to show how "fair" they are. And once you start to worry a media that is pretty much primed to constantly allow you to run your crazy-train uncontested less they be accused of "liberal bias", it shows just how far off the tracks the modern GOP has gone. I've had a hunch in the past that the Republicans are falling victim to their own livelihood, that they can't survive without pandering to the extremists that both turn out strongly in election years yet alienate everyone else, much like what happened with the Democrats in the 70s. In time, even the most ardent supporters that still have a few brain cells circling somewhere in their cranium can't just grimace and pull the lever anymore. In time, the party they opposed in the past starts to look like the lesser of the two evils.

The party that could never die is, in my opinion, dying. If history is any indication, even if the GOP manages to survive, they will have crippled themselves for decades (we still use 60s/70s-era talking points against the Democrats; all the Hippy Punching/angry liberals/anti-government leftists/hey doesn't Carter totally suck came from somewhere). And I think the old guard knows this, which is why you have two types of old-school Republicans in congress these days, the types that are retiring to get the fuck out of dodge before they are chased out and the ones that have embraced the Tea Party Patriots wholeheartedly even though they know damn well their politics and rigid ideology is toxic, not only to them, but to the country. Somewhere down the line, "America First" ceased to matter, and zealotry took over.

I think in the end, the massive restructuring and/or demise of the modern GOP will be a good thing for the country. But in the meantime, it's going to be an absolute disaster. If they are going to go down, they are going to do everything in their power to drag the rest of us down with them. The Republican Party used to stand for something (and could again, in the future). But today, they stand for nothing more then the fact that they hate you, they will not compromise with you, and as such, if you are not part of their tribe you must be eradicated at any cost. Although this is damaging to their party, it does not bode well for the country as a whole. But what else can be done at this point? You cannot compromise with people like this, even if they would let you. Which they won't.

And I know, I know, it's really fucked up to look at the current political climate and find optimism in respect to the policies that will probably be enacted. That there are actually people being affected, that these aren't mere numbers and statistics. I'm fully aware of my own privilege in these matters, that the loss of government services are really nothing more then an annoyance for me so far.

But I'm not going off of an idea of "Fuck you, I win! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!". It's not a game. It is just getting harder to deny that the current Republican Party just cannot exist inside the frame of what we know as a Democracy. The GOP has given no indication that they will tone it down anytime soon (like I said, I don't think they can at this point, movement conservatism has spiraled out of their own control). And as much as I will continue to disagree with true conservative principles, even I can realize that it does me no favors to have an opposition party that is insane and unwilling to compromise.

Of course, in the end, my optimism could be misplaced. We do get the government we deserve, and sometimes I fear that. And perhaps that's more where the rage comes from.

(Opening quote from Gilda, 1946.)

Fun Stuff is Offically Closed

You know what Kurt Zellers? Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck Amy Koch and fuck all you other stupid ideological motherfuckers that decided to waste the entire fucking year on culture war bullshit (and actually had the nerve to go on MPR a while back and giggle about "The budget deal? But where did all the time go? Tee hee!") and then act shocked, shocked(!) when the governor of the state doesn't accept your "Fuck education who needs it when we have rich people that can't be taxed?" bullshit "deal" after fucking campaigning and winning on that very fucking same issue.

This is a gigantic fucking waste of money for the state. Pat yourself on the fucking back. Or maybe hire one of the state employees that is now out of fucking work to do it for you.

Fuckers.

Nothing to say, just messing with Google+

For testing purposes, y'all. Here's some Fisherman's Blues:



Squee! And I was going to be all productive this weekend (in a non-internets way), too.

Circle me!

Please stop making me defend these assholes

I'm starting to get that sickening feeling with Michele Bachmann that I did with Sarah Palin in years past, that feeling that no matter how much you despise them, you are going to end up sticking up for them more then you would normally care to. A prime example would be the "are you a flake" controversy over at Fox News this past weekend.

It's pretty disappointing, and here's why.

1. It's gendered.

I know, I know, that's playing right into Bachmann's hands so she can screech about sexism while at the same time fucking over her fellow women for political gain, something which always benefited Palin handsomely. And I'm well aware that like most things of this nature, I can't "prove" that it was thrown at her because of her gender. But I'd just point out that leading GOP candidate Mitt Romney is a well known "flip-flopper" on issues, and hypocrisy is pretty much the Republican norm at this point, yet I can't say I've ever seen anyone else addressed in this sort of manner, and so bluntly.


2. A constructive answer to that question does not exist.

I know pundits like their "gotcha!" questions because it makes them seem so bad-ass and all, but really, what sort of answer can one expect to a question like that? That Bachmann will break down weeping and say "It is true! It is true! Tis a silly flake am I! Oh how you've destroyed me, Chris Wallace!"? Probably not. It only offers the opportunity to express offense (which will play solidly into Bachmann's overall underdog campaign) or to create an clean little list of all the 'awesome' things Bachmann has done in her life which shows how Bachmann is totally a serious candidate. Which is a shame because...


3. The overall point Wallace was getting at was an important one, and now we are just talking about how he insulted the candidate.

For state's rights yet supportive of a federal ban on gay marriage? Against government spending unless it's something that benefits her own district? Decrying cuts to Medicare from "Obamacare" yet supporting the Ryan plan that does away with it completely? Bachmann is playing into conservative myths like most of her ideological peers, and it's about damn time someone pointed it out. And he blows it. Big time. There were so many more pointed questions Wallace could have busted out at that point.

Bachmann is a moron and a hypocrite, but what people tend to miss is that she's been in the political game for a long time, and she's proven that she knows how to survive. She knows how to work these sorts of things to her advantage. The best thing to do with candidates like her is give her enough rope, because it's guaranteed that she will eventually hang herself. Think of what worked with Palin - The narrative works best as "candidate x said something stupid, and is now whining about it", not as "candidate x was called stupid, and is now upset about it". Bachmann would be terrible for this country, and if allow her message to be heard loud and clear, I think the country will eventually pick up on that.

Instead, Bachmann came out of this looking like (a) the "underdog" victim of a cruel media (WHICH IS THE POINT PEOPLE) and (b) professional and serious because of how well she handled the attack (I would not have responded any other way. Unless I punched the fucker). This sort of thing is not helping.

Not that I expected Fox News to help.

U Mad, officer?

I found it interesting that the LulzSec leak of documents from the Arizona Police Department coincided with the FBI's decision to drop the case against Minnesota's most notorious gang, The Metro Gang Strike Force, investigating their 2005-2008 asset forfeiture free-for-all. Not that the two are related in any way, just that despite the negative press online anarchist groups such as LulzSec garner, there seems to be an increasing need for their actions.

The public would like to believe that citizen abuse in law enforcement is minimal, or that the actions of one good cop can take down even the most embedded hierarchy of corruption. We like to believe that in the end, the bad guys will lose, and the good guys will prevail. But as we saw with the Metro Gang Strike Force, which was brought to an end by a "good cop", this isn't necessarily the case. Sure, the Task Force was disbanded after the destruction of public's trust in them made doing their job impossible. But as for the consequences for the members of the Task Force that preyed on the public for years, there are none to be found. The abandonment of the case comes on the heals of the US Justice Department's announcement that no more charges will be filed against the members due to the lack of evidence against them. This would be the same evidence that was destroyed, in the middle of the night at their New Brighton office that just so happened to have it's security surveillance system disabled while the mass shredding of documents took place. All of the officers are presumably free to keep their jobs within law enforcement. Meanwhile, the public has coughed up a cool 3 million so far to pay off the civil lawsuit against the task force for harassment and theft.

Is it any wonder that the citizens are starting to become upset about this sort of thing, or are taking matters into their own hands? As technology allows citizens to document police abuses in real-time, the myth that the benefit of the doubt should always fall on the side of the boys in blue is slowly fading away in the eyes of an increasingly cynical public. Demigod Officer Friendly has been exposed as nothing more then a mere human, prone to the same flaws the rest of the populace is prone to, yet held to a noticeably much lower standard then civilians are for their mistakes and misdeeds.

But he's fighting back.

The Rochester story (in which a woman was charged with "Obstructing Governmental Administration" for standing in her own yard and filming what she believed to be a questionable traffic stop) just took a juvenile turn:

Basking in the viral glory bestowed upon one of its officers this week, the Rochester Police Department resorted to petty retaliatory and intimidation tactics against citizens attending a community meeting Thursday afternoon.

The citizens were attending a meeting to discuss the arrest of Emily Good, the 28-year-old woman who was jailed for videotaping cops from her front yard, when they realized cops were outside issuing tickets for having parked more than 12 inches from the curb.

Know your place, citizen. Or we will give you really silly parking tickets.

I think my favorite part of this story is the police officer claiming that her recording is a "threat" to his safety because even though we never hear it on the audio, he claims she was making "anti-police" comments. Because making "anti-police" comments is all it takes to waive your rights away. I do really like that her neighbors stuck up for her (one called 911 when they perceived she was being harassed, because if for nothing else, there at least would be a record of the incident). I don't know if you would of seen the same citizen camaraderie 10 years ago.

At least she got some footage (and was able to pass her phone off to a neighbor), which is more then I can say for the Jim Tucker from The Fight Back, the reporter who last week produced the largest threat America has ever seen by trying to take a single cell phone photograph while covering a public meeting regarding the DC Taxi Commission. Reason Blogger Jim Epstein, who was also arrested when he filmed the harassment and arrest of Tucker, talks about the arrests:

About 30 minutes into the meeting, I witnessed journalist Pete Tucker snap a still photo of the proceedings on his camera phone. A few minutes later, two police officers arrested Tucker. I filmed Tucker's arrest and the audience's subsequent outrage using my cell phone.

A few minutes later, as I was attempting to leave the building, I overheard the female officer who had arrested Tucker promise a woman, who I presumed to be an employee of the Taxi Commission, that she would confiscate my phone. Reason intern Kyle Blaine, overheard her say, "Do you want his phone? I can get his phone."

But at the very least, the two reporters (I'm assuming) received their phones back in one piece. Narces Benoit's cell phone was smashed to bits after he recorded a Miami Police shootout earlier this month, which you never would have known about if he didn't act quickly to hide his SD card inside his mouth.

I could play this game all day (hey, at least Benoit wasn't charged under wiretapping laws that would throw him in prison for 16 years!). Law Enforcement really, really doesn't like it when you film them. Recording the police is now basically illegal in three states (Illinois, Massachusetts, and of course, Maryland), loosely based in wiretapping and eavesdropping laws that require two-party consent for filming. If the law isn't on their side, or if they are ignorant of the laws that are in place, officers are often able to threaten or detain citizens and confiscate their equipment with little to no recourse for violating citizen's rights - in fact, as we've seen in the past (and will more then likely see in the Rochester case) the burden is often on the citizen who, if they cannot be charged with filming the officers, will be charged under various other bullshit charges instead, which will more then likely be dropped or cost the department money when a civil case is eventually filed. But instead of training officers on conflict resolution and the legal rights of citizens in regards to record police, it appears they'd rather train officers on the dangers of OpenWatch instead. And if an increasingly skeptical public cannot obtain justice using those routes, is it any wonder that eventually, they would turn to vigilantism instead?

In reality, the attempt by law enforcement to prevent any sort of civilian documentation of their interactions of the public makes them look fairly suspect on it's own (it's almost as if they know the job tends to attract a certain type of personality that could cause problems down the road). I've often thought that all interactions between police and the public should be documented on film, as it not only protects the public from the police, but also the police against the public (dash cams in patrol cars exist for this very reason). And if there is still a segment of the population that honestly believes that the bad guys always have it coming, with or without due process, at the very least they should support these sorts of safeguards if for nothing more then the fact that corrupt law enforcement is costing the taxpayers millions in civil litigation payouts. If an officer conducts themselves with full accordance to the law (and many do), I see no reason why they wouldn't want the extra protection of filmed interactions, as a quick and false claim of assault has the potential to destroy that officer's career and rob him or her of their pension. This is an easy way to keep both the public and the police safe without violating anyone's civil rights, without any sort of vigilante actions that have the potential to expose classified information, without draining away city budgets through lawsuits. So what's the holdup at this point?

This post is 100% accurate because I say so

Is there anything more gratifying then watching a woman smack Scott Adams around? No. No there is not.

A little back story - Sock Puppet master and Dilbert creator Scott Adams, he of "arguing with women is just like arguing with four year olds and mentally handicapped folks" (because when he writes bullshit, women have the audacity to call him out on it) fame decided to pontificate of the sad sate of American males, and how they want to be all rapey and shit because that's their natural instinct but they can't because society set up the rules to favor women's natural instincts, which I guess comes down to not being rapey because he never really describes what he means by that, which means "society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness", because they can't rape people or cheat on their wives, which is totally the same thing.

Basically what I'm taking from this post is that we should probably just chemically castrate males (his suggestion) because Scott Adams has urges to rape people. I mean, you really have to wonder about folks that argue these things as "natural instincts". To me, it's just screams "Hey, I want to do shitty things, so I'm going to assume everyone else does too BECAUSE OF TEH BIOLOGY so I can convince myself I'm not a shitty person". And no, Scott Adams, we aren't going to castrate every male just because you want to rape people. The men in my life are fine. Leave them alone and get help dude. Seriously.

Now, like pretty much all his femimist-trolling posts, the standard response here is that this is not what Scott Adams meant at all, and if your little ladybrainz would just understand Teh Logic, you would realize that he is telling it like it is, sorry about your hurt feelings and all. Yet note that he never really provides any evidence to his claim that men are all rapists, his argument is instead that rape is merely a product of horniness, men are horny, therefore they all must want to rape, they can't, so they are sad. Leaving aside obvious examples such as the use of rape as a war crime or the use of prison rape as dominance and just looking at the horniness factor - rape is not a product of "I am horny, I want this, I rape". It has an extra step - I am horny, I want this, it is for some reason denied to me, but I am for (insert reason here) entitled to this, I rape". To conflate the two (horniness/desire to rape) is just creepy, full stop. As is his notion that sex (and all gender issues) are zero sum and about "winning" and "losing", that just screams "sex is a way to dominate" to me. I'll take a detour into jackass speculation land and venture a guess that Adams probably really sucks in bed. Unless she's into it, I suppose.

But I'm not going to go too deep into his failed arguments, because Mary Elizabeth Williams covered them quite well, and pretty much the only thing he's arguing here is "But hey, wouldn't these goal posts look so much better if I moved them over here by a few hundred feet? Also too people at the HuffPo agree with me so there and women that disagree with me are crazy". It's an amusing read. It's quite amazing how quickly these fuckers fall apart and cling to their logical fallacies. Scott Adams is under the impression that those less then him can't see this. Scott Adams is wrong. I mean, the strawman is pretty much the most well-known fallacy there is, and he humps it as if his life depended on it - his latest post whining about how mean women are (no, I'm not linking to it, google it) presents a "reading comprehension test" which contains gems like this:

If I say Dutch men are the tallest in the world, which of the following facts have I implied?

1. I'm a racist.
2. Every Dutch man is taller than every other man.
3. I have a low opinion of women because I didn't even mention them.
4. None of the above

Because empirically observable traits such as height and jackass musings about the hard-wiring of men's brains being all rapey from the guy that created Dilbert are equally on par in terms of scientific validity. Yeah. So now you know what we're dealing with.

Adams is one of those guys that builds himself a shield of logic and then cowers behind it. And by that, I don't mean that he uses arguments based in logic, just that he claims his arguments are based in logic, because he's just one of those logical guys, he's a certified genius, so the only way you could possibly disagree with him is if you lack basic common sense. He's already stated that he's logical, you dig? So if you disagree, you are not. QED.

I used to see these guys quite a bit back in my Duty Calls days, they usually take the handle of "Common Sense Mike" or "Rational Thinker" or some other such nonsense*, and they are always amusing as hell because they are usually the one person on the thread that lacks those traits. And I think that's the point. There's really no reason to put that sort of label on yourself, because the quality of your argument is going to be judge based on just that - your argument. Not how awesome, realistic, or intelligent you claim you are. If you make poor arguments, sure, perhaps you do have to attempt to paint yourself as some sort of unbiased observer that's just going off of the hard cold facts. But the same people you are trying to appeal to with that sort of self-labeling are the same people that are actually going to judge you based on the content you provide. If you are awesome, realistic, intelligent, a rational thinker, or someone chock full o'common sense, well, that's going to come out based in the arguments that you make, isn't it? And if not, that label isn't going to convince anyone otherwise.

I actually take these sorts of labels as a warning sign at this point.

*I feel the same way about people that claim political labels such as "Independent" (sorry mom), "Moderate" or "Centrist". A buddy of mine still has my favorite political label on the Facebook - it simple says "Partisan". And I'll trust his viewpoint over most "independents" any day.