Month: April 2010

Regardless of how good Transmit 4 turns out to be (and, let’s face it: Transmit has always been really good), this webpage that announces the new version and its new features is an absolute tour de force. Anybody interested in web design, communication, or (gasp) how to advertise online should take a good long look at it, even if they could care less about Transmit.

Just as conservative legislative politics isn’t really about free markets conservative judicial politics isn’t really about restraint. The rhetoric is just rhetoric, and the reality is that conservative politics is about conservatism—about entrenching the power and influence of the dominant economic and sociocultural groups.

Matt Yglesias, noting something that most people seem to have a hard time keeping inside their skulls

The Fucks Don’t Matter

You need simple proof that the facts don’t matter? Doesn’t get much more simple than this.

Dick Cheney, on the floor of the Senate tells the cheerfully collegial Pat Leahy “Go fuck yourself.” Here’s how Cheney described this incident yesterday:

“You’d be surprised how many people liked that. That’s sort of the best thing I ever did.”

Bill Kristol says:

“[telling Leahy to go fuck himself is] a beautiful statement, really, of justice. […] Dick Cheney is going out [and] defending justice in the end.”

Joe Biden, on the other hand, says “This is a big fucking deal” with glee, not with malevolence or personal animus, in regard to the signing-into-law of health care reform.
Bill Kristol says:

“This is one of the most despicable moments in American politics in our lifetimes.”

Repeat after me: The FACTS DO NOT MATTER.

Factual Fail

Couldn’t agree more on the myth of the drunken poor (emphasis added):

over 72 percent of adults whose family incomes are at least four times the federal poverty level drink alcohol. The figure for adults whose families make less than the poverty threshold? 45.2 percent.
[…]
These surprising figures counter the prevalent misconception that poor people drink too much, forfeiting well-paying jobs in exchange for lazy afternoons in front of the TV, beer bottle in hand. Rush Limbaugh’s suggestion that Americans on food stamps “buy Twinkies, Milk Duds, potato chips, six-packs of Bud, then head home to watch the NFL on one of two color TVs” is more than factually incorrect (food stamps can’t be used to purchase alcohol anywhere in the country); it’s another disturbing example of conservative propaganda that blames poverty on the poor. The sole function of this dangerous rhetoric is to dissuade middle- and upper-class Americans from examining the flawed social structures and policies that both cause and perpetuate poverty across the nation.

From that promising start we go right into Why We Fail:

we progressive advocates do have something powerful on our side that Limbaugh and other conservative personalities lack: facts.

How many times does the fact that facts don’t matter, at all, have to be shoved into our collective faces before we realize it? Let’s all have a Dr. Sean Maguire moment together:

The facts don’t matter
The facts don’t matter
The facts don’t matter
The FACTS DO NOT MATTER

In the modern rhetorical war, taking place in the context of the modern MSM, the facts are a hindrance to be overcome. The modern GOP proves that simple truth above all else. Nuance, reason, adherence to “the facts” simply doesn’t play and wont play anywhere in the foreseeable future. Short, rhyming slogans, preferably divorced from all meaning and aimed directly at the limbic brain are what will carry the day. Every time. Until the Democrat realizes that, and plans accordingly, they will fail. Every time.

On a recent Friday night, a couple hundred [MSM media] influentials gathered for a Mardi Gras-themed birthday party for Betsy Fischer, the executive producer of “Meet the Press.” Held at the Washington home of the lobbyist Jack Quinn, the party was a classic Suck-Up City affair in which everyone seemed to be congratulating one another on some recent story, book deal, show or haircut (and, by the way, your boss is doing a swell job, and maybe we could do an interview).

Mark Leibovich, for the NYT, explaining (without trying to) why our Church of the Savvy is so irretrievably fucked up. This is why we invaded Iraq. This is why W. Bush was “elected” the first time. This is why brazen lies are treated as fact, and Meet The Press still refuses even a cursory, days-later and little noted review of the spew that emanates from its own festering maw. This is why they like shit like this and this, and hail it as the very paragon of their output. This is why Sally Quinn is merely the Mike Allen of the ‘90s, just like the execrable Mark Halperin was the Mike Allen of the Aughts. This is why the MSM just loves to write adoring articles about their own Kewl Kids, especially if same just look to the Drudge Report as their assignment editor whilst publically moping about the Liberal Bias in their industry. This is why.

Two Choices

Mitch McConnell reports that he’s “heartened to hear that bipartisan talks have resumed in earnest” and, in response, Harry Reid says “I’m happy to hear my counterpart, my friend, Senator McConnell talk about the need for more negotiations. We don’t stand in the way of that.”

Now they’ll just repair to the negotiating table and make some laws! Finally, everyone will stop with the brazen lies about the financial reforms package! Truly it is a new day!

Or not.

Honestly, how many fucking times does this have to happen? The GOP as currently constituted is against it. “It” being anything the Democrat wants to do. Period. They love the idea of “negotiations.” It extends the sausage-making indefinitely. The American people hate the sausage-making. Anything that avoids bringing the bill to the floor in a decisive manner is a win for the GOP. This is why they keep on with the “back to the drawing board” jibber jabber. They want everything back at the drawing board. Forever.

Make them vote against the bill. No compromises, no negotiations, no changes, no fixes. Make them vote against the bill. To do that, you’ll also need to make them filibuster the bill. To do that, you’ll need to make them talk 24/7 about filibustering the bill. That is how you hurt the GOP. Make them stand up there and talk about the need to save Wall Street from scary scary regulations when all they ever did to us was drive the global fucking economy into the ditch and are aiming to do so again, posthaste. Make them talk, if necessary from now until the 2010 midterms. That, or they file a vote against cloture and we try again. More talking about how great Wall Street art. Two choices, no waiting.

The government blows it again; Cassini mission extension lasts seven years (that’s seven years beyond the already extended six years of service, itself two years longer than anyone anticipated. In orbit around Saturn.)
The final “reference trajectory” calculates all the course corrections and various gravity-assisted adjustments, tracking through those seven years, all the while correlating scientific goals with manpower and funding availability. Out seven years. This path “includes 56 passes over Titan, 155 orbits of Saturn in different inclinations, 12 flybys of Enceladus, 5 flybys of other large moons.” Then the probe will fly into Saturn and be destroyed.

Is there nothing this government can do right?

The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an
ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations,
base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk,
stared into the garden and thought ‘42 will do’ I typed it out. End of story.

Douglas Adams on 42