Tag: Open Thread

Sigh.

There are those who will dismiss this as yet another Obama bashing rant, but unlike Rush Limbaugh and the Republicans he leads I really would like Obama to succeed.

I understand Rush.  I am hyper partisan.  I never accepted W as my president even during the smoking pile nobody could have anticipated bin laden determined to attack in the US bullhorn bullshit 95% of YOU! you willfully ignorant accessories to war crimes times you thought he was the bees knees.

I want to grind your nose in your tortures and murders, your common thefts and lies and pederasty and perversion that you accepted by your complicity.  Up against the wall motherfuckers.  Were I not fundamentally opposed to the death penalty you might hope to provoke me to a quicker relief from your shame and degradation than the lifetime in Spandau I think your pissy pants craven cowardice and oathbreaking deserve.

Obama has never been a liberal.  The DLC assumed he was one of theirs until he disavowed them.

The reason progressive Democrats deluded themselves is that Obama was consistently anti-Iraq.  For them the real game is whether we meet the 16 month deadline and the Odierno – Petraeus – McArthur axis are doing what they can to impede it.  No nukes in Korea.  Get the troops out or find another job.

Frankly if he satisfies that minimum requirement Obama need fear no challenge from the left, for the most part they will be co-opted.  Those of us who care about little things like the Geneva Convention and the Magna Carta and the US Constitution can hope they get carried along on the tide but…

We are the 5%ers and proud of it.

Still who knows?  The level of ignorance about simple dimple economics astounds me.

These Chicago School Free Market Fundamentalists, these Randian Hard On Libertarians, these Friedmanite (Milton and Thomas) Monitarist Morans refuse to recognize that we have efficiented ourselves out of business.  We don’t make anything except conmen who will sell you a lump of wood and call it nutmeg.

Tulips.

Keynesian denial seems to have permeated our discourse and people no longer understand that it’s possible to over supply demand.

Supply side economics is a lie.

It doesn’t matter how much you can produce if nobody is buying.  Prices fall into a deflationary spiral and you have an economy with excess capacity.  Cars rotting on lots, high inventory, job cutting, fall in demand.

DUH!

You need to reduce inventory and create scarcity- plow under those debts and fuck the creditors.  You need to create demand and re-inflate.  This is basically spending, but if you were wise and responsible you’d spend it on stuff that was valuable and would last, still spending alone will do because of the multiplier effect.

If I pay you a dollar it doesn’t just go to you.  It goes to your Starbucks barrista and from them to their Chiropractor and Aroma Therapist (you stand on your fucking feet all day and it doesn’t fucking matter).  Eventually your dollar ends up in the pocket of someone who decides to invest it in something like a Credit Default Swap and with less stimulative effect than a bet on 24, odd, black when the ball comes up 00 the coupier rakes it in.  Sucks to be you.

In the mean time someone got coffee which made the coffee people happy and the barrista stands a little straighter.

Fuck you, you tightfisted greed heads.

From Dee over at Citizen Orange a report about one of our private prison systems, and it’s not good news:

A Prison Uprising is underway at the Reeves County Detention Center (RCDC). This is the second uprising in 2 months. The detainees say prison conditions are inhumane and they lack needed medical treatment. The trigger setting them off in December was a prisoner dying.

This center is located in Pecos, Tx, an extremely “out of the way” location. It houses approximately 2,400 minimum security inmates and immigration detainees. It is operated by the GEO group. GEO attempted to cover up the reason for the prisoner’s death by saying the young prisoner died of natural causes. The detainees, risking their lives, protested.

As I have previously reported, the GEO Group, is an international corporation that operates prisons around the country and is frequently in the news for its abuse of prisoners in its care resulting in many preventable deaths. At least eight people died at the Geo Group-operated George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania, the state’s only privately run jail. Several of those deaths resulted in lawsuits by family members who say the facility did not provide adequate medical care or proper supervision for inmates.

Prisons for profit.  Let’s not also forget one of Halliburton’s prisons, the Hutto facility in Texas (hmm, Texas again?) being only one of the most egregious, children imprisoned — for profit.

Lot of cleaning up to do.  But for so many, it’s too little, too late.

Open thread is open!

This Pony Party is an Open Thread – Please do not rec the Open Thread.  Chat Away!

From NOLA blogger Raymond Ward at Minor Wisdom this:

The coolest thing I’ve seen in a while is the Photographic Dictionary. While most dictionaries define words with other words, “the photographic dictionary is dedicated to defining words through the literal, figurative, and personal meanings found in each photograph.” Go have a look, but be prepared to find yourself transfixed. (Hat tip to Slaw.ca.)

Open Thread is Open!

A Stars Hollow Gazette

You know, some people don’t read.

It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they read for information only.  They don’t care about the plot and don’t identify with the characters.  Metaphors or a felicitous turn of phrase are wasted on them.

You can feel the same way about history.

I’ve always seen it as a ripping yarn that has the benefit of not stretching your imagination much because it’s all true.  As I’ve developed my understanding I’ve recognized that it as much written by real actors with a real axe to grind as anything else.

The past is not dead, it’s not even past said Faulkner.

Aristotle was not stupid.  Many of his ideas were wrong because of the limitations imposed by his environment, but some also because of his personal attitudes and positions.  Most of the ones that were right have been misinterpreted and abused.

If you just look at the facts and time lines and don’t understand the man you’re missing more than half the message.