Paperwight's Fair Shot

Oliver's Army

Shorter Verbatim Pat "Paddy" Buchanan:  

One prefers the old bigotry. At least it was honest, and not, as Abraham Lincoln observed, adulterated “with the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

Indeed one does, Pat.  Indeed one does:

Say Anything

I started thinking after reading this Think Progress post about Bob Ney's challenge to Abu Gonzales:

“If Alberto Gonzales wants to clear his name by saying he didn’t cooperate in torture, then let him try it himself,” said Ney, whose 1 PM show on WVLY and WVLY.net is heard in eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania and throughout the western panhandle of West Virginia.

I've written in the past about the falseness of torture tourism, but I might revise my position a bit.  I think that every advocate of waterboarding, who claims that it generates truth, and who claims that it's not torture, ought to agree to be waterboarded and should be waterboarded until they admit that waterboarding is torture.  Some of them will no doubt come to believe that, and some won't, but I bet every single one of them will say it, just to make it stop.

Bang or Whimper?

Via LG&M, we learn that some libertarians are now fantasizing about forming their own communities geographically localized voluntary associations on the high seas, outside of the reach of any state power.

One wonders whether this venture will end more like BioShock, or more like Sealand.

Satire? Still dead.

Seriously, it's like they exhumed satire, sewed holy wafers into its mouth, put a stake through its heart, decapitated it with a silver axe, burned the body, and then scattered the ashes in a fucking hurricane just to be completely sure:

The details of AEI’s financial picture are private, and spokespeople for the think tank do not discuss fundraising or financial specifics. Much of its donor information is privileged, although some foundations reveal the size and purpose of the grants they have given AEI. But it is clear that the foundation grants and large corporate donations that go to AEI have changed, in ways that have affected the bottom line, overall spending, and individual scholars. Companies that have given generously to AEI in the past, such as General Motors, are facing harder times.

“We’ve contacted AEI,” said Greg Martin, a spokesman for the General Motors Foundation, “and we’ve told them that this is a very tough time for General Motors and we’re either cutting or closely reviewing the contributions we’re giving to think tanks.”

GM, a badly-run corporation failing in the market and seeking gummint handouts as a result, has to cut back the wingnut welfare it's been giving to the "scholars" at the American Enterprise Institute to pimp pro-corporation "free market" propaganda.

You could not make this shit up.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead

"You've got to go up and tell them what will happen [if the Employee Free Choice Act passes], that no one is going to add a single job in the United States," Chamber [of Commerce] president Thomas Donahue told the assembled. "Will I put a job here where it'll get unionized in an illegal way? No, I'll put it somewhere else."

Just a couple notes here:

1) If the Employee Free Choice Act passes, and card check is legal, then companies unionized that way will be unionized a a LEGAL way.  Asshat.

2) Far more important, don't you just love the patriotism here?  It's just like the conservatives who argue that if you tax the rich, they'll leave (and that they would be right to do so).  

Apparently patriotism means jingoistic militarism carried on the limbs of other people's children, bitchin' about them hippies, and raking in as much money as you can pry away from your workers.  It certainly has nothing to do with allowing working people to earn a decent living and have some small hope for a stable future -- better to ship the jobs offshore where the servant classes know their place.

Fuck Off Librul, Make Us Stop: Episode 2

- Karl Rove complaining that both Clinton and Obama politicized the office of the President.

- Rick Scott spearheading the attack on health care reform.

Explanation here.

Snidely Whipsawed

From TPM's Daily Muck:

U.S. lawmakers suffered a minor setback Wednesday in their ongoing effort to close offshore tax havens. Mark Branson, an executive at the powerful Swiss bank UBS, apologized to a Senate subcommittee for helping Americans dodge taxes but he refused to disclose the names of the estimated remaining 33,000 U.S. clients accused of evading taxes with the help of UBS. Branson argued that he could not cooperate because full disclosure would violate Swiss criminal law, and told lawmakers, "the IRS is attempting to resolve this diplomatic dispute in a courtroom, which is neither productive, nor proper."

So, here's a thought... Maybe if you can't run a tax-avoidance business without breaking the law in either the country you're located in or the country whose taxes you're trying to help people avoid, YOU SHOULDN'T BE DOING THAT KIND OF BUSINESS, YOU GODDAMN CROOK!

Old Times There Are Not Forgotten

I skimmed Bobby Jindal's speech, and it occurs to me that I heard it put to music once -- in 1964:

Barry's Boys by The Chad Mitchell Trio

We're the bright young men
Who wanna go back to nineteen-ten
We're Barry's boys
We're the kids with a cause
Yes a government like grandmama's
We're Barry's boys
We're the new kind of youth at your Alma Mater
Back to silver standards and solid Goldwater
Back to when the poor were poor and rich were rich
And you felt so damn secure just knowing which were which

We're the kids who agree
To be social without security
We're Barry's boys
'Cause his hat's in the ring
Where Westbrook Pegler once was king
Now he's too left wing
So if you don't recognize any old Red China
Or Canada, or Britain, or South Carolina
You too can join the crew
Tippecanoe and Nixon too
Back to Barry
Back to cash and carry
Back with Barry's boys

Why did the chicken cross the road?
To get from the left to the right

Roses are red, violets are blue
Walter Lippmann's a pinko, too

A-na-ka-nee, ka-nah, ka-nay
Let's investigate the PTA

Barry, Barry, make your bid
I love John Birch, but oh you kid

Mother, mother, wear a grin
And don't complain, or we'll turn you in

Hold the presses, stop the mail
The Pentagon's having a one-cent sale

What's the latest news statistic?
Hootenannies are socialistic

Shut the door and lock and latch it
Here comes Lizzie with a brand new hatchet

Back with Barry's boys

We're the kids full of nerve
As long as it's conservative, we're Barry's boys
And we can't comprehend
Why our parents aren't friendlier to Barry's boys
Why Dad once crusaded for Sacco/Vanzetti
Now all we're doing is doing the same for John Paul Getty
Our parents emulated Roosevelt and Farley
But we just want to grow up to be like Ev and Charley

No college days with Socrates and Plato
When you're Barry's boys
You just organize parades for the abolishment of NATO
And the rest
The entire West
So let's go back to the days when men were men
And start the First World War all over again
That's right you tell'em son
Isolationism can be fun
Back to Barry
Back to cash and carry
Back with Barry's

And remember, "An American first, and a politician second"
Spoken like a true American politician

Back with Barry
Not with Lyndon, Ike or Harry
Back with Barry's boys

Question of the Day

What is the income / position threshold beyond which you can screw up completely, bankrupt or kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, and suffer no actual personal consequences?

Sample data points:  

 - The George W. Bush Administration

 - Wall Street

 - Every Conservative Pundit

Teachers' Unions?

Yeah, those are clearly the problem with education in the United States.