"The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid." - Art Spander

And it appears that a very large percentage of the voting population in the U.S. is about to do something incredibly stupid. It is possible that we will give control of the House, and maybe the Senate, back to the Republicans. And these are not even the Republicans of the Clinton years, the ones who thought that making the White House Christmas card list into a huge scandal was a great idea. Most of the Republicans on the top ballot positions these days seem to be totally insane. But what absolutely astounds me is that the people who vote for these idiots are actually voting against their own personal interests. Yeah, let's repeal Obamacare! Yes, let's vote No on every single infrastructure program which this country desperately needs. Sure, let's vote to let huge corporations run unencumbered by any sort of regulatory oversight!

Let me ask some questions of the average U.S. voter.

Do you work in a coal mine or on an oil drilling rig?

Do you or anyone in your family have a "pre-existing health condition?"

Do you feel you will need Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid when you retire?

Do want to see your real earnings and savings continue to grow?

I could go on and on. I was thinking there was a quote that went something like, "A democracy depends upon an educated population." Or something like that. I couldn't find it, but it does seem like a truism to me. However, what we have here is what I believe to be a moronic voting population who will vote for anyone or anything that says anything bad about Democrats and liberals, no matter if there is not one iota of truth to it or not. It doesn't matter.

This is not going to end well.

What's that old saying about any landing you walk away from is a good landing?

Yeah, that's about airplanes, not gliders, but even so, I am not sure I would totally buy into that.







This guy was apparently very lucky to walk away from this with only a few cracked/broken ribs. Ow.

DISCLAIMER: As with a number of photos that I post here, I do not know the original source of these. It appears they are under copyright. If anyone can give me a source, I will gladly give attribution, or remove them if someone really objects. My approach is that it is O.K. to post photos such as this if you give proper attribution and a link to the person's own web page. A commercial, of sorts, and an invitation to go visit the home page of the source of the material. Just covering my butt, in other words.

"Hip" phrases used by football announcers that I wish would go away.

"Pick Six" - When anyone intercepts a pass and runs it back for a touchdown, or even has the opportunity to but doesn't, it must be referred to as "pick six." It cannot be said that it was an interception for a touchdown. It is absolutely mandatory to call it "pick six." That was maybe cute for a while, but it is wearing thin. It's not even true alliteration.

"In Space" - This phrase apparently refers to the 97% of the football field that isn't inhabited by most of the players. When I first heard one of the announcers refer to a defensive player as someone "who can make great tackles in space," I was thinking, "Wow. That guy must be REALLY good. But how to you practice tackling somone in space?" I'm a very literal guy...

"Guys...?" - This is for the female sideline analysts and announcers back in the studio. When they want to turn it back to the announcers doing the game, they say "Guys...?" in the interrogative. Like, "Guys, will you now come in a rescue me from that really stupid observation that I just made that almost anyone watching the game could have concluded by themselves and makes it questionable as to why I am getting paid to do this?" Watch for this one. Once you notice it, it's almost impossible to not hear it every single time.




"Dial up" - Defensive coaches "dial up" their calls, like blitzes and different coverages. They can't just "call plays." No, they must "dial up" a blitz. Jeez, not only does the use of a "hip" term sound silly after continual usage, that is just SOOO 1990's. Dial up web access is an anachronism, a thing of the past. I don't even have dial up access anymore. Maybe they should say that the defensive coordinator has a App for that. Need a blitz? He has an App for that.

I suppose the thing I detest about sports announcers in general, and this really applies to the pre-game "analysts", is that they either feel they must, or have been directed to by their superiors, act like 22 to 25 year olds out at a bar after three rounds of drinks. Loud, rather obnoxious, constantly interrupting each other, every single thing that comes out of their mouths is said with absolute certainty at a very loud volume... This is particularly unattractive behavior when all the men in question are in the late 40's and beyond. I suppose they are trying to connect with their intended audience, which is mostly 22 to 25 year old males full of testosterone and brimming with self-confidence. But it sure wears thin. I don't bother watching anything on television that isn't the game itself, and those are becoming limited.

Christine O’Donnell scores big in her televised debate!

Her problem is that she scored big for the opposing team. This has gotten much coverage in the blogs this morning. This comes from Washington Monthly.

Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell tonight totally confused the United States' history with Afghanistan when talking about the Obama administration's plan to withdraw troops from the country.

She complained that Obama and Democratic nominee Chris Coons are advocating something dangerous by proposing a drawdown of troops begin next summer.

"A random withdrawal, that he has said he supports, will simply embolden the terrorists to come after us even more, saying, 'I've chased away the superpower,'" O'Donnell said during a nationally televised debate hosted by CNN at the University of Delaware.
…

But this description of recent history is just astounding: "Well if you remember when we were fighting the Soviets over there in Afghanistan in the '80s and '90s, we did not finish the job, so now we have a responsibility to finish the job and if you are gonna make these politically correct statements that it's costing us too much money, you are threatening the security of our homeland."

Um…. What? Well, I suppose one could say “we were fighting the Soviets” if you are talking about a proxy war kind of thing, because “we”, meaning the U.S., never fought in Afghanistan until after 9/11, when the Soviet Union was long gone. Sure, we supplied weapons to the “freedom fighters” of that time. Remember: freedom fighters of today are tomorrow’s terrorists. Anyway, that’s a weirdly worded statement. Plus, “the terrorists” are now in flippin’ Pakistan, Christine! You doofus.

What in the world did Christine O’Donnell see in herself that made her run for U.S. Senator? This woman in a buffoon. Not that we don’t have lots of buffoons in this country, both male and female. But you would think that anyone with any sort of sense of self awareness would realize when they are in over their head. That doesn’t seem to be true of today’s Republican Party. Buffoonery seems to be the order of the day.

I know all about the “anti-elite, anti-establishment” feelings that have been carefully cultivated by the Republicans over the last 40 years or so. But have we really gotten to a place where a large percentage of American citizens really think elected people with absolutely no qualifications to run this country is a good idea?

It’s like if your car breaks down and you need to make a choice about which mechanic to take it to in order to get it fixed so you can actually drive it and get to work each morning. Do you take it to the guy who has 30 years experience and has several certificates of accreditation on his wall? Or do you take it to the guy who has never worked on a car engine before and actually doesn’t believe people should really be driving cars in the first place?

What kind of choice is this? What do you expect is going to happen?

Oh, man. And these people call themselves Christian.

From Crooks and Liars:

The contemptible American Family Association is no more Christian than Satan himself. The latest remarks from their evil leader Bryan Fischer about how Jesus would have allowed the Cranick's home to burn are just plain evil.

…

We don't know what Jesus would have done if he were in the vicinity of Gene Cranick. We don't generally send rabbis out to fight fires, after all. It's likely he probably would have called out to the crowd for someone to help the man put out the fire. But there is no example in the bible -- NONE -- where Jesus stood by and let someone suffer to teach them a lesson. Jesus suffered, but he did not bring suffering on others. He fed them. He taught them. He led them. But he did not hurt them.
Bryan Fischer's version of Christianity is not one I recognize. It feels far more like Old Testament cruelty, brought down on the poor and disenfranchised in order to consolidate power. It feels like evil.

This is a very plain example of why I think that trust and understanding between the various factions that are present in American society today is pretty much impossible. For one thing, insane people believe that they know exactly what God is thinking at any one time and therefore, having a conversation with these cretins is pretty much impossible. Logic doesn’t work. Compassion doesn’t work. Shame doesn’t work. You don’t argue with the Mind of God.

Movie Review: The Quiet Earth

Fair warning: Here be spoilers!!

As long term readers of this blog (I have some of those, right?) might remember, October is sci-fi and horror film review month! I like to review movies that most people may not have heard of, much less seen, or are so lost in the depths of time (say, 20 years ago) that many people will go, “Yeah, I think I have seen that one. Does it have Robert Downey Jr. in it?”

This little gem is from New Zealand, circa 1985. On the face of it, it resembles one of your more straight-up, end-of-the-world with only a few survivors left alive, sci-fi flicks. It has a plot that has some striking similarities to Harry Belafonte’s “The World, the Flesh, and the Devil.” After surviving an event which kills almost every other living person on the face of the earth, the borderline antisocial hero rummages around empty cities on his own for a while, and then encounters (in the following order) a beautiful woman and a rival male intent on taking his supposed mate. “Oh, you AREN’T the only guy left on the planet, are you?” The two males flirt with a duel to the death, the hero unwillingly so, but then, before they end up killing each other, they realize that working together is their only real way to survive. Come to think of it, this is also pretty much the plot of Roger Corman’s “The Day the World Ended,” except that one has a really silly guy-in-a-rubber-suit monster, where these other two are more dramatic in nature.

“The Quiet Earth” is set in New Zealand and actually attempts to inject some what might pass for a scientific explanation of why almost living thing (not just people) on the face of the earth has vanished into thin air. But that line is somewhat secondary to the film. The most interesting part of the film, in my estimation, is when Zac (that’s a nice, heroic sounding name, dontcha think?) wakes up and finds himself totally alone. After the totally expected “Where IS everyone?” panic attack, he starts going a little bit crazy, wandering around the streets of Auckland in a woman’s slip or in a policeman’s outfit playing a saxophone in the middle of the night. He sets up cardboard figures of infamous figures such as Hitler, Richard Nixon, etc. in the yard of the mansion he has appropriated for himself, and to the background of recorded triumphant music and great applause, sets himself up as God of His Domain. He also takes this opportunity to express the deep guilt he is feeling, as it turns out he and his scientific buddies were probably at the bottom of all of this. It’s kind of a fascinating study, in a very embarrassing, voyeuristic sort of way, of a descent into madness. I thought the best scene in this sequence was when Zac finds himself in grand cathedral with a shotgun in front of a life-sized statue of Jesus on the cross. He starts shouting at God. “Come on out, or the kid gets it!” And he then proceeds to blast away at Jesus. But Zac comes to his senses when he runs over a child’s stroller in a huge earth moving machine that he has just used to demolish a large building. He realizes that, right before “the event”, this stroller held a living, breathing child.

I found the second half of the film a little less enjoyable. That’s when the very cute girl shows up. After a bit of a rough start, it looks as if Zac and Joanne (that’s her name, Joanne) are going to have a nice time of it. However, they keep searching for others, just in case. Joanne: “If we find anyone alive, what do you think they will be like?” Zac Hobson: “We might find all manner of horrors. Politicians... Transvestites...” Unfortunately for Zac, they do find someone else, in the form of a very large, well muscled, could possibly be an escaped criminal, guy with some very deep unresolved issues regarding hostility and relationships with other people. I suppose I found this part rather depressing and embarrassing, as I tended to relate to Zac, the somewhat nerdy scientist that almost never gets the girl and more than likely had something to do with the end of the world as they know it rather than the hunky guy. Of COURSE, Joanne is going to pick the good looking, anti-social guy. It was obvious who was going to win that one.

I won’t bother to explain the entire plot. It’s worth seeing (maybe Netflix one weekend?) just on its own merits as an unusual, little known sci-fi film. But here is why I wanted to review this movie. It has one of the more astounding ending sequences, with just a brilliant accompanying soundtrack, of any film I have ever seen, sci-fi or otherwise. Zac, after (probably) saving Earth and everyone on it (Joanne and Api, pretty much), finds himself on the shore of an ocean on what could a moon orbiting another planet, or maybe in an entirely different dimension. As he is staring, in total bewilderment, at some very strange cloud formations over the ocean, a huge ringed planet is seen rising over the horizon. It is one of the most memorable scenes I have ever seen in a film, just utterly astounding. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. And, as I said before, the musical score behind this just adds to the awe-inspiring sight unfolding in front of the dumbstruck Zac. This single scene, which probably isn’t more than a minute long, is worth the price of sitting through the film. I found it interesting that the filmmakers chose to start running the credits on top of this stunning visual sequence. I rather wish they hadn’t done that, as I would have much rather let it play out without that visual distraction.

Rating: A to A-. Definitely worth your time, if you can find it. There are no easy answers, or even easy interpretations, of what this all means. I usually do not like vagueness in a movie, as I think, in most cases, it is just a cop-out by the filmmakers. “Here, here is a story we thought up and put on film. YOU figure out what it means. We don’t have a clue….” In this case, the lack of specificity and explanations significantly adds to the nature of this film. I think concrete explanations would have diminished the film, not enhanced it.

Photo from SciFiCool, which includes another review and also a video trailer.

O.K., see, THIS is why I can’t blog anymore.

This is just getting absolutely insane. Well, things were insane about two years ago. But they are getting worse and worse every single day. Sort of like that story by Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, for those inclined in the literary direction.

The measure is called Proposition B or the "Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act." It aims to help eliminate the "3000 puppy mills" in Missouri that constitute "30% of all puppy mills in the U.S.," according to Michael Markarian, the Chief Operating Officer of the HSUS.

The HSUS is a national animal rights advocacy group that doesn't financially support local Humane Society shelters.
"This measure would provide common sense standards for the care of dogs," Markarian told TPM, including sufficient food and clean water, vet care, regular exercise, and adequate rest between breeding cycles, among other things. Markarian said the measure only applies to "commercial dog breeding facilities" that have more than 10 breeding females who they use for "producing puppies for the pet trade."

And, OF COURSE, the Republican Party is against that!

Well, according to the Alliance For Truth, the main force behind the anti-Prop B movement, there is something much more nefarious afoot (er, apaw) in the HSUS measure. The Alliance For Truth claims that the HSUS has a "radical agenda" and is "misleading the public with its intentions on Prop B. The society seeks only to raise the cost of breeding dogs, making it ever-more difficult for middle-class American families to be dog-owners."

A radical agenda…. Trying to stop puppy mills…. Sure, I suppose that people with radical agendas could be sitting around, playing a drinking game, I suppose, and come up with an idea to “raise the cost of breeding dogs.” Because everyone knows we liberals hate dog breeders so we want to force them out of business by raising their costs by making them provide the dogs with sanitary living conditions, clean water and decent food.

What could clearer than that?

Sort of explains why Republicans are coming out against the minimum wage.... I think. Actually, it does... No, wait a second....

I give up.

“Crazy” [krey-zee], adj.- Insisting you never said something that there is a You Tube of you saying.

Via Digby:

A new video today catches Rand Paul repeatedly supporting a $2,000 Medicare deductible on Kentucky seniors – despite his claims just last week that such a statement was a “lie.”

Jesus.

One trait that our current crop of politicians seem to share (and this is almost always conservatives, but I have seen where liberals fall into the same trap) is that they just say the first thing that comes into their head that they believe the “here and now” audience wants to hear or that they blurt whatever comes out of their mouths that they will think will get them off the hook. It’s amazing how many instances we have in recent months about politicians flatly contradicting themselves! They have been caught in an obvious, flat-out lie, and they don’t seem to care. And it never seems to bother their hardcore supporters, either.

I find this amazing about our society. Being caught in a lie doesn’t matter anymore. Digby is right. In a sane world, this would have immediately ended Paul’s run for office. But it won’t. The hardcore right, which is mostly made of up of older, scared white people, it seems, but they apparently haven't noticed that Rand Paul is talking about them! He is talking about making their Medicare deductible into an amount that most people on retirement pensions cannot afford. Maybe they think that they won’t be around when this kicks in, so if Paul gets his way, so it doesn’t matter to them. It will be someone else’s problem. Pretty heartless, if that is what they are doing. But I suspect it is something else. They just aren’t thinking, period. Rand Paul hates big government, is against liberals, and therefore, he is “one of them.” End of story.

Picture from Very Demotivational.

Contrary to all evidence which might suggest otherwise, I am still alive.

I just can't post anything anymore. I just cannot, for the life of me, find any inspiration to write about anything that won’t sound exactly like my last post. I am overwhelmed with the craziness of this era, and can’t even begin to comprehend what is really going on in the country.

Here’s a good link. Have a go at this one from the Village Voice. It’s spot on. And I’m a baby-boomer white guy, too.

America is like that guy in the movie, “Memento.”

Remember that movie from about 10 years ago? It was about a guy (played by Guy Pearce**) who had lost his ability to remember anything past about the last ten minutes. Short-term memory was all he had. Somewhere along the line, he realized he had this problem, so he came up with a solution. He wrote notes to himself on his body so that the next time he blacked out, he would know what was going on. Look up this link in IMDB if you want to know more about it.

America is like that guy. We have lost the ability to remember anything past the last news cycle, it seems. We certainly don’t remember anything, past the obvious, from the 90’s. Clinton got a blowjob. That’s pretty much what is left in our collective memories from that era. We, and that includes the national media, apparently do not remember that Newt Gingrich was a disgraced politician who was forced out of his job as Speaker of the House of Representatives. We don’t remember that he essentially shut down the government in a fit of pique that most people attribute to the fact he was mad at President Clinton for making him ride in the back of Air Force One and not up front with the President. We apparently don’t remember how badly that went over with the American people at the time.

America apparently doesn’t remember the 80’s. Ronald Reagan is apparently a god now. But many people in his own party disliked him. His approach to economics was called “supply side economics” and was also referred to as “trickle down.” That theory went something like, if you hand rich people everything they want, then good things will eventually trickle down to all the rest of us. That’s how the theory went, anyway. We, and that includes the national media, apparently don’t remember that the national debt under Reagan ballooned to the largest in American history. George H.W. Bush, during a debate with Reagan (people apparently don’t remember that they were running against each other at one time) called Reagan’s approach “voodoo economics.” Many Republicans at the time did not believe that this was a viable approach.

We certainly didn’t remember the Vietnam War and the rest of the 60’s, except for all those dirty fu*king hippies. That’s the only thing that remains in our collective memories. We certainly love our wars, even when the parallels to our very recent past should have been so obvious as to reach out through the pages of time and smack any self-aware person in the face. But, no. We want to fight wars. We want to subdue entire populations who we were supposed to actually be helping out. We didn’t remember that fighting a guerilla war where the enemy can just melt away and blend in to the local population really doesn’t work. Our military people start being suspicious of every single person that isn’t one of them. We forgot how we slinked away in defeat in Vietnam.

We certainly don’t remember the bad parts of the 40’s and WWII. Oh, we remember the good parts well enough. We remember that was “The Good War.” We certainly remember Adolf Hitler. We remember the name of Neville Chamberlain, although we don’t seem to remember much else about him. We remember V-E Day and V-J Day. We remember we were the good guys and went in and saved the world from Evil. But we don’t remember that the United States interred thousands of American citizens in armed camps surrounded by barbed wire fences just because they happened to look like the enemy. We don’t remember the hatred and suspicion of anyone who didn’t “look American.” We don’t remember that burning books is something that societies built on fear and anger do, that societies built on free speech, open communication and trust don’t.

The early 20th Century, also known as The Gilded Age, is much to far in the past to be part of our collective memory. We don’t remember what the very rich will do with all the accumulated wealth and power of a country and how the workers in this unfettered free economy were treated something akin to cockroaches. Workers were killed in mines and factories on a daily basis. Salaries were barely above a subsistence level. Workers borrowed money from “the company store” so much that they ended up owing the company more money than they were likely to get paid and therefore were, in essence, indebted to the company for the rest of their lives.

Human psychology is a very mysterious thing. As thinking beings, you might think that we would use all the information at our disposal to come up with logical solutions to our problems. Yet, we seem to be driven solely by self-interest and tribalism. Another movie analogy comes to mind. Our society seems to have devolved into the groups of apes during the opening sequence of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” We cower in the dark, afraid of all the scary, unseen things outside our little cave. We scream and make threatening noises at each other from opposite sides of the watering hole. And if you remember how that particular act of the film ended, it didn’t take much of an external push for one group to start clonking the other group on the head with clubs.

Selective memory is such a wonderful tool. It can be used to justify just about any position a person might want to take, because they refuse to acknowledge anything that might suggest that they are wrong.

Perhaps we should start writing ourselves notes on our bodies so that we actually remember what actually happened.

**Corrected, many thanks to Athenawise. I should be ashamed. I call myself a movie buff and get the actor wrong, even after I looked it up in IMDB. Shame on me. I blame the sinus medicine....

There’s nothing like hyping a totally imaginary threat to get people worked up right before an election.

This approach has been the staple of the Republican Party for quite a while now. But it seems to me that, for such an approach to really work well, your “threat” that you are pumping, the one that only Republicans can save the country from, should at least have a hint of plausibility to it. Otherwise, it would seem that people would either ignore you or laugh at you.

This one from Newt Gingrich (from Washington Monthly) really takes the cake, it is so jaw droppingly stupid.

[P]erhaps the former House Speaker's loudest applause [at the Values Voter Summit] came when he weighed in on the controversial Islamic center and Mosque proposed to be built near Ground Zero, declaring, "We as Americans don't have to tolerate people who are supportive of violence against us, building something at the site of the violence."

"This is not about religious liberty, if they want to build that mosque in the South Bronx, frankly they need the jobs," he continued. "But I am totally opposed to any effort to impose Sharia on the United States, and we should have a federal law that says under no circumstance, in any jurisdiction in the United States, will Sharia be used in any court to apply to any judgment made about American law."

I won’t even go into the extreme effort being made by the wingnuts of this country to equate Islam with the crazy people who carried out the attacks on the World Trade Centers. That’s ridiculous. I could just as easily equate Christianity with Timothy McVie’s attack on the government building in Oklahoma City. Same thing, right?

But that’s not the point here. Gingrich, after setting up the table with a totally false equivalency, then makes an even more ridiculous jump to building a “mosque” (which it isn’t) to trying to impose Sharia Law on the United States. This is such a threat, in Gingrich’s mind, that he thinks we should have a federal law to prevent such an imposition of law based in religion.

My first response was, what the hell is he talking about? Is this a threat? Is anyone saying this at all? But then, don’t all our laws already have something like that as their basis? We have the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federal Code of Regulations, we have more laws than we can shake a stick at. They are all written down and cannot be just brushed aside, no matter what anyone would like to try to replace them with. They must be amended, each in their own particular way. Does Newt actually believe that some federal judge or something is, all of a sudden, going to just make a ruling and impose a system of law based on the Islamic religion on the United States? Does he really think it is that easy? He must, because he apparently thinks we need a new federal law to make sure that doesn’t happen.

I can’t believe this person was actually the Speaker of the House. Either he has absolutely no idea how the federal government actually works (which, I suppose, may be possible) or else he has decided that he is going to cynically try to hype up a non-existent threat to try to get the right wing base voters so scared of Muslims they are almost ready to crap in their pants. I just find this so pathetic and immoral. Gingrich knows that this isn't even a remote possibility, and yet, there he is, in the national press, saying this kind of disgusting crap.

Why is this man still considered a credible politician? A national press with any sort of self-respect would have called bullshit on this guy long ago. Yet, he continues to show up on television and hold press conferences where his insane ramblings are duly copied down by a willing press.

But I think the thing I am most disappointed in is that many of the people in this country actually believe this disgusting crap. A very large percentage of this country are perfectly willing to let themselves get manipulated and stampeded by very cynical and crass politicians. This country has willingly given up our ability to work in the realm of facts and logic. The United States is becoming the ultimate Skinner Box. Push a button, watch the freakout.

(Sorry for the light posting of late. I have been on a couple of business trips, back to back, and it took me some time to get prepared for them. I'll try to do better in the future.)

I am pretty much to the point.....

I think that we should just go ahead and give these stupid, hateful assholes the keys to the government and get it over with. Then, one of two things would happen. The first would be that the rest of the country would realize how crazy these hateful assholes really are and the adults would grab the reins of power back and never again let any of them anywhere a job of power, not even dogcatcher.

The other possibility would be that the United States of America would turn into a third world theocratic police state (with a huge military and nuclear weapons) where only white, rich people matter. Yeah, that isn't a very nice future, but crap, that's where a lot of the country wants us to go, so let's just get it over with. Then the rest of the world can ignore us or maybe even invade us when we start indiscriminately dropping bombs on countries we don't like. Mexicans would quite coming here looking for work, because there wouldn't be any. Our entire media would resemble Fox News and the rest of television would be "reality" shows where white assholes try to stab other white assholes in the back while trying to win lots of money by showing anyone watching what assholes they really are. Maybe the rest of us would then really pick up and move to Canada, Australia, Ireland or whatever country would put up with someone who hails from a country run by rich, white assholes with nuclear bombs.

I think we should elect Newt Gingrich president and get it all over with. He would probably have a job for Sarah Palin, maybe Minister of Propaganda. Everyone that hasn't left the country or is in jail or camps could have all sorts of fun tweeting each other about how patriotic they all are.

Bitter? Cynical? Me? Pffftt....

Todd Schorr, surrealist and observer of pop culture.

I saw an exhibit of Mr. Schorr's paintings in San Jose, California in 2009. It was pretty trippy, indeed. Being a film buff, and a 1950's bad sci-fi film buff at that, I found that some of his works just rang a bell with me. I love the one based around King Kong. You can see, if you look, Magilla Gorilla, the big metal Kong robot from that Japanese Toho release, "King Kong Escapes", and the artist himself as a little boy in front of a black and white television screen, watching King Kong. Click on the photos and get a larger version, and then go look at the detailed images in each of these paintings. There is a lot of stuff there. Even better, go visit his home page here.

Unorganized, completely random non-political thoughts on a dreary, overcast Sunday morning.

- I think that all the television networks should just go ahead and get where they obviously want to go, which is to take over the lower third of the television screen and broadcast commercials 100% of the time, even while the main programming is ongoing. They are almost there anyway. They might as well go ahead and go that last mile right now and get it over with. Hey, they could even run commercials DURING commercials! Just think of the additional revenue!

- Why does the Sci-Fi Channel (excuse me, SyFy) show professional wrestling? Does anyone actually watch those Ghost Hunter shows where all I can see happening on the previews is a bunch of people filmed with night vision equipment whispering to each other and yelling “What was that?!?” Why does the Arts and Entertainment Channel show absolutely nothing related to the arts, or even entertainment? Why doesn’t the History Channel show any history? Why is there a goddam reality show on every single specialty channel on television?

- Airlines are now charging 40 bucks if you would like “UP TO six more inches of legroom”, a chance to get in line early and if you want to pay more money to earn more frequent flyer miles so you can subject yourself to more of the same torture you are currently going through sometime in the near future.

- My computer keeps asking me if I want to download a new version of this or that, such as iTunes or my e-mail, without telling me what the new version is going to do for me or any existing problems that I might currently have that this new software will fix. Why would I want to install something that I don’t even know what it does for me and the current version works fine? Is our society now so spring loaded to accept anything new related to electronics or software that we don’t even ask WHY first?

- Do the voice actors and actresses that do English dubbing of Japanese anime feel stupid or foolish when they are making those really stupid, squeaky voices? The overbearing, highly authoritative and/or menacing voices sound pretty silly, too.

- Speaking of feeling silly, did Jimmy Johnson of NFL and NASCAR fame feel ridiculous when he was filming those commercials for Extendz, those “penis-enhancing” pills with that young, really nice looking female “reporter?” Because if I were to try something like that, I believe I would have died of embarrassment right there, on the spot.

- Except for people who own stock in the huge corporations that own movie studios, why does anyone care how much money a movie earned on any given weekend? Is this any indication, at all, about how good a movie this might be? Whatever happened to critical reviews as an indicator of the worth of any particular film. Money? That’s all it’s about, even for the audiences? “Ooohh! Iron Man 2 earned eighty trillion dollars this week! I have to go see that one!”

- Players fighting during a baseball game garners the participants a fine and a suspension. Players fighting during a hockey game earns them five minutes in the “penalty box.” Football players will do almost anything rather than admit they are hurt. They will continue to play through all sorts of pain and blood. Soccer players (the OTHER football players) will scream, collapse on the field (sorry, pitch) and writhe around for minutes, sometimes requiring people to come out and carry them off with a stretcher, all because they got bumped or clipped by a player on the opposing team. Universities pay millions of dollars for coaches’ salaries and for upgrades to stadiums, which mostly include luxury boxes for those wealthy corporate interests. Those same universities get millions of dollars from television contracts, wealthy donors and requiring “donations” for those sports minded individuals who would like season tickets. Yet, the players get absolutely nothing other than a chance at a mostly free education. Cities, communities and states build huge, lavish sports arenas and stadiums with all or mostly all public funds, all to benefit obscenely rich team owners. I have no real observation here, other than to say, not only are Americans way too into sporting events, we aren’t even consistent. But then, we apparently don’t care. Go team! Rah!

- eBay really sucks. I refuse to use Paypal, but they now require it. Why? Because they can make more money, as they just happen to own Paypal. What a surprise. Is there anything in this country anymore that isn’t driven by the desire to extort the maximum amount of money from the general public as humanly possible?

- And finally, a bit about the Hardy Boys. You know, those brilliant kids who solved every sort of mystery that came their way and apparently stayed in high school for about 45 years? Those books were one thing that really got me through childhood and also taught me that reading was enjoyable. I know that the target audience of those books were, shall we say, less than critical. But really... Frank and Joe were not all that brilliant. They were extremely lucky. “Clues”, as they called them, just fell into their laps. They happened to be walking along and hear a conversation that just happened to relate to the case their famous dad was working on. They just happened to find a notebook with everything that the criminal they were chasing had every written down or thought of. Everything that happened to them was related. And their parents! What terrible parents! Sure, let them go out at all hours of the night and end up getting tied up or shot at by desperate criminals. Sure, go explore some abandoned mines in the hope you might find some gold that has been missing for 40 years. Just be careful, don’t get caught in any mine collapses and be sure to be home for dinner. Sheesh.

Terrible truth in humor.

From Very Demotivational.

Who do conservatives hate? Mexicans or Muslims? I forgot.

They keep changing. For most of the summer, there was high hysteria about illegal immigrants and immigrants in general. It got to be where any immigrant was equated with illegal immigration. It was one big mass freak out where conservatives were howling about fixing the immigration problem, sealing the borders, building a fence, etc. etc. Mexicans were taking over ranches in Texas. Headless corpses were being found in Arizona. (Neither of which turned out to be true, of course.) Illegal immigrants were going to be the downfall of the United States.

Then came the uproar about the building of a mosque, which is really a community center with a swimming pool and a basketball court, at “ground zero”, which turns out to be two block away, further than a strip club and a couple of other, small mosques. That is now the freak out. People in Missouri, Wisconsin, Tennessee and California are so freaked out that there have been protests and violence against mosques in communities in those states, which are not even close to “ground zero.”




I was not around at the start of WWII. But this seems so much a replay of our fear, paranoia and xenophobia that occurred back in the 40's, after the start of the war. The Japanese Empire, being run essentially by the military, bombed our navel forces at Pearl Harbor. The national trauma and confusion was, no doubt, extremely high. We were hurt and wanted to hurt back. Luckily, there was the Japanese Empire sitting there, smirking at us. Declaring war on them was easy. But what else did we do? On the west coast of the United States, the government rounded up American citizens who just happened to be of Japanese heritage, made them give up all their belongings and forced them into internment camps. Let me repeat that. The U.S. government put American citizens, who had done nothing wrong except share some genetic heritage with our enemy, into camps. They were surrounded by barbed wire and guards with guns. Even small children were put away, all to help sooth our national hurt and suspicion of anyone who didn’t look like us.



Did the U.S. put people of German heritage in camps? No. But American citizens of Japanese heritage were rounded up and deprived of their liberty. What was the difference? The real difference, in my mind, was that people of Japanese heritage DIDN'T LOOK LIKE US. They were strange, they were foreign. We were hurting after Pearl Harbor and these people, these American citizens who owned their own businesses, paid taxes, went to school, had sons in the military, looked like our enemy. Japanese = enemy. It was so easy, especially since it reinforced the thinking of many people anyway. If Germany had bombed our Navy in a sneak attack that killed thousands of people on a Sunday morning who were doing nothing more than just sitting around or going to church, whatever one does in Hawaii on a Sunday morning, would we have rounded up American citizens of German heritage? We will never know, but I very sincerely doubt it. Germans looked like us. Japanese people, even third generation American citizens, didn't.

What is going on now? People are now trying to equate anyone of the Muslim faith with a bunch of evil terrorists. People are being attacked because they are Muslims. Politicians who should know better are saying, in the national press, that there shouldn’t be any mosques built in the U.S., period. And, for the most part, these are the same people who adore the Constitution when it comes to the freedom to own and carry guns. Brown skin, thick accent, "strange" religion (i.e., not Christian or Jewish) is now equated with terrorists. Yes, let's all focus our anger and hatred of anyone who doesn't look like us at another group of innocent people! That's the American spirit! Kill the infidel before he kills us!

If the current crop of Republicans were in total control of the government right now, meaning the presidency and both Houses of Congress, do you think there might be a danger of the government trying to do the same thing to people of the Muslim faith, even though they are American citizens, that the government did to people of Japanese heritage back in the 40’s? Because, based on the rhetoric that I am hearing, that would be a distinct possibility. Once a mob mentality takes hold, it is very difficult to stop it. I find this very reminiscent of an old Twilight Zone episode, "The Monsters Are Due On Maple St." One line from that episode is very relevant in this discussion.

"You're standing out here all set to crucify someone! You're all set to find a scapegoat! You're all desperate to point some kind of a finger at a neighbor! Well, believe me, the only thing that will happen is we're going to eat each other up alive!"

Our country should be better than this.

Photos from here.

Ignorance is patriotic!

It must be, for a huge percentage of the population of the United States to believe what they do. I just do not see how people with any sort of power of rational thought to believe what they do and to be so easily manipulated by ignorant or immoral people. I knew that many people in this country were going to go bonkers when Barak Obama, a Democrat and a black man, was elected president. I actually thought at the time that this would be rather fun to watch. A right wing meltdown! Ha! Boy, do I regret that feeling now. I have never felt less like I am having fun, ever in my entire life. This is like watching the entire country go down Alice’s rabbit hole.

I was watching a number of older Daily Show episodes last night using the “On Demand” feature of my cable television. That’s kind of nice, as you get to fast forward through the commercials. I also don’t really like watching the interviews that he does as the last segment. I usually just watch the first and second segments, as those are the ones that contain the gems. But I was getting more and more depressed as I watched these last night. Yeah, Stewart is as funny and biting as always. But the targets of his derision were getting to me. John Boehner, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, tea-partiers, on and on, ad infinitum. That’s really depressing that we have so many seemingly crazy and/or moronic people (and, in Beck’s case, add “messianic”) in positions of power and influence. After watching about four or five shows, I couldn’t take it anymore, I was so depressed.

Democrats may be resigning themselves to losing control of the House in November, and the Senate now appears to be in play as well. This is beyond insane in my rational, logic-based universe. How can anyone possibly vote for Republicans, especially of the tea-party variety, after what happened during the Bush years? I cannot fathom how this can possibly be.

My erstwhile posting partner here at Barking Rabbits and good friend has expressed her opinion, when I have made similar plaintive wails in the past, that my problem is exactly because I am looking for answers in the rational, logic-based universe. The answers are not there.

That’s really what is the problem here and why this feels, to me, to be such a hopeless situation. There are essentially two camps out there, neither one of them understanding the other’s position. To me, many of the statements made and positions taken by the right-wing these days seems to be completely and utterly insane. Yet, they think the exact same thing about me. I had a conversation, and I use the word “conversation” in the context that words were exchanged, but exactly zero understanding was involved, with an old friend recently. He has turned out to be hugely conservative and I am pretty liberal, when measured against the rest of the country, I guess. When we were younger, perhaps our worldviews hadn’t coalesced to this point, or maybe it just didn’t matter, as we were concentrating on other things. We talked, and it got a little heated. Even several weeks after, I still do not understand his position, because many things he said seem to be completely contradictory. Yet, even though he is a very logical person in his engineering career, these contradictions either didn’t bother him or else he didn’t think they were contradictory. We had no understanding of each other’s positions, and never will.

That’s why I feel the current situation is so hopeless. It seems as if the polarization will only continue to grow. I see no way out of this, except for some not very pleasant resolutions. The one that I believe to be most likely is that our arguing, infighting, trying to minimize each other, will continue to grow until physical violence becomes the norm. We are on the brink of that right now. There are many good examples, almost all coming from the anger and hatred of the rightwing. The most recent example of this is the attack of a Muslim cabdriver in New York by a drunk, angry white guy who apparently harbored a deep grudge against Muslims. This is only going to continue to escalate until this country is so involved in our conservative vs. liberal free-for-all that this country will continue its slide toward complete irrelevance on the world stage. Our rich people will continue to get richer, our middle class will continue to disappear and our poor will continue to get poorer. In the absence of a French Revolution-style uprising against the gentry of this country, our society is going to evolve into this stratified, wealth/class based system of haves and have-nots. That it what I see as a likely outcome. That is, unless the looming catastrophe of global climate change doesn’t get us first.

Enough of this maudlin attempt at prophesying a very uncertain future, and back to more current, but still incomprehensible, events. Today, Glenn Beck is holding his “Reclaim Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. I won’t go over everything that has gone on to this point. I am sure, if you are reading something like this and have made it this far, you are well aware of what I am talking about. I just cannot fathom how Beck and his followers can possibly think that they are “reclaiming” the civil rights movement. A white guy with both national radio and television programs and who makes millions of dollars a year is actually comparing himself to Dr. Martin Luther King. This is the guy who said that our first black president has a “deep seated hatred of white people” and who thinks “social equality” is some sort of socialist plot. My reaction, in my rational, logic-based universe, is “What kind of lunatic is this guy? Does he know nothing of history?” Yet, he has sold this vision to thousands if not millions of his followers.

Back stated that he is not going to have a long prepared speech, but only going in with a few notes, so that if “He” wants to speak through Beck, “He will have the opportunity.” That is what Glenn Beck said on his radio program. I am presuming that Beck is saying that he is going to channel God during this rally, so that Beck will be the instrument of God’s will, or something like that. Again, my reaction is, “This guy is a messianic megalomaniac.” But hardly anyone except for people like Keith Olbermann points this out. Everyone else apparently either agrees with Beck or else prefers to just let him skate on this point. In my universe, Beck would be nothing more than one of those crazy people in need of a bath, shouting about the end of the world on a downtown street corner and a few passersby throw a few coins in the bowl in front of him. Yet, thousands of people are traveling a long way to here this guy speak.

I really thought I was overwhelmed with this insanity of this situation during the Bush administration. I didn’t realize that all these crazy people were being relatively well behaved, as “their people” were in power. I didn’t realize how much they could dial up “the crazy” when a black Democrat was elected to the presidency. I just didn’t realize how insane this situation could become.

This is why I haven’t been blogging recently. I feel overwhelmed, and cannot even begin to wrap my head around what is going on in this country. It is beyond my comprehension and therefore, I find it very difficult, as well as futile, to try to write anything about it. I am about to the point where all I am doing is hunkering down in my foxhole and keeping my head down. I am to the age where I can now see retirement from my job as a very real concern in a few years. Not for a while, but it is no longer a nebulous concept. I hope our society holds together for the next 20 years or so. After that, I suppose I can say that I had a good run and I was relatively lucky not to experience the huge upheavals that human culture goes through with more regularity than we would like to admit. I missed the Vietnam War. I was not in Europe during the first half of the 20th Century. I didn’t live during in the Middle East during the Crusades. I was not a Native American during the time that European settlers were taking their land and isolating and killing their population. No, I have had a relatively easy life. I never have had to worry about where my next meal was coming from and whether I was going to have a warm, dry place to sleep that night. I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.

But I am very concerned about what kind of world my daughter is going to find herself in when she becomes an adult and has to face these issues for herself.

Random thought for Saturday morning.

The U.S. government seems to be really good at indicting famous people, such as Martha Stewart and most recently Roger Clemens. But it seems to really kind of suck at actually going after big time lawbreakers in the government. Torture became standard operating procedure when it broke all sort of treaties the U.S. had signed onto. Politicizing the Dept. of Justice under the Bush administration? No big deal. Illegal wiretaps? Yep, that's O.K. too.

Yeah, there have been a few elected officials that eventually serve time for their misdeeds. Randy "Duke" Cunningham is still in the clink, I believe.

I agree that lying to Congress isn't really a wise thing to do. But really, doesn't the government have anything better to do than go after Roger Clemens?

Whatever happened to.....?

I am introducing a new featurette here at Barking Rabbits, which may or may not go past this first entry. It's called "Whatever happened to...?" and you might be able to guess from the lead-in what it might be about.

Whatever happened to the time when public figures were caught, by indisputable evidence, contradicting themselves in public, and then that figure at least felt guilty enough or embarrassed enough to try to apologize, or explain, or maybe just go away for a while? Now, all that happens is that the contradiction is ignored by most everyone and it is quickly forgotten. If the guilty discusses it at all, it seems to always be in the form of blaming someone else for not understanding or being too sensitive.

An illustrative example of how the Republican Attack Machine works.

As everyone who is alive in America today, the “Ground Zero mosque”, which is neither at Ground Zero nor a mosque, is a big issue. Just why it is a big issue is beyond the intellectual capacity for most of us to understand, but then, that’s probably our fault. We have tried to understand things that are going on in this country from a logical perspective. And that just ain’t happenin’.

So, here’s how this works. Some tiny little person with a loud voice (in this case, Pam Atlas of Atlas Shrugs, look up the link youself) generates some outrage over something ridiculous and even something that conservatives themselves had no problems with a few months ago. Keep at it until it seeps into more prominent conservative channels, and then, by definition, the so-called “main stream media” that everyone just KNOWS is quite liberal because conservatives keep saying so, must pick the “story” up and run with it. It becomes a snowball set rolling down a hill. In very short order, it has become an avalanche that no one, including the President of the United States and the Majority Leader in the Senate, can avoid.

However, in this case, it appears that things really are getting out of control. A pipe bomb was set off in a mosque in Florida, and it was just luck or bad planning by the bomber that people were not killed. Republican leaders who worry about how this might play out in the elections (I am pretty certain it isn’t because they have a conscience or a sense of right and wrong), have decided that this might be getting out of hand and are trying to pull this monster, which was entirely of their own making, back.

From HuffPo:

As the discussion over the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" has moved from a debate over religious freedom to one about the place of Muslims in American society, a question left largely unanswered is what role the issue will play in the 2010 elections.

In recent days, top GOP strategists have begun expressing a sense of caution about candidates for office pushing the issue too forcefully. On Monday, for instance, Ed Gillespie, the former chair of the Republican National Committee and current point man on a host of election efforts, told the Huffington Post that he expects the "mosque" debate to ebb as an a electoral issue.

"I suspect it does recede," said Gillespie. "But the long-term impact is that it is one more example of how President Obama views most Americans...

I love this. Fabricate a totally ridiculous outrage, get the entire country in a lather about it, and then blame the President of the United States for it. Yeah, this is ALL ABOUT how President Obama views “most Americans.”

What a goddam stupid country we live in right now.

Native American Paper Sculptures

Sculptures Designed and Made by Allen & Patty Eckman. Please visit their home page here.

















These stunningly detailed sculptures may only be made from paper – but they are being snapped up by art fans for tens of thousands of pounds. The intricate creations depict Native American scenes and took up to 11 months to make using a specially formulated paper.

Husband and wife team Allen and Patty Eckman put paper pulp into clay moulds and pressurize it to remove the water. The hard, lightweight pieces are then removed and the couple painstakingly add detailed finishing’s with a wide range of tools.

Allen said: "We create Indians partly because my great, great grandmother was a Cherokee and my family on both sides admire the native Americans... I work on the men and animals and Patty does the women and children" explains Allen. "I enjoy most doing the detail. The paper really lends itself to unlimited detail. I'm really interested in the Indians' material, physical and spiritual culture and that whole period of our nation's history I find fascinating. From the western expansion, through the Civil War and beyond is of great interest to me."

Allen explained their technique: "It should not be confused with papier mache. The two mediums are completely different. I call what we do 'cast paper sculpture. Some of them we create are life-size and some we scale down to 1/6 life-size. These sculptures are posed as standing nude figures and limited detailed animals with no ears, tails or hair. We transform them by sculpting on top of them - creating detail with soft and hard paper we make in various thicknesses and textures. We have really enjoyed the development of our fine art techniques over the years and have created a process that is worth sharing. There are
many artists and sculptors who we believe will enjoy this medium as much as we have."

More unusual art: Sand sculpting and beach art

Photos from Popular Mechanics, of all places.

Facts, data, opinions, yelling really loudly and multiple alternative versions of reality.

I'm sorry, but I seem incapable of writing anything. "Not being able to write" and "blogging" don't really seem to fit all that well together. Sort of like "wanting to be an actor" and "being overcome with stage fright." It doesn't really work.

I suppose part of this is due to the fact that my job mostly entails reading and writing stuff, all day long. It's rather difficult to work up the enthusiasm anymore to come home after work or get up in the mornings on the weekend and think, "Hey, I really want to write more stuff!" After eating spaghetti three meals a day for six weeks straight, you really don't want to have any more fu*king spaghetti.

But my big problem, as I have said before, is I am just overcome with the vapid stupidity (is there another kind?) of our society, and the devisions within in it that don't even seem to dwell in the same reality as each other, much less talk coherently and be able to find common ground. Facts are not facts anymore.... Facts are subject to whether or not they fit in with your current philosophy. Facts are now just heartfelt opinions. There is data out there on the internet that supports any damn position that you would like to take. Earth is warming up? Sure, there's lots of data to support that. Earth is cooling down? Yep, there's data for that. Unless someone takes the time to go track any piece of data (which I guess would be a datum) that they are using back to its original source, then you just stop looking when you find something that works for you. We have gone way past that old joke about lies, damn lies and statistics. You can no longer try to use data and facts to try to convince someone of the validity of your argument, because the person you are arguing with is probably armed with more "facts and data" than you are that are in complete opposition.

Is there even any such thing as "truth" anymore? Was there ever such a thing? I always believed there was. However, I am coming to believe that I was wrong. I have degrees in engineering and physics. There is a certain kind of thinking that is required to get a degree in engineering, one that starts with a set of facts or data that everyone can agree on in order to come up with a solution to any particular problem. But now, all that's out the window. It's like you got every single answer to your final exam wrong, just because your professor disagreed with your starting data points. "The Laffer Curve tells you everything you need to know about taxation!" "No, the Laffer Curve is widely discredited!" What is it? It depends on what you go read and want to believe in the first place.

The consequences of these dueling sets of realities is that the two sides, or however many there are, will never, ever be able to agree on anything. Never. We are all now obligated to view whatever facts and data might pop up in front of our faces through the filter of our already preconceived notions. It is fits, then great. We can absorb that new one for future use. If it doesn't fit, then you toss it out without thinking anything further about it, or else maybe chalk it up to the partisanship of the "other side," who are obviously a bunch of malicious liars and/or complete morons.

In my universe, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are morons, Beck is more unhinged than Palin, but morons all the same. Others, however, think that both of them are saviors and conveyors of the absolute and unvarnished truth. How can this be that people can have this big of a difference of opinion about something that I think is so cut and dried? How could ANYONE with an education over about the fifth grade thing that Sarah Palin is anything other than a lazy attention whore who usually has no idea what they hell she is talking about? It's beyond me, other than to go back to my original assertion that there are no absolute truths anymore. There is no such thing as unbiased, rational thought. Every single thing must be seen through the filter of preconceived ideas before any sort of judgment is passed. If your particular reality requires that Sarah Palin is some sort of Goddess for Truth, Justice and the American Way, then that is what she is.

This is not how I think a civilized, thoughtful society should function, but that's how it goes these days, even for most of our mass media. And without a responsible mass media that doesn't use those same filters as their target audience, I must admit, there is very little chance of this country ever having a knowledgeable population that elects intelligent and knowledgeable people to political office in order to solve the huge problems facing this country if our society that does not have an active, truthful media that will accept the notion that they are there to help uncover the truth and not just to report that every story has two sides. No, partially because of our incompetent media that loves conflict, juicy scandal and playing to the audience in order to make as much advertising dollars as they possible can for their corporate masters, we can't even agree on whether things are even problems anymore, much less come up with ways to fix them.

To get back to my original starting point for this point, it is a very long way of saying, of course, that it is extremely difficult for me to blog about much of anything anymore when I have completely given up hope for our society. I have absolutely no idea where it might be headed. It could be headed for some 1984-esque world where facts are things to be manipulated and no dissent or even appearance of non-conformity is tolerated. We could be headed for some complete meltdown of orderly society when global climate change disrupts our food and energy supply and distribution to the point that we have no functional government at the national or even state level, a la The Road Warrior or the myriad of other post-apocalyptic films of the past 40 years. We could keep stumbling around just like we are, slowly sinking into the morass of our own stupidity and inability to see past the ends of our collective noses in order to maintain the purity of whatever vision of reality to which we subscribe. It could be a combination of little bits of all of those, or it could be something completely different. Probably the one thing that won't happen is what everyone was worried about in the 50's and 60's, there won't be a global thermonuclear exchange by two or more superpowers that wipes civilization off the face of the planet. That's probably not going to happen anymore. But, whatever happens, I firmly believe 1) it isn't going to be pretty, and 2) nothing we can do now can change it and only part of that is due to the fact that we don't want to change it.

So, that's why my blogging has fallen off to a whisper these days. It's pretty difficult to write something snarky or insightful or hopeful or full of passion if I have given up hope. What's the point? The last few weeks, I have engaged in active isolationism, and I have found myself being a lot less unhappy, frustrated and angry than I have been. If our society wants to commit suicide by mass stupidity, then who am I to complain about it?

I am just going to go bury my head in the sand over here for a while. Poke me in the butt if something happens that you think I might need to know about.

Future mass migration of Mexicans to U.S. because of global climate change?

From a story in the Seattle Times:

Climbing temperatures are expected to raise sea levels and increase droughts, floods, heat waves and wildfires.
Now, scientists are predicting another consequence of climate change — mass migration to the United States.

Between 1.4 million and 6.7 million Mexicans could migrate by 2080 as climate change reduces crop yields and agricultural production in Mexico, according to a study published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The number could amount to 10 percent of the current population of Mexicans ages 15 to 65.

"Assuming that the climate projections are correct, gradually over the next several decades heading toward the end of the century, it becomes one of the more important factors in driving Mexicans across the border, all other things being equal," said study author Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.

Of course, Oppenheimer acknowledged, changes could occur in U.S. immigration and border policy or in Mexico's economy and its reliance on agriculture. But he said this was a simplified first step in studying the effect of global warming on migration.

Boy, I cannot wait to see what conservatives do with this one. On one hand, this feeds into their paranoia about Mexicans coming to “take over the U.S.” That’s what they are always warning us about. And this one actually might be based in some sort of fact and logic-based analysis! That certainly isn't the case for most of the other BS that they routinely become hysterical about. But, on the other hand, in order to use this as any sort of credible threat, those same conservatives must admit that global climate change is not some sort of liberal plot and will indeed have real and lasting effects across the world. Climate change will eventually lead to mass migrations of entire populations.

What’s a poor conservative to do?

Conservatives in this country want to be lied to.

I had been rolling this concept in my mind around for a bit, trying to get up the initiative to actually write a blog post about it. Of course, to quote Uncle Bonsai, “There’s no such thing as an original thought.” Doug J of Balloon Juice has it all right there.

I used to believe this sort of thing, that it was shameful, for example, that Fox provided such a low level of journalism to its captive conservative audience. My thinking was that conservatives watched Fox and listened to crazy conservative talk radio not because they enjoyed being lied to, but because they enjoyed overtly conservative media and Fox/Rush/etc. was what they had to choose from; the lying and low level of discourse, I reasoned, might very well be bugs rather than features.

Well, I was wrong, they’re features. Compare the ratings of Shep Smith with the ratings for Glenn Beck. Compare the traffic numbers for Hot Air, Drudge, and Instapundit with those of FrumForum, The American Scene, and Eunomia. And note that the Daily Caller traffic went way up with when they started in with the JournoList silliness (whatever one thinks of JournoList, the way that Daily Caller is presenting the story is extremely dishonest).

Given the choice, conservatives as a group will go for the dumber, more dishonest, more insane option. There’s a market for good-faith conservative media, but that market is liberals. Who watches/reads the faux-good faith propaganda of David Brooks? Totebaggers. Who reads The American Scene and Eunomia? People like me.

Conservatives, by and large, have no interest in what you or I or actual journalists consider journalism. It’s telling that when Clark Hoyt and Andy Alexander muse about pleasing conservative readers, they don’t talk about covering legitimate stories that conservative readers are interested in, they talk (exclusively) about following ginned-up Breitbart controversies.

And that about sums it all up, I think. There really isn’t any market for the truth these days, because somewhere between 25% and 50% of this country doesn’t want to know the truth. They really don’t want to know what was really behind the Iraq war, or how the United States of America came to be one of the world’s foremost proponents and practitioners of torture. They don’t want to know what caused the financial meltdown of a couple of years ago, and whether or not the policies enacted by some Republicans and then taken up by the Democrats really helped or not. They don’t want to know the truth that ACORN was a small, underfunded organization trying to help low-income people get their voices heard in government and was in no way some giant secretive monster manipulating elections behind the scenes.

No, apparently most conservatives of this country want to hear stuff that feeds into their already formed ideas and positions. Government is evil. Democrats are evil. Guns are great and everyone should be allowed to carry them anywhere they want. Big business can really do no wrong, and when something bad does happen (e.g., the huge oil spill in the Gulf, 29 miners killed in West Virginia coal mine explosion), then it was just “an accident”, “God’s Will” or, once again, the fault of the government for too much regulation. All events, everything that anyone has ever said or done, all can be manipulated to fit into these narratives, so that everything, absolutely everything, confirms to the conservative mind what they already “know.”

Now, this is not to say that there are not liberals and progressives that exhibit these same traits. No doubt, there are. I am always questioning myself about this. I don’t actually find anything that makes me change my mind on certain questions, I must admit, but at least I am asking myself the right questions. I think most liberals and progressives really do want to know the truth about their government and their country. If a Democrat is behind something underhanded, then I firmly believe that most of us would want that person gone, immediately. Mostly… Right now, many of us are torn by the Obama adminstration. They are making it mightily difficult for liberals and progressive to give their unbridled support to an administration that seems determined to always “go for the middle,” even when that means shortchanging the very people who supported them in the first place. And we really don’t like the fact that President Obama is intent on ignoring the wrongdoings and lawlessness of the Bush administration, and even carrying on some of the worst of the previous administration’s policies.

But, to go back to my original point, when conservatives will never, ever make any concessions of wrongdoing and try to use every single thing that happens as some sort of cudgel to bash the other side over the head, even at the expense of the country as a whole, then, ladies and gentlemen, we have an ungovernable country. We simply cannot fix the huge problems we are facing because one side doesn’t want to admit they are problems, or else they do believe they are problems but don’t have any policy that would actually address those problems other than to attack the Democrats for actually trying to do something.

I can’t say that President Obama and the Democrats haven’t gotten anything done in the face of this overwhelming opposition to everything. There have been a number of amazing achievements made since Barack Obama took office. But what could have been has been significantly watered down, and with the Democrats a sure bet to not have anywhere near the required “super-majority” in the Senate after January of next year, then it’s a good bet that major achievements will be few and far between.

I am extremely disgusted and disappointed by the almost everyone in our society today. I suppose I should consider myself some sort of wild-eyed idealist, as what I believe in seems to be so far out of the mainstream these days. By looking around the blogosphere, I can see I am not alone. There are many knowledgeable, educated and well spoken people that seem to believe in the same things that I do. But I have come to believe that we are not going to get there. Not in the time of Barack Obama, and not ever. The tide is just that overwhelming. Huge Money, in the form of powerful lobbyist groups, mega-corporations and wealthy donors that want to see their own agenda enacted, is just too much to deal with.

This country is on a path to mediocrity, and maybe even worse. But at the very least, we are on the downside slope of the curve. Yes, the United States will remain a power in the world, just because of the money and power that is concentrated here, along with a huge consumer market. (How long that huge consumer market lasts is an unknown, given all the forces that are at work undermining the capacity of 90% of the population of this country to actually be consumers of anything past the essentials for living.) The argument for “American exceptionalism” will become less and less persuasive, if it ever were a real argument, and more and more just some myth that hardly anyone believes in but keeps telling each other anyway, just like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

Here's what I find so discouraging about the Shirley Sherrod story.

It's the reactions, or non-reactions, from everyone after it has been laid out so plain about what went on and how it was exactly like what happened to ACORN and Van Jones. The reactions seem to be able to categorized like this:

1) Who, us? We didn't do anything. It's all Obama's fault anyway. Oooh!!! Look over here! Big Mexican women helping Afghans become illegal aliens! (Fox News)

2) Gee, I feel sorry for Ms. Sherrod. She certainly went through some tough times. It's the NAACP that's the racists, that's who I was going after! ((Andrew Breitbart)

3) I don't really care what the facts are, Breitbart was correct! Shirley Sherrod is a racist and deserved to lose her job! (Wingnut commentators)

4) YAWN! Well, the White House certainly overreacted, didn't they? Yes, black eye for the Obama administration. No, Breitbart is perhaps overly enthusiastic, but he really didn't do anything wrong. And we certainly aren't going to say anything bad about our brothers at Fox News. (95% of the national media)

5) Yes, we overreacted and we did Ms. Sherrod a huge disservice. It was all the media's fault, they made us overreact. (Obama administration)

6) Um.... What? We didn't see anything. (Elected Republican officials)

7) We don't care, Democrats are evil and deserve everything they get! (1/3 of the population of the United States)

I may have missed a few, but that seems to be about how it went. Yes, the left leaning blogosphere and most of the programming on MSNBC made sure that how this all went down was well documented. But in the end, no one really cared, because it STILL is not going to be the "learning moment" that we have heard mentioned. Breitbart and Fox News are not going to stop doing what they do, because that's who they are. The official media won't stop listening to them, because that would be impolite. Politicians looking to cover their butts will still overreact to really stupid fake news stories but will not work together to address the very real problems that this country has.

Geez. After everything we have been through in the last 10 years, and people are still going to vote for Republicans. I can't believe it.