Blaska's Blog: constitutionally cruel and unusual!
There is a reason the Dane County Association of Political Pundits elected me their president. (Of course, I knew they would.) I present for your amazement yet another example of my amazing powers of political prognostication.
Be sore amazed at what I wrote, three days after Barack Obama was elected President, on November 7, 2008 (a date that will LIVE ... in infamy!) -- two months before he was even inaugurated:
- I am proud of this country and my fervent hopes and best wishes go to President-elect Obama. But the notion that the Republican party is doomed or that the nation has swung to far left Nichols/Garvey-ism is ridiculous.
- There remain some things government can do well and others it cannot. Obama will expand government and prove that point, it says here. Government did not make America a wealthy and democratic nation - the people and their enterprise did.
- Remember: Republicans were dead after the Barry Goldwater massacre in 1964. They retook the White House only four years later. And that 1964 campaign sowed the seeds of an enduring philosophy: Reaganism. It remains to be seen if Obama can substitute his own "ism."
- Obama remains a re-distributionist ....
Who's your daddy, Nostradamus!? Folks, it's a gift from the Creator above. I claim no credit for it. My only hope is to use these powers for the good of all. Judging by the election results of November 2, 2010, it's working.
It's all astroturf to The Nation
I spend a good deal of my time here at the Research Center and Experimental Work Farm trying to understand my progressive-liberal acquaintances. (For they ARE my acquaintances.) They're not stupid, as a whole. (There are exceptions on both sides.) They just have a different worldview.
I do so to field-test my beliefs against my ideological adversaries before rolling them out to a grateful public via Blaska's Blog. It may surprise the chronically confused that I spend a lot of time perusing prog-lib sources. To challenge those beliefs is not cruel or "mean-spirited" -- and I hope it is not unusual. The contest of ideas in a free marketplace is what defines America.
So, I stumbled across this in The Nation, a national publication that is so traumatized by the refudiation of its principles that it now lashes out at all expressions of popular sentiment from "the masses" they once claimed to represent:
Does anyone else sense something strange is going on with the apparently spontaneous revolt against the TSA?
Now there is some graduate-level paranoia!
The Nation has proof that the "don't touch my junk" guy, John Tyner, is an operative of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, funded by the nefarious Koch brothers (who, strangely, resemble the Mario Brothers):
[Tyner] attended private Christian schools in Southern California and lives in Oceanside, a Republican stronghold next to Camp Pendleton, the largest Marine Corps base on the West Coast.
Christians! Republican strongholds! Marines! Oh my! Christians! Republican strongholds! Marines! Oh my!
But wait, the pitchman says, there's more! The founder of the (as it turns out, lightly heeded) "National Opt-Out Day,"
is no "ordinary citizen."
No, no, no. After sifting through "cached and scrubbed online LinkedIn records" The Nation has discovered that this fellow works for the -- prepare to be outraged! -- American Dental Association! I'll never floss again!
Hooray for Glenn Greenwald in Salon, who writes, on Wednesday, Nov. 24:
... the most odious premise in this smear piece [is that] anyone who doesn't quietly, meekly and immediately submit to Government orders and invasions -- or anyone who stands up to government power and challenges it -- is inherently suspect.
Doesn't that describe the "Don't Tread on Me" ethos of the tea party movement? It is the concept that our government, however well meaning, has grown "too big to fail." That America has to quit spending money it does not have on things it does not need. That the people are sovereign and cede no rights to Big Government. (See "concealed carry.")
BTW: Greenwald notes that the ACLU itself has logged over 900 complaints this month alone about the new TSA procedures.
It strikes me as unlikely that all -- or most -- of the 900 people turning to that group are astroturf "fakes" being funded by right-wing billionaires.
Not waiting for Superman in Chicago
Chicago parents are fed up with the shoddy education many of their kids are receiving in Chicago Public Schools and they're no longer being silent.
As a part of the DoneWaiting.org coalition a collection of hundreds of organizations that joined together after the release of the unflinching documentary film Waiting for 'Superman', parents protested outside the school board meeting earlier this month.
Want to bet you'll see the same thing in Madison soon enough? The people standing up to the indifference of the power structure and those who profit at the government trough (See: MTI). (Oh, my, another prediction! They just come; I have no control over it!)
The stimulus is explained
Credit to the World Wide Web:
A tourist drives through town, stops at a motel, and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect his room before he registers.
As soon as he walks upstairs, the motel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Co-op. The guy at the Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her "services" on credit. The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner. The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the traveler will not suspect anything.
At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves.
No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and looks to the future with a lot more optimism.
And that, folks, is how the government stimulus works.
