Psychopolitik 2.0

Dumb.  Just dumb:

Texas is about to make it more expensive to watch a little bump and grind.

In what some have dubbed the “pole tax,” the Lone Star State will require its 150 or so strip clubs to collect a $5-per-customer levy, with most of the proceeds going to help rape victims. The tax goes into effect on New Year’s Day.

Club owners and some of their customers say the money is going to a noble cause, but they argue that the tax infringes on their First Amendment right to freedom of expression, that it will drive some bars out of business and that it unfairly links their industry to sex crimes.

“We’ll be fine. I’ve already stopped advertising, and we’re raising our cover charges. But this is going to kill some of the smaller clubs,” said Dawn Rizos, who with her husband runs the Lodge, a Hemingway-inspired place that has exotic animal heads on the walls and is packed after Dallas Cowboys games at nearby Texas Stadium. (emphasis mine)

Well no duh on that one.  On top of the moralistic asshattery involved in assuming that access to strippers translates to rape, both small-scale operators AND customers with less money get screwed (the larger, fancier places that can afford such an expense tend to cost more already).  Besides that, there’ve already been cases of strip clubs elsewhere having charity drives voluntarily, so even if it were somehow just to wield such power in the first place — which it damn sure isn’t — it wouldn’t be necessary to any cause.

So, what right-wing religious goof is behind this one?

Supporters of the tax say they are not out to close the clubs — that would just mean less money for victims of sexual assault.

“This is an industry that largely employs women, and this gives them an opportunity to raise funds for a crime that affects women,” said state Rep. Ellen Cohen, a Houston Democrat who sponsored the bill, approved by the Legislature in May. (emphasis mine)

Whoops.  Scratch that motive…

So what are we looking at here?  A perversion of feminism?  Is Ellen someone who seriously believes, in the face of all reason, that looking at women get naked warps men into violence-prone Neanderthals?  Maybe just a garden variety prude?

“I’ve been told the fees to get into these places can be $10, $15. I don’t think another $5 is going to prevent someone from going,” said Cohen, who is also president of a women’s center that could get financing from the new law. (emphasis mine)

I wonder what percentage of that money would end up in her pocket, as opposed to actually helping anyone…

Strippers > politicians.   The fact that strippers don’t force you to give them money at gunpoint, and you actually get what you want out of the exchange makes that quite clear.

People in Dallas are praying for an interstate highway.  Loudly.

Why?  Oh, they think it’s been referred to in the bible.

Saw the video of this a few minutes ago while flipping through channels.  I laughed so hard I lost my breath.

Via Sullivan comes one more sign that people are fucking retarded.  Two words: Canned.  Air.

From a post on Ron Chusid’s site about Steve Bainbridge’s opinion of Ron Paul, for some reason followed a link to this — which turned out to be the closest thing to a sane comment posted on NRO since they locked their founder in a closet for saying “y’know, maybe the war in Iraq was a bad idea”.  The relevant bit, within a criticism of a return to the gold standard, is a description of the current situation as Frum sees it:

Right now, the United States is in the midst of a huge rebalancing of its external accounts. A big current-account deficit has begun the inevitable and ineluctable shift to a correspondingly big current-account surplus. The mechanism by which this will occur is a decline in the trade-weighted value of the US dollar. As the dollar buys less abroad, Americans will be constrained to consume fewer foreign goods and services – and foreigners will be induced to buy more from Americans.

With luck, this process will occur without a recession. The pace of domestic economic activity will continue brisk, dollar-denominated incomes will remain stable or even rise, unemployment may even decline as exports accelerate. This is what happened in 1985-86, the last time we saw a big drop in the value of the dollar.

The assumed outcome is much rosier than I’d imagine, and he doesn’t acknowledge the real reason for that account deficit in the first place (decades of attempting to rig international trade for a few, one of the ways the post-WW2 global power vacuum was filled), but the meat of it is right.  The dollar is coming down because in a way it has to, the balance really makes no sense anymore & the rest of the world is responding accordingly.

Now, the short question: say the Fed were abolished & the current fiat system were killed off, but gold itself was ruled out as the backing.  What’s behind door number three, in your opinion, and why?

The somehow-still-going myth of “liberal media”.  The corporatizing of war.  The absurdities being conducted in our name.  The internet-encouraged ability to find snark in the darkest places.  All this, boiled down for an ultimate example, to one headline:

“New York Times in Iraq: ‘Blackwater shot our dog‘”

Heh…

I’m kinda torn on this poll:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they believe the Constitution guarantees each person the right to own a gun, according to a poll released Sunday.

In all, 65 percent said they thought the Constitution ensures that right, and 31 percent said it did not. The question had a sampling error of plus-or-minus 3 points.

In a way, I suppose I should be relieved that a majority felt that way. At the same time, I can’t help but wonder what responses would’ve came out if the ones who said otherwise were asked why. Or, for that matter, if anyone, regardless of response, were asked to define a militia, or even asked the “yeah, but…” types where the authority comes from to say what type of firearm one may have.

Another curiosity of the poll: the difference between rural & urban responses:

Among rural dwellers, 73 percent said they agreed, versus 64 percent or suburban and only half (50 percent) of city dwellers who thought the same.

A casual observer would say to this “yeah, duh, probably because of the increased amount of violence in big cities”. Problem is, this isn’t asking for a judgment call on the merit of the right to bear arms, merely if it is recognized as such. As bonkers as I would see it, it is quite feasible for an honest person who happened to be opposed to private firearms ownership to acknowledge that such a right is recognized anyway. Besides, by this type of logic, freedom of speech under the 1st Amendment could be reasoned away in a cloud of smoke if you just didn’t like what most people were saying.

-John Cole notes NRO picking who they want to lose in 2008, and Huckabee trying to pass off religious bigotry as a mere lack of info.

-Glenn Greenwald takes the right-wing narrative that to be anti-neo-con is to be anti-jewish and completely obliterates it — by showing that most jews are anti-neo-con.

-Muckraker points out the legal trickery behind the destruction of those CIA torture tapes.

-Matt of ThinkProgress reveals some interesting fallout from the embrace of waterboarding: one of our own generals can now not denounce it if hypothetically Iran did it to an American pilot.

-Kos user Meteor Blades brings us another clear example of why “public” ≠ “government-controlled”: people out west are being double-taxed for “public” land access, meanwhile connected developers & oil companies get a discount.  Until the definition of a commons area goes back to the original use of the term — collectively held by the people who live on or near it & use it, w/o state involvement at all — this will continue to happen.

Apparently Iraqis are familiar with N.W.A., because the increasingly fundamentalist government there just took a policy cue from MC Ren:

The Iraqi government has ordered all policewomen to hand in their guns for redistribution to men or face having their pay withheld, thwarting a U.S. initiative to bring women into the nation’s police force.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, issued the order late last month, according to ministry documents, U.S. officials and several of the women. It affects all officers who have earned the title “policewoman” by graduating from the police academy. It does not apply to men in the same type of jobs.

Critics say the move is the latest sign of the religious and cultural conservatism that has taken hold in Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s ouster ushered in a government dominated by Shiite Muslims. Now, that tendency is hampering efforts to bring stability to Iraq by driving women from the force, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Phillips, who has led the effort to recruit female officers. [...]

Policewomen say the decree also will leave them unable to protect themselves at work or off duty. Scores of police employees, both officers and administrative workers, have been killed by insurgents. Men and women have traditionally been allowed to carry their Glock pistols with them after hours for security.

“We are considered policewomen. We face kidnapping. We could be assassinated. If anyone knew where we worked, of course they would try to do something to us,” said a 27-year-old interviewed Sunday.

But…but Freedom Is On The March™!!  Islamo-Fascism™!!  9/11™!!  Dissent Is Un-American™!!

Props.

Found another eligible entry for the “a broken clock is right twice a day” department, this one from E.J. Dionne, WaPo’s wet-noodle moderate-Dem columnist.  Here he has an educated hunch about a wedge issue for ‘08 congressional elections, starting off like so:

Want a preview of coming attractions in next year’s elections? Listen to a television ad from Bob Latta, who is trying to hold on to a traditionally Republican congressional district in Ohio’s special election today.

“Broken borders, and Washington does nothing,” the announcer intones. “Had enough? Bob Latta wants to get tough.” Latta’s “plan” includes “no amnesty for illegal immigrants,” cutting off “taxpayer-subsidized welfare benefits” and, of course, “no driver’s license.”

Latta is facing a strong challenge from Democrat Robin Weirauch, who is running on trade and health care. But he is apparently not worried that the Republican Party’s increasingly punitive approach to immigration is costing the GOP Hispanic votes. That may be because people of Hispanic origin account for only 3.8 percent of the population of Ohio’s 5th District. (emphasis mine)

From there, he goes on to point out how Hispanics are swinging heavily towards Democrats, & the difference in Hispanic population between some western states & certain house congressional districts.

As a “moderate”, E.J. inevitably plays it off as simple math, weaseling around the elephant in the room.  I, on the other hand, am militant asshole enough to point it out: the ones going all Tancredo-esque in districts w/ virtually no Hispanics are in effect telling the majority in those areas “vote for me an’ I’ll keep out dem durn messikins for good!”.  Seriously, as silly as the border panic is for the country as a whole, no one in Ohio should be thinking reconquista is around the corner.

Shorter Democratic-led House: “What’s that, Mr. Bush?  You want us to bend over AGAIN on the one issue that got us in power?  Sure thing!”:

House Democratic leaders could complete work as soon as Monday on a half-trillion-dollar spending package that will include billions of dollars for the war effort in Iraq without the timelines for the withdrawal of combat forces that President Bush has refused to accept, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday.

In a complicated deal over the war funds, Democrats will include about $11 billion more in domestic spending than Bush has requested, emergency drought relief for the Southeast and legislation to address the subprime mortgage crisis, Hoyer told a meeting of the Washington Post editorial board.

If the bargain were to become law, it would be the third time since Democrats took control of Congress that they would have failed to force Bush to change course in Iraq and continued to fund a war that they have repeatedly vowed to end.

If anyone in the private sector took this approach to their promises they’d go broke rather quickly.  How much more proof is needed that these people don’t give a fuck?

“The way you pass appropriations bills is you get agreement among all the relevant players, among which the president with his veto pen is a very relevant player,” Hoyer said. “Everybody knows he has no intention of signing anything without money for Iraq, unfettered, without constraints. I think that’s ultimately going to be the result.”

Your party runs congress, you idiot, you don’t have to pass anything to STOP something you don’t want, just deliberately fail to offer or take seriously such a bill.  It’s not like the flood of outlandish propaganda calling you obstructionist hippies that hate America is going to stop if you play nice, if you can’t screw ‘em on this one issue then what was the point of winning the elections?

They run on ending the war & restraining Bush’s panic-driven authoritarian impulses, and instead roll over for yet more spending — from someone who makes LBJ look like a tightwad already.  Pissed yet?