Psychopolitik 2.0

The other day, a bunch of nutjobs aligned with Pat Robertson and his ilk went to Wall Street, and…eh, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Apparently the 11th Commandment is “Thou shalt not acknowledge irony even when it sodomizes thy skull”.

Props.

Shorter Steve Sailer: “Can’t sleep…clown will eat me negros will rob me…”:

I intend to do in 2008 what I did during the Bush-Kerry whoop-tee-doo: write in the name of a public figure who is actually trying to solve a major, long-term problem, my friend Ward Connerly. Just as Social Security can’t afford too many retirees per worker, America won’t be able to afford its affirmative-action system when the racial ratio of minority beneficiaries per white benefactor reaches excessive levels. As America becomes majority minority (by 2042, by latest Census projection), the cost of affirmative action will become crippling. (emphasis mine)

Obviously, as someone who doesn’t support government-mandated anything, I don’t support government-mandated racial preferences.  That said, Steve’s remark is a ball of ridiculous assumptions disguised as rational argument:

1. Key difference between affirmative action and social security: one involves a transfer via taxes of money from one person to another.  The other doesn’t.
2. Hypothetically, what would happen if the ratio of minorities to whites were to pass this mythical trip wire?  Does Steve think Kwanzaa will become a federal holiday?  Wu-Tang Clan will be commissioned to rewrite the national anthem?  Serving chicken w/o hot sauce in a restaurant will be a felony?  Time to give that copy of White Man’s Burden in the DVD player a rest…
3. My question from before still stands: define “white”.

Two wars, a threatening crack-up of the US — and possibly global — economy due to funny money and fiscal cloud chasing, & a “security” apparatus digging its teeth in more by the moment, to the point where even the least observant of people notice.  And his big fear is more people merely existing in the US who don’t trace the majority of their ancestors to an arbitrary cross-section of western & northern Europe than would suit his particular tastes.  Funny…

Bonus bloggage: the article linked above is part of American Conservative’s collection of essays from various people asking who they’re voting for and why (or, if they’re not voting, why not).  In another one, Rod Dreher says the following:

The present and future economic traumas brought upon the nation by elites in both parties will minimize the role politics will play in the lives of ordinary Americans. The binge spending that Democrats and Republicans alike engaged in over the past 30 years, and the concomitant failure to be good stewards of the country’s long-term economic future, will enervate the government in the decades to come, though the growth of Leviathan in the short term is assured. Local, intermediate institutions—Burke’s little platoons—will become more important to the survival of communities. There is a rich treasury of traditionalist conservative wisdom ready to be liberated from the hegemony of the conservative establishment that failed. (emphasis mine)

I would elaborate on the following comment, but IMO it wouldn’t sound right hemmed and hawed about so fuck it: what stops someone who’d consider the above from shifting towards anarchy?  Or a radical decentralism at the least?  Seriously, delete the word “conservative” from that and read it again.

Where did the archetype in those stupid beer commercials of the fantasy cute chick that loves to Hang with the Dudes to the extent that they match them in brew tolerance & even wear the team colors to sports events (they fill out those jerseys rather well too) come from?  If these type of women actually exist, where?

Related note: “drinkability” is different things to different people, obviously.  For me it’d be reflected best in something like this.

*laughs pre-emptively just in case a construction worker named Robert shows up at a McCain rally and gets referred to as, well, y’know…*

Among the various scare tactics used against Obama — a candidate I personally find unremarkable, as I’ve explained here numerous times — the one calling him a “socialist” amuses me in particular. With the rampant nationalization and government aided consolidation that’s gone on, conservatives throwing around “socialist” has become so garbage that even Hugo Chavez has standing to laugh. Yet, there’s a deeper issue behind the much-deserved snark…

Anyone familiar with historic conservatism (read: longtime philosophical stances that would fly over the heads of the average Limbaugh listener) knows their number one stated value is Order. Yes, capital O. To the conservatives of those dusty history books, of the pre-mass media era, stability and calm are freakin’ awesome, no matter what. That in mind, consider what has tended to happen when the balance of wealth in a nation has shot apart past a certain point. Think about it, picture the uprisings and outpourings of rage, the indiscriminate bloodying, just let them simmer in your head for a bit.

Now, contrary to popular belief among the right-wing, we were never close to a communist overthrow, ever. But I do recall a period in US history where people could get serious votes — and even in some cases win office — as self-described socialists. At the moment, well…there is Senator Bernie Sanders.

It has been argued by both liberal intellectuals and radical libertarians — for different reasons — that many of the shifts in approaching the economy by government around the New Deal era served to defuse more critical sentiment, “fixing” capitalism or even saving it outright. My own view on correcting such imbalance is more along the lines of crossing neo-Wobbly labor tactics with dismantling the welfare that the wealthy enjoy, but say we humor the more common interpretation: the market faced a crisis, the State stepped in, people put down their pitchforks and went back to work, all was well.

If that’s true, then a conservative denouncing a few percentage points on the top income tax bracket as a raging commie plot is, to put it bluntly, playing with fire. It speaks volumes about the modern right-wing that they’d deny history suggesting it could always be worse…

(cross-posted to FreedomDemocrats)

Is it just me, or has Brad Johnson’s head doubled in size?  It looks like his helmet barely even fits.

One drawback to living somewhere that has a pro football team is that you’re stuck with their games when the coverage is regional, whether they’re any good or not.  That the Rams are as I type putting foot to Cowboy ass says more about the Cowboys than it does about the Rams.

BTW: saw SNL last night.  Mostly unfunny, could’ve clicked to something else right after the intro to be honest.  Sounded to me like Palin tried to alter her voice for the appearance.

I’mma be particularly glad when campaign season is over, just so the local ads can stop.  Don’t know who most of these people are and don’t really care, it’s not like a state level representative can start a war.

Had to come sooner or later:

Socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez mocked George W. Bush as a “comrade” on Wednesday, saying the U.S. president was a hard-line leftist for his government’s intervention of major private banks in the U.S. financial crisis.

Chavez, who calls capitalism an evil and ex-Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor, ridiculed Bush for his plan for the federal government to take equity in American banks despite the U.S. right-wing’s criticism of Venezuelan nationalizations.

“Bush is to the left of me now,” Chavez told an audience of international intellectuals debating the benefits of socialism. “Comrade Bush announced he will buy shares in private banks.”

LOL…

Great, another reason not to buy Madden ‘09:

Too busy playing video games to watch presidential ads on television? Barack Obama has found you, too, by becoming the first presidential candidate to buy ad space inside a game.

Nine video games from Electronic Arts Inc., ranging from the extremely popular “Madden 09″ football game to the street racing “Burnout: Paradise,” feature in-game ads from the Obama campaign. The ads — they appear on billboards and other signage — remind players that early voting has begun and plug a campaign Web site.

The idea of embedding advertising temporarily inside a video game is relatively new, having only begun about 18 months ago, and Obama is the first presidential candidate to buy space, company officials said.

Sometimes it’s the small lines being crossed that really get you.  I play video games to temporarily block out the silly shit of reality, but nooooo…

Two big, struggling companies start giving each other The Look:

General Motors has had talks with smaller rival Chrysler LLC about a merger that would combine the No. 1 and No. 3 American automakers at a time when both are struggling to cut costs and shore up cash, according to a source briefed on the matter. (emphasis mine)

Brilliant!  After all, it worked for Sirius & XM!  Oh, wait, what?  They’re still hemmoraging money?  Whoops…

Maybe they’re considering conglomerating up with each other and then gobbling up Ford too, and renaming the resulting car company something like U.S. Car, National Automobile, or Patriot American Vehicle.

I think I finally figured out why the campaign ads Google spits out in the sidebar* are all McCain, despite my interpretation of this election as Middling Status Quo Guy vs Old Dude That May Be Insane:

1) Obama’s people value message discipline to an almost paranoid degree.  Google ads are fairly random, so that’s a no-go.  McCain’s people really don’t seem to give a fuck, so Google ads are a go for them.

2) Keywords.  I don’t talk about Obama much because frankly I don’t see much of substance to talk about with him, and see that as in a way the whole point of his campaign: having abandoned the few positions where he differed in any meaningful sense, he’s effectively running as the Generic Democrat that was trouncing the Generic Republican in the polls back when the campaign season first started — which is working.

Pick one, and add to it that the 3rd parties don’t have the money for much, at least as far as I can tell.

(* - as for any possibility of directly selling ad space, I dunno and don’t really care.  Besides, I can’t tell if I get enough traffic to justify it, and it’d probably break compatibility with the theme anyway.  I don’t want to change the look of the site just to stick an ad over there that I like, that’d only be an option if a shit-hot designer fell into my lap that could figure out purely based on content — visual design ain’t my strength — a look that would say what you’re getting here better than the tagline already does, without bashing anyone in the skull with it.)