Psychopolitik 2.0

If there’s no expectation of privacy in a public bathroom, then why are there locks on the doors?  Hell, why do the stalls even have doors at all?

Yeah, I’m kinda late with this, but it’s been grating at me this long.  All things being equal, I’d rather endure the remote chance of someone fucking in the next stall than open the door for the flourishing of toilet-watching warrants.

I notice during the speeches with loyal supporters, every candidate makes reference to winning “with your help”, addressing the crowd.  This makes no sense whatsoever, and here’s why:

Now, relatively few people vote in elections at all.  Even fewer vote in primaries.  A number smaller than THAT actually pay attention enough to actively support a candidate and show up at those damn rallies.  Regardless of their reasons, these are inherently folks who have made up their minds — the converted, if you will.

Among the reasons people have for voting for someone, whether sensible (support their policies, find them to be the most capable person for the position) or not (reflexive support of their particular tribe in the Culture War), none are controllable by the dedicated supporters at all.  As such, they are functionally irrelevant to whether or not their pick wins.  No doubt they’d respond to that with “but we’re spreading the word, getting the message out!”.  However, depending on how you define the communication, they’re either being passively dragged along in denial (donating to a campaign doesn’t mean they’ll use it to communicate what you think they will, if anything.  Besides, it doesn’t require showing up in person.), or they’re the political equivalent of Amway salesmen.

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?

During an attempted home invasion robbery, someone shot Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor.  He died the other day from his wounds.  Watching NFL Live, a moment ago ESPN’s NFL analyst John Clayton took this as a cue to talk about the NFL possibly directing anti-gun PR to its players, attempting to draw a link between Tank Johnson’s weapons charges & Taylor’s death.

One problem with that: Sean was shot while trying to defend himself with a machete.

To Sean, R.I.P., we’ll miss you.  To John, go fuck yourself.

Why do shows like Late Edition, Meet the Press & the like, after statements from recently retired or resigned military personnel — which tend to be skeptical of the war in Iraq — invite on current military personnel, who are barred as a term of their service from publicly criticizing official policy?

CNN did a poll recently, angling for views re: the use of water-boarding.  The result was, well…awkward:

A majority of Americans consider waterboarding a form of torture, but some of those say it’s OK for the U.S. government to use the technique, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Asked whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture, more than two-thirds of respondents, or 69 percent, said yes; 29 percent said no.

Asked whether they think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from terrorists, 58 percent said no; 40 percent said yes.

So, with the overlap in responses, that means some people acknowledge that water-boarding is torture AND think it should be embraced as a tactic.  They’re willing for the US to toss any claim whatsoever to moral high ground, radicalize even more people, and probably end up being fed false info just so the agony would stop.  I disagree about as strongly as one can, but at least they’re honest.

Oh, wait a minute, I forgot something.   Here’s that last line of the excerpt again:

Asked whether they think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from suspected terrorists, 58 percent said no; 40 percent said yes. (emphasis mine)

“Suspected”.  That means they’re thought to be terrorists, which they may or may not be.  The possibility of innocence is fast becoming a quaint concept these days, as if simply being held by the government means you’re guilty and deserve everything you get.  Who do we have to thank for that?  Clearly the overlap group in the poll, the reactionary nutjobs with delusions of “hippie unamerican commie libruls” in their head, believing anyone who’s anti water-boarding thinks if Bin Laden himself were captured he should be given a cup of coffee & a comfortable chair to sit in for a cozy little chat.

If you need a poll to tell you that people in the US are generally pissed off about politics at the moment, then you should contemplate suicide.

Consider WHY the anger.  Such a hard change of course is being expected within a system that inherently discourages it, if you kept being led into a brick wall you’d be pissed too.   What exactly do these polls tells us that anyone capable of thinking for themselves didn’t already know?

Re: the upcoming cutoff of analog TV:

Now here’s a great Christmas gift idea: a cute-as-a-bug 5-inch TV. As the Circuit City ad says, the TV “makes it easy to take entertainment on the road.”

But it will be cute only until Feb. 17, 2009, when its little screen will go blank.

To make the set work after that, the owner will need a digital converter box and a place to plug it in, making entertainment on the road not so easy.

Circuit City does warn consumers that the set’s analog tuner will stop working after that date, when federal law requires broadcasters to send only digital signals in order to free up electromagnetic spectrum for use by emergency responders and other interests. (emphasis mine)

Ok, so this was a decision imposed from above.  The government wanted that analog spectrum, so they simply took it.  Typical example of the confusion about the definition of “public” — civilians hear the word & think “we own it”, and politicians say no.  Whatever, that’s how they’ve approached it from day one.  But check out the responses to the inevitable confusion…

Already this month, hearings on DTV have been held in both the House and Senate, and another is scheduled in the House on Wednesday.

Lawmakers are trying to determine whether industry and government are doing enough to inform TV viewers about how to handle the transition.

To help, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration will offer each U.S. household up to two coupons, worth $40 each, to be used toward the purchase of two converter boxes. The boxes will become available in 2008, probably for about $50 each. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, a cable-industry trade group, has unveiled a $200 million public-service announcement campaign.

But some lawmakers fear many viewers will forget to redeem the coupon until after its 90-day life expires. Also, people in rural areas may not be able to get to a retail electronics outlet in time to use the coupons.

Some groups suggest that government create a DTV Task Force, similar to the Y2K Task Force, which oversaw the fixing of a widespread software problem in the late 1990s that threatened to shut down computers at the turn of the millennium.

Many Republicans argue that the free market will solve most of the problems as Americans upgrade to new televisions and cable service over the next year. (emphasis mine)

So to deal with an issue created by political impatience with transitioning technology, one group proposes subsidizing converter boxes — and by extension, the companies making those boxes.  Another responds to that by basically saying “nah, people are too stupid to use coupons right”.  Yet another wants to repeat the Y2k panic.  As for the GOP response, if they were seriously convinced the market could sort this out, they wouldn’t have agreed to the spectrum grab in the first place.

Full disclosure: I have cable & a relatively new model TV, so this more than likely will not affect me.  It just pisses me off that even on such a comparatively trivial issue, the usual suspects come out.

Oh yeah, one more thing.  My insistence on NEVER asking for help at any “big box” electronics store proves justified yet again:

In August, U.S. PIRG sent surveyors to major electronics retail stores in the Washington area to see whether clear information was being dispensed.  It found clerks often gave out inaccurate or misleading information, such as suggesting everyone must upgrade to expensive high-definition television sets.

Unless you’re into video games something hardcore, HD is a waste of money IMO.  I mean, I see a difference, it does look better, but nowhere near enough to justify the price difference.  Even the low-end, smaller HDTV sets are around 500 bucks, c’mon now.

The spin on Iraq still isn’t working, another section of the Patriot Act gets rightly struck down as unconstitutional, and people are basically writing off Bush entirely.  Gee, look who shows up among all this:

Ending a nearly three-year absence from public view, a dark-bearded Osama bin Laden surfaced yesterday in a new video in which he repeatedly taunted the Bush administration but made no overt threats of renewed terrorist attacks.

The al-Qaeda leader appeared visibly older and spoke in somber tones as he delivered a rambling, 25-minute monologue that included a lengthy tirade against Western capitalism sprinkled with references to recent news events and cultural and political figures.

Addressing his message to “the people of America,” bin Laden predicted failure for U.S. forces in Iraq and warned against what he described as the continued oppression and humiliation of Muslims by the West. […]

In Sydney, President Bush told reporters: “The tape is a reminder about the dangerous world in which we live. And it is a reminder that we must work together to protect . . . against these extremists who murder the innocent in order to achieve their political objectives.”

“I found it interesting that on the tape Iraq was mentioned, which is a reminder that Iraq is a part of this war against extremists,” Bush continued. “If al-Qaeda bothers to mention Iraq, it is because they want to achieve their objectives in Iraq, which is to drive us out and to develop a safe haven.”

Give it a few days and check those poll numbers.  By now, Bin Laden is really Bush’s only friend, ironic since him still being out there is glaring indication of failure to reasonable people.
What REALLY amuses me though is some of what was said…

He chides not only Bush — a leader who he says “harvests nothing but failure” — but also the Democratic leadership of Congress. “Why have the Democrats failed to stop this war, despite them being the majority?” he asks, according to the translation provided by the SITE group. Later, answering his own question, he argues that the failure of Americans to stop the Iraq war was attributable to the political dominance of large corporations that “benefit from this continuation.” (emphasis mine)

Rants about “capitalism”?  Criticism of Democrats for not ending the war in Iraq?   Pointing out how a few actually benefit from this clusterfuck?  Either “Adam the American” — who is already being talked about as having wrote part of this — knows jack squat about how politics works here (these kind of critiques coming from Bin Laden makes irrational stubbornness seem like strength), or the whole reason this was released at all was to attempt to discredit any argument that could be twisted to sound like this.  Next time you point out to one of the dead-enders how much of a total waste invading Iraq was and will continue to be, watch how much quicker they say “oh, so you agree with the terrorists?”.

If Osama didn’t exist, they’d create him.

In a section of an MSNBC article about Massachusetts’ mandatory health insurance system, found the following from an owner of a seafood restaurant, who had already been offering insurance before the new rules:

“I think that’s basically how liberal government works — liberals in the government work,” [Nathan Nickerson, owner of Arnold’s] said. “They force-feed you things that they feel are good for you, like it or not. And that’s the way it is. … There’s so many regulations on every level now, to try to run a business, it’s very, very difficult. Having said that, I’d like to see everyone with health insurance.”

Who was governor of Massachusetts at the time again?  Oh yeah, a republican.