Fascist Follies
So the Holocaust Museum shooter is a Neo-Nazi and "anti-government?" Wait - how is that possible? Did you miss the Twentieth Century?
This is your idea of "anti-government?"
What is Fascism - and its brain-damaged butt-baby Nazism - about if not complete and total worship of the State?
I see how the "left" and the "right" in this country are engaging in a slap-fight because certain "right-wing" commentators have pointed out that fascism is a form of socialism. Guess what? It is. As is Nazism - no, "National Socialism" is not some kind of false front. It was what the Nazis were all about. It still is.
The concept that "socialism" and "fascism" are somehow opposites is just World War II propaganda bullshit.
You want to read anti-capitalist screeds? Try The Turner Diaries. Or the writings of Francisco Franco. Or, hey, Joe Goebbels.
So the "right-wing" sock-monkeys are right, for once. Then again, it's becoming so piteously obvious that the whole Left/Right thing is a scam I'm starting to read about it daily online. The "Right" is anti-government? Then where were they while George W. Bush was expanding everything about government - spending, scope, and power - at a nearly unprecedented rate?
Oh, that's right: with their noses firmly clamped between his asscheeks. Where the Left is with Obama now that he's doing the same thing and telling different lies about it.
The Power of Government to Do Good
Here's what it looks like.
It has some figures, too. Like the upwards of a quarter billion people it killed in the 20th Century. And that doesn't even count wars - in many ways the ultimate expression of government doing good.
It is the slogan, the motive, and the means for history's greatest murderers: Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot (socialists all.) And for the last US president, and the current one, and their admirers and apologists.
It's what those who rule us intend to come to your block soon.
So ... what part of government is evil were you having trouble understanding?
Hat tip to Radley Balko for commemorating the 20th anniversary of the above iconic image.
Ethics-free hacks
So "prominent Berkeley economist Brad DeLong" calls opponents of the stimulus plan "ethics free Republican hacks." (Hat tip to Jesse Walker at reason, by way of Antiwar.com.)
Good one.
Given that what DeLong and Paul Krugman and their fascist troll ilk are peddling - economic "stimulus" and the nonsensical notion that we can spend ourselves rich - is nothing more than a slathering of whore's makeup over history’s greatest known transfer of wealth to the very wealthy. Which wealth, by the way, is going to be ripped off our bodies like skin, through the miracle of hyperinflation.
To be sure, the Republicans clamoring in opposition to the bailout are ethics free hacks. Leaving aside the fact that's a truism - nobody gets elected to national office without being one - let's recognize their stance for the cheap ploy it is. The Republicans know the American people are largely wise to the fact this is all egregious socialism for the rich (a tautology anyway); they're just pandering. Of course they favor the bailout: they're employed by the same people the Democrats are, and that isn't the voters.
And after all, the bailout was one of the final pet projects of George W. Bush.
This is a trick the Democrats have proven adept at: vocally opposing Bush's war against American liberties at home and todo lo mundo abroad - and then voting for every stinking scrap of it, from funding the war waged against Iraq in total opposition to US strategic interests, to the confirmation of whatever torture monkey the Busheviks threw up to be Attorney General. Few were more assiduous at that than the new puppetoon President - whose definition of change, you should be realizing now, means "more of the same, only bigger and harder."
New Mexico’s Pride!
I know this is old news. But life and the need of sustaining it have kept me pretty preoccupied for the last month or two. As readers of this blog (provided they exist), my real blog, and my Forum can attest.
As you may be aware, toward the beginning of the month NM governor Bill Richardson withdrew from consideration to be the new commerce secretary because of allegations of influence peddling.
My question: how total a fuckup do you have to be to get caught acting so corrupt a Chicago politician won't hire you?
Update: Maybe it isn't such old news after all.
Also, a good point made.
You Can’t Afford Him
That's the one thing you need to take away from today's investiture of the new Führer: you can't afford him. Not you, not me, not your family, not your friends. Certainly not the American people.
The good news is, the United States - the Empire - can't afford him either.
Of course the O-Bomber is a "post-partisan uniter," as reason puts it, snarkily and correctly. That's because there's no difference between the parties - not in practical terms. Not in terms of what they actually do.
Both parties do what governments are instituted among men to do: to preserve and increase the power, privilege, and profit of the ruling classes. What rational reason is there to suppose government would do anything but serve the interests of its proprietors?
And as if there was any doubt that, as I've told you before, "Change" means "More of the same, only harder and worse," recall that the newly anointed Dear Leader has voted for or otherwise endorsed pretty much all of the evil things his predecessor did - when he hasn't outdone him in militaristic zeal, as when he proved himself far to the right of even the rabidly anti-freedom Sarah Palin on issues like killing brown people in Afghanistan and Iran to make them better.
He endorsed war, torture, spying, and the real war which is being waged against American liberty - not to mention American property and American lives.
And most of all he, like his mentally-deficient sock puppet of a predecessor, vigorously supports a "bailout" of 8.5 trillion dollars, and rising. Which constitutes history's greatest known transfer of wealth to the very wealthy.
The New Definition of Change
"More, and harder."
And, after all, how were the Clinton years anything but an extension of Bush I? While Bush II's policies - expanding war, the USA PATRIOT Act (HR 666 recycled!), burgeoning wealth transfers to the power elite - were nothing Clinton hadn't done or tried to do. And Obama has made it clear "change" means "the same, only more and harder."
He's blatantly planning a massive expansion of US military assaults on the rest of the world. There's no money for this. The military is broken. It doesn't matter: this "administration" - or what we probably should call the power elite's new management team - is no more reality-based than the one about to be flushed.
Clearly, The O-Bomber's a stooge; clearly, the same people pull his strings as did the two Bushes and Bush Sr.'s smarter, adoptive son Slick Willie. And who'd've pulled McCain's if voters had decided to elect an overtly mad, evil old reptile instead of a handsome young demagogue (with a Nuremberg Rally-friendly constituency!)
Meanwhile the Mad Christers who wanted to set the world ablaze so the demon they imagine is Jesus could return to assert dominion are on their way out - well, except for right-wing fundie Hillary Clinton, who belongs to the Mad Christer DC insider group called the Fellowship. (See also here.) But bizarrely the secularist nuts who were equally responsible for executing the mad US-vs-the-World program are still firmly entrenched.
After all, how did Clinton's overtly fascist "neoliberals" differ from Dumbya's overtly fascist "neocons? " Barely if at all, in rhetoric or policy. Just the switching-in of meaningless syllables: "conservative" for "liberal." And now back.
Of course the same people are still in charge. At the top, as well as in the lower, public ranks. People who possess real power may lose it through accident, incompetence, or action by their rivals. They do not suffer themselves to be displaced by majority vote of their livestock. Why in Hell should they? In what way is it rational to imagine that they would?
Why settle?
Why, indeed?
Really, could he be any worse than McInsane or O'Bomber? How?
They both stand four-square for war, torture, domestic spying, and massive welfare for the rich. Or hadn't you noticed?
Anyway, click on the link to buy the swell shirt. I'm happy, at least, to be able to plug my pals Ray and Barb van Tilburg and their wonderful Offworld Designs. Ray's an excellent artist who does tee-shirt designs for a lot of Midwest cons, including Archon. Plus they have tons of non-con specific designs, such as the above, which are nifty and wicked clever.
Even if they're distressed by my usage of their design, if, like most people, they cherish the belief there's an actual difference between the sock puppet on Leviathan's left claw, and the one on His right.
But relax. It's nothing to the pain that your guy will cause if elected. No matter which he is.
(And then again ... not even a Great Old One can prevent the implosion of the Unitedstatesian Empire.)
Daylight Stupid Time
As if it weren't annoying enough to have to deal with my sundry computers automatically changing to reflect the end of Daylight Savings Time - which doesn't happen this year until November 2 - my notebook keeps changing back to the wrong time, thanks to synchronizing automatically with time.nist.gov. Hey, thanks!
So here's another reason to question the judgement, if not the sanity, of those who - like all my liberal friends, Sarah Palin, and Stalin - believe whole-heartedly in the "power of government to do good." We need these people to manage every aspect of our lives when they can't, in its second year of operation, make the simple software fix to adjust to their own stupid law? What a great idea!
Even if there were some reason to believe government has, does, or ever will act with the primary motivation of making you or me safer, freer, healthier, or richer - and why should they? - this also reminds us to ask: what would make us believe they could if they wanted to?
“We owe it to ourselves.”
For all those who like to believe that people today are dumber than they used to be, the above statement ought offer fairly compelling counter-evidence.
Once upon a time otherwise intelligent (and educated, which isn't the same thing) people apparently believed that statement, uttered decades ago by John Maynard Keynes, among others, in reference to the national debt.
But what does it even mean? On the face of it, isn't it transparent nonsense? Let's see you borrow $100 from yourself. Does that mean you suddenly have $200?
Ah, but let me explain how it really works.
I take from you $100. That shouldn't bother you, because "we" - necessarily including you and I - owe it to "ourselves." Yes?
Now, to pay back that debt, I take from you $100. Because you and I are still part of "we." And we owed that $100 to ourselves, yes?
So now we're square. The debt has been repaid. Only a greedy bastard could possibly complain. Gitmo for you, Gordon Gekko!
Isn't that simple?
Not convinced? I give you the "bailout" - the largest single wealth transfer from the proletariat to the wealthy in known human history. In this case, the transaction above works out as $100 (plus a whole lot more) borrowed from you, and repaid to J.P. Morgan.
Which cosmic larceny, of course, is heartily supported by both presidential candidates.