Where'd All The Money Go?

For Sam Stone's kids it was a hole in daddy's arm. For the 99% in the current jobless recovery, it's the hyper rich:

And yet somehow or another Obama is a socialist marxist scum.

How Horrible Are The Republicans

Here is a harrowing account of a woman's experience with the Texas law concerning forced probing and mandated moralization. The woman's account, I think, exposes the heartless cruelty and horridness of the wretched god-botherers who think that their blinkered concept of religious life is the tune to which we ought all march.

These Horrid Little People

Rustication refers to the process of expelling someone from Oxbridge. It features prominently in 19th century British fiction usually associated with some nerdowell or another. Recently, one of Britain's neoliberal twits came to Cambridge to announce the destruction of higher education in the service of expansionary austerity. The students and professors were not pleased and so they

as he came to the lectern, a number of audience members (both students and academics) stood up and read, or performed, collectively, a poem articulating opposition to the policies he was advocating. They continued to read and repeat the poem until after a few minutes Willetts was ushered away and the lecture and question and answer session cancelled.

In response, 

one PhD student was singled out for reprisal by the university authorities, and made subject to the university’s disciplinary procedures.

This singling out despite

a letter signed by sixty dons and students advertising their own actual or implicit part in the protest was drafted and sent. This had no effect on the proceedings, and the hearing went ahead.

The result? The student was given

a sentence of seven terms rustication which, as earlymodernjohn points out, is almost the whole period of PhD study.

From gambling and drink to protesting the absurd idea that the best way to respond to years of neoliberalism more neoliberalism.

Bunny Ears

An earless bunny from Germany:

Der Spiegel reports that earlessness combined with

his cuteness would surely have made him a media celebrity, especially in Germany, which has a history of worshipping furry baby animals.

And so they had the "media" into take video, which could then go viral, unfortunately for the bunny the videographer stepped on and killed the earless fellow.

Again With The Idiocy

First a video as a reminder:



It's not a series of political opinions or policy suggestions, Limbaugh's rantings over at least three day is just one of many examples of his use of lies to create a false image of an "enemy" in order to use vile language and vitriol to whip his ill-informed and willfully ignorant listeners and fellow "cultural warriors" into a frenzy.

So when Andrew Sullivan decries the boycott or quotes child-scribe Ezra Klein centrist Kevin Drum worrying about the knock on effect of the boycott on legitimate political discourse, it might help lay their fears to rest to remember that legitimate political discourse doesn't require lies, abuse, and horrid little men and women.

If the boycott tends convince pundits to stop lying or even just stop using vile language society will be a net gainer.

Conservative or Stupid

Over to The New Yorker John Cassidy, who isn't all that bright, conflates conservative with stupid:

First, Alabama and Mississippi remain two of the most conservative states in the country. Second, Rick Santorum is the most conservative candidate in the G.O.P. field. For a man who has questioned the science of global warming and the morality of birth control to win a plurality of the vote in two states where, according to an election-eve survey from the research firm Public Policy Polling, almost two in three Republicans don’t believe in evolution and almost one in two think Barack Obama is a Muslim, shouldn’t have been so surprising.

In this case, however, it seems to me that he is on to something. Only an idiot holds the latter two positions and only an idiot thinks that Santorum could govern.

Why Contraception Matters

From the Historiann:

 There is more at the link and you ought to read it. The larger point is, I think, that taking away medical advances is a really bad idea. To which I would add, mega dittos.

When Is A Quote a Lie

George Washington in his 1st inaugural:

A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.

Pretty clearly an argument for either a standing army or for a well trained militia not individual ownership. However, according to AWR Hawkins PhD the meaning of the quote is:

 When George Washington wrote that “free people ought … to be armed,” he gave us a clue as to the kind of America the Founders envisioned. It was one where the government stayed within its bounds, carrying out its limited duties while leaving the people free to exercise their rights and liberties.

If you ignore the full quote and misrepresent it; sure, it can mean whatever you want it to.

Not content with misrepresenting Washington, our PhD insists that

during the 1930s Mahatma Gandhi bemoaned the fact that Great Britain had forcibly disarmed his people. He saw it as not simply a denial of the right to possess a weapon but as something that cut much deeper: “Spiritually, compulsory disarmament has made us unmanly … has made us think we cannot look after ourselves or put up a defense against foreign aggression, or even defend our homes and families.”

The full quote:

Spiritually, compulsory disarmament has made us unmanly, and the presence of an alien army of occupation, employed with deadly effect to crush in us the spirit of resistance, has made us think that we cannot look after ourselves or put up a defense against foreign aggression, or even defend our homes and families from the attacks of thieves, robbers and miscreants.

"We hold it to be a crime against man and God to submit any longer to a rule that has caused this fourfold disaster to our country. We recognize, however, that the most effective way of gaining our freedom is not through violence. We will therefore prepare ourselves by withdrawing, so far as we can, all voluntary association from the British Government, and will prepare for civil disobedience, including nonpayment of taxes. We are convinced that if we can but withdraw our voluntary help and stop payment of taxes without doing violence, even under provocation, the end of this inhuman rule is assured. We therefore hereby solemnly resolve to carry out the Congress instructions issued from time to time for the purpose of establishing Purna Swaraj.

Ghandi is,  on the one hand, condemning colonialism as a means of infantilizing Indians and, on the other, denying that arms mean or make freedom.

My point is this, Limbaugh et alia cannot wage "cultural war" without resorting to lies, vile rhetoric, and vitriol and, as result, the Right's preferred method of argumentation is lies and more lies.

Here in Wisconsin

Scott Walker's campaign or members of his staff who also worked for the campaign or something or another, are or is under investigation of violating the rules of the road. Today, we learn that Walker has set up a legal defense fund, although he denies being a target of the investigation. Interestingly according to the WSJ, for the last link,

Wisconsin statutes allow government officials to seek or obtain contributions to so-called defense funds only if they are being investigated for or charged with a violation of either campaign finance or other election laws.

 So which is it? Either he is a target or he is violating the law.

What is it with these louts and their refusal to take the law seriously.

Eat

By the way  if you're in or near Sun Prairie stop in at Porktopolis for some really fine BBQ and an array of sauces. The sides, unfortunately, are only mediocre.

A Lie Too Far

The hopeless stupidity of Obama's hugging of Derek Bell goodness knows how many years ago is obvious, I think, to anyone with eyes to see. At the same time, this video of Bell's wife shows the proper response:

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Video via

Crazy Talk

Ross Douthat has a Op Ed up in which he "argues" that Republican voters aren't either crazy but rather just being good citizens as they desperately seek someone who isn't Mitt Romney. This might be true were it not for the fact that the Republican candidates have been spewing lies about Obama, crazy talk about Iran's invasion and contraception. On the whole, the primary has been a vile and horrid affair in which the candidates are willing to pander to the 27 percent. The voters are crazy and the candidates either crazy or uninterested in governance and truth.