Lawlessness And Disorder Conservatives

In a recent speech, Joe Biden made the point that as the number of police went down, because of the collapsed economy, crimes went up, and he used this fact, for fact it seems to be, to support the jobs bill, which the Republicans refused to debate and Conservatives excoriated,  because it would have kept many more cops on the beat.  Whether or not the correlations between fewer cops and more crime is evidence of causation is, it seems to me, open to debate. But surely the notion that an increased police presence and its ability, which is to say reduced civil liberties protection via Constitutional originalism, to deal with crimes large and small has been a key bullet in the arsenal of Right's creation of the security/police state. Biden's use of their argument has enraged the Right and, because argument making is hard, they take to burbling nonsense, which is too say Jonah Goldberg is still dumb:

 What I find amazing about this, is that Biden had the numbers [of increased rapes and murders] ready. That means this is no gaffe, but this is a staff-prepared talking point. Unless of course you think Joe Biden just happened to have the crimes stats for Flint at his fingertips for totally unrelated reasons.

 Why yes, it is shocking and laughable that when explaining the content of a jobs bill that has significant funding for police, fire, and other municipal workers, that Biden would make a speech pointing out the benefits society accrues from the police, fire, and other municipal services.

Small wonder the world sucks.

Did He Watch The Movie?

Over to the NRO's Corner online, Mark Krikorian claims, relying on The World Accoding to Garp, Romney will never, ever make the mistake of implementing a sucessful and popular program like he did with MA's health insurance law because he has been "pre-disastered." After moving into the house, Garp and family suffer from 2 affairs, one dead son, oral sex based castration, one son with one eye, culminating in mom's and Garp's assassinations.Too dumb to live.

Update:
On the plus side, if he right and Romney gets elected: Socialism111!!

Kings of America

Paul Krugman on the hyperwealthy lamenting their hyperwealth because it's only 300k and not 500k

It would all be hilariously funny if these people weren’t destroying the world.

Elvis Costello on, I think, the same set of idiocy, in the Greek sense:



Also too for no reason:




And, for no good reason, the 80s revisited:

Closing Time

Some years ago, Aristotle argued that there is a 

reason the rich and the poor are regarded in an especial sense as parts of a state. Again, because the rich are generally few in number, while the poor are many, they appear to be antagonistic, and as the one or the other prevails they form the government. Hence arises the common opinion that there are two kinds of government- democracy and oligarchy.

It's important to note, that Aristotle insisted the the rich and their riches were beneficial only to the extent that "the wealthy . . .  minister to the state with their property." By which he means that wealth is a means to the end of creating a thriving city-state; should, he suggests, the wealthy use their wealth to further enrich themselves they are, in the Greek sense, idiots and, consequently, a destructive force. 

With the collapse, or apparent collapse, of this democracy's commitment to the poor, it would seem, in Aristotelian terms that we are entering a period of oligarchy.  I offer you, consequently, mad man Jack London's Ernest Everhard and various versions of Woody Guthrie's genius:



or



and



comedic relief



 

Warren Report Video Edition

Here is Elizabeth Warren in her own words:



Here is some more:



Here's a positive, I think, satiric take:



Here is what the creatures of oligarchy want you to hear:



What I find odd is that the editors think that by highlighting her commitment to doing what she thinks is right they are proving that she is wrong for public office even as their preferred candidate, Scott Brown, defends what he has done by to continue the ruination of the working class in this country because he thinks he's right in every particular. As by the way, when I wrote that sentence, I had no idea what Scott Brown said or how he voted but using the amazing predictive skills I have honed over the years of listening to apologists for the oligarchy, I assumed that he made an ass of himself and, what do you know, I was right.

Inside Baseball

Josh Marshall goes all inside basebally to explain Perry's drop in the polls:

But stepping back from all the particulars, it seems to me that a key reason for Perry's burn up on reentry into the atmosphere after his rapid ascent in August is that his key political handlers -- and presumably Perry himself -- simply didn't grasp that the dynamics of national politics are just very different from those of Texas.

Ah brave new media with such people in it. How about this: Rick Perry is a moron and his policy positions are idiotic and moronic. The percentage of American voters willing to risk  their future to another moron with idiotic policies from Texas is vanishingly small. When Perry's policies weren't idiotic they were centrist Democratic policies and the percentage of Republicans willing to vote for centrist Democratic, which is to say workable if insufficient, policies is vanishingly small. As a consequence Perry's popularity dissipated. QED.

Why is it that pundits, new media or old, think that the key to explaining things is to pretend that there is some kind of a circle of seriousness and knowledge that they inhabit while others don't. It'd be one thing if Marshall or any of them were right more than they were wrong but the fact is they mostly don't know what they are talking about. Except Krugman and his political judgements are reliably utopian.  Perry and his advisers thought that the time was right for another Texas moron with idiotic policies; they where wrong.

On Notice

You know that thing Stephan Colbert does when he puts a person, place, thing, or concept on notice and it ends up dead to him? Watch

I find this especially helpful with "left" neoliberal bloggers and the funny pages. So, and you know who you are, shape out or die a metaphorical death.

Also on notice my video embedding skills.

Watching Will Put You in My Debt

Ha:

Passive Voice and Information Underload

Geoffrey Pullam writes in defense of passive voice. He asks:

More generally, do the writing tutors of the world really think we should not report that a politician has been shot until we can specify the gunman?

Unknown gunman shoots Senator X. It's really not that hard and, as by the way, lets the reader know exactly what is currently known or not known about the event.  In another case, he argues:

The piece I was writing—a sad task—was an obituary. In one sentence I explained how I had met the deceased: “I was introduced to her while she was visiting California.” My helpful colleague asked: “Why the passive? What’s wrong with ‘We met …’?”—and the answer is: Nothing at all, except that it omits the very thing I was saying, namely that this was an actual old-fashioned introduction, not a random encounter in an airport bar. So I ignored that well-intended advice.

If the introduction is so important: A mutual acquaintance introduced me to . . . . Once again, the reader gets all the information necessary to make sense out of the event and, surely, if an event is important enough to introduce, it's important enough to explicate fully.  Passive fails to provide all the necessary information in order to fully understand, usually by leaving out  agents and actors.

His big mistake, I would argue, is that he thinks that people don't like the Passive Voice because of Strunk and White, which is -- again I think, wrong. It's about short declarative sentences and imparting  information. Plus and also, its usually advice reserved for papers and reports, as opposed to Obits, poetry, and novels.

I Know He Is Trying to be Funny; but, He's Right.

Over to the NRO Victor David Hanson, of all people, halfway understands the Occupy/99% guys and dolls. He needs, obviously, to include all the malefactors from his "side" of the ledger. But babysteps and all that. The comments on the post, on the other hand, are straight out of John Birch. Why it's almost as if Hanson is trying to be ironical, which can't be the case, can it?

Erin Burnet once argued that poisoned toys are necessary because they are cheap or cheap toys are necessarily poisonous or something or another.



Oddly enough, she find the Occupy Wall Street Crowd beneath contempt.

First Things First

First they ignore you, then they laugh, then they fight, then you win. Three down one to go.

Wrong Yet Again

Eric Loomis and Matthew Yglesias are having an argument about technology and its ability to improve one's life. As Loomis points out, with becoming politeness, he knows quite a bit more than Yglesias about the subject under consideration and, as is usually the case, Yglesias misses the point.

I'd like to make a point about facts, reality, and Yglesias' resistance to both. Yglesias argues that

Once upon a time, middle class American households had to spend an incredible amount of time washing laundry and dishes by hand. Nowadays, the mass public can afford dishwashers and washer/dryers.

The facts of the matter are that technology hasn't changed the amount of time involved in managing a household; it just shifted it around:

Yet despite the introduction of electricity, running water, and "labor-saving" household appliances, time spent on housework did not decline. Indeed, the typical full-time housewife today spends just as much time on housework as her grandmother or great-grandmother. In 1924, a typical housewife spent about 52 hours a week in housework. Half a century later, the average full-time housewife devoted 55 hours to housework. A housewife today spends less time cooking and cleaning up after meals, but she spends just as much time as her ancestors on housecleaning and even more time on shopping, household management, laundry, and childcare.

So the problem here is that the best example he can come up with relies on his usual commitment to factiness while avoiding reality. This is made even more abundantly clear when one considers Yglesias admission that the alleged benefits of technology

hasn’t happened. But the world would be a better place if it had.

This isn't, as Yglesias seems to think, a defense of technological optimism; it's a reason to reject it. Relying on the automaticism of technological innovation has, time and again, failed to achieve the utopian society technological optimists promised.  The time has come, as the Walrus put it, to speak of many things chief amongst them the need to create the world we want by changing the rules, as it were, creating the world we want. Second among them is the admission that proponents of automaticism are apologists for a world made in the image and likeness of those with money.

As is his wont, Yeglesias argues that if only the world wasn't so stubbornly the way it is instead of the way he wishes it were he'd be right.

I Call Bullshit

Ryan Lizza suggests that

 next year is looking very much like a Republican year

On the basis of what now? There is not one Republican contender who scores better that Obama; the Tea Party is nearly as disliked as Palin. Perry's recent polling plummet indicates the the more people know about the idiots running for the Republican nomination the less they like them. So, and I mean this seriously, who among the Republicans is a "serious" candidate for office? 

The rising tide is those who oppose all that Christie et alia stand for. As too Obama's electoral outlook see also. And, for that matter, this in which a crazy denounces another crazy.

Quick Point, Grumpily Made

To the nitwit who nearly run  into me on the multiuser path, it wasn't the pedestrian's fault that you crossed over and nearly ran into me; it was your fault for failing to be in control of your bike. Ride, why don't you, like you know what you're doing.

Stupid People

I really like The New Yorker.  But there are staff writers who, I would argue, ought not have jobs.  John Cassidy is one such nonesuch. He solidified his standing as master of the vicious aside that destroys credibility with this:

What does Christie represent? Union-bashing? School vouchers? Unhealthy diets?

Why is that people who are more than well paid for being serious commentators on this or that matter of alleged import suffer from the delusions that they are funny and that sophomoric "snark" is funny. Twit.

The Luddites Had a Point

If you can replace many workers with a machine all of those workers are out of a job and their children need to find new careers. As each career becomes victim to increased productivity most workers have nothing to do. Because they have nothing to do they earn nothing; earning nothing they have no means of taking care of themselves. Not being able to take care of themselves, they die or descend into some form of servile labor forced to compete with their fellows for some crappy, ill-paid job or another. This is, in fact, the story of mechanization from weaving to welding. Machines replace labor power as capital improves its profits and workers stand about cleaning the rich folks windows. The promise of robot labor and such like failed to account for the mass of unemployed and unemployable. A reasonable person surveying the current catastrophe, it seems to me, would conclude that the erroneous optimism was, you know, erroneous and shift gears or change horses or some other metaphor that includes the notion of being wrong. Not so our neoliberals. Rather they would condemn more of us to repeat the follies of the past. Efficiency, productivity, and machine power haven't yet, they seem to argue, created the utopia Neoliberalism promised; however, they insist, if we just continue . . .

What are we for? Work that offers remuneration sufficient to live. What are we against? Nearly 30 years of political decisions that make that impossible; a continued commitment to economic efficiency that dooms generations to vile underemployment. Consider or remember why it was that Solon reformed Athens.

Nun So Blind as Those Who Will Not Look

Today we were working on the Reformation and part of the discussion dealt with the Catholic Church's structure, popes, monks, nuns, priests, and laity.  At least one of the students was unclear if monks and nuns still existed. After straightening that out, I left to ride home and was about to cross a boulevard when I stopped because there was a car approaching.  On the other side of the street was a kiddie wink, maybe 12 or thirteen, who bolted onto the street and was about to get herself run over.  I took, I admit, one third of the Lord's name in vain, shortly after which both the car and the cyclist slammed on their brakes missing one another. I looked at the driver; she was a nun. Honest to goodness. The choice is yours look both ways before crossing or hope for divine intervention.

What They Really Really Want

Lot of tedious tedium inducing lovers of banalities and point missing have some time now been musing about the occupywallstreet 99 percent movements desires. Sort of like Ted Kennedy in The War at Home telling the anti-war protesters he knew what they were against now tell him what they were for. So you could read this or consider the case of HP's failed CEO or the Koch Brothers or the now endemic economic inequality of 30 odd years of neoliberal orthodoxy or banks and their fees and conclude that they alike 99% of the population want crooks to be punished, the rich to be treated like other folks, and, in a more general sense, an opportunity to work at a job that pays a living wage and enjoy the refreshing beverage of their choice at the end of a day's labor, ideally sharing with a significant otherish thingy mabob.

Cobblestones

From YouTube get while it's available, Paris Roubaix:

Double Down

To continue a theme. Watch, why don't you, the whole set of arithmetical demolitions of a sunny tomorrow. But watch this one and ask yourself what time is it?

The Current Crises Explained

Alerted by one or another of my siblings to this insanely great David Harvey discussion and animation, I offer it to my many devoted readers:

Freedom Isn't Free

If you work for a secular state, you cannot use your position to advance a sacular cause. No one, for example, would applaud a registrar who refused to sign a marriage license for a Catholic and non-Catholic or an Orthodox Jew and a Gentile because his or her religious beliefs didn't recognize those marriages as legitimate. America is a secular state and the price of serving it in an official capacity is putting the laws of the land above private belief. Consequently, this woman is an anti-American religious zealot and ought properly resign or be fired. And the NYTimes needs to rethink it's stance on wrong-headed actions even if the maxim of that action, perhaps especially if, is private belief.

Economics Still Not a Science; History Remains a Discipline

In this post Paul Krugman laments the ignorance and mendacity of many of his colleagues and in this one extolls history as means of informing economics. I would go further and insist that one needs to think historically to aid in the creation of policies and the single most important "lesson" from history is that lots of things that were once true, particularly about social, political, and economic arrangements, were contingent truths and that reliance on contingent truths is a really lousy way to run a railroad.

Indeed

Paul Krugman on the problem with proceduralism versus personnel:

The point is that what we need are the right ideas, not the right sort of people. Madmen in authority come in all forms, and the dignified men in suits are often no better than the rabble-rousers.

In my dissertation, I found that August Hermann Francke was consistent in insisting that anything good resulted from selecting the right man, and he meant man, for the job.  The problem was, or became, who selected the right man? Clearly, Krugman is on to the key issue. Unfortunately, there is no standard for right man picking. Francke relied on a combination of evidence of spiritual rebirth and personal knowledge. What standards are we going to come up with today?

I had a conversation the other day with a relative about why the various proponents of not starting WWI were ignored and how we could identify them. Right now, I think, the answer is to never pick someone who has the answer instead of a series of answers to a variety of questions that need immediate solution.