The Bullshit Paradox

 

               My oh my, it is hard to imagine that there was ever a time when more bullshit ruled in the course of an election  then what we are seeing this cycle.   Even though the history of this country is marked by an almost pathological disposition for candidates to wallow in the mud and to lie through their teeth to get to their asses elected, it would seem in this era of television bullshit has soared to new heights.  Spin masters and the candidates themselves have perfected the art of bullshit.  In essence one simply keeps bullshiting even in the face of serious questions or facts.  There really should be no surprise when we discover we have idiots, thieves, degenerates and other disreputable characters passing laws.  To make matters worse our elected idiots then appoint their ilk to seats on the Supreme Court.  It is a wonder this grand experiment in democracy hasn’t blown up before now.  Given the fact that the news room has been converted to a beauty salon reduces our ability to get an honest reporting of the election.  For the most part, all we get are talking heads mouthing bullshit in an attempt to convey the essence of debates.  One cannot watch a single partisan spokesperson explain something without being bombarded with bullshit.  From ignoring reality to just plain lying, we see air time being devoted to bullshit.  Which leads me to the conclusion that we should have political debates conducted in a muddy pig pen and let the candidates have at each other.

               I am a Democrat, have been and will always be one.  Therefore, I find Republican bullshit more distasteful than Democratic bullshit.  I guess I like to think of myself as a man who believes in honest science.  I say honest because there are a whole bunch of dumbbells out there who think science is picking out select passages of Scripture and proclaiming truisms based on stuff written when people still believed the earth was the center of the universe. Now some will say that is a mischaracterization of the Republican Party.  Well, if you hear pronouncements from idiots, like Aiken of Missouri or West of Florida and don’t disavow yourself from them, well, birds of a feather flock together.  Sure I pity a true conservative who has watched his party taken over by folks who defy the characterization that homo sapiens are a rational species.

               This brings me to the current election and this pairing of Romney and Ryan.  With Romney we have a man who will say anything to get elected to whatever office he is running for.  If he is running in a liberal state, well, he espouses liberal positions.  If he is running for the nomination of a party taken over by crazies, well, he espouses the crazies’ position.   He is truly an etch a sketch candidate.  I don’t want to get into his religion, but the whole premise of Mormonism tends to fall into the category of all religions but with a somewhat modern twist, (modern being a historical reference).  Being a Mormon, there is creed to make the world a better place, and I might ask for whom?  What is scary is that the dude is a bishop; now shouldn’t a bishop walk around with something to signify him as a bishop.  A bishop is a serious dude with a serious vow.  I guess Mormons need to go underground or something unlike the Catholics who prance around in gowns and funny hats.  What I am asking is shouldn’t people who have this tie to a specific hierarchy identify themselves and detail his pastoral duties?  Maybe he is mandated by church cannon to turn over all of the nation’s vital statistics so the church can baptize everyone, living or dead.  The elders did do that with Jews who died in concentration camps.

               As for Ryan, he is a person who has embraced ever neocon position, every tea party tenet, and every evangelical aspiration.  He is the poster child of the “no nothings” who parade themselves as patriots, who haven’t a clue of what the world is about or if they do they choose to ignore it.

               Obama is plagued by bullshit as well.  In the second debate, he couldn’t answer many of the questions directly preferring to use the opportunity to skew his opponent.  It seems more important to stay on message than to be genuine.  That the man was at least conscious in this debate spoke volumes to how these candidates are packaged and programmed.  Hell it is like both are Manchurian candidates. 

               Well, time is rapidly approaching when the partisan bullshit will end, and the country can get back to its steady diet of bullshit offered by a whole economy designed around selling stuff, from erections to aluminum siding, from drugs to reality shows.  That a company can spill millions of gallons of oil and then tell us it is working on the environment, to beer commercials touting the benefits of alcoholism among the young, to car companies showing youth how to kill themselves driving too fast, our 21^st century society is a society functioning within an economic system that thrives in a world where truth is relegated to “positions” and it is mandatory that bullshit be given equal time.  Of course, if the folks who bullshit can afford it, they can have all the time their money can buy.

              

The Less Than Great Debate

Hubris

 

                There is a moment in a Greek Tragedy when the main character meets his disastrous fate not from forces without but from the character flaw that drives his persona.  In last night’s debate, we witnessed the flaws of the two men who aspire to be the president in the next term.  Romney is clearly a brash bully who feels entitled, a flip flopper who will say anything to win the hearts and the minds of the electorate.    Obama presents himself as the cool detached man who resides in and presides over a bubble.

                In the case of Romney, we have a man who forces his way into the issues and hammers on points either different from his previous pronouncements or based on fabrications.    He is a skilled prestidigitator, almost a shift shaper, appearing at once both your ally and nemesis.    That he ran and won a party’s nomination on the basis of being more conservative than right wing fanatics and screwballs speaks to his deft ability to appear to be whomever it is you wish to see.

                The president, on the other hand and after four years in the white house, seemed to convey the studied and even temperament of an intellectual armed with reason and civility.  He repeats points as if they are truisms that should be taken by all as gospel.  His gestures and demeanor showed that he is detached from the reality of confrontation.   He was, in short, speaking to the TV audience while his opponent was doing that as well but attacking him directly and indirectly with a barrage of concocted facts and premises, all the while, shaking the  etch a sketch.

                In the end, we got little more than a reality show, which of course has nothing to do with being real.  Fact is that if these guys need a “debate school” to “pimp” them out for a public display then I will conclude Romney had the better “paint job.”  His team took a standard sedan and made it into a hot rod.  While the Obama folks thought they could squeak by just hand waxing the Prius.

                Fact is that neither showed the vision one would expect a leader should demonstrate in these troubling times.  Romney spouted sad allusions to the great nation with the (and I hate this word) awesome military.  To be quite frank, anyone who would admit that they like Snooky of the Jersey Shore should be disqualified for the Presidency on that basis alone.  When asked that question he should have responded, “I don’t watch that shit.”  The president continues to demonstrate that he is no liberal.  He certainly didn’t bring the righteous indignation that most of us liberals harbor.  To stand across from some conservative who talks in clichés and false hoods and not call him out is tantamount to being perceived as weak.  Of course, Obama had abandoned us left wingers a long time ago.  For example, when Romney attacked “Obamacare” where was the retort with the facts to show this country supposed great health care rankings.   Hearing Axelrod the morning after is to hear the strategy, “be cool, be presidential, show the country you are a level headed operator.”  Problem is sometimes the game plan needs to be adjusted to win the game.

                I have a libertarian friend who posted “zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz” as his take on the debate.  That may have captured the debate from his perspective.  I believe that Romney supporters were energized because people follow bullies.  It is on the rare occasion that someone steps into the fray.  Check out the moderator, a decent man, letting the bully bully.  Underneath all this rhetoric of god and country and conservatism is an outright distaste for people of color.  As for Obama, he will continue along his path being cool and detached.  Unfortunately, I am afraid he will appear as his handlers want him to appear and that is something less than what he should be.  He said it last night when he insisted that at times one has to say no when principles hang in the balance, but where the hell was the passion to defend that position.  Problem is that he had abandoned the high road when he continued the wars, when he opted out of the fray and avoided a single payer provider in the health care law.  He has in short alluded to following the role of Lincoln but he hasn’t even come close to channeling him.

The Insincerity of Referencing Future Generations

Politicians are quick to point out that their polices are designed to protect the next generation from the excesses of the current times. The Republicans point to the budget and scream that we are enslaving our children by running deficits. They will puff up their mighty indignation and point to a society that has gone off the rails in doing too much for too many who parenthetically ought to get off off their lazy asses and go to work. That the only employment available is minimum wage jobs that would take at least a sixty or seventy hour work week to maintain a substandard existence is of little concern to those well-to-do folks who benefit from all kinds of incentives to keep them wealthy. To think that some average Joe actually buys into this bull is truly amazing.

Romney just recently went to a white board and demonstrated how a fool with some polish can make the most outrageous assertions seem viable. Ryan, on the other hand, cherry picked the conservative Rand's writings to rationalize high military budgets, more tax decreases for the wealthy all the while gutting social programs. When compared to a street walkers who make no bones about what they are offering for money, Ryan looks like a duplicitous whore who would parade himself as an intellectual all the while taking money from the citizenry and giving nothing but a goofy smile and some allusion about the future generations. It is said he wanted to be a politician since a child. Well, Atwater (the man who mastered hate and lying politics in the modern age) and Rove must have schooled this neo con zealot in how to package bull in patriotic wrappings.

The fact that Ryan's fiscal plan is being questioned by even Reagan's budget director makes you wonder just how far a flimflam man can go before people truly understand just what the hell he is selling. That aside, there is another area where the current crop of Republicans are full of it. That is the environment.

When any of these clowns talk about the future the question should arise what kind of a land and water quality are they proposing to leave as their legacy. Sure, the troglodytes can contend that the burning of fossil fuels and releasing carbon into the air has nothing to do with climate, but that doesn't mean that it “ain't” happening. In his book, “The Fate of Species,” Guteri talks about tipping points. They being a point in time when the effects of a consequence cannot be reversed. That the earth has already gone under some major extinctions in the course of its long history should raise a caution flag. That many of the catastrophic events have come, in geological terms, quite fast should be reason enough to look at polices and practices that have dire consequences. Something to the effect that you can't use your drinking as a place to dump your sewage. That dire changes could come upon humanity at a faster pace than models suggest would surely get thinking people to look at the issue without the bias of moguls who profit from those elements that are causing the harm. The focus should not only be on this country but the world as a whole. The fact that the United States thwarted the Kyoto Accord speaks volumes to the ostrich-like policies and practices of this nation.

This high handed reference to future generations that the vast majority of neo-cons are wont to allude shows that they are little more than profligate, insincere liars. Their practices and polices as well as their laws and their court decisions will do little but leave this country and the world a vast barren land, under water, with only the roaches surviving the upheaval befalling this small planet. Funny thing is that the world will survive and will take on a composition that will eliminate the need for reality shows, and politicians who claim that their god has charted the way for a country and its fools to do whatever the hell it wants without an iota of concern for the fragile nature of this small planet.

By the by, the Democrats can stop feeding at the troughs of the bankers and other bastards whose only concern is how to acquire vast amount of capital. One noble gesture would be to transition this nation from a war state to a peace state.

The Madness of Neoconservatism

Richard Jenni, a brilliant though troubled and tortured comic, once observed that it is within a man's ego to look upon himself and see nothing but what is in his mind. An overweight sow can assume because he has plastered his eyebrow down with spit he strikes an image like a matinee idol. So it is with the Republicans politicians who parade their idiocy and think that they are astute. The country is awash in debt and the right wing revisionists point to public service workers and safety nets programs as the sole source of our economic difficulty. To hear this collection of troglodytes pontificate on a balance budget is to think that they know the way to fiscal solvency. Yet the facts remain clear. You can't spend treasure on unfunded wars, you can't cut taxes when you are increasing government spending on military systems of dubious and questionable value and you can't keep proposing policies that are responsible for the mess.

Now we have Romney selecting Paul Ryan, who somehow has been labeled an intellectual, and a budget genius when he proposed among other things to create a voucher program instead of Medicare. Paper is the last thing our health care system needs. The system is awash in paper. Fact is simplistic solutions which do little but create more confusion to an already confusing and bewildering system will never do anything to improve health care. Vouchers will do nothing but unleash a host of providers who will spend millions, if not billions, to scream out to potential subscribers the benefits of their programs probably with no entity verifying their claims. Of course, the ghouls of our healthcare industry ( that would be those giant corporations who sell insurance) are just waiting to scoop all those vouchers from unsuspecting senior citizens and giving them nothing but denials and a whole lot of paper work. We need to eliminate the ghouls who have somehow gotten their greedy dirty hands in the middle of the relationship between doctor and patient. We don't need someone sitting in an office in Hartford to determine what are medical necessities and we don't need them determining who should get coverage and we definitely don't need politicians sucking up to these guys for campaign contributions. Yet, we have a fool like the Senate Minority Leader telling us that our healthcare system is the best. It is obvious he doesn't have a clue of how to read world wide statistics. Facts, though, never got in the way of a fool's proclamation.

The question is how did the government programs that attempted to build a great society become the problem when all the fault lies with corrupt bankers, fool hardy and chicken hawk politicians, and conservatives who think that the only government necessary is government that gives them tax breaks and allows them to operate free of any restriction in their pursuit of capital. In this curious world, environmental protection is tantamount to a crime while pollution is touted as a cost of doing business. Conservatives claim unions are at fault when in fact they were responsible for the iconic middle class which has shrunk due to the absolute ignorance of those who can't grasp a fundamental law of economic. If you give the rich a tax break they buy rich people things which benefit a few, while a working person will buy a house and housing, of course, is a good indicator of a vibrant economy though that would assume you keep the thieves out of the equation.

So, here we go folks. The gauntlet has been dropped. The “necons” have secured the Republicans. They are back with their fear and saber rattling. They have all the answers. They will talk of job creators and a country that is strong and possesses all the greatness it always has. They will talk of god as if they have had a personal audience with the almighty. Bottom line, they are full of themselves to such a degree that they cannot see the forest because of the trees. They have, in fact, been calling the shots along with the thieves on Wall Street for a long time. Industry has dominated the landscape forever while the public sector and the blue collar workers who once occupied a sliver of a middle class have faded because of a hostile environment created by two bit snake oil salesmen who have charmed the electorate with guile and deceit all the while waving a flag and singing patriotic tunes. This country is in a decline and I fear Romney, the newly anointed pied piper, is tooting a tune that is nothing more than a call to the masses to follow him as he leads them to the precipice, where, if perchance, he convinces them, they will, like lemmings, fall into the abyss of inane conservatism. The truth is the true conservatives have long opted out of the fray for the crazies are in control.

The Economy of Crap

 So the new growth rate was a rather paltry 1.5% which when compared to home prices and personal income was a downer. As an uneducated student of economics, I looked at the explanation given by the talking heads and asked, WTF are they talking about. Let see, we are stagnating because a) people are saving b) were not running out and buying new crap. Hmmm, does this make sense. It wasn't too long ago we got into a shit because people were spending too much and not saving, relying on credit cards to fuel the insatiable consumerism created by the constant bullshit that bombards every American on any electronic device 24/7. The depth and extant of this pernicious need to consume smothers the world in junk, for if there is one constant among all the crap we buy it will all become junk. To base an economy on junk is little more than an attempt to squander resources in the pursuit of an illusion that the present is more important than the future, or to think only in terms of the immediate effects, something like a child consuming too much ice cream. If the world is ever going to get off the hamster wheel, things will have to be recalculated using measures that will fully account for all the variables going into a product. For example, when we calculate the value of a new product, we need to include the cost of disposing of the shit that it comes in, and for the matter, the cost of producing all the crap it is wrapped up in. To look at new consumer goods as the be all and end all of prosperity is to deny what the hell it cost to produce and to junk it. We are so fixed on this madness that we can't see the consequences of the practices that need to be addressed before we have the “new” product in our hand. That brings us to a point, is it better for someone to save or to spend? I would argue that it is better someone save for the building up of capital makes it possible to buy more durable goods. Of course, that position can only be proven if the people who safeguard the monies aren't a collection of thieves. Alas, we need some regulations, well no, we need to arrest and convict those who betray the public trust and make it hard for the rest of them to steal, something like the steel doors in a bank, but only tighter for scurrilous pin stripped bankers. To be frank, I don't know a lot about economics but what I know is that buying shit shouldn't be the basis or the measure of how well we are doing. If the modern grid were to fail, let's face we would all be in a shit. Our towering cities and suburban enclaves would fail on a scale that only a doomsday author could fully detail. Our foothold on the world was demonstrated at Fukijima. In one horrific storm, that modern shell of comfort was destroyed. Somehow, we need to refocus our energies and our models to reflect a positive move forward. It is absurd to base our economy on merely production and waste. Funny thing, since most of the junk we buy comes from China, perhaps we need to understand the value of permanence and to appreciate that if something lasts it isn't bad. We don't need all this crap, we need stuff that lasts. So as the summer rends its way through the dog days and the candidates continue to babble and the reporters talk of numbers that really don't mean anything to anyone but to the people who calculate them, we need to ask what the hell does it all mean. I would think that, for me, it is time to save and to hold off buying useless stuff I don't need. If that is impacting the economy then it is the economy and how it is measured that is at fault not me.

Silly Season in a World of Bullshit

As the country bakes, the candidates ramped up their campaigns. One can only imagine what the final two months will be like though I imagine it will be like television except instead of banal commercial commercials we will have the banal political ones. That we are bombarded with bullshit from the great bullshit manufactures in the hopes that the brain numbing sales pitches will entice us to part with some of our diminishing cash reserves is a sign that in the end this economy is merely an illusion propped up by those whose only purpose is to acquire vast sums of money so they can bemoan the welfare state and buy politicians who will make them more wealthy. The fact that any common man without a portfolio or Swiss bank account will sign on to the beliefs that a) capital gain taxes are bad, b) that a public health system is socialism, and c) that capitalists know what is best for the country and the economy is a testament to Menken's admonishment that no one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the American public. While the noise machines of the right continue to incite their lemmings to action, the country flounders in a sea of greed, theft, and incompetence. That congress is little more than house filled with elected officials whose behavior can only be classified as juvenile, though to be fair, kids often acts with some degree of ethics and morality. The house is a joke parading as a deliberative body; and, the senate has turned out to be totally ineffective institution with the requirement that anything that passes that body needs 60 votes. The lazy bastards did away with filibustering so that they can spend more time at the trough of big campaign contributors than standing in the well and defending what they believe. Forget the banks. Daimon, who the president praised as a smart banker, has lost billions on risky investments. The explanation he gives sounds those of a dude with a gambling addiction. That the person responsible for the losses earned 28 million is unfathomable. That these thieves, they being the bankers, screwed consumers and municipalities with their fast talk and rate rigging and not having been brought to justice is proof positive that in this world we are in the hands of those who don't give a shit about anything but their own greed. What makes it all the more ironic is that “they believe they deserve everything they stole.” Mort Sahl made that observation many years ago. Unfortunately, it holds true today. Now for Mitt, here is a dude that claimed he is a job creator and he points to Bain Capital. Interesting, now that it has been shown that Bain was a job destroyer, he claims he wasn't in charge, just the CEO. Only in the curious world of politics can you have it both ways. As for Obama, he cites that his biggest mistake was that he failed to tell a story of hope. I think what he meant to say a narrative. We have had enough stories. What his biggest mistake was his dreaming some phantasy about a Lincolnesque team of rivals, when he should have hit the ground and kicked ass. Listening to those republicans early on, when he had a super majority in the senate and majority in congress, was tantamount to masturbating, though that act at least has some conclusion. So, here we are facing the dog days of summer. The super rich are ponying up their large checks so that they can get the ear of candidates. A recent article in the Atlantic, showed that the only people whose income went up where those with the most. The average joe is whipsawed by prices and a diminishing economy. The banks continue to get free money, while everybody's investments deteriorate. The rich will tell us they have the answers, but only a fool would believe them because these rich people have been in control and have had the politicians in their pockets and the only thing we got for all their bullshit, is crumbling schools, roads. We have squandered treasure and lives on senseless wars. We have gotten pollution. To make matters worse, we have to listen to idiots praise the rich and redefine what is good. Zealots with no morals tell people how live. Thieves manage are money. Hacks gum up our political institutions. Bullshit remains the underlying principle of this country and its economy. The candidates will begin pumping us with their unique brand of bullshit. The irony is that they are the only ones with the dough to wast on useless crap. Don't look for the news program to help decipher the bullshit. They only repeat it.

We are so screwed

Well the quadrennial popularity contest is upon us. Bullshit will be flying fast and in amounts never seen before now that the Supreme Thugs allowed robber barons to participate in the media frenzy that accompanies our national effort to reduce everything to tv spots. Forget a meaningful discussion of issues. Slogans and catch phrases will be hurled at us, always with the backdrop of some patriotic symbol. Fact is that our entire political system has been reduced to electronic bullshit. While there may be a real difference in the two candidates, the end result always seems to be the same. Money and monied people drive this country. We, the people, only matter at the polls and given the fact that the majority of us either don't give a shit or are too blinded by our own biases make the deciding faction a small minority. The candidates are, for all intensive purposes, sides of the same coin. Last time, the country went for hope and change, and all that was delivered was despair and the status quo. This year the deficit seems to be the issue. Luddites on the right scream we need to cut all social programs while maintaining tax cuts for the wealthy and expanding the military and its doomed missions. To hear this collection of “know nothings” is to hear the murmurings of the lemmings as they race toward the cliff's edge. They have no common sense. They huddled in circles and mumbled their prayers to a god that we can only be thankful does not exist. They reduce everything to faith and their faith is stooped in Byzantine knowledge. The movement of the right grew out of everything ugly and hateful in our history and to make it palpable they wrap it up in fundamental Christian thought that has nothing to do with Christ save the misappropriation of his name. As for the left, and in the interest of full disclosure, I am of that persuasion, we keep pushing the idea of equality and social services but we don't have a clue as to the dynamics under which the game is played. We have ideas that are, at times, strangely based on new age thinking that can be down right faddish. We supported Obama as if he was a messiah demonstrating that we are as fool hardy as our brethren on the right in our belief that we live in a system that can be shaped by the will of the people. What we got was but another four years of the failed polices of the previous administration. That a man as articulate as Obama could not have seen that the road to meaningful change comes from meaningful action not bullshit is beyond understanding. How can we believe that Congress is at fault when he was elected with a super majority and did nothing with it? To have waltz his way into this quagmire after four years is at its best a sign of incompetence. Underlying it all is the possibility that in this game of politics it is the moneyed people profiting from it all. Instead of Paul Volcker we got the wall street pigs who proceeded to suggest that they knew how to correct the mess they made. It was like to house breaking a pup by giving him a new room to crap in. To even suggest, as Obama did, that JP Morgan's chief guy is an astute banker is about as close as you come to drinking the Kool-Aid as you can get. If he is so damn astute, does he need a regulation to keep his subordinates from sashaying up to the dice table and pissing away a fortune? Give me break. I believe but I am not stupid. We are all plugged in and hopefully that maybe our salvation If we could only have an American Spring and move this country toward a meaningful path to a future filled with the promise that our science has given us. Politicians to the one are mere bull shit artists who work at convincing us at what we already know. As I look across the vast expanse that divides this country, the problem as I see it is that as much as we have been able to progress in terms of knowledge there is an opposing force just as certain in their ways to returning the country back to a time that never existed. In the meantime, the moneyed people sit in their glass tower smiling in amusement at the antics of the masses. For in the final analysis, as long as there are two factions fighting one another, neither will have the time to ferret out the real culprits.