If I Were A Better Person, I Might Feel Sorry For Them

Those sad fools heading the GOP keep making attempts to "listen to real Americans" by putting up little 'ol websites & inviting comments. This is because they feel compelled to keep up the populist front, so that all of the Angry Whites and Bitters* can continue to fixate on the mean gubmint and not notice the thorough reaming they are getting by corporations.

Unfortunately, teh Interwebs appears to be populated mainly by vicious and apparently unemployed liberals who immediately swarm to any such site and start proposing things involving Truck Nutz. Then they all laugh at each other's jokes, just like the cool kids used to do when they were in the hallway smoking pot, while some people were just trying to have a prayer session before school starts, okay? Then the other people who comment are people the Republicans really don't want to be publicly associated with, who have numerous suggestions about the proper weaponry for the Upcoming Race Wars. Basically, the Republicans should just give up on the whole open-forum website idea and own up the fact that they really don't care what a bunch of hicks from the swamps think anyway. Of course they won't do this, but it would be good to see: a swanky website that requires you to donate $10,000 to the RNC before you can even enter, and then cigar smoke wafts gently out of your computer and your disk drive begins to dispense Talisker and you start to chuckle quietly about how well the whole dismantling-the-education-system 30-year plan turned out.

But as Wonkette notes, there are, in fact, some Real Americans who do get a word in edgewise, and they sound both reasonable, and sad.

*Sounds like a fun new cocktail, but is not.

It's Never Going to Stop, Man...Now Hop Quick, Like a Bunny!

That line is from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Benicio del Toro/what was his character's name again? is clinging to a merry-go-round in Circus Circus, and Johnny Depp/Hunter S. is trying to get him off it. When Benicio says, "Make it stop," Johnny Depp points out that the merry-go-round never stops--much like life itself, the wheel of samsara, or myriad events that confirm my total cynicism.** It's deep, see?

So, quick, like a bunny, onto the report that found that the regulators from the MMS--who were supposed to be overseeing tiny little details like oil rig shut-off valves, but who ever needs to use those, right?--would let industry officials fill out the forms in pencil, and then the "regulators" would go over them again in pen and turn them in. I vaguely remember mocking the MMS back in the day, when a bunch of these guys got caught doing cocaine and sharing hookers with lobbyists from the various industries they were supposedly overseeing. I figured that they had just signed away all national parks to Halliburton, as this was standard Bush Administration policy, whether high or no. Then I tried not to think about this anymore--which was apparently the course of action taken by lots of people, until some 200 million gallons of oil poured into the Gulf. And while the Obama administration is clearly going to emphasize that this report covers 2005-2007, when, you know, THOSE GUYS were in power, it turns out that the current Administration selected a BP executive as deputy administrator for land and minerals management. How about that, surprise, surprise, surprise, &c. Also, seems like both BP and the Obama Administration significantly under-reported the amount of oil pouring out of the well.

Suggestion: there are currently many people unemployed in Gulf Coast states, no? Perhaps they could be hired to wash some pelicans and save some wildlife? And perhaps BP could just go ahead and pay all of them a nice wage, just out of the goodness of its shrunken, withered corporate heart?

**The Theme of the Month is "defending my cynicism," apparently; I just noticed that 3 of the last 4 posts are about being cynical. I suppose that, as a graduate of a notably lefty-hippie-idealist university, I have some lingering need to defend my misanthropic views, which were generally at odds with the general tenor of debate in my undergrad discussion sections. What Blogs Are For: Finally Saying What I Wanted To Say to That Hippie That One Time in 1997.

Today in Republican Jackassery: You Say Christian, I Say Hypocrite, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off.

Many people have already mocked George Rekers, not only for his moustache, which is eminently mockable, but also for claiming that homosexuality can be 'overcome' and 'cured.' And to prove it, he went online to a site called, yes it is true, Rentboy.com to find someone to help 'carry his luggage' on a trip to Europe. Perhaps he felt God was dilatory in giving him tests to prove his faithfulness and non-gayness, and decided to set up a little test of his own.

I will now assume that all conservative Christian men who vociferously demonize homosexuality are, in fact, gay. Actually, I've been operating under this assumption for quite some time, and its accuracy is now approaching Euclidean levels of certainty.

Then today, in a refreshing change--from the gay hypocrisy, I mean, not from the generic hypocrisy--a Republican (Christian, conservative, the usual) member of the House, Mark Souder, resigned because he had an affair with one of his staffers. This kind of thing is usually not worth even reporting, because hypocrisy is always squalid and boring. This story has a little extra fun, though, because Souder at some point made a video promoting abstinence. Co-starring--how could it be otherwise?--the staffer with whom he had the affair.

I guess it wasn't a very effective video.

Why I Am a Cynic, Part 998 of a Countably Infinite Series

>> So it seems that the Powers That Be may have "underestimated" the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf by just a smidge. Luckily, I always have my Cynic's Trump Card at hand: the "Oh, well, we're probably all fucked anyway" card. One doesn't actually win anything by playing this card, although if this card is played often enough, one does eventually have the ability to shrug in a Gallic fashion, while smoking Gauloises.

>> One might remember that prior to the passage of the health care bill, I had some minor concerns about the lack of price controls and the vague language used about the new "restrictions" on the insurance industry. Funny story: the insurance industry is now lobbying to "ward off strict regulation of premiums and profits under the new health care law." They would like to define an "unreasonable" increase in premiums as anything "more than one trillion percent in one year." Also, since they are now required to spend a certain amount of their money on actually providing health care services to people, they would like to expand the definition of "health care service" to include "paying people to review and reject health care claims." But I guess this is still better than what we had, because...now they have to haggle out in the open?

Thought Roulette

>> During the great health care debacle, I wanted to make a point about how much it would cost certain Senators to buy their health insurance on the open market. The only thing was, many many Senators qualify for Medicare, which meant 1) I couldn't say, "See, your health insurance would cost $1500 a month and wouldn't cover your wife's stays at the Betty Ford Clinic" and 2) our Senate is clearly populated by the olds. Today, Alex Pareene (formerly of Gawker, now apparently of Salon) noted that this Congress is officially the oldest Congress ever. Apparently, being senile does not disqualify anyone from voting on minor little things like wars and whatnot. I grant that it's hard to differentiate between senility and batshit insanity, but still...Call me cynical (if you haven't already) but somehow I doubt that these guys are making decisions with the seventh generation in mind. ("Global warming? How soon will Manhattan be under water? 2030? Fuck it, I'm not going to be around for that.") Fun fact: Senator Robert Byrd was born the year the United States declared war on Germany the first time.

>> Sarah Palin is publishing a book. It is entitled--and I am not making this up--"America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag." Now while I can see someone, perhaps not Sarah Palin, but someone, having reflections on family, and it is possible to have reflections on faith, I am baffled as to how exactly one reflects on flag. Not the flag, not a flag...but just flag. Do articles of faith prohibit the use of articles in text?

>> Apparently, the Tea Baggers in Maine have managed to replace the Republican party platform with their own platform, which is a very special blend of crazy. Among other things, while going all out for "the rights of the unborn" (in passing, "the unborn" is an oddly creepy phrase) they also want to reject the U.N. Treaty on the Rights of the Child. Interesting. If only those children could un-born themselves, they could have some rights back. In the meantime, we will stand proudly with Somalia as the only nation that has not ratified this treaty. They would also like to "discard political correctness" and "Investigate collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth"and something about "Return to the principles of Austrian economics" which, um, irony alert?

One thing that I find very strange about these folk is their propensity for taking an outraged stand against things that no one is actually proposing (for example, a one world government or currency; or for that matter, is political correctness really so oppressive? When you want to call a woman--say, Hillary Rodham Clinton--a bitch, do people materialize out of nowhere and staple your tongue? Isn't this whole anti-political-correctness thing really a little temper tantrum because you can't call the other kids names anymore?)

As for the "collusion between government and industry" in perpetuating the "global warming myth" this is just so retarded I can't even get into it, especially because Sarah Palin just showed up to staple my tongue for using the word "retarded." It's okay, though, it's not "political correctness" if it's for Jesus.

Yeah, What He Said

A great clip from the Ed Schultz show (the sound is a little funky, but it's worth it). Mike Papantonio, an environmental lawyer, breaks down the right wing response to the oil spill. Bonuses: he calls Rush Limbaugh an "AM radio burnout," says there's an audience for this "crazy bumpkin" talk, that corporate America knows that there is this exploitable audience (we may run out of fossil fuels, but we'll never run out of stupidity), so they "release the flying monkeys" like Palin, Beck, and Limbaugh.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

I am frequently accused of being a cynic. And this is so, though of course like all cynics I think I am simply a realist. Example:

IDEALIST T.A.: So my students would really like more time to work on the essay, so could we get those paper topics out earlier? They're really committed to their topics.

CYNICAL SELF: 95% of those kids are going to write their paper the night before it's due, probably after buying Ritalin from the kid down the hall.

IDEALIST T.A.: No! Well, maybe your kids aren't as inspired as my kids are by this class (smiles at professor).

CYNICAL SELF: Or maybe my students aren't trying to bullshit me into getting them extra time to find a paper on the internet, because I scare them.

IDEALIST T.A.: You're such a cynic! I could never live like that. I like to look for the best in people, don't you?

CYNICAL SELF: No.

So anyhow. Apparently the Gulf of Mexico is where the military dumps much of its unexploded ordinance. And it is also, as you may have recently noticed, where a lot of off-shore drilling activity takes place. I'm sure this adds just that little bit of extra excitement oil rig workers need.

This reminds me of trying to read Ghost Wars, an excellent book that I will probably never finish. Because it starts with the war between the Soviets and the Afghanis, which was, first of all, really for no reason whatsoever, some Cold War nonsensery about spreading or supporting communism. And then in a shocking turn of events the Reagan administration gets involved, and starts handing out expensive and very effective weaponry to basically anyone who showed up saying they were going to fight the Evil Commies. The part that kills me is that they expected people to turn them back in after the war with the Soviet Union was over. Instead, they used them to fight each other, and now they use them to shoot down American planes. Fun!

In both situations, people had to think that Everything Is Under Control, betting that the outcome of the situation would be the best possible outcome (The Afghanis would never descend into sectarian civil conflict, and will always be on our side; oil companies can be trusted to be cautious when drilling in a minefield). This is why cynicism is actually a helpful attitude, and clearly more cynics should be consulted about policy making, and oil drilling licenses, and the minor problems that may occur when we litter the ocean floor with bombs.