Which Way’s Up?

Seems like the spin starts in the bed room.

Now let’s see what can be done with these. . . .

Or you can . . . 

No matter how shitty, you can always find someone who likes it . . . “The print is a good size for reading.”

Which Way's Up? Politics

Well, not maybe not yours, but they still do work hard on the intricacies of good governance.

In the Idaho House you can take off your jacket but there’s no spitting on the floor. 

Members of the Idaho House loosened their ties Monday and waived the decorum rule for the rest of the session. 

That means they can take off their jackets and eat or drink on the floor of the House - they just can’t smoke or spit. 

Rexburg Republican Rep. Dell Raybould asked members to keep the no smoking or spitting provision because some members on the main floor voiced concern about what could fall on them from members who sit in the balcony. 

So then this is still cool?

Which Way's Up? Politics

Just when you thought the grand ole US of A had the market cornered on crazy, comes this report from our neighbors to the north.  Take that you smug French-Canadians.  Yes, this means you Celine Dion.

Weird Al Interviews Celine Dion - Funny home videos are a click away

Which Way's Up? Music, Out of Context, Politics Canada, creationists, Politics, ridiculous

I hate to say it, but if we don't pay these guys they will blow up the world.

The Case for Paying Out Bonuses at A.I.G.

I know that the official line is that the U.S. does not negotiate with terrorists, but these guys at AIG have pieced together one of the most destructive weapons of mass destruction known to man and they say they are the only ones that know how to diffuse it.  Also, even though the job market in general is shit right now, it turns out the job market for top executives, who brought about calamitous failure to their companies is still really good.  So, let’s just pay them off, because if we don’t someone else will.  There is still hope that they give back some of their ill gotten gains later.  Sound Good?  Also, if they leave they will do everything in their power to work against the government for further ill gotten gains.  Maybe we can ask them nicely to save the global economy and then shower them with money for un-fucking what they fucked.  It’s just crazy enough to work!

Which Way's Up? About the same length, Politics Andrew Ross Sorkin, bailout, Economic Meltdown, Politics, risk-free investments, Stupid

Grassley elaborated:

“Listen, what I meant was these people are the scum of the earth.  If they show their faces, I will take it upon myself to murder them in the most brutal fashion.  I have this book in my house about the Spanish Inquisition - I plan to throw it at them very hard . . . It’s a really big book.  Then whatever page it opens to - I will read it to them start to finish.  This of course will result in their not being able to stay awake.  Which is my opportunity to find the nearest National Science Foundation porn addict.  He will have his way with these dishonorable people.  Really, I’m saying the only merciful way out for these AIG executives is to kill themselves.  Otherwise, I am getting my pitchfork and torch and we will have old fashioned mob rule.  That’ll take me back.  DIE!  DIE!  DIE!”

Now excuse me, I have to get to my real job as a public access TV host:

Which Way's Up? Out of Context, Politics Corruption, Economic Meltdown, fresh faces of the GOP, Grassley, POLITICO, Politics, Republicans, Stupid

AIG goes ahead with bonus payouts

AIG, the multi-national insurance giant which is now 80 percent owned by the U.S. government, announced today that it would make a $100 million dollar donation to the Bernie Madoff legal defense fund, 3 days after the convicted mega-grand larcenist pleaded guilty to screwing over “everybody that got close enough to trust me.”

When a company spokesman was asked why the insurance giant was using bailout money to keep a wildly unpopular crook out of jail, the spokesman replied, “because we have no fucking clue how to keep middle class Americans from hating us. I’ll let you in on a secret, we have one of those huge lottery ball selection machines and we throw in a ball for each issue of the day. Whatever comes out that’s what we decide to go with. So toady it was either donate to Madoff’s legal defense fund, OR buying a private jet for a Mexican Drug lord. ”

When pressed on the details of who okayed such a plan and whether it might be more advisable to focus more on setting the business on a path to profitability, the spokesman added, “that’s just crazy enough to work!”

An AIG public relations executive picks a new strategy to improve public perception of the company

Which Way's Up? Politics

Despite his past mistakes, I was ready to give Bill Kristol a clean slate.  Let him forget about the immense blunder that was the Iraq War and focus on his poignant critique of Obama Administration.  My thinking being that perhaps he’s not that good at coming up with policies, but he is good at finding fault in other people’s policy (a common malidy of the right-wing press that is often helpful when the left gains control but a complete disaster when the right is in power).

But of course that was all shot to hell, because Bill Krisstol has a script and God help him he is sticking to it!  Exhibit A:

Never Allow a Democratic Administration To Go To Waste 

Opportunity knocks for Republicans. 

by William Kristol 

Weekly Standard 03/23/2009, Volume 014, Issue 26

Kristol, as always, starts with a back-handed compliment to the opposition.  Referring White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel’s desire not to let a crisis go to waste, Kristol writes:

Emanuel deserves points for candor. But perhaps not for perspicacity. 

Candor is something Kristol was never that good at.  His way is better charecterized as muddle and fling poop, with a straight enough face that half the country thinks he’s a lunatic and the other half takes him at his word.  The following is his take on who REALLY wanted to invade Iraq - I’ll give you a hint it’s not neo-cons.

Kristol goes on to write that the opening stumbles of the Obama administration has left their image a bit scuffed up . . . but those Republicans are looking PRETTY good right about now:

Meanwhile, the GOP recovery program is going pretty well. Republicans have progressed from shell-shocked timidity through small-bore sniping and onto robust (and responsible) opposition. The GOP has shown itself able to stand up and counter Obama’s arguments. The Bush hangover seems to be proving less burdensome than expected, and some of the GOP’s members of Congress are turning out to be more presentable than suspected.

I believe this is the sort of shape-your-own-reality thinking that was the hallmark of the GOP going into the Iraq war.  The neo-con argument used to go: “we are mother-fucking American and we can mother-fucking do whatever we want.  AND more importantly whatever we want to happen will happen.  Mother-fucking America creates whatever reality it wants.  Mother-fucking America does not get bogged down in geo-political tensions, or local rivalries, or even cultural sensitivities.  We come in, we blow the place up, we rebuild it the way is should have been built the first time around.”

I bielive that argument has been boiled down to: “we didn’t have the troops to pull it off, but if had - OH BROTHER!”

What’s unsettling here is that Bill Kristol is not being optomistic about a Republican future, instead he’s cramming all the negative GOP press into, “shell-shocked timidity through small-bore sniping and onto robust (and responsible) opposition.”  

The election brought into office a candidate that ran on idea that EVERYTHING that was done the last 8 years needs to be completely overturned.  Whether or not that’s happening is another story, but he ran on that notion.  To not ask existential questions about the GOP feeds into the notion that the GOP has completely lost touch with what the people of America are asking for.  

And has stopped looking at approval ratings.

And has stopped watching the non-Fox news.

Moving forward . . . 

First, Obama is, for PR reasons and PR reasons only (and not very good PR reasons at that), committed to closing Guantánamo. GOP members of Congress can make clear just how dangerous the remaining Guantánamo detainees are, and how irresponsible are some of the proposals for sending them abroad or trying them in the criminal justice system. The GOP should seek the release of the Defense Department report on terrorist acts by some of the less dangerous detainees released from Guantánamo under the Bush administration. Republicans can seek to slow or reverse Obama’s decision, requiring that he certify that closing Guantánamo will not endanger American lives, providing funding for Guantánamo in the budget whether or not Obama wants it, and so forth. Lots of Democrats would have trouble opposing such efforts.

Polls will be helpful here, again.  Forty-four percent of Americans agree that Gitmo should be closed.  Not a deal breaker.  In fact, only 35 percent of American’s believe that the governement should fund family planning over seas, but that won’t stop Democrats from removing the “gag-rule.”

Moreover, the PR reasons Kristol scoffs at, are part and parcel of why terrorists have grown stronger under Bush.  The Islamic world doesn’t hate us because we like freedom and democracy and nearly-naked women in our magazines.  This is of course distasteful to them, but you will not find many Muslims joining the terrorist cause because of our life-style.  Instead the Islamic world hates us because of the ACTIONS OF OUR GOVERNMENT.  Including the BAD PR OVER GITMO.  Gallup illustrates this point.  In most of the nations of the Middle East surveyed the top three things the U.S. could do to improve their image are, 1) Pull out of Iraq, 2)Remove military bases from Saudi Arabia, 3) Close Gitmo

The top three U.S. actions to improve our PR in the middle-east and Kristol scoffs at it.  No amount of extra-judicial killings, imprisonment without trial, or invasions of sovereign nations will stop terrorism.  But good PR can and does cut the legs out from under terrorist recruitment.  And Kristol’s against it.  Is he wrong on every issue?  No it just seems that way, because he’s wrong on all the important ones.

Second, what’s now the rationale for discriminating against ROTC on elite college campuses? The “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy? Well, Obama is president and the Democrats control Congress. They can change that policy if they want to. 

Absolutely!  But I’m sure Kristol will come against a change in the policy when Obama decides to tackle it in his second term.

Which Way's Up? Obama, Politics Bobby Jindal, fresh faces of the GOP, Obama, Politics, Republicans

The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) has a buddy on the Texas House of Representatives who believes that privately funded non-profit institutions should be able to print degrees without submitting to the Texas regulations that govern degree-granting institutions.  Basically, he believes that privately funded non-profit institutions should be able to print degrees until they run out of ink, effectively giving a yokel with a printer the authority to grant degrees.  

ICR wants to continue offering a masters in science (it recently relocated from California to Texas) program, but Texas has a law that mandates that people receiving a masters of science degree should be studying, oh I don’t know science.  The first tenant of which is that ALL HYPOTHESIS ARE TESTABLE.  This runs counter to ICR assertion that:

the Bible consisting of the thirty-nine canonical books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven canonical books of the New Testament, is the divinely inspired revelation of the Creator to man. Its unique, plenary, verbal inspiration guarantees that these writings as originally and miraculously given, are infallible and completely authoritative on all matters with which they deal, free from error of any sort, scientific and historical as well as moral and theological.

That’s scientific democracy.  It’s right and true because the majority of people believe it.  This from of science has a hard time “discovering” anything knew, because people just feel so nice and cozy in the old facts.

At least some creationists are “challenging” their hypotheses.

Which Way's Up? Politics

To which Rush is sure to respond with the tried and true, “I didn’t vote for an Obamanation.”

The Democratic party will counter, “So what?”

And Rush, “Sew buttons”

Etc. until entire country is distracted enough for the Riddler to steal all the gold out the Federal Reserve.

Future owner of ass loads of gold

Which Way's Up? Politics

It turns out saying stuff you don’t believe IS harder than it looks.  So that’s why politicians get the big bucks.  

Abortion is a . . . . choice. Damn it! I knew I should have taken the note card with me.

Which Way's Up? Politics fresh faces of the GOP, Politics, Republicans