The world is now safe for Nazi garden gnomes. (via)
Apparently opposition to Obamacare by Democrats is racist.
CNN’s Rick Sanchez is no sellout, but he is an asshat.
We all know that the MSM never runs with a non-story with little or no info. That’s what the internet does.
A friend has called me out as a dupe because (gasp) a conservative foundation has launched an anti-Obamacare patient advocacy group and has been called out (oh noes) by some progressive leftist public interest organizations and blogs. Wow, one set of highly organized partisans deeply invested in the outcome of a political issue are dismissive of their opposition because it might (gasp) involve a set of highly organized partisans deeply invested in the contrary outcome of same political issue. Whoda thunk?
Perhaps more germane is the fact that using the involvement of partisan organizations in any political protest to invalidate the protest itself is a distraction. It is a feat of rhetorical legerdemain that allows one to sidestep the argument by pointing at people with complaints and saying, “oh they aren’t sincere,” “they don’t know what they’re talking about,” without dealing with the legitimacy of their complaints. Oh, someone somewhere might have given someone some funding, we don’t have to listen to them.
It’s also kind of illustrative of the echo chamber effect. In the Wonk Room post linked above they use the following language:
After orchestrating and funding the so-called Tea Parties movement, Americans for Prosperity — a nationwide front group founded and funded by the right-wing polluter Koch Industries — is launching an ad campaign characterizing President Obama’s effort to reform the health care system as a government take-over that will ration care and care and deny treatments.
Wow, you can see why my friend Steve thought I was a dupe. According to that graph, the evil “Americans for Prosperity” are the invisible hand behind the whole tea party movement. (BTW isn’t it asinine to use “So-Called” when you’re already using the word’s “Tea Party” as a slur. Or are there some ligit form of “Tea Party” you want to distinguish? Oh well, moving on.) If you follow the first link, though, you find that:
Despite these attempts to make the “movement” appear organic, the principle organizers of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works.
Okay, sloppy language in the first post, they obviously meant that Americans for Prosperity was only one of two “principle organizers.” (Weasel word alert. Define the level of support required to make a “principle organizer.” How many tea parties do you have to organize? All? Half? 25%? A dozen? Six? ) So what have they done? Well Freedom Works’ sinister plans involve a trio of websites (apparently you can make a web site look “amateurish” by having a slick flash intro, good to know) distributing literature, and advice on sign construction. Americans for Prosperity went so far to hide their hand in the movement by posting a half-dozen events on their website. Damn them!
And her name is Janeane Garofalo.
Hear me out here. Kaufman’s genius, or his insanity, was to blur the line between performance and reality to the point where the audience’s reaction (is this really happening? Is this guy serious?) becomes part of the act. Unlike some latter-day acts (can you say, Borat?) he managed to find the line of plausibility and straddle it uncomfortably close, so close that many of his “acts” are still believed by many to have been real events. (The fictional Tony Clifton, his “feud” with wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler.)
It has dawned on me that Janeane Garofalo is conducting an elaborate performance piece of satirical brilliance that would make the late Mr. Kaufman proud. This woman sat on a soundstage at MSNBC and explained to Keith Olbermann how tax protesters are actually racists. How can you not watch that and not see the genius of Kaufman’s Inter-Gender Wrestling champ and how it infuriated the SNL audience? Now, she has managed to say something so absurd that even those that sympathize with her carefully selected views can only stare gaping as she offers the following devastating quote:
GAROFALO: The, mostly the media in the States is much more to the right. I mean there is almost no liberal outlet for news commentary or editorializing.
One has to stand in awe at the woman’s commitment to her art.
Ever buy a house? Remember signing all that paperwork at the bank?
Let’s just say you’re there, a couple of hours before five, and there’s a stack of paper, maybe 1200 pages worth. You don’t have a hope of reading it all before closing, and you have to close today. You’re understandably nervous, since you’re signing a commitment that’s going to impact the next few decades of your life. So for a little reassurance you ask the mortgage guy, “So, does anyone actually read all this stuff?”
How would you react if his response was to laugh and say, “of course not, if anyone actually read this, we’d never get anyone to sign it.”
The whole premise of Atlas Shrugged is based on the productive members of the US abdicating from an encroaching socialist State by retreating to a secret utopian enclave called Galt’s Gulch. Thus the libertarian phrase, “Going Galt,” or refusing to be coerced into producing for an overreaching State. Of course, this isn’t as practical when there’s nowhere else to go.
However, it is still possible to withdraw your support from the regime. Since the whole enterprise is based on money and tracking financial transactions, you just have to reduce the amount of money you contribute to the system. So going “Galt” you need to do the following:
1) Lower your expenses and get out of debt. The fewer dollars go out your door, the less the State can grab in transit.
2) Shorten your supply train and buy local. The fewer stops between you and the producer of what you buy, the less chance the Sate can grab a slice. And if you buy something off of Craig’s List, or pay cash for eggs to the person who owns the chicken, the State might not see a dime from it. Hey, and your going green too.
3) Lower your taxable income. The less you “make” the less the State gets. Negotiate a lower salary for equivalent fringe benefits that aren’t taxed: vacation, retirement, dental coverage.
4) Donate as much as you can to charities, especially charities that produce tangible goods. (Habitat for Humanity) There’s a triple whammy there, the State gets less taxes from you, no taxes from the Charity receiving your income, and reduced taxes from the sector of the economy where they’re producing goods.
5) When you can, barter.
6) Save what you can in commodities and physical goods. Gold and jewelry are wealth that is invisible to the State. (Buy buy a safety deposit box.)
7) Grow your own food and brew your own beer, at least in part.
The subject that will not die has reared itself again. So, if we don’t tax the Internet to pay for dead trees killed by a dying business model, and we don’t turn copyright law into an undead brain-eating zombie under the control of the RIAA, what do we do?
Well if our goal is simply the perpetuation of piles of largely unread newsprint and not actually the perpetuation of journalism or journalistic ethics, well why not simply charge lobbyists for access to the newsmakers and the journalists who cover them? What could possibly go wrong?
Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive “salon” at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.
Now why would you cancel a sweet deal like that? Unless the brazen effort to prostitute the paper’s reputation had gone so far off the sleeze meter that it actually squicked out a Washington lobbyist enough for him to leak the pathetic plea to give the Post money. Apparently, the newsroom was not on board:
The flier circulated this morning came out of a business division for conferences and events, and the newsroom was unaware of such communication. It went out before it was properly vetted, and this draft does not represent what the company’s vision for these dinners are, which is meant to be an independent, policy-oriented event for newsmakers.
Well damn. There goes another promising business model. Good to know that the White House was not involved.