Where's Her Apology?

Martin Bashir has resigned from MSNBC after taking Sarah Palin to the mat over her ridiculously awful comparison our debt to slavery. Not only was she insensitive but she demonstrated (once again) that she is sorely lacking in an understanding of our debt. On his Nov. 15 broadcast, Bashir called Palin "a world class idiot" because she made a comparison to slavery while discussing U.S. debt to China. The host then read an excerpt from the diary of a former plantation manager who wrote of forcing one slave to "S-H-I-T" in another slave's mouth, and said "if anyone truly qualified for a dose of [such] discipline... then she would be the outstanding candidate." He has since apologized for the remarks and now tendered his resignation from the network.

What I'm wondering is where is Sarah Palin's apology? Does she get to play with different rules?

Yes. Yes, she does.

In fact, so do all conservatives. They get to act like jack wagons because...well...they are. And their base eats it all up. But liberals don't get to act that way because they are the adults in the political arena, hence Bashir's resignation. If the Fox News personalities were held to the same standard, there would be no one working at the network.

Honestly, it's pretty fucking unfair if you ask me. It's almost like we simply have accepted that it's OK for conservatives like Sarah Palin to say offensive things. They get a pass and liberals don't. 

Growing Up

Dennis Prager's recent piece over at RealClearPolitics.com is a perfect example of the total lack of reflection by conservatives. Filled with the usual straw men, ad hominem and misleading vividness fallacies, Prager is stumped!

Virtually every institution outside the home has been captured by people with left-wing values: specifically the media (television and movies) and the schools (first the universities and now high schools). In the 1960s and 1970s, American parents were blindsided. Their children came home from college with values that thoroughly opposed those of their parents.

And then they come home, often after only year at college, a different person, values-wise, from the one the naive parent so proudly said goodbye. 

Naive, yes, but not in the way he thinks. I wonder if Mr. Prager and the conservative parents he has elected himself champion of every consider that they might be...oh, I don't know....WRONG?!? Nah, that can't be it. All that fancy book learning at schools is all lies and liberal deceit! How dare they actually veer off script and speak the truth backed up facts.

Maybe something should be done about those teachers...hmm...I'm sure we can look to history for some ideas:)

When You Hear Their Answers...

As I have said many times, the biggest impediment to progress in this country is the conservative movement as it stands today (see: apocalyptic cult). While we are seeing signs of them moving away from psychosis, they seem unable to grasp that our country has one direction: forward. Yet, it is not simply the conservative that are holding us back. Another big impediment are the liberals themselves.

Liberals are, by their very nature, diplomatic and reflective. So when conservatives say things like climate change is a hoax perpetuated by people want to control us or that having universal background checks means a national registry, we pause and wonder if what they are saying might be true. That's where the first mistake is made. We take their assertions at face value. The second mistake is then the movement toward the playing field that they want to play on (i.e. where they can "win"). By even considering that climate change legislation is going to lead to internment camps or that a national registry is really, really bad, we feed into their paranoia and, sadly, embolden their argument.

So, the lesson is quite simple. Refuse to allow them to set the table. Ignore the impulse to be diplomatic and fair minded when they say something ridiculous. Instead, ask questions. Why is a national registry bad? What happens after that? Who are those people whose backgrounds are not checked now? What should we do with them instead? What should we do about climate change?

When you hear their answers, it will become obvious very quickly that these people should not be in charge of anything.

Be Careful What You Wish For

When a corporation files for bankruptcy, it's the culmination of a series of unfortunate events that was likely caused by some sort of government over regulation. When a city like Detroit files for bankruptcy, it's a "win" for the Right and their minions in the blogsphere. Why? Well, it goes something like this.

Detroit is a city that has largely employed liberal polices.
Detroit has just gone bankrupt.
Employing liberal policies means every city every where will go bankrupt.

Indeed, the very definition of a logical fallacy. This is all they have. By this logic, San Francisco should be in deep, deep shit. The opposite, of course, is true. The city attracts the 4th most foreign tourists of any city in the world, ranking 35th out of 100 worldwide. Juxtaposed with the millions brought in by tourism are the 30 international financial institutions, seven Fortune 500 companies, and a large support infrastructure of professional services—including law, public relations, architecture and design. Liberal policies there certainly are not affecting that city in an adverse way. Or New York, for that matter. We don't see Wall Street relocating to a red state any time soon, right?

Once you get past the adolescent game of "See? I told you!!" it's easy to see that Detroit has gone bankrupt for a number of reasons, none of which have to do with liberal policies. The city's woes have piled up for generations. In the 1950s, its population grew to 1.8 million people, many of whom were lured by plentiful, well-paying auto jobs. Later that decade, Detroit began to decline as developers started building suburbs that lured away workers and businesses. Then beginning in the late 1960s, auto companies began opening plants in other cities. Property values and tax revenue fell, and police couldn't control crime. In later years, the rise of autos imported from Japan started to cut the size of the U.S. auto industry.

By the time the auto industry melted down in 2009, only a few factories from GM and Chrysler were left. GM is the only one with headquarters in Detroit, though it has huge research and testing centers with thousands of jobs outside the city. Detroit lost a quarter-million residents between 2000 and 2010. Today, the population struggles to stay above 700,000.Detroit lost a quarter-million residents between 2000 and 2010. Today, the population struggles to stay above 700,000.

Add in the usual amount of corruption that goes on in big cities and it's easy to see how Detroit has fallen so far. Cory Williams over at AP has an interesting piece told from the perspective a primary source. The over riding diagnosis is severe mismanagement of public funds and a decided lack of even basic fundamental services. Of course, it's much more than that.

Detroit is a metaphor for globalization. It represents how the spread of free market capitalism around the world ended up eroding it here at home. It was the epicenter of the Golden Age of American Manufacturing at the heart of the Rust Belt. The various factors above brought about its fall and the main lesson to heed from this devolution is that if we want the world to be a democratic place rooted in free markets and liberal economic theory in practice, we must be careful what we wish for.

Because we got it.

You Are Not That Conservative (or liberal for that matter)

Tom Jacobs has a great piece over at Pacific Standard that analyzes a recent study on just how conservative and liberal people are these days.

In three experiments described in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers found “a systematic bias among young adults to perceive themselves as somewhat more conservative than they actually are.”

And the reasoning behind this is simply that the word "conservative" brands better than the world liberal. I've often thought this because when you really start asking people, who self-identify as conservative, where they stand on issues, they really aren't that far right at all. They just don't like the word liberal and are embarrassed to label themselves as such. This is largely due to the immensely successful job the Right has done at negatively marketing that word.

In the first group, “liberal Democrats significantly overestimated their liberalism,” the researchers report. “However, moderate Democrats, Independents, and Republicans significantly underestimated their liberalism.” A very similar pattern was found in the other groups, with an underestimation of one’s liberalism “more pronounced” among self-described conservatives.

Here is the quiz that was taken. How did you do?

File Under: Who the FUCK Cares?

If there is one thing that really drives me nuts about liberals, it's their PC bullshit. I haven't had to put up with much of it of late because my various circles are all very laid back. Occasionally, though,  if I'm over at the U for some reason, I'll make a comment about porn and the people there will be up my ass with a tweezers in less than a second.

"Don't you know that porn subjugates women?" they ask.

"Considering that women are the primary owners now of the porn industry, I'd say that's incorrect," I reply. I then add in examples from all the women I know that love porn and then the mouth foaming really begins. Fortunately, this is really the most I have to deal with it and that suits me just fine....that is, until, last week.

What a giant pile of horse manure. More importantly, who the FUCK cares? He called one of his long time friends good looking. Well, guess what? She is good looking. And so is he. In fact, she's fucking hot!! How's that, jack wagons? She is a fantastic ass and is very shagable, to channel my inner Austin Powers. But I guess we aren't allowed to say or even think such things because that leads to the raping and subjugation of women.

Who are these "critics" that forced him to apologize? If anyone knows, I'd appreciate a link so I can give them a piece of my mind. The extent to which things get exaggerated in this country boggles my mind. I thought we had come out of our repression about sex and were a much more open society where you can say things like, "Hey, she's a dime!"

More importantly, given all the misery in the world, don't we need all the compliments and positivity we can get?