Occupy Nazi Hashtags

Late to teh party, but wanted to get my two cents in on Hashtag Hitler-gate. 

1. It's a hashtag.  But let's give teh guy teh benefit of teh doubt and try and address his post-hoc editted correction argument.  That orange hashtags will be creeping everyone out due to their imagined connections to "totalitarian tendencies". Perhaps teh PJmedia-idiot is right - I mean gauging teh opinions and views of teh general public isn't always easy. How else can we explain teh popularity of Creed or Justin Bieber? What we do know is how favourable a view teh public has of OWS at teh beginning of teh month. Because there was polling.

At 54% favourability, it currently outpolls teh Tea Party 2:1. In fact teh Tea Party has never polled higher than mid 40's in terms of favurability, so teh general public already connects better with OWS than they ever have with teh Taxed Enough Already movement.  Sort of an important point when discussing teh public's view of teh movements.

2. But teh thing is that no one knows. Despite teh apparently unshakable belief displayed by teh moran that OWS is doomed to being despised by all Americans everywhere. Maybe as moar polling data becomes available and OWS' popularity trends down she might be able to come back to this post and say that she "told us so." But that data isn't in yet. Incidentally, I kinda think that any effect teh orange hashtag has on OWS favourablity polling is microscopically miniscule at best, but that leads us into,,,

3. Moar importantly - and I think this is part of teh original point - it's not about teh orange hashtag. It's about teh OWS movement having "totalitarian tendencies". That it's really a giant fascist autocratic movement with a cult-like reverence of some charismatic Dear Leader Fuhrer-figure. Uh, minus that cultish leader thing. And teh autocratic fascism. But otherwise - exactly that.

wev. Hashtags or not, this is about teh nature of teh OWS movement. If OWS really is just a patchouli reeking version of Heaven's Gate looking for teh low-Gini-coeffecient spaceship behind teh comet of record high corporate profits or whatnot, polling will bear it out.

4. As a kind and generous Dragon-King, I want to look at common ground. I am totally against totalitarianism. Don't liek it one bit. Not a fan of fascism. I relate bettar to anarchists than authoritarians. Teh entrenched establishment can eat me. &c.  Just teh same as they profess "on teh other side."

So we're on teh same page on opposing blind loyalty. That despite what we're told to believe - we need to use our own judgement to decide. I mean, who are you gonna believe - edicts from above or your own lying eyes?  I believe teh phrase is WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

And here we have OWS. Made up of people. And while teh righties may disagree with some of them, dislike some of them, and outright despise some of them with 53% of their shrivelled hearts and missing souls. And on teh other hand we have Wall Street and teh Financial Industry.  Who after leading teh entire world into a massive financial crisis that we still haven't seen teh bottom of, is in teh middle of reaping near-record profits.

I dunno how you define "being against totalitarianism", but siding with Goldman or Citibank certainly doesn't fit my definition.

UPDATE: I've been informed with great Gravitas that d00d is of teh non-d00d gender, so I plucked some eyebrows on teh way and shaved some pronouns now he is a she.

Doo-de-doo, de-doo, de-doo, de-doo-de-doo

Obama and Democracy

So, this month has marked some excursions from my ususal commenting grounds. My first comments at Balloon Juice and Lawyers, Guns and Money. Prompted by the shit sandwich that is debt ceiling Super Congress cutty Mc cut cut bullshit deficit OMG deficit - it's not like we're skirting around a fucking double dip recession or worse here. Anywho, what with all that, it's been a pretty Obama-bashing gay old time. And it's probably way too late at this point to clarify my position on Obama for folks who have only seen my nym for teh first time on some HE SOLD US OUT rant, but thinking about itand getting it down into words has been an intersting learning experience for me, so wev.

Firstly - yes, what some anonymous foul-mouthed d00d in Canuckistani land thinks about teh preznit? Who fucking cares? Well, I do. And it's my blog and I'll cry if I want to. Okay, here we go:

Item: As I said over at fish's

I am still very relieved that it's him and not Bomb Iran in teh Oval Office. Or, IPU forbid - Grifter McQuitsalot.

Even if you gone on the assumption that Obama is a corporatist tool, and nothing more, he is still way preferable over JiSM3. And for all you Obamapologists with your President Bachmann ooga-booga-boo! this is what we call "grading on a curve". And it is a crazy curve that yields nothing informative or enlightening. Like when folks tell you that whatever you're being forced to settle for is "better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick". Great, thanks. When someone offer to trade me for said eye poking, I'll now know to pass.

Item: I'm not a PUMA. This isn't about Hillary being teh better choice. Ask anyone who knew me from back when I switched to this nym in ought eight. And I'm glad that we've got Barry instead if Hillary, notwithstanding that we'll never really know for sure how Hillary would have done things. LG&M moved onto this question after I decided to write this post but well before I finished it. Anyways, here's what I think about Obama v Hillary.

I'm pretty bullish about Obama on gay rights. Sure he moved really slowly on it, but I really don't know if Hillary would have been better. On DADT, I think she'd have been worse - and not because of Bill, but because she seems even more deferential to teh military than Obama does (IMO - can't be arsed to find back-up). This covers too, Iraq and Afghanistan. It's hard to imagine, but I believe that Obama is the least hawkish of anyone who had a reasonable shot at 2008.

I think HRC might well have pushed harder for HCR. It's hard to imagine someone pushing less than Obama did. Actively berating the people supporting what was then the strongest bit of leverage he had. Even if he was set on flushing teh robust public option, he could have let teh Leftsies rant and rave and shift the Overton and gotten a better price for killing the most effective cost control method being debated at the time.

Ugh, sorry for the Obama bashing diversion - where was I? Right, I think Hillary would have fought harder for HCR, but I also think that with Hillary pushing, the opposition would have fought harder as well. I think we'd probably have ended up with a dead reform bill. Although this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I believe I'm on record as a Kill Bill during HCR Shit Sandwich - not strongly but my feeling was there was too much graft. I seem to recall that my final position was pass the thing anyways, not on its own merits, but to add momentum going into Fin Reg. Yeah, that worked out fan-fucking-tastic. Still, my feelings about the HCR that passed, I'd have to say is it woulda wash if we had Hills instead.

In Hillary's defense, I would say that I'd have been less disappointed by Hillary if we ended up in the same Debt Ceiling Austerity Growth Dada play we're in. Not to say that I didn't expect much from her - for sure her election would have been historic - and coming out of the dark years that marked teh beginning of teh new millenium, anything would have seemed glorious. But not like Barack. d00d just has so much charisma and he so captured the imaginations of not only America, but teh whole world.

Okay, battle with ancient history done with - what's my beef with Obama? There's a bunch of specific things, but I think there's a separate common item to it all. I think teh word for it is establishmentarianism. A strong bias towards those already in power.

Here's teh thing - democracies are only as strong as their institutions, otherwise it's just mob rule. This is why, for example, plebiscites on minority rights are seen as uncouth. "Minority rights" is an institution that is respected in functional democracies. The problem with teh US is that some of those institutions have gained outsized importance - those being the usual suspects - Wall Street, The Military-Industrial Complex, &c..

And my problem with Obama is his whole hearted embrace of that paradigm. Hence the lack of accountability for war crimes. The campaign against whistleblowers. The continued record high deployment fractions of the armed forces. The financial bailouts that favour giant mega corporations over families with tough mortgages. Everything he does now is in this protect-the-hierarchy-and-expand-its-reach mode. HCR favours teh insurance industry and hospitals more than it does the uninsured. The outrage against entitlement program cuts only seem to want to protect Social Security and Medicare, neither of which are means tested (note that I am most definitely NOT endorsing means testing these programs). Medicaid, which is for helping the neediest is fine for chopping.

Even his approach to doing things is different. OFA, that grassroots machine that helped him get elected - practically sat out the first fight and then got mothballed. Everything is decided by small groups of appointees working in the back rooms. He received his transparency in government award in one of those back rooms. But it's this working group or that special Presidential Commission or its Super Congress - twice the authority and about 2% of the membership! Super!

That's the complaint really. What happened to the community organizer? To small donations? To the wide base of motivated volunteers? To listening to the people that worked their assess off three years ago instead of teh Republicans?

An Epic Rant

Not mine.  The main post is about how XBox Live is offering Civil War Uniforms for your avatars, but curiously enough only in gray.  The story isn't teh intersting part - although considering that XBox Live is populated by thirteen year old sociopaths who make moar comments about people's mommas than I do - well I suppose there's a chance we'll be hearing about it again soon.

No, the AWESOME part is the first comment on the post.

I'd buy teh @The-Upsetter a martini, but it's crass to drink during a toast to yourself.  Maybe the next round, after teh applause dies down.

How Many More Gay People Does God Have to Create Before We Ask Ourselves Whether or Not God Actually Wants Them Around?

Click here for the news article or here for the vid.

The Marquee de Sad

I am told that the marquee is a very important thing for blogs to have. Teh Union Thug was stoleded from this guy.

Fuck You Friday

To commemorate zrm's new tradition I'm offering my own Fuck You Friday. Incidentally, also about wind turbines.

FUCK YOU DALTON MCGUINTY. FUCK YOU SO MUCH THAT THE LARGE ARRAY WAKE EFFECT IS NOTICEABLE.

Ontario is canning all offshore wind. There is something like a gigawatt of offshore wind projects currently in various stages of development. At least one turbine manufacturer was so interested that they were considering moving their offshore turbine manufacturing to Ontario. Kiss all of that good-bye.

This is the same government that was going to close all of our coal plants by 2007. The plan now (and there is actual legislation mandating it) is a 2014 closure. I dunno where they're going to find a gigawatt of power generation to replace the offshore they aren't going to build.

Remember this from last year? The thing about being a leader in wind power? Apparently only if someone else does it first.

The Long-Term Energy Plan is to have 10 GW in wind/solar/biogas by 2018. We're currently at something like two and half. Good Luck hitting that target when you drop bombshells like "no offshore in Ontario - period" with no warning whatsoever.

Seriously, no warning at all. A lot of the work I do is with wind farms and no one I know had any clue this was coming down the pipe. Notice the timing of the announcement - 2 PM Friday afternoon. Not on the front page of the Ontario website, but buried as a small text-only link in the newsroom. Not even a Top Story.

Why? You'd think that they would want to trumpet this announcement so that all the NIMBY's and anti-wind folks would hear. Because the plan is not to reduce the amount of wind energy to be installed. That means moar onshore turbines.

Ontario's capacity for renewables generation is limited by the transmission network - meaning new generation has to come online either very close to where the coal plants are being shut down or close to load centres. So that gigawatt of wind power they won't be building in Lake Ontario or Lake Erie is instead going to be built - I don't know where. But it's gotta be close to where people live.

That's why they've buried the news. This announcement is bad for both sides of the wind power argument.

So why are they doing it?

Because they are fucking cowards. Dickless dipshits. Spineless babies that are scared shitless. Cowards. Stupid ones at that.

They are pre-emptively killing an industry because "freshwater" wind power is too new. SRSLY - that's the entire fucking reason for it. They are scared of some nebulous un-explainable something or other. Because apparently, freshwater is somehow more risky than anchoring steel towers in the fucking ocean. You would think that people living in Ontario would have an understanding of the relationship between salt and corrosion, but apparently not the fucking gutless geniuses that make up the Ontario gubmint.

FUCKAWESOME. Way to go there assholes. I don't think you could have done anything more wrong.

Blogroll Amnesty Day 2011

I don't even have a blogroll yet and I'm two hours late. Did I mention that I'm lazy?

Here's the rules. Five blogs with less traffic than yours, no jokes about how there are no blogs smaller than yours.

Firstly, yes this is a small blog, but I actually have no idea how small. So I don't know if what I'm linking qualifies as smaller than l'idiot l'escalier. In fact I'm certain that some of them aren't. It's quite probable that none of them are. Spirit of the thing is to promote stuff that is under-appreciated or not something your readers would know about, so I'm going with that as my criteria.

1. Consider the Source. I'm pretty sure he gets more hits than I do, and that's as it should be. His stuff is way more substantial. Even now that his update schedule has become more sporadic than mine (congratz on the job mikey) swinging by to check in over there makes more sense than finding out whose mom it is that I'm claiming to fuck this week.

2. Whatever it is that Sharkey is calling this thing. Sharkey probably gets orders of magnitude more pageviews than I do, but since his subject matter is different from my subject matter, it may actually be new to people reading this post. And funnier than a barrel of monkeys in a rubber chicken factory during a freak peanut-butter related meteorological event. Bonus - his current post is about getting raped by bears. How can that not be funny?

3. Also in the much-bigger-than-my-blog category, Steve Munro is Toronto's go-to guy on transit issues. Also smart as hell and absolutely passionate about transit.

4. This one's just to get a certain large and non-hirsute individual to update The Five Thousand Year Creep. Geez, I poked it in the comments with a sexy red-headed Russian spy posing in lingerie and nothing happened. The panther is beyond teasing, it needs medical intervention.

5. Acoustic! Kitty! is new (as in the past few hours new) and most of the folks who would be reading this post have already read the entirety of everything that T&U's posted. I'm linking because the proprietor there seemed kinda ambivalent about the whole blogging thing in teh days leading up to the first post and I want to add my bit of encouragement. That's what blogroll amnesty day's about, right?

Okay, that out of the way - a few words about this blog, specifically regarding size. The reason given for the "no bad jokes about no blogs having less traffic" rule is that it's unfunny and whiny. Well, I think you can milk funneh out of anything - so there's gotta be a worthwhile bad joke in there somewhere. Moar importantly though, I want to address the issue of whiny.

This is a small blog - and that's hte way I like it. I don't spend an awful lot of time formatting layout or crafting posts. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'm kinda lazy. Also, I enjoy the freedom of being read by only a small group of folks. They are the best folks anyways. Except fish. Damn you fish.

So why bother? Well, samiply because I want to. Sometimes there's stuff that gets under my skin and I just have to yell about it. Sometimes I think I've come up with something totally hilarious and just have to say it out loud. And sometimes I just want to have some place to state my opinion of whatnot in a kinda of official fashion (at least as aofficial as can be done under a pseudonym).

So when I acknowledge my low traffic status - I'm not trying to be whiny about it. SRSLY, the attention-whore in me gets its fix in comment threads at Teh Mothership, this blog isn't here for that reason. Note that I'm not saying that adulation and praise are unwarranted unwelcome, just that it is unrelated to why I blog.

That's also why this place is so haphazard and sporadically updated. That plus I'm lazy.

Obama's Katrina

I have a dilemma. The "Deepwater Horizon spill is Obama's Katrina" meme needs some smacking down. Sure there are things that the Administration could and should have done more on *cough*HCR*cough* but the oil spill doesn't seem like one of 'em. The dilemma is about approaches.

OT1H, intelligent and thoughtful commentary speaks to ones sense of reason and can be very effective. Kevin Drum takes this approach and makes some excellent points.

OT1!H, snark can be really effective.

I've already discovered that a satirical parody-type approach ain't gonna work - the right wing regualrly out-crazies the craziest shit I can imagine. I guess I'll sleep on your mom it and maybe in the morning I'll begin to see the light. Or just forget about it entirely.

Zorbing Grannies

Apparently zorbing is big business now.  Kneel before Zorb, son of Jor-El.  Anyways, always glad to do my part:

Zorbing Grannies!!
Zorbing Grannies!!


Zorbing Grannies!!




Zorbing Grannies!!





Zorbing Grannies!!



 
 
Zorbing Grannies!!

A Rising Chorus Lifts All Boasts

So apparently both Atrios and BM Matt are allupons over Ramesh Ponnuru's characterization of transit as anti-American.  With multiple posts from each.  All researched and linky too.  Probably lotsa other folks are incensed as well.  I appreciate that fighting back against the Mighty Wurlitzer / Right Wing Noise Machine sometimes requires repetition so I'd like to do my part, not only to amplify the message, but as a reminder to others as to what's actually going on.  Here is the real response that the National Review article should have gotten:

Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru are idiots.

UPDATE: via Brad at S,N!

Apparently the key to preventing terrorism is to make your enemies fear you with blatant displays of violence and militarism. Who knew!