They Built That

Matt Taibbi tells you exactly what it is they've built:

 "...The critics couldn't be more wrong. Mitt Romney is no tissue-paper man. He's closer to being a revolutionary, a backward-world version of Che or Trotsky, with tweezed nostrils instead of a beard, a half-Windsor instead of a leather jerkin. His legendary flip-flops aren't the lies of a bumbling opportunist – they're the confident prevarications of a man untroubled by misleading the nonbeliever in pursuit of a single, all-consuming goal. Romney has a vision, and he's trying for something big: We've just been too slow to sort out what it is, just as we've been slow to grasp the roots of the radical economic changes that have swept the country in the last generation..."

four more wars

I knew there was a good reason not to bother listening to Kindasleezy Rice and Jingo John McCain this week.

the Force has a strong influence on the weak-minded

From foreign policy to national security to medicare to education to just about every thing that comes out of every mouth at the Reptilian Republican National Convention, Truthiness rules over fact.

Sometimes delivered in misty-eyed crocodile tear tones of regret.

Its about what you'd expect. It's not stupid. It's an attempt to modify the world-view of the misinformed.

Of course, it hasn't helped that Obama has played the game by their rulebook from the beginning.

When you agree to use Company methods, you have to expect Company methods to be used against you.

same planet, different worlds

Michael Cohen at the Guardian thinks they're in a different universe altogether:

...Democratic partisans were busy tweeting out the fact that Obama has signed multiple pieces of legislation providing tax breaks for small businesses, but such "facts" simply bounce harmlessly off the GOP's protective truth shield. Indeed, if there is one overarching takeaway, not only from the sessions so far at the Republican convention, but also from the last year of political campaigning, it is that Republicans not only toil in their own narrowly and misleadingly constructed world, but really are just making stuff up.

There were plenty of instances on display last night, beyond the "you didn't build it" meme. The most pernicious and racially-coded example is the oft-repeated claim by the Romney campaign that Obama, by granting waivers to states, has gutted the work requirement of the welfare reform bill (passed more than 15 years ago). The charge has become a crucial element of Romney's attacks on the president, even though, as many independent fact-checkers have pointed out, it simply isn't true. It's another lie; and yet, it was repeated last night by former Democratic Congressman Artur Davis, and again, by failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who went a step further and accused Obama of creating a "nightmare of dependency".

These are the big lies; but there are so many other ones that it's almost impossible to keep track. For example, speaker after speaker denounced Obama for running up $5tn in debt. While budget deficits that have increased the national debt have occurred during Obama's presidency, only someone who believes history began on 20 January 2009 (when Obama took office) can think he is fully responsible...

Like all writers of fantastic fiction, the leading Republic spinmasters know fully well what the real story is. But their avid fandom? It's pretty clear they haven't got a clue.

the parting on the right

As the Guardian spins a yarn of neonazis murdering their own in the military to keep secret plots, the Post tells us a story of the Bush-league Admiral who would have started World War III in 2007 just in time to distract us from the crash of the Great Recession. And, of course what happens to patriots that successfully block the way of a war.

Wrath of the Gods

It's gotta be the explanation, Mittens.

It couldn't be anything as mundane as having the idiocy to pick a tropical coastal city in the height of hurricane season for your convention, could it?

it is unclear which side they'll fight on, though

Lubbock's law enforcement needed extra tax dollars in order to be prepared for a full-scale uprising, which he said could be a byproduct of Obama's reelection. According to Head, the president is seeking to sign a variety of United Nations treaties that will effectively take precedent over domestic law.

Everyone knows only multinational corporations like British Petroleum or Standard Chartered Bank get to take precedence over domestic law.

Lucky Duckies!

been down so long, it looks like up to me

nobody there but chickenhawks on the make

All across the Midwest, as far as I can tell,  every place in the country is saturated with a synthetic Southern culture. It's synthetic because the love of the land has been replaced with the love of the official legend of the land. The United States of Amnesia has been reprogrammed with new Truths regardless of old facts. Now it remembers whatever it is supposed to know, regardless of whatever it already knew, for however long it needs.

they want to clutch your pearls

Enquiring minds want to know: who's really surprised that the Republicans are drafting an electoral platform right out of the 19th century?

red state two-step

Going down South for some family business. Its always a foray. See you the middle of next week, pilgrims.

not your usual John Lackland types

Tea Party Republicans want to shrink the government so we can all be ruled by landlords. Of course, they are the landlords They tried that in the Dark Ages, didn't they?

casino royalty

Our Galtian lords know how to throw the dice. And probably the $election, too.

No room for MAD among the Austere

We hear of the second test of this "unmanned hypersonic vehicle". Actually ICBMs will go this fast above the atmosphere. This is really just intended to be a low-flying hypersonic cruise missile that can fly below the radar. It's a great way to void a missile defense.

Of course, that isn't what DARPA calls it. It's what I call it. Another $500 million or so of your tax dollars that the republicans aren't going to cut off to the defense industry.

Then there's always the peacetime applications of your basic war on Terra tech. [tip o' the tinfoil to Cryptogon]

it'll be like we never left

i'm unsure we ever did leave them behind

“Look at their budget and what they’re proposing,” Biden said. “Romney wants to let the – he said in the first hundred days, he is going to let the big banks once again write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street. They are going to put y’all back in chains.”

Meet the New Squeeze

Same as the old squeeze:  Paul Ryan, bank$tah playah.

He's about as real Tea Party at Mitt Romney, he just had better marketing by his owners.

band of bothers

I just saw James P. Hoffa on the tube defending Progressivism.

Is there any real reason why the Democrats have to use their thugs to argue against the piracy of the Republicans?

Other than the fact that our entire system is a criminal enterprise, that is.

clutching the pearls

The TSA targets racial and ethnic minorities to fulfill quotas.

Who'd'a thunk it?

Besides, you know, anyone who bothered to think about it.

a mind is a terrible thing to lose

...how true that is

I have to disagree with anyone on the left that thinks the Ryan nomination is anything but bad news.

That includes, especially, the Obama administration.

This is very dangerous: the corporate Romney supporters would vote for him regardless. There was a good chance the Republicans to their right- most of the party- wouldn't vote for Romney if he just packed the ticket with another Company whitebread.  Now, the Truthy Believers will out signing up their Faithful for the Cause.

Meanwhile, the corporate Obama supporters are deserting the ship, smelling a short term killing in the market under the Ryan Austerian flag. Those to their left- the Democratic wing of the Democratic party- retain a bad taste in their mouth from the 2008 Hopey-Changey meal that turned into another Company bait-and-switch. What's worse, the corporate DINOcrats in the Democratic leadership Congress and the White House that told themselves that no matter what they trashed- Medicare or Social Security, propagation and retrenchment of the endless War on Terra & Drugs or the police state- no matter what they trashed, the Democrats would vote for them anyway.

And guess what? A lot of us will. I will. I realize the alternative.

But guess what? A lot of us won't. So many of us won't, in fact, now I predict the alternative will win. Recent road tripping reveals that outside of the urban areas and selected sanctuaries like the People's Republic of Ann Arbor, the right rules the road in all of its ignorant glory.  They are armed and dangerous and not above doing whatever it takes to steal this $election.

Hold on to your butts, kids, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

it depends upon what the meaning of "is" is

doubtless

crop circles

Nearsighted solutions to far-ranging problems:
...The U.S. Department of Agriculture's addition of the 218 counties means that more than half of all U.S. counties — 1,584 in 32 states — have been designated primary disaster areas this growing season, the vast majority of them mired in a drought that's considered the worst in decades...
"The USDA cannot make it rain, but it can apply flexibility to the conservation practices," Sen. Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, said Wednesday. The USDA designated 39 of his state's counties disaster areas.
Let's talk about the last great drought, which curiously enough, occurred right about the time of the last great depression. You know, the last time corporations were allowed their way with things.
Let's talk about its solution: FDR's civilian conservation corps.
Let's talk more about what it did to stop the dust bowl: it planted 3 billion trees in the space of a few years.
...the CCC was responsible for over half the reforestation, public and private, done in the nation's history.
If that doesn't provide a solution to unemployment, and take the edge off global warming, nothing will.
Certainly it's a better solution than destroying wetlands to preserve agribusiness, which is likely more than a little responsible for the drought conditions in the first place.

he lost his kittens

somebody should tell little Mittens that the only one who can put up or shut up concerning his tax returns is looking at him out of his reflection in the teleprompter he never bothers to read from

when everyone who knows is no one

Unanticipated, this is. Except by anyone who thought about it, that is. Speaking of which, the good Doctor tells you exactly what's wrong with the Economy today, yet again.

terra vu all over you

Looks like the Company has pressured the Figurehead-in-Chief to covertly sign on the dotted line, because, you know, the terrorists have to be used to fight the terrorists with more terror. It's the War on Terra, you know.

one factor for one focus

Jared Diamond to Mitt Romney: "... It is not true that my book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” as Mr. Romney described it in a speech in Jerusalem, “basically says the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there. There is iron ore on the land and so forth.” That is so different from what my book actually says that I have to doubt whether Mr. Romney read it... Mitt Romney may become our next president. Will he continue to espouse one-factor explanations for multicausal problems, and fail to understand history and the modern world? If so, he will preside over a declining nation squandering its advantages of location and history. " But he and his pals will continue to make a lot of money doing it.