Hosted by Wednesday Addams.
Open Thread
Hosted by hippos.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by random pictures from my photos folder.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay. Skadoodlies.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Blogcation
We are taking the week off next week, because we could all use a break. Also because Deeky W. Gashlycrumb will be arriving at Shakes Manor in a little less than 24 hours and THERE IS MUCH BEING LAZY ASSHOLES TO DO. It's just too bad you can't all be flies on the wall (SO MANY FLIES! AHH!) to hear our awesome conversations about wieners and Breaking Bad.
Anyway!
We will be posting daily Open Threads, which will be moderated, but otherwise there will be no new content.
To those celebrating Labor Day this weekend, have a nice (and ironic!) holiday.
Have a great week, Shakers. See you soon!
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by a tall glass of ice cold water.
Recommended Reading:
Yves: The More You Look, the More Bank Criminality You Find in Mortgage Land
David: FHFA Readies Lawsuits Against Top Banks in Mortgage Bond Scandal
Matt: The Conservative Recovery Teeters into Recession
crunkonia: Feminist Musings on Showing Up
Andy: Oscar De La Hoya Says Fishnet Drag Photos Were Him (I wish I had time for a whole post on this; suffice it to say for now that it's really too bad he feels obliged to "blame" cross-dressing on alcohol and drugs.)
Brian: The Continued Failure of Fat People Prevention
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Quote of the Day
"This is a huge win for corporate polluters and huge loss for public health."—Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, on the Obama administration's decision to ask "the Environmental Protection Agency to pull proposed ozone standards," which the EPA says are "required to increase protection for children and at-risk populations against respiratory and cardiovascular diseases related to exposure to ozone in the air."
Apparently, implementation of the new standards was going to cost a lot of money, so Obama decided to kick the can down the road for another few years.
Which, of course, does no good for people suffering now, but does make Big Energy very happy.
Dan Weiss, CAP's director of climate strategy, was blunt: "It's unfortunate that the administration is siding with big oil over the health of children, seniors, and the infirm."
Indeed.
[H/T to @ericabarnett.]
Daily Dose of Cute
Dougie wants your tuna sandwich. Pleeeeeeeease?
Oh, so the answer is no? Fine, then Dougie will look askance at you while you eat...
...and then console himself with a rollicking round of armadillo tag.
Number of the Day
$12.5 million: Rupert Murdoch's cash bonus for the last financial year.
The News Corporation chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, received a $12.5m (£7.7m) cash bonus for the last financial year, while his total remuneration rose 47% year on year to $33m, according to the company's annual statement to shareholders.Sure. Perfect. Well done, gentlemen!
His son James Murdoch – who is chairman and chief executive of News Corporation in Europe and Asia – also benefited handsomely, with a $6m cash bonus taking his total remuneration to almost $18m – a 74% rise on his 2010 take-home pay.
The bonuses were for the year to the end of June, during which News Corporation became mired in the phone-hacking scandal that engulfed the News of the World.
Blog Note
It's not you: Comments aren't loading at the moment. Unfortunately, it's nothing that we can control, but Disqus is aware of the problem and one hopes will be able to resolve it soon.
My apologies for the inconvenience.
Um...
[Trigger warning for assault]
This June, I wrote about how two female Wisconsin Supreme Court justices reported that a third Justices David Prosser and Micheal Gableman bullied them.
Prosser has already admitted calling Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a "bitch" and threatening to "destroy" her, but claimed he had good reason to do so.
This June, multiple witnesses also told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Prosser held Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in a headlock during deliberations.
TPM reports that Prosser Justice Michael Gableman has an explanation for that episode, too:
1) She started it. (By hitting Gableman)
2) She threw her head at his fist Bradley ran into Prosser's arm while he was defending himself.
Prosser Gableman also couldn't quite remember the year in which Justice Bradley supposedly hit him (thus totally starting it), although as far as I'm concerned, that's the least problematic aspect of his account of why he assaulted his colleague.
Anyhow, that's my latest update on The Supreme Court of Wisconsin.
via @tcita
UPDATE: I've revised the post to reflect the embarrassing fact that I confused Justice Gableman with Justice Prosser. Whoops, I'm not careful enough to keep track of which dude on the Wisconsin Supreme Court assaulted which female justice. So that's pretty embarrassing, and also unfathomably depressing. Thanks to Shaker BlueRidge for the heads up.
Dispatches from the Two Americas
In the latest CNN/ORC poll, 80% of respondents believe we are in another recession. One-third believe it is a "serious" recession.
While the country isn't technically in a recession because the economy hasn't experienced two straight quarters of negative growth, the poll's results highlight the importance of President Barack Obama's jobs speech next Thursday night."Economic jitters" is a nice way of saying that a lot of USians are shit-toiling to pay their bills.
Americans have "a bad case of economic jitters," according to CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
About two-thirds think the president should focus more on creating jobs right now, even if it means less deficit reduction.
And, yes, the poll's results do indeed "highlight the importance" of President Obama's jobs address (and underline how inadequate it will probably be), but they also starkly reveal a simple truth: Most USians don't respond to this question based on reports of negative growth, but based on their own circumstances and the struggles and successes of the people around them.
The poll's results highlight that the US people are desperately in need of help, from a government who has abandoned its responsibility to them in pursuit of political gamespersonship and ideological fuckery.
Congresswoman Wears Shoes, Eyeshadow
Conservative Hudson Valley Congresswoman Nan Taylor may be a conservative Congresswoman, but she's also feminine.
Courtesy of New York Magazine:
Hayworth's opponent in the traditionally moderate 19th District next year, Richard Becker, quickly sought to tie her to the tea party and the hostage-taking tactics of the debt ceiling. But while Hayworth might look the part — she's a member of the Hudson Valley Patriots and she wears Palin-red pumps — and sound like one of the bombastic female tea-party-affiliated GOP politicians currently having a (long) moment, there are more than a few very New York differences between her and someone like Bachmann. [Emphasis mine]Awesome paragraph. Great journalism. Trenchant as hell.
Moving along...
Hayworth has quickly learned to dress the part of a conservative politician: The morning we talked, the city was sweltering, but she was in full regalia: knotted bright scarf, prominent pins, dark blazer, nude pantyhose. Her shiny red pumps — Stuart Weitzman, obtained from zappos.com, she confided readily — looked like a slightly more sedate version of the Naughty Monkey peep-toes Sarah Palin famously wore onstage at the 2008 RNC. The semiotics of Republican fashion is a topic to which the former ophthalmologist has given some thought since entering politics in 2010 — "I never wore red shoes before in my life," she told me.Super. I'm so voting against that virgin/whore the first chance I get.
I'm pretty sure that
There's nothing wrong with wearing pantyhose. Femininity hurrah! But what would happen if Representative Taylor didn't wear pantyhose in August? Would she even be in Congress? She can conform to gendered beauty standards and have journalists ridicule her, or she can refuse to conform and be ridiculed for doing that. That's some choice.
And for the record, back the fuck off from the red shoes bit. Red shoes are the shit. I own three pairs of red shoes: tattered Chucks and well-loved tennis shoes, as well as amazing crimson patent leather Mary Janes with three inch heels. You bet your ass I'll be wearing those
Via @CapitolTonight
On Fat Hatred and Eliminationism
[Trigger warning for fat hatred; eliminationism; references to dieting and disordered eating.]
So this morning I see that professional fat-hater Jamie Oliver has posted a petition which he's asking people to sign in support of his "Food Revolution," and in which he's included the bullshit stat that "obesity in the US costs $10,273,973 per hour" (sure) and notes, in all-caps, "OBESITY IS PREVENTABLE."
Celebrities who have signed the petition are posted in rotation: Jennifer Aniston, Eva Longoria, P. Diddy, Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest, Ellen Degeneres.
It's always nice to see wealthy people with access to the best food, comprehensive healthcare, personal trainers, private chefs, and individual nutritional plans put their names to a petition admonishing the fatties that OBESITY IS PREVENTABLE.
When there are people for whom that is not true, people for whom obesity is not preventable, for myriad reasons, to bray about how their bodies (our bodies; ourselves) are "preventable" is to engage in eliminationist rhetoric.
I will never be not fat.
To get rid of my fat body, you have got to get rid of me.
This is where the fat-hating narrative of "calories in, calories out!" and the universal treatment of every human body like it's a Bunsen burner gets us: It's all just about personal choice and fatties' bad choices, without regard for natural variation among human bodies, including disease and disability, individual histories of fad dieting, disordered eating, and/or trauma, or systemic problems like poverty, racism, fat hatred, food deserts, lack of safe outdoor spaces, corn subsidies, meat subsidies, and an entire industry that makes lots and lots of money off of shaming fat people that wouldn't exist if some people weren't fat, just for starters.
OBESITY IS PREVENTABLE: Except when it's not.
Fat people are not only tasked with finding individual solutions to systemic problems; they are, in many cases, asked to somehow overcome their very physiologies and make their bodies do things that they are simply unable to do.
We are literally asked to be people we are not.
That is eliminationist. Plain and simple.
And the only way to convince oneself that it isn't is to believe things that are simply not true, to pretend that every fat person in existence is just a lazy, gluttonous piece of shit who would totes be thin if only some sanctimonious assholes got together and signed a condescending petition outlining how OBESITY IS PREVENTABLE.
When the science eventually catches up to the reality that fat people who are not fat as a result of disordered eating already know, the people who are putting their faces and names to this campaign will be ashamed that they ever supported such naked bigotry, such rank hostility, such victim-blaming garbage. Paul Campos, who has written extensively about the OH NOES Obesity Crisis! and debunked many of the myths surrounding fat and health, has observed that the science, conventional wisdom, and cultural narratives of obesity closely mimic the science, conventional wisdom, and cultural narratives about homosexuality a generation ago, and has pointed out parallels between the gross "reparative therapy" touted to magically make gays straight and the gross "reparative therapy" touted to magically make fatties thin.
Once upon a time, most people thought not being gay was just an issue of willpower, too.
That's where we are with fat acceptance. And one day, people will look back at this revolting petition and wonder how the fuck such unapologetic hatred was popular enough that celebrities were tripping over each other to sign their names to it.
They'll say, "Oh, we didn't know back then." But they could know now—if they'd ever bothered to speak to any of the fat people they're so keen to help, from a safe and patronizing distance.
[H/T to @fatheffalump.]
Question of the Day
What is the worst thing you've ever deliberately eaten?
As opposed to, you know, accidentally getting something gross in your mouth.
And by worst, I just mean taste-wise, or texture-wise. Not cooked right, spoiled, salt used instead of sugar, didn't guess it would taste like THAT, forgot an ingredient, that sort of thing. Let's stay away from commentary that others delicacies outside of one's own culture, i.e. don't treat "gross" and "weird to me" as synonymous.
Number of the Day
$1,197,000,000,000: The amount of US dollars spent as of June on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's one trillion, one hundred and ninety-seven billion dollars.
I can't wait until Congress is back in session so we can listen to them continue to squabble over "entitlement programs" that we can't afford.
Today in Rick Santorum Says Something Stupid
I had Piers Morgan call me a bigot. Because I believe what the Catholic Church teaches with respect to homosexuality, I'm a bigot. So now I'm a bigot?! Because I believe what the Bible teaches! Two thousand years of teaching and moral theology is now BIGOTED! And of course we don't elect bigots to office. We don't give them professional licenses. We don't give them preferential tax treatment. If you're a preacher and you preach BIGOTED things, you think you're gonna be allowed to have a 501(c)(3) as a church? Of course not. No, this has PROFOUND CONSEQUENCE! To the entire MORAL ECOLOGY OF AMERICA! It will undermine the family; it will destroy faith in America!—Republican Presidential Candidate and World-Renowned Epic Dipshit Rick Santorum, getting all pissy about being called a bigot for expressing bigotry.
Following this outburst of colossally stupid whining, Santorum went on to argue with a college student about the existence of multiple studies that have conclusively proven children raised by same-sex parents are as well-adjusted any kids ever are in the fucked-up garbage nightmare we call a culture.
I can't be arsed to transcribe that bit, but here's a rough paraphrase: "BARF FART I AM SO STUPID LAWYER SCIENCE IS YUCKY POOOOOOOOOP!"
Anyway! My favorite part is definitely the bit where he claims people who express bigotry toward the queer community don't get any special privileges. DEFINITELY NOT!
(Via Gabe.)
Daily Dose of Cute
When Sophie isn't draped across my monitor, she likes to lie on my desk giving my hand a full-body hug, with her head curled around so that every time I move the mouse, I'm simultaneously giving her head scratches.
(No, I don't have giant hands and a giant mouse. She is really just that small, lol.)
Zelda is unimpressed. "Whatever with your adorable tininess! I get peanut butter!"
Random YouTubery: Stairway To Heaven
What if the Beatles recorded "Stairway To Heaven"? (Hint: It would have been a better song.) Well, the Beatnix (a Beatles tribute band) have the answer. And it rocks. Really.
You Go, Grrl. On Your Own Special Toilet.
There is a story going around the internetz today, care of the print edition of In Touch Weekly, about Madonna's toilet preferences. Stories about Madonna's toilet preferences come up once every few years (seriously): About five years ago, it was how she requires venues at which she performs to install new toilet seats for her arrival and dispose of them immediately after she leaves (to prevent resale on eBay, because people are gross and opportunistic). Before that, it was how she doesn't like using public toilets. Etc.
But this story is THE WORST YET ZOMG SHE IS SO HORRIBLE!—because, according to the highly reputable In Touch Weekly, Madonna won't allow either her boyfriend or her children use her toilet.
Someone tell Madonna that boy toys come potty-trained! According to a friend, Madge won't let her 29-years-younger lover Brahim Zaibat use her, ahem, throne.Look at how these stupid rags turn everything into a SCANDAL. "Madonna is very generous, but her toilet is one thing she doesn't want to share," is hardly a provocative statement, but stick it in between snide garbage about dating a man much younger than she is and the usual slut-shaming, and suddenly it's a game of LET'S JUDGE HER SHE IS TERRIBLE WHAT A WEIRDO SHE IS SELFISH AND AN AWFUL MOTHER AND SHE IS MEAN TO HER BOYFRIEND!
"Madonna doesn't even let her kids use her toilet," a friend tells In Touch. "It's just her thing. She is very generous, but this is the one thing she doesn't want to share," adds the pal, who explains that 53-year-old Madonna is very cautious when it comes to anyone else tinkling in her territory.
Apparently, she's got no such fears of bed-wetting - because she's more than happy to share her boudoir with the fetching French dancer!
Because, seriously, what is the story here? That a woman who has worked her ass off for three decades as a performer and producer and has earned gazillions of dollars wants to use a little bit of her money to live in a space in which she's got a toilet that's all her own? That she's putting one little desire for privacy and indulged preference in front of the her children and boyfriend (as if they have a right to access every part of her life and space)?
Stingy. That's the story. A woman is stingy because she wants something that is all her own, for whatever her reasons.
She's generous BUT.
I know, I know—it's such a little thing. But this kind of stuff is literally why I'm a feminist, as much as anything else, as much as the Big Stuff.
I want a right to my own goddamn toilet, if that's what I want and can afford, without judgment. And I want that for every other woman, too.
I want women to be able to want and to have, without being accused of being less than generous, simply because we occasionally put ourselves first.
Is that really so much to ask?
Don't worry: That's rhetorical.
Mixed Messaging
[Trigger warning for terrorism.]
There's a very interesting piece by Carrie Johnson at NPR about the Obama administration's Justice Department "taking a more aggressive approach against people who block access to abortion clinics, using a 1994 law to bring cases in greater numbers than its predecessor."
The numbers are most stark when it comes to civil lawsuits, which seek to create buffer zones around clinic entrances for people who have blocked access in the past. Under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, the Justice Department's civil rights division has filed eight civil cases since the start of the Obama administration. That's a big increase over the George W. Bush years, when one case was filed in eight years.This is very good news! I am very grateful to the Obama administration for treating anti-choice terrorism with the seriousness it deserves! It does, I admit, feel a little bit like giving a cookie to someone for just doing what they're supposed to do, but after the Bush administration and the onslaught of anti-choice legislation across the nation, I am nonetheless very happy to hear this!
"There's been a substantial difference between this administration and the one immediately prior," says Ellen Gertzog, director of security for Planned Parenthood. "From where we sit, there's currently much greater willingness to carefully assess incidents when they occur and to proceed with legal action when appropriate."
Over the past two years, the Justice Department and FBI have been meeting with abortion-rights groups and medical providers all over the country to explain their work and talk about a federal task force designed to prevent violence against doctors and women seeking abortions.
...Justice Department spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa says the department takes "seriously our responsibility to enforce FACE fully and fairly and in a manner that does not infringe any First Amendment rights.
"The department has stepped up civil rights enforcement across the board, and will continue to vigorously enforce all the laws under its jurisdiction, including the FACE Act."
And yet: Two years. Two years the feds have been meeting with reproductive rights advocates and abortionists.
I can't help but wonder why it is that this, this solid and meaningful defense of legal abortion, is not the thing that the President and his spokespeople talk about when they are challenged on their record of supporting women, especially when their go-to brag, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, does not even do what they routinely claim it does.
Look, we're supporting you on this whole abortion thing, but let's not make a big deal out of it, okay?
I am reminded of the presidential proclamation of Women's Equality Day issued by the president last week, which failed to include even a passing mention of reproductive choice. Yes, it's a real wonder that abortion remains a "controversial" issue when even our ostensibly pro-choice president won't speak of his Justice Department enforcing laws protecting abortion clinics and the people who staff and use them.
This silence suggests a shame about being pro-choice, and it makes me very sad.
Photo of the Day
A cash-strapped 22-year-old who sought to have an entire Where's Waldo scene inked on his back got a proposition from tattoo artist Rytch Soddy: Raise £500 (~$815) for London's Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, and the full-back piece is yours, free of charge. John Mosley, a music producer, did him a few hundred better, raising a total of £2000 (~$3250) for the hospital that saved Soddy's life when he was stung by a bee many years ago. (Link)The tattoo took 24 hours to complete: "Wally appears hidden among 150 other characters, including Darth Vader, a beached shark, and a humanoid horse."
Great Idea! Very Democracy!
A press release I just received from the White House Office of Communications:
Office of the Press Secretary
____________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 1, 2011
White House Announces We the People
New Online Engagement Feature Invites Public To Petition The White House
Today, the White House announced We the People, a new online engagement feature. On this innovative WhiteHouse.gov platform, individuals will be able to create and sign petitions seeking action from the federal government on a range of issues. If a petition gathers enough signatures, White House staff will review it, ensure it is sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.
Visitors to WhiteHouse.gov can begin submitting petitions later this month. To sign up for an alert when it launches and preview the feature, visit http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/WeThePeople.
"When I ran for this office, I pledged to make government more open and accountable to its citizens. That's what the new We the People feature on WhiteHouse.gov is all about – giving Americans a direct line to the White House on the issues and concerns that matter most to them," said President Obama.
To create and build support for a petition, WhiteHouse.gov visitors will simply need to create an account and gather signatures by reaching out to friends, family and coworkers. If a petition reaches a certain threshold – the initial level will be 5,000 signatures within 30 days – it will be sent to the appropriate policy makers throughout the Administration, reviewed, and an official response will be published to WhiteHouse.gov and emailed to all signers of the petition.
###
-----
This definitely won't be used by conservatives to make the president look like an asshole. Can't wait for the White House's "official response" to the Send the Statue of Liberty Back to France! petition.
Btw, in terms of making the government "more open and accountable to its citizens," maybe this would be a better place to start.
Of course, that might entail government actually being accountable to its citizens, as opposed to quashing any chrysaline thoughts of rebellion with a cartoon website that cynically propadandizes the thin illusion of a still-functional democracy.
Every Move You Make, Every Call You Take...
Democratic Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden are raising a red flag about abuses of the Patriot Act:
Ten years after 9/11, new questions are being raised about what the US government is secretly doing on the internet and through satellites, using the Patriot Act and other national security law as justification.It is not "reasonably possible" to know how many people have been tracked by the US government. Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.
Two American senators with access to top-secret intelligence raised the alarm in May, suggesting that the invasion of law-abiding Americans' privacy was being carried out clandestinely - and that people would be shocked if they knew the extent.
"I want to deliver a warning this afternoon," Senator Ron Wyden said on May 26 during a Senate debate. "When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry."
Exactly what activities US agencies are carrying out remains unclear. Senator Wyden and Senator Mark Udall - also on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence - have been unable to elaborate on their accusations because of official secrecy law.
...As debate took place in May on a vote to extend the Patriot Act for another four years, Senators Wyden and Udall warned that the executive branch had come up with a secret legal theory about what personal information it could collect, which didn't dovetail with a plain reading of the text.
Wyden and Udall continued to press for transparency after the Patriot Act extension was passed in late May. They sent a letter to the Director of National Intelligence, James R Clapper, who oversees 16 spy agencies, including the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency. The senators asked whether legal safeguards were in place to protect the electronic communications of law-abiding Americans under another security law, the Foreign Intelligence Service Act (FISA).
"It is a matter of public record that there have been incidents in which intelligence agencies have failed to comply with the FISA Amendments Act, and that certain types of compliance violations have continued to recur," Wyden and Udall wrote. "We believe it is particularly important to gain an understanding of how many Americans may have had their communications reviewed as a result of these violations."
Kathleen Turner, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the senators that it was not "reasonably possible to identify the number of people located in the United States whose communications may have been reviewed."
Michael German, however, who worked for the FBI in counterterrorism operations for 16 years and quit to join the ACLU, tells Al Jazeera: "It's clear the government is broadly collecting information regarding innocent Americans. It appears officials no longer need individualised suspicion, and a person's good conduct does not protect them from scrutiny." Which gives us a pretty good picture of the scope of the surveillance.
Every time some evidence of a government breach of trust (i.e. illegal spying) is made public, there raises a chorus of "it doesn't matter if you've got nothing to hide." Sure. Except for how innocent people are convicted of crimes they did not commit in the US justice system with alarming frequency, often using cooked evidence, coerced confessions, coached witness testimony, or some combination thereof. That is, evidence formed to fit the crime, to close a case.
It's no coincidence that it tends to be straight white cis middle- or upper-class men who toss out the old "nothing to hide" chestnut, when they are the least likely population to be railroaded and framed for a crime they did not commit.
The rest of us (and even they, frankly) should be very concerned about "the government surreptitiously tracking an individual's movements using a mobile electronic device," when it's entirely predictable that being (provably, irrefutably) in the area of a crime at the time of commission will axiomatically make one a suspect, without even the benefit of a witness ID.
"Nothing to hide" implicitly assumes that the people doing the tracking are always, invariably more interested in protecting the innocent than in closing cases. That is a particularly bad assumption in an era of elected law enforcement, job performance (i.e. closed-case) incentives, and 24/7 media pressure.
German said that it is "official culture" to collect as much data on people as possible. The attitude is "while this person may not being doing something wrong today, what if they do something bad a year from now?"And then there's this: What if something you're doing isn't illegal today, but is a year from now?
Yesterday: "The newly enacted Idaho law banning late-term abortions was not yet in effect when McCormack terminated her own pregnancy using abortion pills she obtained from an online distributor."
The problem with "nothing to hide" is that what isn't worth hiding today may be worth hiding tomorrow.
Top Chef: Just Desserts Open Thread
Holy cake wrecks, Batman! Frank Gehry must be spinning in his grave at the site of this "tribute" to his Walt Disney Concert Hall. Oof! That's some Lovecraftian non-Euclidean architecture right there.
Last night's episode will be discussed in detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, pack your fudge and go...
Cool War Profiteering, Robber Barons!
[Trigger warning for torture.]
Remember when the Iraq War started—SHOCK AND AWE! USA!—and all the dirty hippies were saying things like, "This is a war of choice being justified by invented intel with no purpose except to allow the friends of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld at firms like Halliburton and Blackwater to make shitloads of money from bloated defense contracts doing profoundly unethical things," and everyone else was like, "Shut up, dirty hippies! You are wrong about everything and you smell like patchouli!" and then it turned out the dirty hippies were totally right, and then everyone on the left pretended that what the dirty hippies had been saying was so totally self-evident no doy and everyone had known it all along and everyone on the right pretended that no one, not even the dirty hippies, had correctly predicted all of the things and no one could have foreseen any of the things? Remember that? Good times.
Anyway! I just want to cast your minds back to that glorious time in America when the dirty hippies were talking about war profiteering, and the government of their country was literally calling them traitors for even daring to suggest such a thing, and even Democratic presidential candidates were all, "Whoa, let's not get carried away there, hippies!" as if it was an incredible accusation and everyone knows that nothing could ever go wrong with no-bid contracts to megacorps with ties to the White House.
Because—and I know you're shocked—it turns out that the Bush administration was rewarding war profiteers of all descriptions, including the private companies chartered to fly terrorism suspects around the world to deposit them in one of the CIA's network of secret jails all over the globe. Yep, that's right: The Bush administration even turned extraordinary rendition into a for-profit enterprise.
The invisible hand belongs not just to a thief and a bully, but a torturer.
Adfail
In yet another hilaritragic example of content-generated ad failery, I am being served JC Penney adverts all over the place this morning.
Whooooooooooooops!
