August, 2012 archive
Taxing Commentary 0
Mike Papantonio and Ed Schultz consider what happens when Senator Harry Reid talks like Fox News, complete with “Some people say . . .” and “The word on the street is . . . .”
They also wonder whether there’s a there there:
If there is a there there, it’s the only there that’s there over there in Mitt world.
Music Hath Charms 0
Following the Milwaukee massacre, the press has discovered the seamy underground of white power punk (as an SPLC supporter, I was already aware of it and other manifestations of the mongers of extreme hate).
Psychology Today blogger Anthony Lemieux, who has studied that music, considers the message in the music and its use in recruiting haters. A nugget:
A couple of years ago, one of my former students did a detailed research study examining the lyrical themes in White Supremacist music and in short found a series of reliable and recurrent themes. Those mentioned here are just a small (but representative) sample of what we found. But it is important to note that emphasizing the need for ‘awakening’ is one of the themes that is particularly important in the context of violence, because violence is positioned as the means by which the masses can be shocked from their collective complacency. Not only are the perceived problems and threats that Whites face attributed to racial and religious minorities, but the solution to those problems is purported to be through the embracing of eliminationist themes and justification of violence.
Protecting Women (but Not from Men) 0
Contradict Me has a case in point. Follow the link–you won’t want to believe it.
Image via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.
Romney’s Bain 0
Profit is an important measurement of business.
What happens when it mutates from measurement to idol?
Excerpt:
I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he has done to anyone, and furthermore I do not think he cares.
Via the Booman.
Mean Girls, AKA Fox News 0
How low can Fox News go?
Pretty damned low.
Aside:
Despite my determined ignoring of the quadrennial athletic marketing fest in Ye Olde Countrie, I know who Gabby Douglas is. She’s from these parts and therefore mention of her has been, like Savoir Faire, here, there, and everywhere.
Mayors against Guns 0
As Susie points out, this ad ran the same day as yet another whack-job bigot ran amok using yet another gun to kill yet more persons just for being.
What Will Not Happen 2
Chauncey Devega examines what will not happen after the shootings at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin:
As such, we will never see a special investigative report called “White in America: Why do White Men Commit Mass Shootings?” on any major news network in the United States.
Likewise, there will be no special congressional hearing or “Beer Summit” where a panelist dares to ask either “What is wrong with white men?” or “Are white men exhibiting pathological violence in response to the Age of Obama?”
The victims were brown. They wore turbans.
That’s all the explanation anyone will need.
Follow the link to read the rest.
Facebook Frolics 0
The Bears have it.
A put warrant, a security for speculating on the future direction of a company’s share price, which predicted Facebook would be at $22 by March, cost 6 euro cents ($0.07) to buy in the week after Facebook went public with an initial price of $38. Today, with Facebook trading at $21.10, the warrant is worth 37 euro cents, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Follow the link for a somewhat murky explanation of the even murkier world of betting that stocks will go down.
Faking It 0
Asia Times considers the creation of artificial worlds:
The world of Disney is the closest thing to totalitarianism that the entertainment-industrial complex has ever produced. The founder, Walt Disney, created a saccharine, air-brushed utopia that has been a dystopic reality for so many who have worked in the many enterprises of the Disney universe. The affinity between Disneyworld and the world of North Korea goes beyond any taste for Western-style entertainment that Kim Jong-eun might have picked up during his Swiss education.
(major snippage)
The world of Walt Disney is the kind of social engineering that the North Korean regime has aspired to create. North Korea, too, has a founder who serves as a substitute father for all children, who established a governing template that his successors religiously maintain, and whose wisdom continues to be celebrated through word and image. North Korea projects a utopian vision of smiling, hard-working people that turns out to be very different in reality. The government attempts to maintain strict social control, particularly in Pyongyang, the showcase capital.
Some years ago, we took the kids to Disney World for a week, staying in a hotel on the property, immersed in Disney’s land.
It was eerie, life in an artificial bubble disconnected from anything not Disney. By the time we caught the train home, we had lost touch with the world.
Big Brother American style–not imposed, but wrapped in a bow, marketed, and eagerly purchased.
Some years later, while I still worked for the railroad, I was walking from our office adjoining the train station to the station itself.
I met a fellow who was staring intently at the work of architect Frank Furness. After a few pleasantries, he mentioned that he was studying the building because he designed buildings for Disney theme parks.
He pointed out a detail of the decorative brick work.
“It’s marvelous,” he said, “except where Furness has five decorative bricks, Disney would have three.”
Whenever I see one of Disney’s ads touting its antiseptic, sterile, and ultimately lifeless biospheres for the whole family, I remember that encounter.
Facebook Frolics, Nyarlathotep* Dept. 1
The answer is always more technology.
Richard Parker surveys the morass of spam, phishing, and general crap that fills our email boxes and then considers one proposed solution:
Awesome. I’m sure that will work.
———————
*The creeping, crawling chaos.
Stray Thought 0
A lot of the ambivalence over women’s feeding their babies the way God designed is because some men think they, rather than women, must control the breasts of the world.