Brian's Brain

I find this Brian Williams/helicopter-dreams dust storm interesting, and not because of what it does or doesn't say about Mr Williams. It's what it says, or might well say, about memory. I don't know where the line is between confabulation, or lying, or just the vagaries of the human brain, but I've had a couple of experiences that give me a certain amount of sympathy for the man.

A while back, I wrote here about when JFK spoke at my college, mere weeks before his assassination, dedicating the Robert Frost Library. In the post, among other things, I described how he stood on the steps of that just-completed structure, and how moving his speech was. Not long after I wrote that, my college, on the 50th anniversary of the ceremony, published several articles and pictures from that day. Turns out, I got it all wrong.

The speech, the one in which he said the semi-famous words, "When power corrupts, poetry cleanses," was in his first appearance of the day, in "The Cage," an indoor dirt-floored track. He spoke only briefly when he went to the library location; and not only was it not on the steps of the building, it was on a hastily constructed wooden platform, with shovels at the ready to break ground on the hole that would become it. "Completed," indeed.

And this one: like the good liberals we are, my wife and sister-in-law and I went to D.C. to attend Jon Stewart's "Rally To Restore Sanity." (Didn't work, evidently.) It was my first return to the capitol since the summer after fifth grade, and a high spot was visiting the Library of Congress, of which I had a distinct memory from that earlier visit. Yet again, I couldn't have been more wrong. In my recollection it was a huge, bland, rectangular brick building with countless straight rows of oak tables and chairs, card files, and people deep in research. It is, in fact, nothing of the sort. Among other things, it's a spectacularly beautiful building, bearing zero resemblance to my memory of it.

They were pretty shocking, those two revelations of false memory. It's nothing new, of course; eyewitness testimony, for example, is considered all but useless nowadays; still, it makes a person wonder: If who we are, or think we are, is in any way connected to our memories of ourselves, and if memories can be so wrong, who the hell are we, anyway?

As a side note, I've also wondered at what point, and by what process, did my memories become false. Surely a week after JFK's visit I could have recounted it pretty accurately. Or a month after. Probably a year, or five. So when did it morph into falsehood? Which pieces of what other recollections did my brain stitch together; and is it natural? A result of some sort of stressors, or some sort of cerebral shorthand? Or am I just an idiot, uniquely so?

If I could have so thoroughly misremembered such specific details, one in near-adulthood, is it impossible -- especially under the strains of being shot at in a hot war zone, which I was once, too, and have some memories -- that Brian Williams just got a bunch of memories mixed up? Ronald Reagan, after all, had a hard time separating what he'd seen (or acted) in movies from his actual life. (Okay, sure, no one ever said he was smart enough to be a newsman.)

I have no idea, as regards B.W. Being shot down versus not being shot down seems a bigger deviation than whether a speech occurred on a platform or on the steps of a yet-to-exist library (it's a pretty big building, though.) I've sorta liked the guy, especially in his appearances on The Daily Show. Between that, and my own experiences, I'm less ready than some to call the guy a deliberate liar. Plus, his daughter is pretty cool.

[Image source]

Charlie Hits The Nail On The Head

As usual, Charles P Pierce cuts through the crap and gets right to it: 

...The money power does not need the political entity that is the United States of America except as an organizing infrastructure through which private profits can be insured and increased. The money power does not need its fellow citizens as anything but disposable commodities, and anonymous, interchangeable units, in the mechanism that produces those profits. That is the political and social reality against which The Wisconsin Idea was raised up to combat. It depended vitally on the intellectual ferment of the state's universities, and the products of that ferment as applied in pursuit of a better life for all the state's citizens. The forces for which Scott Walker is only the most recently popular front man are threatened by education, and by knowledge, so they use all the power they have to frighten people about new ways of looking at things, about fresh knowledge, about the process of education itself. They force a kind of mental surrender of the rights of the people to create and sustain a self-governing political commonwealth by convincing those people that anything done together, through the mechanisms of self-government, is a threat to personal, private liberties. You can see it in what Walker's trying to do to the University of Wisconsin, and you can see it to a smaller degree in the way that potential Republican presidential candidates have bamfoozled themselves on the subject of childhood vaccinations. We conquered polio, and smallpox, and measles because we all worked together, and when intelligent people offered us a cure, we made a national movement out of the effort to eradicate these diseases. The government and the universities and the people they produced showed the way, and the country made that cause its own, and we by god eradicated these diseases. We didn't do this as a mindless and fearful herd. We did this because we educated ourselves on what the experts told us was the best way to prevent these diseases. and then we acted on the knowledge that we had gained for ourselves. 

Now, though, a substantial portion of the population has been taught that the worst people in the world to trust are the people who know the most about anything. They have nothing to say to us. We have our good old common sense which, I have learned, grows less sensible as it grows more common. This has been a lesson devised by people whose power is threatened by the act of creating a political commonwealth in which their power needs must be scrutinized and, if necessary, limited. That is the game Scott Walker is playing. It is far from a new one, and it still can be lost.

In the simplest of terms: people calling the shots for today's Republican party have -- so easily it's beyond belief -- convinced about half the population to ignore what they're really about; have convinced about half the population to distrust expertise, to reject knowledge, to ignore our most significant problems. And they've done so for purely selfish reasons, understanding that there's a limitless pool of gullible, frightened, people from which to draw their votes. People so anxious for easy answers, so willing to find someone to blame other than themselves, so anxious to rationalize their own selfishness and prejudices, that they'll ignore their best interests, ignore the implications for their kids, and vote for those who tell them what they need to hear.

Okay, maybe that wasn't the simplest of terms. But it's simply true.

[Image source]

Mr Moussaoui Spills The Beans

The guy is in a super-max prison for life and has no real reason to lie; plus, it's about as surprising as learning that the ocean is acidifying. So how 'bout Congress spends a little more time on this than Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi? (We know the answer, of course.) Read about it here, within which is this chilling quotation:

The French-born Mr. Moussaoui was detained weeks before Sept. 11 on immigration charges in Minnesota, so he was incarcerated at the time of the attacks. Earlier in 2001, he had taken flying lessons and was wired $14,000 by a Qaeda cell in Germany, evidence that he might have been preparing to become one of the hijackers. He said in the prison deposition that he was directed in 1998 or 1999 by Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan to create a digital database of donors to the group. Among those he said he recalled listing in the database were Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor; and many of the country's leading clerics. "Sheikh Osama wanted to keep a record who give money," he said in imperfect English - "who is to be listened to or who contributed to the jihad."

I think it's time to tell the Saudis to go fk themselves, oil prices be damned. Keep pumping our own while we redouble, retriple our efforts to advance renewable energy sources. I also would draw attention to this lovely vision, from the same article, by the redoubtable Charlie Pierce:

There was some brief kerfuffling when the president took time off during his visit to India to attend the funeral of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who went to his grave knowing that George W. Bush had kissed him and held his hand, which must have been a great comfort to His Opulence during the final hours before what must have been a standing-room-only Final Judgment.

God, I wish I could write like him.

[Image source]

Why Is It So Hard To Understand, Mike?

[Source]

Revenue Stream

As a retired guy mostly counting on investments to sustain my financial needs, I'm happy when the stock market rallies, no matter the reason. But really? This latest rise is because the price of oil is increasing? That's what they say, whoever "they" is.

I'm no economist, but it seems pretty clear that the only people who benefit from rising oil prices are oil companies and those who invest in them. Not insignificant, I suppose; but doesn't cheap fuel benefit the hundreds of millions of people who aren't invested in oil a lot more than the relatively few who are? Isn't it a lot better for capitalism when people have extra jingle in their pockets, to spend on the stuff that businesses other than energy companies make?

So, intuitively and otherwise, it must be the case that the economy does better when fuel is cheaper; yet the Dow rallies on the opposite news.

My point: is that screwed up, or what? Why should the financial status of average investors depend more on the whims of a handful of hedge-fund managers, than on the health of the economy at large? It's all-year opposite day, and it's unsettling.

Yeah, boo hoo, right? But it's another demonstration of how little the average person is in charge of anything.

[Image source]

Tom Tomorrow

Entire cartoon here.

Digging Deep

Our media, doing the hard work of digging deep into the president's budget.

[Image source]

Another Newspaper Column

Here's my latest, as published today in the local paper:

When you’re a Republican national leader and you’ve lost Fox “news” you’ve probably crossed a line. A very distant line, so far past half way that you can’t see it from here. A line that’s beyond the Atlantic and deep into the Middle East. John Boehner, for whom I’ve occasionally felt sympathy as he tried to wrangle the craziest of his flock, and about whom Dan Savage tweeted during the State of the Union Address that it’s nice to see “two people of color on the podium,” has finally pulled it off. In so doing, he’s made the obvious undeniable even to the deniers: since day one, Congressional Republicans would rather damage the country than miss an opportunity to embarrass or obstruct Barack Hussein Obama. Whether it’s restoring the economy or seeking solutions to the insoluble in the birthplace of Abrahamic religions, their list of priorities includes only one item; and it’s not the national interest. 

Yes, even the sometimes level talking heads at Fox, Wallace and Smith among them, are gape-mouthed at Boehner’s craven and insolent decision to invite Benyamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress, without consulting with the White House. (Well, we haven’t heard from the brain trust of Doocey, Kilmeade, Pirro, and Hannity. But even Billo was a little ruffled.) We might excuse Bibi for his acceptance of the invite, were it not for the fact that he’s plenty smart enough to know what’s going on. No good will come of this: not for Israel, not for the prospects of peace, minimal and illusory as they are. Not even, contra Boehner’s fever dream, the Republican Party. 

And even though Mr. Boehner would need an extra wit to rise to the level of half-wit, and has been unable to think more than one step at a time since Obama was elected, even HE ought to understand that in matters of foreign policy anywhere, let alone the flaming Middle East, you don’t take unilateral Congressional action; you confer with the Executive Branch, even if you can’t stand the guy who sleeps down the hall from the Lincoln Bedroom. 

This really is a low point on a downslope where, after six years of cynicism and dishonesty the concept of lowest of the low has lost all meaning. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it can’t get any worse from these people. I might even go so far, against all reason, to hope so. But we’ll see worse, of that there’s no doubt. And not just in foreign policy. The toxic mix of unmitigated derision of the president, a preference for one-note thinking based on simple answers, putting party above the nation, and a penchant for ignoring facts makes for a poisonous brew. 

But I get it, I do. Republicans consider President Obama weak, believe he needs to invade somewhere, really soon, spend more billions, and create more dead and maimed soldiers because, really, we only tried for fourteen years. John McCain’s trigger finger has been twitching since the polls closed in aught-eight, and Lindsey Graham has had the vapors since hand came off the Bible. (Or was it the Koran?) Maybe they’re right. In wars millennia in the making, who knows? Maybe future alien historians, browsing through the rubble of humanity, will conclude that if only we’d sent more troops, fired more missiles, stayed for a few more decades, peace would have spread through the Middle East like an oil sheen in the Gulf. But isn’t it true that our armed attempts to force peace and reconciliation they don’t seem to want haven’t worked out all that well? Is it so crazy to give negotiations a shot? Call me naïve. I’ve been called a lot worse. 

For years, Republicans have been saying it’s time for Obama to “own” the economy. Now, as the rebound is undeniable despite their six-year building of blockades, they’re giving him no ownership at all. So now they’ll try their hand in Mesopotamia. But trying to prevent economic recovery for political gain and campaign donations is one thing; being willing to blow up the world for the same reason is quite another. If this isn’t proof our politics are beyond repair, I don’t know what is.
  

[Image source]

Mr Fry Calls Out God

Stephen Fry is a hero of mine on a par with Christopher Hitchens. Maybe half a rung higher. In any case, what he says above is exactly what I've said for years: if there is a creator of this universe he's a selfish egomaniac, heartless and cruel, or shockingly incompetent. In no way could he be the god of the Bible; which is to say a being who's all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. Simply incompatible with what is observable all around us. Bone cancer in children. As good a starting point as any. Or this, which I wrote many a year ago, and which got mostly angry and outraged comments.

I've also said that if I'm wrong, and I were standing at the gates, I hope I'd be honorable and ethical enough to say exactly that, and decline the opportunity. (There was a movie a few years back, The Rapture, which was touted and loved by Christians because it seemed to confirm all their beliefs about, well, the rapture, among other things. To me it was notable for three things: two of them were Mimi Rogers breasts; the third was her refusal, in the end, to join her daughter in heaven because she couldn't forgive god for making her (Mimi) kill her (the daughter) as an act of faith. Not my kind of god, she demonstrated. To me, that was the point of the movie.)

Lastly, I've also said that if any theology makes any sense, is compatible with what we see of how this world works, it's the sort of polytheism in which no god is all powerful, and most of them are screw-ups and pranksters, and not a little devious and nasty. Seriously, it's the only view of our planet that works, if you want to invoke deity.

Bonus: here's a favorite video involving Mr Steeven Fry. Lovable in all ways.

Koching The Books

Whether writing here or in my formerly weekly and now occasional newspaper column, I've often mentioned the antipathy today's Rs have for education; their unapologetic denigration of expertise at "elitist;" their country-wide efforts to defund public education. And, of course, I've gotten plenty of denialist pushback when I've said such things.

Here's a situation so obvious that I can't see any way to deny it. In North Carolina, the sine qua non of modern teabaggeristic insanity, they've just summarily ousted the Dean of UNC, about whom no one seems to have anything bad to say, even those who showed him the door:

... Intriguingly, this mysterious dismissal of a guy whose enemies insist was fired because he was doing such a great job (or something) has been accompanied by a widely held suspicion that Pope wants the job for himself. (Shades of the "autonomy" that is proposed in Wisconsin as part of a deal with Governor Scott Walker.) Part of the reason that this suspicion exists is because no other reason for firing Ross makes sense, especially not the ones offered up by the people who actually fired him.

Right-wing pundits have accused people who were understandably confused by the decision to fire Ross and asking about Pope replacing him of being conspiracy theorists - which is the height of irony considering the circumstances. A politically appointed board unexpectedly fires a popular and respected president with no notice or no explanation and nobody even owns up to pushing for him to resign. The head of the board then insists that it wasn't politics that prompted the president's dismissal, and says his age wasn't a factor either, and then proceeds to talk about the incredible job the president is doing...

The Pope person to which the article refers is evidently a Koch-connected money guy, you might be surprised to learn; and the reasons for his move aren't all that subtle:

... But it doesn't take much sleuthing to uncover the Republicans' distaste for the centers and institutes dotting the UNC landscape that were created to explore issues of poverty, civil rights, the environment and energy policy. Places like the Center for Work, Poverty and Opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. Central University's Institute for Civic Engagement and Social Change. The board of governors has 34 such centers under scrutiny. 

Why? The explanation is found in a paper published two weeks ago by conservatives at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy—a nonprofit named for Art Pope's father. The paper is entitled "Renewal in the University," and it sings the praises of academic centers which "restore the spirit of inquiry. 

But not centers that look into poverty. No, they are the problem, writes author Jay Schalin, because they threaten "thousands of years of Western thought." 

What we need instead, Schalin argues, is to replace such disruptive centers with new centers paid for by rich people like Pope—"privately funded academic centers" that reinforce for students the traditional values of "liberty" and "free-market economics." ...

Admittedly I don't know all the ins and outs of NC politics, other than to have noted their legislative tendencies have gone so far over the edge as to be unretrievable any time soon. But this seems a pretty clear demonstration of what's at the heart of R actions against all levels of public education: creating informed people is the last thing they want, for obvious reasons. And it's not just N. Carolina.

[Image source]

Take It To The Bank

In arguments here and with people I know in the flesh and blood world, I've repeatedly said what I've known to be true: housing loans made to poor people weren't the reason our economy tanked. In fact, I've pointed out, loans made under the CRA were less likely than "regular" loans to default and more likely to stay with originating banks as opposed to being turned into the unregulated investment instruments of the sort that did play a huge role in the recent unpleasantness. 

So here's an article that makes me sound like a damn genius:

... Irresponsible lending might have been one of the many causes of the financial crisis -- but not just irresponsible lending to poor people, according to a new study. 

"The large majority of mortgage dollars originated between 2002 and 2006 are obtained by middle- and high-income borrowers (not the poor)," the authors write. "In addition, borrowers in the middle and top of the distribution are the ones that contributed most significantly to the increase in mortgages in default after 2007." Rich people tend to take out larger mortgages, of course, but the fact is that the amount of money poor borrowers failed to pay back was just never that significant, as this chart from the paper shows... 

Well, what's done is done. Money under the milk. But it'd be nice if there were something to be learned from it all. Oh, it's not that there's nothing to learn; just that those who need the lesson aren't in class. Pesky facts get in the way of their preferred self-serving and dishonest narrative, so they prefer to tell tales out of school.

In a world where facts mattered and where there were enough people who preferred solving problems over denying or ignoring them, one might think this sort of information would be useful. Maybe it'd make people reconsider; the ones trying their hardest to undo what meagre regulations followed the crash. I think I might have lived in that world for a little while, maybe the first two or three decades of my life. As I recall, things were moderately hopeful, way back then.

The only cause for hope nowadays is that Congressional Rs will continue to shed all pretense of rationality, to an extent that even the Foxified will start to recognize that their agenda is inimical to having a future.

Sadly, though, because that's the only scenario which might provide reason to hope, there really ain't much cause for it at all.

[Image source]

Mike Fingers Us All

So Mike "Way, WAY holier than thou" Huckabee has written a book (God Loves Me But Not Likely You, Gunning for the job, Grit your teeth before reading, and Whistling past the Gravy!), which means, of course, he's running. Evidently his platform will be "Do with the Constitution as we do with the Bible: pick and choose."

If you don't agree with a court ruling, sayeth the Huckster, if you don't like a law, feel free to disobey it. This, from a guy who, presumably, would like us to pick him to upholdeth the Constitution of the United States of America. That document in which the independence and function of the judiciary is pretty deeply embedded.

Well, I suppose if he were to take the oath, he'd do it with his hand on the Bible, which, to today's Christian right, is the same as crossing your fingers behind your back. Still, it's pretty damn amazing that a person, a former governor! (because they're nothing if not sensible and coherent), who yearns to be the highest law-enforcer of the land, would actively suborn criminal behavior. Would seek votes from those who claim Barack Obama tramples the Constitution, to place him in office, based on sedition.

But look at that smile, would ya? Affable as a wrinkled suit, is Mike. While arbitrating which laws to follow, he also has a little parenting advice regarding which performers he approves, while thumping his bass (is he a hep cat, or what?) behind the odds-on favorite for the Most Despicable Human On The Planet award.

To me Mike Huckabee is the worst of the lot. Rick "It's not an IQ contest" Perry doesn't even try to hide his stupidity; Rick Santorum is an unapologetic theologue and proud homophobe, but doesn't pretend otherwise; Mitt Romney waves his willingness to say anything to any audience like a pair of clean underwear; Bobby "My god can beat up your god" Jindal is a caricature, too far gone to be taken seriously; Jeb Bush seems a little embarrassed by having to be an asshole to get the nomination. (Not gonna mention Sarah again, because who cares?) But Mike. Mike. Mike Huckabee embraces sleaze the way the La Brea tar pits embraced dinosaurs. He smiles, he jokes, he haw-haws and aw-shucks while saying the most vile things and pretending butter wouldn't melt if he sat on it. Mike Huckabee is a human Ponzi scheme. He's a nasty smiler, a deceiver, he's the Benny Hinn of presidential candidates. The America he "loves" is one of his very selective choosing, not the one that is.

That much, of course, is true of the lot of them. Mike Huckabee just does it in a way that gives me the creeps and scares the hell out of me. Choose your laws, people. It's a grab bag.

[Image source]

Authenticity, Faking Of

Really? Who was it that said, "Sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made?" Well, Mitt's working on it:

If he runs again in 2016, Romney is determined to re-brand himself as authentic, warts and all, and central to that mission is making public what for so long he kept private. 

Rebranding authenticity. Gotta love it. The guy puts the moron in oxymoron.

[Image source]

The Horribles

. 

My predictions might actually come true. When Rs took control of Congress, I've said, it'll become apparent how crazy they've become. Believing that the majority of the 38% electoral turnout went to them because most Americans agree with them (they don't; and the Ds in the Senate got twenty million more votes than the Rs, even as they lost their majority), they'll brazenly let their freak flags fly. They have been. Changing the way budgets are scored. Preventing experts from advising the EPA. And those are just warmups, letting the engine run a while in the cold, waiting to mash the accelerator.

The latest revelation, to be filed under "duh", is that since the previous eight investigations of Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi have turned up zilch, this time around they'll make damn sure they get the results they want:

WASHINGTON -- From the Department of Predictable Outcomes: The House select committee investigating the 2012 attacks on the U.S diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, appears to be falling apart. 

At issue are two complaints from committee Democrats. The first is that they have been systematically excluded from at least five witness interviews, and only discovered that Republicans had conducted those interviews after the fact through press reports. The second complaint is the committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), is downplaying or disregarding interview testimony that contradicts assumptions about the night of the attacks...

Honest to god/gods/FSM, and I'm dead serious about this, I don't see how any thoughtful person, conservative or not, could vote again for these people. They're not even trying to hide their awfulness anymore. And yet there are undoubtedly those who still revere Sarah Palin, even after the Crash in the Corn; who figure as long as their representative is a good Christian and against gay marriage nothing else matters; and there are undoubtedly those who still believe the Benghazi conspiracies, despite the fact that investigation after investigation, nearly all of which were headed by Congressional Republicans, specifically and thoroughly debunked them all.

But this one -- THIS ONE! -- will be different. Because, breeding true from their change-the-math, ignore-the-science, silence-the-expert genes, they'll do lots better than thumbing the scale: There'll be no scale at all.

[Image source]

Miss Universe

I'm told the Miss Universe pageant was this past weekend and that the above is the winner's acceptance speech.

Seriously, if anyone can listen to the whole thing without wondering when the fk John McCain will admit his mistake (probably right after he admits war isn't the answer to everything), or, for that matter, without puking on his/her shoes, I'd like to meet them. Or maybe not.

And as awful and embarrassing as that salad of words was, I'd bet she thinks she knocked it out of the cornfield; and that the audience did, too.

If she were to run for president, it would only be based on the calculation that she'd lose after raising tons of money and getting lots of spotlight time. Because that's what she's about. There's nothing I'm more certain of than that she doesn't want to BE president, because that would require a lot of work. And learning stuff. Two things to which she's as adverse as Patriots are to inflated footballs.