Happy Hour Discurso

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

I have survived the move, or at least survived to a reasonable degree. Right now, my lower back is fighting a losing game. On the one hand, it’s very much wanting to remind me that we have arthritis developing. On the other hand, I’ve got it buried in the new rocking recliner. And I’ve promised it a bath later. It’s hard for a lower back to argue with those things, no matter how much abuse it took earlier.

It looks like I missed quite a bit of excitement during the move. The Cons have unveiled something they claim is a budget proposal:

About nine years ago, then-Gov. George W. Bush was asked about his budget experience. Bush said he was proud of what he’d put together: “It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.”

Keep that quote in mind when considering the “budget” House Republicans unveiled this morning.

Stung by their stereotyping as the “party of no,” House Republicans eagerly promoted the unveiling of their alternative to President Obama’s budget today — but when they finished speaking, reporters had one big question: Where’s the actual budget? You know, the numbers that show deficit projections and discretionary spending?

There certainly was no hard budgetary data in the attractively designed 18-page packet that the House GOP handed out today, its blue cover emblazoned with an ambitious title: “The Republican Road to Recovery.” When Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) was asked what his goal for deficit reduction would be — President Obama aims to halve the nation’s spending imbalance within five years — Boehner responded simply: “To do better [than Obama].”

And that’s really all we got. House GOP leaders held a press conference this morning to prove a) they could put together a budget; b) that they could be the “party of yes”; and c) that their agenda is about more than just saying the opposite of whatever President Obama wants.

Instead, they unveiled a “budget” with no numbers or even budget estimates, and spent most of the press conference criticizing the president.

Republican leaders posted their “Road to Recovery” report online, and it’s more or less a joke. Apparently — I hope you’re sitting down — the minority party believes the nation will thrive if we cut taxes, stick with Bush’s energy policies, and pursue more deregulation.

Wow. Now, those are fresh ideas. If, of course, you’re measuring fresh on a geologic scale.

They’re proud as peaches about meeting Obama’s challenge to show him a budget, but they seem a little lost when it comes to reporters asking basic questions:

Today, MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell challenged Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) to say what the deficit impact of the GOP plan would be. Pence awkwardly tried to change the subject:

Q: So you don’t have the numbers now? About what you’re plan would be in terms of how it would cut the deficit or add to the deficit? You don’t have any numbers on that?

PENCE: Well, it’s really a broad – when the White House a few minutes ago was attacking the numbers in this bill, the tax cut numbers. There’s plenty of numbers in the Republican recovery plan. And we just really believe the President’s plan to raise taxes by nearly 2 trillion dollars on almost every American…deserves a debate on Capitol Hill.

Without details, “how is your plan credible?” asked O’Donnell. “Well, I thought through this morning, we didn’t have a plan, so it may be progress our plan is being attacked,” Pence responded. “This is the broad outline,” he said, stating that the GOP would introduce a bill soon.

And when might that be?

When might GOP leaders flesh out the details in their “detailed budget”? Boehner told reporters today that some numbers will probably be available sometime next week. So, right around the time House lawmakers are voting on the budget, the minority party will offer an alternative budget that no one’s seen.

My, what… interesting timing. Don’t they whine like spoiled little children when Dems pull that shit on them?

At least the press is finally getting tired of the Cons’ antics. They’re actually verging on acting like journalists:

Today, MSNBC cut away from its live coverage of President Obama’s web town hall to cover the House Republican press conference on its alternative budget. This afternoon, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer expressed her exasperation that the GOP still had not offered any real, specific plans. “Give me some substance!” she proclaimed:

BREWER: Here’s the thing. They say, We have a plan — and proceeded not to tell us what that plan is. They sent us some paperwork. It’s got no numbers attached. I understand, it takes time to do math. I would be content even doing without the numbers. I’m just saying, What are your ideas? You have my attention. We cut away from the president. Give me some substance!

MSNBC’s congressional correspondent Mike Viqueira said that the GOP website promised a “detailed plan.” “I guess details are in the eye of the beholder, but I don’t think most people would call this a detailed plan at this point,” he said.

One gets the feeling they’re annoyed. Most excellent.

There’s plenty more stupid where that comes from, but I’ve promised my aching back a nice, long soak, and the cat’s “helping” unpack boxes, so I shall have to leave you with this last gem (h/t):

It appears Republicans just couldn’t bear letting Obama’s challenge stand until they had their act together, and had to do some quick posturing lest someone imagine they were just the “party of no.”

But at one prominent conservative website, there seems to be some deep resentment that Republicans didn’t respond a little more forcefully. Check out this interesting observation from Jeff Emanuel at Redstate:

There was a time in our country’s history where opponents who had a genuine beef with each other were not only unafraid to debat
e the issue (see Lincoln-Douglass), but were willing to actually do battle over it (see Sumner-Brooks). Heck, we’ve even had a sitting Vice President kill a former Treasury Secretary in a duel!

That’s right. The rabid right are pining for the days when, instead of relying on your native intelligence to win a debate, you relied on your ability to aim a pistol. Gee, I wonder why.

Happy Hour Discurso
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Movin' Day

Thank you, Ron Britton, for finding the Lolcat that sums it up so superbly:


It applies more to my soon-to-be-former roommate’s poor boyfriend. I gave up cheap for convenient long ago. He wanted to, but ended up like the poor cat above.

Still. I should’ve hired someone to pack the damned books.

Posting is likely to be light-to-non-existent today, depending on when the Comcast guy gets me hooked up, and how well the move goes. Please accept my profound apologies for not having something set up in advance, and consider this your opportunity to write something brilliant for the next Carnival of the Elitist Bastards, which will be sailing from Captain Z’s place this weekend.

See you all from my new location.

Movin' Day

A Surprise, a Valid Question, and an X-Rated Metaphor

Since I don’t have time for a lot of blog reading today, and sure as shit don’t have time for actual writing tonight, I headed over to Ron Britton’s place. I knew he’d have something good for ye.

First, the surprise:


If you’re thinking that looks like a Dr. Seuss cartoon, you’d be right. If you’re thinking it was photoshopped, you’d be wrong. That’s an original, folks.

I think Dr. Seuss would’ve gotten along just fine here in the cantina.

Ron uses the above cartoon to illustrate a very valid question posed to the “pro-life” movement:

You’re opposed to the “morning after pill”, because the destruction of an eight-cell blastocyte is murder. So how is the destruction of 91,000 post-birth Iraqis OK? If “abortion is the murder of a child”, and “even one abortion is too many”, then how is the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqi children not murder and not too many?

Somehow, I don’t think they’ll have an answer.

Now for the metaphor:

The senator contends that people need to be disabused of the notion that raising taxes increases revenue to the federal government, and that lowering taxes decreases money coming into the federal Treasury.

Republicans need to be disabused of the opposite notion. Since they keep perpetuating this myth among themselves, it’s obviously self-abuse. Republicans just keep masturbating to the pornography of low taxes.

You’re welcome.

Both articles deserve your attention. Go forth and enjoy them, my darlings.

A Surprise, a Valid Question, and an X-Rated Metaphor

Happy Hour Discurso

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Moving sucketh mightily. Packing sucketh worse. Don’t expect much today.

Although the Cons have provided us an abundance o’ the stupid. They’re so stupid they can’t even tell the difference between very smart and very stupid people:

Over the last couple of years, it seemed like Barack Obama’s conservative detractors had thrown just about every criticism imaginable at the guy. If recent commentary on far-right blogs is any indication, they’ve come up with a new one: they’re convinced the president isn’t very bright.

Just to be clear, they’re talking about the current president.

[snip]

Take this item, for example, published yesterday by Powerline’s John Hinderaker:

Everyone knows that Barack Obama is lost without his teleprompter, but his latest blunder, courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via the Corner, suggests that the teleprompter may not be enough unless it includes phonetic spellings. [Obama apparently mispronounced the name of the company “Orion”]

So evidently we have to add astronomy to history and economics as subjects of which Obama is remarkably ignorant. I’m beginning to fear that our President has below-average knowledge of the world. Not for a President, but for a middle-aged American.

Just in case there’s any doubt, there was no indication that Hinderaker was kidding or being deliberately ironic. (With conservative blogs, it’s often hard to tell.)

This is, of course, coming from the same blogger who was not only impressed by Sarah Palin’s intellectual prowess, but also once lauded George W. Bush as “a man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius.”

No wonder Steve Benen entitled that post “Stupid Is as Stupid Does.”

Next up on our list of profound stupidity is Eric Cantor, who apparently feels an affinity with the profoundly paranoid:

C-SPAN’s Washington Journal hosted House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) this morning. During the segment, a caller phoned in to “thank” Cantor “and [Rep.] Michele Bachmann [R-MN] and all of the conservatives that are doing such a great job.”

The caller then said it’s “insanity” that there are “people” drinking “from the kool-aid” who “seem to think that there is a magical tree of money behind Washington,” adding that the country is descending into “fascism.” In response, Cantor said the public is “finally waking up” to this and that the GOP is trying to bring President Obama “back into the mainstream…”

Maybe we should cut him some slack, though. Maybe he was still all hung over after the Brittany Spears concert he went to:

In recent weeks, congressional Republicans have been critical of President Obama for doing anything that isn’t directly focusing on the economic crisis — such as going on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno or filling out his NCAA bracket. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) even called Obama’s decision to overturn the ban on embryonic stem cell research a “distraction.” However, Wonkette reports that instead of watching Obama’s prime-time press conference last night, Cantor decided to pursue his own distraction — the Britney Spears concert. A statement from Cantor’s office:

After attending the NRCC dinner, Eric, like President Obama has been known to do, enjoyed a night at the Verizon center.

I wish I was kidding. Alas, ’tis not April 1st.

Chuck Norris has no such excuse for being a spectacular dumbass. You know he writes columns for WorldNut Daily:

… and World Nut Daily prints them

And the question that keeps coming back to my mind is: How is it that we can militarily overthrow a tyrant like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, yet we can’t keep illegals from crossing our borders? As Mike Huckabee says, “If the government can’t track illegals, then let’s outsource the job to UPS or Fed Ex.” It’s true. If they can track a lost package anywhere in the world within minutes, they can certainly track down and keep track of illegals.

Will Fed Ex scan each illegal or what?

I think this man took far too many blows to the head. Or possibly did too much blow. I’m not sure which.

By the way, has anyone else noticed signs of desperation (as well as signs of psychological implosion) from the right? They seem pretty damned desperate to me:

Eugene Robinson had a column a couple of weeks ago in which he argued, in relation to media criticism of President Obama, “It didn’t work to shout ‘socialism,’ so now they’re yelling ‘overload’ and ‘lack of focus.'”

Except, that didn’t work either, so now they’re yelling “over-exposed.”

CNN’s Anderson Cooper last night spoke at some length about the idea of the president of the United States being “over-exposed.” Cooper compared Obama’s media appearances, including his press conference, to ABC airing “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” too much, to the point that Americans got “sick of it.”

Cooper’s hardly the only one. Indeed, Jason Linkins had a good piece yesterday on the media’s “obsession” with this idea of Obama benig “over-exposed.”

Ain’t gonna work. In fact, their attacks have worked just about as well as Bobby Jindal’s follow-ups to President Obama’s speeches:

Yesterday, as President Obama was delivering his second press conference, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA)
spoke at the NRCC’s largest fundraiser of the year to an audience of more than 1,200 Republicans — including prominent luminaries like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH).

In his speech, Jindal turned to one of the major issues facing the GOP: whether it agrees with Rush Limbaugh’s statement that he wants Obama to fail. Without mentioning Limbaugh, Jindal criticized the recent focus on the remarks, claiming that anyone who disagrees with President Obama is treated as committing “treason.” On whether he personally wants Obama to fail, Jindal simply said, “it depends“:

Make no mistake, anything other than an immediate and compliant – “why no sir, I don’t want the President to fail” is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience, or political obstructionism. This is political correctness run amok. […]

I will not be brow beaten on this, and I will not kow-tow to their political correctness. We will be the loyal opposition. So… my answer to the question is very simple — “Do you want the President to fail?” It depends on what he is trying to do.

I’ve only skimmed his speech, looking for the spot where he implicitly condemns Limbaugh (which I didn’t find). It’s a grab-bag of insanity wrapped in idiotic GOP talking points and then drowned in pathetic.

I’d ask when these people are going to learn, but I realize the answer to that is, “They’re incapable of learning.”

Happy Hour Discurso

Great Minds

Digby and I are thinking alike, which gives me hope for the eventual greatness of my mind:

I was just reading this interesting piece about narcissistic personality disorder and musing about the mindset that believes it’s ok to take down the world economy and then dictate the rules by which it is fixed.

So we don’t agree on the actual pathology, but at least we’re on the same track. Woot!

If we have any clinical psychologists in the audience, they should feel free to weigh in. Who’s closer to the proper diagnosis of the Wall Street fucktards, Digby or your own cantinera?

Great Minds

Prescribing the Disease as the Cure

Leave it to the uber-religious fuckwits to come up with genius ideas like this:

I had to laugh at the absurd assumptions behind this headline from the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow:

afaheadline.jpg

STDs have gone up, therefore we need more abstinence-only sex ed. Never mind that study after study has shown that kids who get abstinence-only sex ed are less likely to use condoms when they have sex.

You know why I love Ed Brayton? Because he’s merciless with the statistics:

Let’s look just at the state of Texas, which leads the nation in abstinence-only sex ed. 94% of all Texas school districts teach abstinence-only sex ed, with only 3% teaching abstinence-plus (abstinence plus condoms and other forms of birth control).

The result? Texas teenagers also are among the nation’s leaders in unprotected sex.

Fifty-sex percent of high school students in Texas report having used condoms at last intercourse. Only three states have lower rates of condom use among students.

We already know that Texas has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the nation, despite 94% of them being taught abstinence-only. It’s certainly no surprise that they also have an extraordinarily high rate of STD infections:

Young people ages 15-24 comprised twenty percent of Texas’ new HIV cases in 2006.

Texas’ youth, especially young women, are at risk for STIs:

  • Youth ages 15-24 experienced 73 percent of the total number of Chlamydia cases in Texas in 2006.
  • Youth ages 15-24 experienced 61 percent of the total number of Gonorrhea cases in Texas in 2006.
  • For all youth in this age range, young women were most at risk for STIs, experiencing 83 percent of Chlamydia infections and 60 percent of gonorrhea infections.

So much for that argument.

I think it’s time we turn the tables. Anti-choicers like to shove pictures of discarded fetal tissue in people’s faces. Why not take a page from their book and start parading around outside their churches with blown-up photos of the effects of STDs? We can ask them why they’re ruining kids’ lives.

Here’s just a few pics to get us started:

AIDS:

Advanced Kaposi’s sarcoma with marked lymphostatic oedema in a patient’s face.

(© J.H. Frenkel, Univ. Frankfurt)


Syphillis:

Lesions

Courtesy of the Sexual Health Guide blog


Chlamydia –

A wicked case of crotch rot

This is what they sentence kids to when the only advice they give is “Don’t have sex.”

Prescribing the Disease as the Cure

Happy Hour Discurso

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Cons are united by many things: their paranoia, their fondness for calling their political opponents “socialists,” their economic ignorance, and their hatred of Dick Cheney:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has refused to stay out of the political spotlight since leaving office, giving high-profile interviews to CNN and Politico. Last night, The Hill reported that congressional Republicans are telling him “to go back to his undisclosed location and leave them alone to rebuild the Republican Party without his input”:

Rep. John Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) said, “He became so unpopular while he was in the White House that it would probably be better for us politically if he wouldn’t be so public…But he has the right to speak out since he’s a private citizen.”

Another House Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said he wasn’t surprised that Cheney has strongly criticized Obama early in his term, but argued that it’s not helping the GOP cause.

[snip]

Cheney did “House Republicans no favors,” the lawmaker said, adding, “I could never understand him anyway.”

Yeah, well, neither could we. At last, something we can all agree on: Dick Cheney is a fucking arsehole, and it would be nice if he tripped and fell into a convenient black hole. Well, all of us except the DNC, who probably scream with joy every time he appears on teevee. The more he talks, the better 2010 looks for Democrats.

I’m wondering how the chances of a Dem takeover in Rep. Michele Bachman’s district are looking. If she keeps opening her mouth, they should increase exponentially:

Watching Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn.) speak has a certain car-wreck quality. It’s painful and disturbing, but it’s just so difficult to look away.

Take Bachman’s questioning today of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Research Chairman Ben Bernanke. (via Karen Tumulty, who noted that Bachman seems confused about how a bill becomes a law)

It’s a five-minute clip, but it’s worth watching. Bachmann starts by asking Geithner if the United States is “jettisoning free-market capitalism.”

From there, the Minnesotan asks where the Treasury Department received the legal authority to intervene in the financial markets. When Geithner explains that Congress gave the Treasury the authority, she pressed on, asking “where in the Constitution” Geithner is given the authority to act. (Apparently, she was making some kind of constitutional argument. It didn’t make any sense.)

Congratulations, Minnesota. Your rep has no fucking idea how the federal government works, and yet you sent her to help govern. Can we please arrange for her to elope to an undisclosed location with Dick Cheney?

After all, we don’t need her for the entertainment value. We’ve got plenty more where she comes from:

Today, Politico reported that Republican senators are prepared to go “nuclear” — essentially shutting down the Senate through the use of parliamentary maneuvers — if President Obama attempts to use budget reconciliation to pass key parts of his legislative agenda, such as health care reform and and cap-and-trade. Reconciliation allows some legislation to be protected from filibusters and passed by a simple majority. On NPR this morning, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) repeated a now familiar attack on budget reconciliation:

BOND: “In this post-partisan time of Barack Obama, we’re seeing a little Chicago politics. They steamroller those who disagree with them, then, I guess in Chicago, they coat them in cement and drop them in the river.” [NPR, 3/24/09]

Bond appears to be parroting his colleague Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), who said any use of budget reconciliation by President Obama would be “regarded as an act of violence” against Republicans, and likened it to “running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River.” Other GOP senators have chimed in against reconciliation, with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) calling it a “purely partisan exercise” and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) saying it “would be a mess.”

Despite their howls against Obama, Republicans employed the same procedure to pass major Bush agenda items (which were supported by all four aforementioned Senators):

– The 2001 Bush Tax Cuts [HR 1836, 3/26/01]
– The 2003 Bush Tax Cuts [HR 2, 3/23/03]
– Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 [HR 4297, 5/11/06]
– The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 [H. Con Res. 95, 12/21/05]

As ThinkProgress has noted, Gregg defended using the reconciliation procedure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for domestic drilling in 2005, arguing, “The president asked for it, and we’re trying to do what the president asked for.” Evidently, Gregg has lost the same sense of patriotic duty.

Is it just me, or is Con stupidity actually increasing at exponential rates? We’re beyond simple foaming at the mouth – they’re getting more rabid by the day.

Not to mention more xenophobic:

Leave it to Pitchfork Pat Buchanan to take a seemingly rational discussion of America’s relationship with Mexico on Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC show this morning and turn it into a Latino-bashing bigotfest:

Buchanan: Mexico is the greatest foreign-policy crisis I think America faces in the next 20-30 years. Who is gonna care, Andrea, thirty years from now whether a Sunni or a Shi’a is in Baghdad, or who’s ruling in Kabul? We’re going to have 135 million Hispanics living in the United States by 2050, heavily concentrated in the Southwest. The question is whether we’re going to survive as a country.

Rrrrrright. I gather he’s been listening to Glenn Beck.

Wassamatter, Pat? Are you scared the icky brown people might dish out a little of what you served ’em? As for your question, yes, we’ll survive as a country (if we make it through the hell your buddies dumped us in), but in answer to your implied question, no, we won’t survive as a white country.

Myself, I can’t wait. One of the things I miss the most about the Southwest is all of the Latino culture. The only people terrified of changing demographics are those who suspect they’re fundamentally useless and only have their positions of power and authority because they happen to be in the majority for the moment. People like, y’know, Pat Buchanan.

There’s far more stupid – too much for me to relate in one small post. But I did want to let you know the media’s doing a bang-up job on their watchdog duties:

ABC News reports on the sordid past of Obama’s Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra:

When Kundra was 21 years old, records show, he was caught stealing four shirts from a J.C. Penney store.

….”Thirteen years ago, Vivek committed a youthful indiscretion. He performed community service, and we are satisfied that he fully resolved the matter.”

What’s going on here? The new administration has a lot of work to do, but it keeps being sideswiped by issues in its appointees’ pasts. Police records provided to ABC News show that those shirts from Penney’s were worth less than $140. Kundra was fined $100 plus $55 in court costs, and ordered to do 80 hours of community service. He reportedly told the White House about the incident while he was being vetted for his current job.

Seriously. And if you think that was ridiculous enough,
read to the end of the article:

But reporters, watchdog groups and information-technology specialists still ask about that perplexing 1996 shoplifting charge from Penney’s.

And you know where they picked up this information on Kundra’s nefarious criminal past? Michelle Malkin’s blog.

With a media like this, it’s no wonder dumbshits keep getting elected, good people are kept out of government, and sociopaths are allowed to pillage Wall Street at will.

Happy Hour Discurso

The Sociopaths of Wall Street

The cluelessness from Wall Street just gets worser and worser:

Via TPM, a Wall Street Journal article that says, basically, that at first the Obama administration did not particularly seek out Wall Street’s advice:

“In late January, as Treasury Secretary Geithner prepared his proposal for handling the banking crisis, administration officials avoiding seeking input from Wall Street. “Those people are tainted,” said one aide at the time. “Why would we consult the very executives who got us into this mess?” (…)

[snip]

But then Obama decided that it was important to reach out more to Wall Street, and did. More Wall Street people were consulted; the administration worked harder to win them over.

Here are the passages from the article that really got to me. (Emphases added.) First:

“Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his colleagues worked the phones to try to line up support on Wall Street for the plan announced Monday. (…) Some bankers say they turned the conversations into complaints about the antibonus crusade consuming Capitol Hill. Some have begun “slow-walking” the information previously sought by Treasury for stress-testing financial institutions, three bankers say, and considered seeking capital from hedge funds and private-equity funds so they could return federal bailout money, thereby escaping federal restrictions.”

Second:

“But as the furor intensified, Mr. Obama’s words to Congress — “we cannot govern out of anger” — seemed to take on less importance. Last week, he was asked by reporters on the White House South Lawn whether anger was getting in the way of pushing through banking reforms. “I don’t want to quell anger,” he replied. “I think people are right to be angry. I’m angry.”

Bankers were shell-shocked, especially when Congress moved to heavily tax bonuses. When administration officials began calling them to talk about the next phase of the bailout, the bankers turned the tables. They used the calls to lobby against the antibonus legislation, Wall Street executives say. Several big firms called Treasury and White House officials to urge a more reasonable approach, both sides say. The banks’ message: If you want our help to get credit flowing again to consumers and businesses, stop the rush to penalize our bonuses.”

I think it’s important to be really, really clear about what this article claims. Both the stress tests and the attempts to get credit flowing again are essential parts of our attempt to solve the enormous economic problems we now face, problems that these very firms are largely responsible for. If the banks are “slow-walking” the stress tests and threatening not to help get credit flowing, that just is threatening not to help get the country out of the economic crisis.

That would be an absolutely appalling thing to do under any circumstances. It would be doubly appalling since these very people bear a lot of responsibility for that crisis. But the fact that they are making these threats not over some large issue of principle, but over their bonuses — that’s just breathtaking.

As if that wasn’t enough chutzpah, we also learn this:

Last month, ThinkProgress reported that in a House hearing, seven out of eight bailed-out bank CEOs said their companies still “own or lease” private planes. ABC News provides more details today, reporting that JPMorgan Chase — which received $25 billion in TARP funds — “is going ahead with a $138 million plan to buy two new luxury corporate jets,” complete with “the premiere corporate aircraft hangar on the eastern seaboard…”

But they think it’s okay, because they’ll wait until they’ve paid back the TARP money. They don’t seem to comprehend that Americans don’t expect them to return to their same old habits after we’re done saving their asses from their own bad decisions and cooked books.

As I was reading this, it occurred to me that their behavior fits the definition of sociopathy to a T:

Imagine – if you can – not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern of the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools. Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience that they seldom even guess at your condition.

[snip]

Maybe you are someone who craves money and power, and though you have no vestige of conscience, you do have a magnificent IQ. You have the driving nature and the intellectual capacity to pursue tremendous wealth and influence, and you are in no way moved by the nagging voice of conscience that prevents other people from doing everything and anything they have to do to succeed. You choose business, politics, the law, banking or international development, or any of a broad array of other power professions, and you pursue your career with a cold passion that tolerates none of the usual moral or legal encumbrances. When it is expedient, you doctor the accounting and shred the evidence, you stab your employees and your clients (or your constituency) in the back, marry for money, tell lethal premeditated lies to people who trust you, attempt to ruin colleagues who are powerful or eloquent, and simply steamroll over groups who are dependent and voiceless. And all of this you do with the exquisite freedom that results from having no conscience whatsoever.

We’re not dealing with normal people. We’re letting sociopaths dictate the terms
of their own rescue. I somehow doubt that will go well.

The Sociopaths of Wall Street

Vermont On Fast Track to Marriage Equality – With Republican Support

Every once in a while, Republicans surprise me:

This afternoon (Monday, March 23) the Vermont State Senate passed S. 115, legislation for civil marriage equality by a vote of 26 to 4.

The 23 Democrats in the Senate voted for the bill by a 22 to 1 margin, while the 7 Republicans split 4 to 3 in favour of the bill. (In how many states would a majority of Republicans vote for marriage equality?)

Mind you, it’s a wafer-thin majority, but that’s still four Republicans who did the right thing. The bill now goes to the House, where it’s expected to pass. As long as Vermont’s Republican governor doesn’t get an itchy veto pen, same-sex couples in Vermont will enjoy the right to destroy their lives get married just like the rest of us.

My deepest condolences congratulations to you!

Vermont On Fast Track to Marriage Equality – With Republican Support