brainiac conspiracy

Bet It'll Happen Again

There are some people in this world who can't be counted on to play well with others. Whatever the reason, they're just pathologically antisocial, and usually, more than a bit hostile. We generally---and rightly---relegate them to society's fringes because of the corrosive effect they exert on our national psyche, and also because we know that letting them run the show is akin to rewarding antisocial behavior. This is bad enough, but rewarding antisocial behavior under threat of violence strikes your humble blogger as, well, utter madness. We've only encouraged them to escalate the conflict.

---Baron V

Monday Night Music Blogging

Because like herpes, nightmares never go away, only into remission.

---Baron V

Saturday Night Music Blogging

Because no matter the time of day, the crazy train keeps rollin'. Don't forget daylight savings tonight!

---Baron V

44 Presidents in 140 Characters

I know I complain a lot on this blog about the awful people who govern us, but when you really think about it, most of the people who have governed us throughout the whole of American history have been awful people, too. I don't know what it says about the judgment of the commonweal, but it's not a ringing endorsement of our Federal-Presidential system of government, now, is it. (As opposed to, say, a parliamentary system, which, while imperfect, is a lot more flexible.)

---Baron V

Dear Dixie

If you love our Republic, do it a favor and secede already:

"Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson's controversial remarks over homosexuals haven't hurt him at home in Louisiana: The reality TV mainstay would top sitting Democratic senator Mary Landrieu in a hypothetical match-up, according to a new poll.

Robertson would beat Landrieu 46 percent to 42 percent, according to Public Policy Polling, if he ran for office. His overall favorability in the state would be enviable for most politicians: 45 percent favorable, and 19 percent unfavorable. Landrieu's job approval sits at 37 percent approval and 52 percent disapproval.

I wonder what kind of traumatic event needs to befall the nation before we finally reach Peak Insanity---because it's painfully obvious that we haven't reached it yet.

---Baron V

Term Limits

It bears repeating that they were a Republican idea in the first place so Americans could never again elect the same Democrat to the Presidency four times in a row. Besides being vindictive and profoundly antidemocratic, like most Republican ideas, it was---and still is---a spectacularly bad idea that transforms the executive power of the Presidency into an academic exercise the day after a President is re-elected. In other words, the lame-duck period doesn't begin the year before the President leaves office, it starts the minute he's a certified two-termer. There's a reason why so little gets done in second terms anymore---if you're the opposition party in Congress, or a foreign head of state, what incentive do you have to make any deal with a President who you know will be gone four years from now, and someone who may be more to your liking is holding the office?

All I can say is, our state government in Sacramento has been subject to terms limits for the last 25 years, and it's much more ineffectual than it used to be when guys like Jesse Unruh and Willie Brown ran the place. No surprise, really: by the time legislators learn how to perform their jobs well, they have to leave. What workplace in America would work efficiently this way?

---Baron V

Today's Worst Persons

The City of Fullerton persons.

Snark aside, this should surprise absolutely no one. It's the O.C., and that's how those people roll.

---Baron V

Monday Night Music Blogging

Because baby, it's cold outside!

---Baron V

Not Getting It

Can't say I have a strong opinion, one way or another, about this whole Duck Dynasty free-speech brouhaha. The guy's got a right to say what he wants, I suppose, and I while I'm not so sure his employer has a right to punish him for it, the thing that mystifies me is: How did these awful people ever get their own TV show in the first place? How did Dog the Bounty Hunter get a show? How did the fucking Kardashian sisters or the Real Housewives of Wherever get a show? There is something about the culture of reality TV that I've never really understood---specifically, why such stupid and uneducated people could ever provide a source of entertainment to the viewing public. Do people actually identify with these characters, or is the fun in mocking them? I've watched a few of these reality shows a handful of times, and I've never been able to view them for more than ten minutes without succumbing to either boredom or revulsion. Can anybody explain America's fascination with lowlife culture to me?

---Baron V

Light Blogging Day

Because at first I thought there were Typepad server gremlins afoot, but now it appears as though the two-year-old laptop has come down with some crappy virus that keeps me off the Interwebs. So for now, it's back to the six-year-old desktop, which is slow, but still works. Anyone want to buy me a new MacBook Pro for Christmas?

---Baron V

Today's Worst Persons

America's job creators, and the persons who patronize them:

Gun-buying after Thanksgiving is becoming something of a holiday tradition. In each of the past two years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has reported a record number of calls for background checks for gun purchases on the Friday after Thanksgiving. A flood of 154,873 calls on Black Friday in 2012, nearly three times the daily average that year, caused outages at some of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System's call centers.

The FBI does not track actual firearms purchases, and customers can buy multiple guns at one time, suggesting the total number of weapons sold on Black Friday could be even higher than the number of background-check calls. The bureau has reported 17,238,102 background checks this year through Oct. 31.

You really have to wonder about our nation's mental health.

Also too, mental health:

Starting as early as Thursday night, shootings and stabbings have been reported at retailers in several states. Among the most violent episodes happened yesterday at a Kohl's in Romeovile, Ill., when an alleged shoplifter dragged a police officer from his car before being shot in the arm by other law enforcement officers present at the scene, The Chicago Tribune reports.

A shooting was also reported Thursday night in Las Vegas. Two assailants reportedly attempted to steal a TV from a man who had recently purchased it. After arguing, the man was shot in the leg before the attacker sped off in his car, leaving the TV behind, CBS News 8 reports. In an email sent to The Huffington Post, Kohl's said it was "cooperating with the authorities leading the investigation" into the incident.

A police officer in Rialto, Calif., was also injured Thursday night when a fight broke out at a local Walmart.

In Virginia, a man was allegedly slashed with a knife during an altercation with another shopper over a parking space at a Walmart.

A stabbing was reported early Friday morning in Carlsbad, Calif. The victim in that case was stabbed in the stomach at the entrance of a mall, according to NBC San Diego.

Sure, I know that out of millions of people, these are statistically insignificant events, but they point to a more worrisome social trend. Granted, the overwhelming majority of Americans are peaceful and tolerant people, but the minority who aren't are growing increasingly unhinged, and are more heavily armed, with each passing year. Perhaps this won't amount to anything in the long term, but I really worry sometimes that something will happen that will set them off, and we're going to end up with some armed insurrection on our hands. Angry people and guns are not conducive to a civil society.

---Baron V

Midday Music Blogging

Because it's time to go out for some family stuff, so enjoy your afternoon.

---Baron V

What if They Played Without Helmets or Pads

Long ago in a time far away, your humble blogger toiled as a sportswriter---it was the first writing job on a salary!---and as you might expect, I consumed nothing but sport news for many hours a day. As I've grown older, though, I've watched progressively less and less of it, and even when I do, I can (and often do) switch channels or turn off the box, even when someone is about to boot a game-winning field goal as time runs out. I'm not sure why this has occurred, but it's possible that after a certain amount of time you manage to disabuse yourself of all the clutch hitters and proven winners and big-game players and all the other quasi-mythic bullshit that surrounds the game, and realize it's just another form of entertainment, like wrestling and reality shows. It just plays by a different set of rules.

---Baron V

Thursday Night Music Blogging

Because it's always unpleasant when relationships crack up, especially if the principals are crackpots.

---Baron V

Down Memory Lane

If we had the same kind of national news media 40 years ago that we have now, you'd probably be reading conservative accounts at the Post or Politico today to the effect that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, one of their most beloved standard-bearers was merely accepting a gift from grateful constituents, not grifting on the job. Regardless, it's a reminder that the Real Americans have been hopelessly corrupt for many, many decades. But it was fun to watch in real time, though!

---Baron V

Light Blogging Day

Because I've got nothin', and because the crazy people can drive you, like, crazy.

---Baron V

Idiocies of Rural Life

More accurately, there are eighty of them:

It may seem mean-spirited, but sorry to say that Karl Marx was basically right: country life promotes an insular and self-reinforcing worldview, and in the realm of policy, that generally means poor outcomes. It definitely means poor leadership! (To be fair, not every one of the hillbilly Hayeks hails from the sticks; a few, like Bachmann, represent suburban districts. But by and large, a great deal of our current political conflict stems from America's rural-urban divide---which might be somewhat more tolerable if our simple country folk weren't, in the aggregate, a bunch of welfare moochers.)

---Baron V

No Need to Panic

Financial markets are, basically, a confidence game. If an investment pays you a virtually guaranteed rate of return, you're much more likely to hold onto that investment for a very long time, and perhaps even plough more money into the investment. if it doesn't, however, you probably won't, and that's why it's incumbent on our leaders to cut the crap and mint the Special-Edition Reagan-Head Platinum Coin so Uncle Sam can continue to meet his sovereign debt obligations. Yes, the austerity scolds will warn us that we can't manufacture money out of thin air, but the fact is, we can, and we do it all the time, and so long as Mr. Market believes the money is good, then the money is good, period. This isn't like the extortion racket the bankers run when they threaten to blow up interest rates if we don't keep giving them free QE money because Treasuries are held by all sorts of investors. If you've got an IRA or a 401(k), chances are a fair amount of it is tied up in Treasuries, so this isn't about handing money over to rich people, though rich people---and poor people too---will benefit from the Reagan-Head Coin. So what are we waiting for?

(Via.)

---Baron V

Good Times

Glad to see it's a special five-year anniversary today, and as noted elsewhere, at the time there was no shortage of credulous scribes in the Washington media corps who took this person seriously as a national political figure. Some journalists still do, apparently. So, just for fun, your humble blogger thought he'd comb through the Brainiac archives to see if he, too, had ever bought into the bullshit:

The Ex-Parrot Sings
AUGUST 29, 2008

Earlier this morning, a Fox News-aficionado colleague of mine wrote in to hail McCain's bold choice of Sarah Palin, citing her working-class roots. My response, which has been pretty much echoed across the Left Blogosphere today, was as follows:

Rose-colored glasses, my friend. Michael Palin would have been a smarter pick. In one dumb move, McCain just took Obama's “inexperience” off the table as a campaign issue. I mean, the woman's served one year as governor of Alaska, with NO experience in national politics? Crikey, that's even thinner than Obama's resume . . .

Look at it this way: If anything should “happen” to a President Obama, he’s got a seasoned and experienced VP in Biden, ready to take over at a moment's notice. If something should “happen” to President McCain, and the Middle East or the Caucusus blows up, who's left in charge? A pretty novice. If you don’t think the Democrats aren’t going to hit this point, and hard, between now and Election Day, you don’t know what’s coming down the pike.

After last night in Denver, I am guessing that Pawlenty, Romney, Ridge and the other leading VP contenders saw the writing on the wall and ran for the hills to wait until 2012, and Palin was a last-minute fallback. Considering that she's under an ongoing ethics investigation in her home state, this really smacks of desperation.

Now, I've read reports that Ridge, Mitt and the rest of the bridesmaids did not in fact head for the hills---and that there may be some bad blood between some of them and the McCain camp---but even a few hours later, I think the rest of my observations are fairly solid. And it really brings into question a topic that Obama has raised time and again in the campaign, and surely will again: McCain's judgment. For a guy who's only trailing by three or four points in the polls, why such a Hail Mary play? When Walter Mondale tabbed Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in '84, he was down 20-plus points in every opinion poll; Wally had literally nothing to lose with such a gambit. But for Pete's sake, why not Ridge, a blue-collar meat-and-potatoes guy who could've likely delivered Pennsylvania? Why no Mitt, who also cleans up nicely on TV, and could also have helped shore up McCain's support out West, and maybe even helped to tip the scales in Michigan? Why not Pawlenty, even, the governor of a key battleground state?

The answer, it appears, would be that Palin is a darling of the anti-choicers---a group still leery of McCain and one which his brain trust apparently felt they could not afford to alienate as they likely would have with a pick of Mormon Mitt or pro-choice Ridge. You still have to wonder, though----this should have been a day when McCain stole some of Barack Obama's thunder with a VP pick of depth and accomplishment, whose virtues would be extolled ad nauseum by all the usual network bobbleheads over a long holiday weekend. Instead, the mass media reaction, outside of Fox and the NRO Dittohead Brigade, has been, and likely will be, a collective "Huh?"-fest of mutual head-scratching.

Okay, so he needed to shore up his support among women and young voters, as well as among his party's religious base. But it's a bit late in the game to be making a major course correction in your campaign, isn't it? And any and all intraparty fences should've been mended weeks or months ago, out of the limelight. What McCain needs now isn't a few thousand PUMAs or the usual Dobsonites---he needs to win states. Like Pennsylvania. And Ohio. And Minnesota. And Colorado. And maybe his own state as well. To do this, you need to build effective state organizations during primary season. Barack Obama's people figured this out long ago, and they've got an efficiently-run organization on the ground already in every state, with millions of volunteers on call to organize, fund-raise, register voters, and turn them out to the polls. McCain obviously has nothing resembling that for an organization. And generally speaking, the presidential candidate with the best-financed, best-coordinated, and most broadly based campaign organization usually ends up winning these things, certainly over the past 40 years of Campaign-by-TV. Maybe that's what drove a cash-strapped McCain to make the pick, who knows---the realization that there was no infrastructural way, in money or manpower, to win a prolonged campaign against Obama. Still, while there's a certain logic to it, given the uniqueness of his opponent, this strikes me as a decision that was made in a moment of panic.

Summing up, put it this way: when a bonafide red meat-eater like this guy is bamboozled at the choice, you know you've traded one set of troubles at the convention next week for another set altogether. (And for what it's worth, this may be the only time you ever see Krauthammer and Vitelius ask the same question at the same time: why call a Hail Mary play in the third quarter of a game that's essentially tied?)

I guess all we can say is, the man has apparently chosen to succeed or fail on his

Celebrated Maverickyness® . . . but my suspicions are, this won't play very well for very long, even among a fair number of Republicans.

Update: Well shucks, nobody took me up on my wager the other day. I gotta admit, though, even I wouldn't have imagined McCain was that stupid.

Not to toot my own horn---okay, a little---but I think this proves yet again that in politics, being right about everything and two bucks buys you a tall Americano at Starbuck's. But it's nice being reminded, at least, that my personal crap detector was fully functional in those days.

---Baron V

Midday Music Blogging

Because your humble blogger is out for awhile doing stuff. Go have some fun!

---Baron V