The Poor Man Institute

The comments rule the internets with an iron fist.

New meme: Obama is nuclear holocaust Jesus:

Anyone familiar with the history of communism knows enough to be terrified by utopian visions. Equally frightening is the staggering breadth of the Moonbat Messiah’s ego. Not long ago, Obama told Sunday worshipers in Greenville, South Carolina that they don’t have to wait for any Second Coming:

“I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth.”

Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, et al. had ambitions on a similar scale, although I don’t recall them comparing themselves to God. For the messianic aspect, you normally have to leave politics for cults like Heaven’s Gate.

Obama isn’t the first to mix Marxist utopianism with cult deification. Jim Jones did it with his Peoples Temple. Fortunately Jim Jones never had access to the USA’s nuclear codes.

A bit of a misstep here, comparing Obama to Jim Jones, rather than the more evocative Charlie Manson.  True, Jones brewed the original Kool-Aid, and did go to darkest Africa swarthiest South America.  But Charlie Manson was much scarier, was all about the class and race war, and – and this is critical here – was from the Epochal and Very Scary Late Sixties, rather than the Forgettable and Mostly Embarrassing Late Seventies.  Now, one could construct a perfectly serviceable Culture War narrative based on late-70′s resentment – in fact, I can think of 3 without even trying:

1. Obama as secret (black, gay, urban, coastal) disco partisan opposed to salt-of-the-Earth (white, suburban/rural) Eddie Money fans;
2. Obama as secret (London/NYC, jobless, stoned, callow) anarchist punk rocker/reggae listener opposed to John McCain’s steady, hard-working Frank Sinatra-listening establishment type;
3. Obama as creepy glam transsexual Ziggy Stardust Bowie vs. coked-out fascist but sensibly-tailored Thin White Teuton Duke Bowie;

The last one made more sense when it was in my head – substitute some kind of scary forced-busing liberal Negro vs. punk-killing “Death Wish” Charles Bronson narrative here.  It’s not hard.  But once you’ve made a narrative choice, you do have to stick with it – you can’t just keep bouncing around, or people become confused.  If you are telling the story of a scary vampire, you can’t decide in chapter 2 that he’s also 500 feet tall and radioactive and bent on destroying Tokyo, in chapter 3 that he is actually a giant man-eating shark, and in chapter 4 that he is all this and a super-terrorist trying to plant a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles.  All of these things are, indeed, scary, but taken together they add up to a muddle.

This is the problem.  It’s not just the McCain campaign’s problem – although their inability to pick a narrative and stick to it is a special kind of inexcusable -  it’s a problem for the entire wingnut noise machine.  Obama is a Marxist Muslim Arab Jesus Black White Terrorist Technocrat Racist Do-Gooder Liberal FDR Stalin Hilter Commie Fascist Gay Womanizing Naive Cynical Insider Noob Boring Radical Unaccomplished Elite Slick Gaffe-Prone Pedophile Pedophile-Seducing Liberation Theology Atheist Etc. & Anti-Etc. with a bunch of scary friends from – wait for it! – the Nineteen Hundred And Sixties.  It makes no sense.  It’s a jumble sale of fears and scary associations from 50 years of wingnut witch hunts and smear campaigns, a flea market of pre-owned and antique resentments, and if one does detect a semi-consistent 1960′s motif running through it all, that’s because that’s when most of these ideas were coined.  While it is great fun for wingnut yahoos to relive the glory days when National Review was still taken more seriously than liberal blogofascists by the people who matter, most of this stuff is obsolescent (or at least unfashionable), and people suffering from the material problems caused by 50 years of right-wing ascendancy aren’t going to drop everything to listen to fuguing conservatives spin disjointed yarns about how much better everything was back in their day.  Nobody gives a fuck.

While you’re up, could you please shoot me:

Some concerned parents have contacted the Mattel toy company with allegations that one of its dolls utters words which promote Islam.

The Little Mommy Cuddle ‘n Coo dolls are manufactured by Fisher-Price, which is part of the Mattel toy empire. However, a number of parents contacted the company when they heard the doll say these words: “Islam is the light.”

While the doll appears to utter “Islam is the light,” the company denies that is actually what it is programmed to say. Mattel insists that Little Mommy Cuddle ‘n Coo features realistic baby sounds, including cooing, giggling, and baby babble, with no real sentence structure.

Like a less pretentious Camille Paglia, then. No word yet on whether the doll comes to life and carves a backwards crescent into your child’s cheek, although presumably this question will be answered in the affirmative before the week is out.  It does makes one long for a more innocent time, when dolls taught tots wholesome warblogging skills.

Time Cube Guy endorses McCain:

At the risk of my life, I must issue a GRAVE WARNING to my fellow Americans – about a
potential Civil War between millions if Obama,
the Black candidate, is elected President of the
United States, displacing the white president -
inducing America to become a Black Nation.
There are some whites who cannot accept this,
especially during the drastic hardtimes ahead,
and will initiate a spark of violence that will
spread over the Earth like a wildfire. The
World is now on the verge of such a threat,
and the World condition is highly volatile.
This is most likely the test Biden mentioned.
Neither candidate mentioned RACE for its
beyond their expertise – so they just let it
happen – slaughter like never seen before.
I fear if Obama wins, America will lose.
Now, what will you do to avoid such a hell?

Dr. Gene Ray, Cubic and Wisest Human
Gene Ray is sole Authority on Harmonic Time Cube.
Collection of raw data on this Site will empower the
Greatest Book ever written. That includes Bibles and
Academic Scientific Books. Stop evil Ad Hominemism.

Wait: Obama’s black? Why was I not informed?

It is impossible for an academic deified Queer ONE god to give
birth to, or breast-feed a Baby. [...]
You’re Educated ONE Nitwits,
I possess Math & Science Proof.
A Queer as God = Queer HIV.

There is much, much, much more.  I think this points the way for the Republican party to form a vibrant new electoral coalition in time for 2012.  Time Cube Guy, Chuck Norris, Pedobear and the conFURvatives will form the new “base”.  Around them we could collect Tron Guy (transhumans), Peter Pan Guy (crunchy cons), Star Wars Kid, Numa Numa Guy, lonelygirl15, Kung Fu Baby and Dramatic Prairie Dog, Chris Crocker, and 50 billion house cats, forming a Coalition to Defend Traditional Internet Values.  If my calculations are correct, this coalition could deliver over 9000 electoral votes in the next general election, and good will triumph over evil.

Here is a possible ad campaign:

I got better.

So a crazy girl, apparently canvassing for the McCain campaign in Pittsburgh, made up a story that a scary black guy mugged her and carved a ‘B’ on her face for Barack Obama, because that seemed like the sort of thing that might happen on planet Earth. Obviously, the young lady in question is very troubled, and I’m pretty sure I used to date her. Obviously, the McCain campaign is equally troubled, and perhaps Joe Biden’s gaffe was more a reference to McLean than McLane. Because, seriously:

John McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established — and even told reporters outright that the “B” carved into the victim’s cheek stood for “Barack,” according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the “B” stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

It’s worth noting that Michelle “John Kerry shot himself” Malkin thought this story was too repulsive to peddle, although it’s also worth noting that FOX News, Drudge, and most of the rest of the conservative messaging apparatus had no such qualms. Normally, I’d point out a bunch of other idiots who were all over it, but it’s just too gross.  And really, what’s the point?  Instead, let’s enjoy Dan Riehl explaining how Barack Obama is going to murder his grandmother for sympathy votes.

I take back everything I ever said about ratfucking.  It’s like bringing coal to Newcastle at this point, and cruel besides.  I’ve joked before that conservatism belongs in DSM-V, and I’m about 80% sure I’m still at least half-kidding.  But it’s hard to interpret any of this as something other than a cry for help.  From top to bottom, the whole conservative movement is having a nervous breakdown.

Yucky.  As a mental palette cleanser, consider what Jonah Goldberg would be like if he were an orange pussy cat:

Kittens to follow.

I realize that some people are so frightened of their own sexual impulses (and their neighbors’) that they feel the need to erect and adhere to strict moral codes that tightly regulate sexual behavior (ie, no masturbation ever, heterosexual sex only, and only after marriage and, even then, never for pleasure – only for procreation).  In this vein, we get the near-panicked Dennis Prager in his most recent gay marriage cri de couer testicules that The Eds linked to earlier this week. 

I’m not sure if the type of Freudian analysis in his article is unintentional, or if hyper moralists like Prager regularly acknowledge the system of locks, canals, levees and damns that they take it upon themselves to defend for the greater good of human sexuality, but this bit is remarkably telling, possibly even insightful in some respects (more elegant than “God hates fags” at least):

Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity — especially females  — can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction — until now, accomplished through marriage.

He acknowledges that human sexuality is, by nature, amorphous and on a continuum, but then explains that this natural state of affairs is unhealthy and must be vigilantly guarded against.  Because if not, the people guarding against it will be told that they were wrong for their past judgmentalism.  Or something.

Perhaps Prager is a cynic.  Aspiring rulers realized long ago that manipulating sexual fears, regardless of whether those same fears are held by the ruling faction themselves, is a very effective way to control larger populations.  You get the masses by the balls so to speak, and what better way than through the threat of eternal damnation and the unraveling of society.  Fear, sexuality, God, the after life and politics.  That’s quite a potent blend.

But all that repressing, channeling and guilt mongering leads to some ugly outcomes.  Polymorphous human sexuality doesn’t dutifully obey commands or religious doctrine.  It’s polymorphous for fuck’s sake!  The attempt to channel the flow of human sexuality into artificial containers causes the build-up of an irresistible pressure.  When a leak springs, the now shame-ridden and distorted impulses are released in unpredictable and often unhealthy ways that the person holding them is not equippted to handle (he/she was too busy repressing to become acquianted and comfortable with their continuum).

So, regardless of whether the soi disant moral clarions are themselves scared of their latent and repressed sexuality, or cynically using sexuality as a means to a political end, a shocking number are at some point caught engaging in behavior that they have spent their lifetimes stigmatizing as so deviant that it threatens the fabric of society (sometimes, as in the case of pedophilia, rightfully so – but there might be a link there to: again, when you push sexuality down so forcefully, it erupts in deleterious ways).  

This piece over at LGM seems fitting:

The successor of the Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider was dismissed yesterday after he revealed a “special” relationship “far beyond” friendship with his former mentor.

In emotional interviews with the national broadcaster and a tabloid newspaper Stefan Petzner spoke openly about his affair with Haider, who died at the age of 58 in a high-speed car crash after heavy drinking session at a gay club this month. Haider’s party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria, captured 11 per cent of the vote in national elections last month .

“He was the man of my life. Our relationship went far beyond friendship,” Mr Petzner, 27, said after only a week in the job, adding that Haider’s wife, Claudia, 52, “did not object” to their relationship. 

I don’t know if repressing human sexuality leads one to go Nazi (or neo-Nazi, or Liberal Fascist), whether it causes priests to molest children, whether it is the impetus behind preachers buying crack from male hookers they plan to fellate, or whether it leads to the urge to don multiple wet suits and a butt plug while suspended from the ceiling in a harness.  And I’ve already engaged in enough armchair psychology to probe this any deeper.  But I will simply say this:

Human society would be much healthier if people stopped trying to “channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction.”  It’s not doing anybody any good.  And even if fostering tolerance toward homosexuality doesn’t alleviate any of the aforementioned unsavory manifestations, at least people who are shamed for their natural sexual inclinations by all the self-appointed “channelers”  will be happier.  That should count for something. 

Seriously, Mr. Prager: Live a little.  Kiss a boy.  Grab a dick.  Embrace your inner-ghey, and leave everyone else’s continuum the fuck alone.

Tigerhawk:

Arctic sea ice, the melting of which has become one of the favorite bits of pop-sci “evidence” that the planet’s climate is warming, has recovered so quickly from its summer lows that it is just a hair below the “normal” range.

In recent years the press has covered every twitch in Arctic sea ice coverage with breathless headlines. Not now, though. Given that this manifestly good news would undercut those who have mocked Sarah Palin for her position on, well, the “endangerment” of polar bears, we should not expect any coverage of this story in the mainstream media until the second week in November.

In order to avoid biased ‘pop-sci “evidence”‘, Tigerhawk links to the internets weblog of “a former television meteorologist” who presents a graph which – if I’m reading it correctly – contains shocking new evidence that summer is warmer than winter.  I wonder what such a graph would look like over longer – dare I say “significant” – timescales?

I wonder how the NSIDC characterized this Palin-vindicating bit of good news:

Arctic sea ice extent during the 2008 melt season dropped to the second-lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979, reaching the lowest point in its annual cycle of melt and growth on September 14, 2008. Average sea ice extent over the month of September, a standard measure in the scientific study of Arctic sea ice, was 4.67 million square kilometers (1.80 million square miles) (Figure 1). The record monthly low, set in 2007, was 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles); the now-third-lowest monthly value, set in 2005, was 5.57 million square kilometers (2.15 million square miles).

The 2008 season strongly reinforces the thirty-year downward trend in Arctic ice extent. The 2008 September low was 34% below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000 and only 9% greater than the 2007 record (Figure 2). Because the 2008 low was so far below the September average, the negative trend in September extent has been pulled downward, from –10.7 % per decade to –11.7 % per decade (Figure 3). [...]

NSIDC Research Scientist Walt Meier said, “Warm ocean waters helped contribute to ice losses this year, pushing the already thin ice pack over the edge. In fact, preliminary data indicates that 2008 probably represents the lowest volume of Arctic sea ice on record, partly because less multiyear ice is surviving now, and the remaining ice is so thin.” (See Figure 4.)

Global warming: disproved!  Polar bears: thriving!  Strange the MSM won’t cover this awesomely good news!  Because they hate Republicans!

I suspect that somewhere, deep down beneath layers of ego-protecting horseshit, that Tigerhawk understands that it is pointless to track changes that happen over a timescale of decades by cherry-picking week-to-week or month-to-month data.  One suspects that if you replaced the label “Extent (million sq. km)” with one reading “Tigerhawk’s net worth (10,000′s of $)”, the fantastically persuasive argument that “you now have more money than the least you have ever had, almost as much as one standard deviation below the average of the last 30 years of accelerating annual decline!” would not be accepted as thorough vindication of his broker’s investment strategy.  One suspects that the problem here is not some kind of innate mental limitation which causes these bizarre spectacles, but a form of learned, protective idiocy – a cocoon, if you will – which seals out facts that could damage the ego.  (Now, one does have to wonder about the fragility of an ego which can be so seriously damaged by learning that Sarah freakin’ Palin does not, in fact, know more about climate science and polar bears than the USGS, but let’s avoid the darkest places.)  Unfortunately, in this case, the pain Tigerhawk and his co-cocoonists are sparing their egos is being borne by the planet, and those of us who – mentally as well as physically – live on it.  Dude: fucking give it up already. It’s pathetic.

If it makes you feel any better, Al Gore’s beard looked dumb.

If Gregg Easterbrook is going to use a football column to talk about cosmology, I’m going talk about football.  Consider this recent block by WR Hines Ward on LB Keith Rivers:

Rivers broke his jaw, season over. Or this hit by S LeRoy Hill on WR Ike Hilliard:

Hilliard – who had 2 neck vertebrae fused after a previous neck injury – sustained a concussion. Lofa Tatupu – they guy whose head Hillird’s head was knocked into – also sustained a concussion. It’s like a Newton’s Pendulum of brain damage! Both of these hits were deemed “legal” – no penalty was assessed, no fines (AFIAK) were levied. Compare with this hit on WR Anquan Boldin:

A $50,000 fine for S Eric Smith, they guy whose head Boldin’s head was knocked into; a fractured face for Boldin. You tell me. All of these involve helmet-to-helmet contact – the difference being that Smith (as with Kevin Everett and – not h2h, but still – Dennis Byrd) hit the guy with the “crown” of the helmet, as opposed to using the forehead or facemask.  (Or something – every play in an NFL game is a lawsuit, and you need 6 PhDs and a Magic 8-ball to figure out how some of this stuff works.)  It’s still causing serious injury, with the potential for much, much worse, and this in a league (and a sport) that has supposedly been concerned with head injury for some time.  Like, I get it: the NFL is super badass and everyone is a super tough guy who concussions are scared of.  And then, every year or so, someone breaks their neck and no one could have predicted, etc.  Maybe Mike Ditka is right, and they should eliminate the facemask.  Or, maybe a league that has 8,000 rules about what sort of dancing is permitted could just make initiating helmet-to-helmet hits a 5 yard penalty.  But it seems like the league can’t go a week without a couple of grotesque, but apparently perfectly legal, helmet-to-helmet injuries.  Or maybe they want more backups to play so as to better compete with the CFL.

Also, NFL players may – MAY! – be using steroids.  More on this story as it is studiously ignored.

Make … the pain … go away:

As TMQ always wonders about deep-space cosmology, why assume everything we are observing is natural? In the Iain Banks “The Culture” sci-fi novels, a utopian human society battles a monstrous biologically immortal (they never age, but can die by violence) alien race called the Idirans. As an ultimate weapon, The Culture learns how to destabilize stars and make them engulf planets; faced with destruction of their worlds, the Idirans yield. How do we know some distant advanced race has not learned to make stars like Eta Carinae unstable, and is using this knowledge in an apocalyptic war?

Indeed. How do we know that annoying aliens from Unibrau 7 haven’t sent a secret agent to Earth, planted him in a “science expert” “job” at Brookings, and used this position to disseminate bonghit philosophizing so unbelievably retarded that anyone who reads it wants to put their face in a blender?  Talk about an ultimate weapon!

The industrious work of the Toot’s prog rock auxiliaries has revealed the following masterpieces of musical packaging:

Gert Jonnys, eat your hearts out:

And, in what might be the ultimate commentary on the genre:

See also: here, here, here, here, here.  I tried to decrease the overall Swedishness of this selection by including some horrible Glenn Danzig covers, but that would just open up whole new vistas of Swedish nonsense that are best left unexplored.  So, instead, here’s Glenn Danzig deservedly knocked on his ass:

And here’s Jim Rome, receiving a partial shipment of same:

Good times.