You’re Not Fooling Anybody, You Know

Joel Pett, Miami Herald

Against Image

One of the things I’ve learned here in the South is why our country – run mostly by Southerners for the past couple of decades (if you count George W as a Texan and Texas as part of the South rather than the West, which is a close call) – is a flaming mess. Apart from the concentration on moolah as the only acceptable criterion of character or success, the chief ingredient of Southern leadership, as in all other areas of Southern life, is a belief that nothing actually has to be good as long as it looks as if it is.

I’ve had a few short-term jobs in construction over the last year or so and this Southern propensity for replacing quality with an illusion of quality shows up very clearly there. It is practically a law that, for example, if you can rebuild a staircase in 3 days but jerryrig it so it will stand for another year in a day, you don’t rebuild; you support it, paint over it, hide the temporary fix, and then everybody pretends it’s as good as new because it looks as though it is. That’s what paint and spackle are for.

But the most significant use of image is, of course, personal. If you dress in a way that suggests you are a successful and financially astute businessman, you can be a rip-off artist extraordinaire, a cheat, a thief and a con-man, and nobody will ever question what you claim as your bona fides. If you dress “like a tramp”, clearly that’s what you are. It is expected here, in a squirt of naivete hardly explainable in the 21st century, that whatever you look like you are, you are.  It is as if the old adage, “You can’t judge a book by its cover”, never made it further South than Philly.

Good Question, Isn’t It?

Jim Morin, The Miami Herald

Separated At Birth?

You wouldn’t think Iranian President Ahmadinejad and batshit-crazy wingnut blogger Pam “Atlas Juggs” Geller would have anything in common, would you? She hates his guts and he thinks she’s a lunatic. She wants him assassinated and he wants her eviscerated. But you’d be wrong. They’re both Holocaust Deniers. Which is weird because Geller is, like, Jewish.

You know, there is a sort of resemblabce here. They both look like they’ve been injecting way too much botox, Pammy in her forehead and Prez A in his nose. Co-incidence?

And oh yeah, as long as we’re discussing La Juggs, she thinks passing the healthcare “reform” bill on Xmas Eve is blasphemy!!!! (You have to imagine a deep bass voice through an echo chamber on that last word.) I might agree. I tend to suspect that Christ would NEVER want his name associated with a bill that shamelessly molests innocent people. (Via Norwegianity)

A Merry Republican Xmas

That Jack Bauer. He’s a real man! (Via Avedon)

The Myth of Christmas

Reprinted from 12.24.06 – And it will continue to be printed until the O’Reilly-originated “War on Christmas” BS ends. There’s no antidote to lies except truth.

This would be the time, if ever there was one, to reflect on the meaning of Christmas, but before we can do that to any purpose we need to clear away some of the dead wood by exploding a couple of the myths that have built up around it since the holiday became popular in the late 19th century. Chief among these is the legend that Christmas is Christian, or even religious.

Myth #1: That Christmas used to be a religious holiday but has been turned into a consumer carnival

It may seem obvious that Christmas is a Christian holiday. The very name of the day suggests a celebration of Christ, and certainly many have bemoaned the fact that Xmas seems to have lost its religious meaning under a barrage of commercialism. Back in the 1950’s the satirist Stan Freberg released a classic record called “$Green Christmas$” which savagely criticized what Christmas had become even then; its chief sound effect was the ringing of a cash register. Behind all the criticism was then – and is now – a belief that Christmas had once meant something it no longer means, that what was originally the celebration of a religious figure has been twisted into a callous, materialist frenzy of buying stuff.

The truth is somewhat different.

Have a Tree With Your Tree

O’Reilly’s “War on Christmas” paranoids are fighting back.  Below is a Christmas tree you can order online in case your tree doesn’t have the right symbolic configuration. Or something. (Via Bill Berkowitz at TTA)

Um, yeah.

Afghanistan: Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Pot

David Horsey

No outside invader has ever “won” in Afghanistan. What makes Obama think we’re the exception to an ironclad historic rule?

Stoopid Is Gud!

Tom Tomorrow on Our Most Precious Resource (click to enlarge)

The Definition of “Non-Governable Democracy”

Just think about this for a minute, in re the previous post:

In its first vote on health care overhaul, the Senate Thursday narrowly approved an amendment to safeguard coverage of mammograms and preventive screening tests for women under a revamped system.The 61-39 vote on an amendment by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, would allow the Health and Human Services secretary to require insurers to cover preventive health screenings free of charge.

Under special provisions agreed to prior to the tally, 60 votes were needed to pass the amendment. The margin underscored the fragility of the coalition Democrats are counting on to move forward on President Barack Obama’s signature issue.

Fragility?

Question #1:

Why do we need 60 votes – a filibuster-proof majority – in order to approve something as non-controversial and obviously necessary as mammograms and cancer screening tests?

Question #2:

Why did something as obvious, necessary, and minor barely squeak through this cloth-headed Congress?

Question #3:

How “fragile” is the Democrat “coalition” (between Democrats and Blue Dogs, presumably) when it takes that much effort to pass an amendment this bland?

Question #4:

How “fragile” is our democracy when it takes that much effort to pass an amendment this bland?

Just curious.

A Single Question for Your Edification and Amusement

Has it occurred to the Democrat majority – or to anyone else, for that matter – that it is impossible to govern a democracy when 2/3 of us have to agree on virtually every policy?