Palin Song

Move over Steve Reich. What an interesting speaking-melody this song has. All jittery and jumbled, fragmented and jazzy.


Anyway, this is fucking brilliant.

Political dead-end #1

Recently a friend sent me a link to a post on a blog called This Modern World by tom tomorrow. Anyway, its a ridiculous thing i saw on this site. Apparently theres something called the Conservapedia, (À cause de* liberal bias!) ....anyway, Im not going to get upset by this black hole idiocy and write some sprawling rant, i think, instead, that its more productive to laugh at it.

But im dancing around the subject, the real reason im posting here is because of dinosaurs.

...

err... actually conservapedia's hillarious and pitiful article on dinosaurs. HERE you can find it, but just in case you're lazy like me, i'll quote it for fun. Its too good not to be quoted.

There are a number of lines of evidence that point to dinosaurs and man coexisting. For example, explorers have reported seeing a live dinosaur. A thousand people reported seeing a dinosaur-like monster in two sightings around Sayram Lake in Xinjiang according to the Chinese publication, China Today. An expedition which included Charles W. Gilmore, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology with the United States National Museum, examined an ancient pictograph which is claimed to portray dinosaurs and man coexisting.....

I saw a picture once of a giant cat on a monorail, and im sure more than a thousand people have already seen it. Here, now conservapedia can write an article about the existence of it!



and a little later...

Some Christians reject the Theory of Evolution and the current science community consensus of the age of the earth. Of those Christians who reject evolution, the Young Earth Creationists believe, based primarily on Biblical sources, but also drawing on Archeological and fossil evidence, that dinosaurs were created on the 6th day of the Creation Week as a final addendum to the wonders God created, approximately 6,000 years ago; that they lived in the Garden of Eden in harmony with other animals, eating only plants; that pairs of various dinosaurs were taken onto Noah's Ark during the Great Flood and were preserved from drowning; that fossilized dinosaur bones originated during the mass killing of the Flood; and that some descendants of those dinosaurs taken aboard the Ark still roam the earth today...

and finally....

Because the term only came into use in the 19th century, the Bible obviously does not use the word "dinosaur." However, they are alleged to be mentioned in numerous places throughout the biblical account. For example, the behemoth in Job and the leviathan in Isaiah are sometimes said to be references to dinosaurs, although some reject this view, saying that behemoth was a hippopotamus and leviathan was a crocodile. There is a problem with this view, however, such as the fact that a hippo doesn't have a "tail like a cedar" and a crocodile does not accurately match the description of leviathan.

Now i have bascially quoted the ENTIRE article for you. That whole... whats it called, "science" crap that's those dirty evolu-atheists promote, that liberal bias, is left out. No other possibilities are given. so case closed, god created the dinosaurs and noah lived with them and put them on his boat.

The end.


Anyway, i figured this would make a good companion post to PWS' utterly true post about Conservatives and science.

Political Cul-de-sac #4

I am outraged.

Once again republicans in congress have shown their ideologically infused disregard for the minimum wage. They once again shot down an attempt to raise it. Why? Why on earth does republican ideology say the minimum wage is bad or raising it is harmful? The argument i hear is about business and particularly small business- that raising the minimum wage will decrease jobs and be difficult on small business owners.

Firstly this is not going to be a wide-spread truth no matter how dramatic your scenario- secondly- what state has the highest minimum wage in the county? Mine. Washington state, which has more jobs across the board and a much stronger economy than most of the US states... and there very well may be this relationship between the minimum wage and a stronger economy (or there damn well should be according to republican logic (see below))

Reganomics (see: republican ideology economics) claims as its primary principal the notion that when people have more money, they spend more, they then boost the economy and increase job opportunities. This is the logic and reasoning behind all those tax cuts and those recent ones the republicans passed earlier in Bush's career. Ok, we will just assume this is true. So how does the minimum wage hurt the economy again? small business ...what? so...

When people earn more, they spend more (earn more = have more money) so....
By the republicans own logic- by the their own founding economic principal ( people having more money = people spending more= better economy) i have just justified an increase in minimum wage and contradicted their own argument against the minimum wage using their own time honored logic.

I dont feel the need to expand on this, as its pretty basic connect the dots here. The republicans are simply following a confused and literally self-contradicting economic-ideology, without realizing it, they have just turned their backs on the reason(ing) for tax cuts- something they all seem to hold so near and dear.

But, fuck, this makes it seem like its all just a sham.

Mode of reasoning

I try to restrain my political outbursts on this site (i think this will be my 3rd), as its not a political blog, but sometimes i read something that just pisses me off. For better or for worse, im a political animal...

The 101 most dangerous professors bit by David Horowitz is just a continuation of the conservative dogma. The assumption of the text, and the argument frequently put forth by republicans, is that its the institution of the university that is the problem, it’s the problem with our system, its infested with liberals who are corrupting the youth, thats why these universities are so liberal. Does this kind of argument sound familiar? it should.

This is the same kind of logic that is used for the marxist-lenninist-soviet philosophy * - there is nothing wrong with the people, its society that makes people bad and corrupts them, it’s the capitalist system, its the institution, not the people. This kind of argumentation is actually the root of all Marxist-communist thought. Not surprisingly, the soviets also ceaselessly criticized (and purged) those in high ranks at the universities, bourgeois, they said of them then. Well, Liberal they say now.

So it is then a massive orgasmic irony that the republican pundits use this (ill)logic, since they will explode at the very mention of communism, and they never hesitate to criticize communism for being founded on a misunderstand of social behavior - fails because of human nature. Well, thats funny, their argument fails because it uses the same reasoning. Why are professors usually liberal? Could it be because they’ve seen errors and endless contradictions in the logic of conservatives? No no… it’s the system, remember? The system!

* well, it started with Rousseau, but unlike Marx, Rousseau was a nice man.

For Kicks.

This needs some explanation. Recently Alex Ross made a post about George Bush's infamous statements about Trent Lott's porch and a little bit about his posing with a guitar. George apparently wanted to pose with a G chord, but messed it up, and instead he was positioned on the notes G, G#, A, B, C, and D ( Thank you JD Considine!).

Now this produces a wonderfully ugly chord, which, no doubt, our dear leader intended. I thought it fitting today, after reading this post, and reflecting on the powerful leadership of dear leader, to make a little ditty out of this (though not my usual fare), so this afternoon i did just that. The rest is on the back of this page, and i wont trouble you with that.

A word about the piece. I imagine a warm summer Mississippi day with Dubya on the guitar- on... you guessed it, Trent Lott's porch.

As always, feel free to comment. Im not easily offended.