Auntie Ayn or Uncle Al? Take the test!

The modern Republican party has embraced the philosophy of Ayn Rand, while the religious right still trembles at the name of self-styled "Antichrist" Aleister Crowley. Oddly enough, these two writers created philosophies which, while not identical twins, may be considered close kin.

See for yourself. Take the test. Which of the following quotes comes to us by way of Ayn Rand, the Philsopher Queen of Objectivism -- and which ones were delivered unto us by way of Aleister Crowley, the Beast 666 and prophet of the Age of Horus?

(Yes, I know that some clever HTML coding could turn this post into a real online quiz -- the kind with buttons and automatic score tabulation and so forth. But making that happen would take work, and doing work is against my rational self-interest. Please -- just take the test mentally. You're not being graded. No fair using Google! At the end, I'll reveal the answers.)

1. "What are your masses...but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" 

2. “The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.” 

3. “I am alone. There is no God where I am.”

4. “The definition of self-respect contains a clause to include pitiless contempt for some other class.” 

5. “How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed to any other qualities than those of brutes.” 

6. “A strong man can eventually trample society under his feet.”

7. “You love only those who deserve it” 

8. "I spit on your crapulous creeds." 

9. “According to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the non-ideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the non-ideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors." 

10. "We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong..." 

11. “Each man must live as an end in himself.” 

12. “The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules” 

13. “Some men are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy, and some have sodomy thrust upon them...” 

14. "Pity not the fallen! I never knew them. I am not for them. I console not: I hate the consoled & the consoler." 

15. “What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty” 

16. “Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves – or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.” 

17. “All this talk about 'suffering humanity' is principally drivel based on the error of transferring one's own psychology to one's neighbour. The Golden Rule is silly.” 

18. “Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.” 

19. "I am the creator of a new code of morality... a morality not based on faith." 

20. “I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.” 

21. “The person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind.” 

22. I am unique & conqueror. I am not of the slaves that perish.

(CLICK "PERMALINK" BELOW FOR ANSWERS!)

Here are the quotes again, this time with attributions...

1. "What are your masses...but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" -- Ayn Rand

2. “The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.” -- Ayn Rand

3. “I am alone. There is no God where I am.” -- Aleister Crowley

4. “The definition of self-respect contains a clause to include pitiless contempt for some other class.” -- Aleister Crowley

5. “How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed to any other qualities than those of brutes.” -- Aleister Crowley

6. “A strong man can eventually trample society under his feet.” -- Ayn Rand

7. “You love only those who deserve it” -- Ayn Rand

8. "I spit on your crapulous creeds." -- Aleister Crowley

9. “According to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the non-ideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the non-ideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors." -- Ayn Rand

10. "We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched & the weak: this is the law of the strong..." -- Aleister Crowley

11. “Each man must live as an end in himself.” -- Ayn Rand

12. “The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules” -- Aleister Crowley

13. “Some men are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy, and some have sodomy thrust upon them...” -- Aleister Crowley

14. Pity not the fallen! I never knew them. I am not for them. I console not: I hate the consoled & the consoler. -- Aleister Crowley

15. “What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty” -- Ayn Rand

16. “Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves – or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.” -- Ayn Rand

17. “All this talk about 'suffering humanity' is principally drivel based on the error of transferring one's own psychology to one's neighbour. The Golden Rule is silly.” -- Aleister Crowley

18. “Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.” -- Aleister Crowley

19. "I am the creator of a new code of morality... a morality not based on faith." -- Ayn Rand

20. “I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.” -- Aleister Crowley

21. “The person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind.” -- Ayn Rand

22. I am unique & conqueror. I am not of the slaves that perish. -- Aleister Crowley

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Fox Glam

What the hell is it with the women on Fox News? Traditionally, female news broadcasters have dressed in a conservative fashion. But the women on Fox don't look like they belong in the office or the board room -- they look ready for a hot date.

I first noticed this trend last year, when I put together a video expose of a scammy group called the National Inflation Association; they literally had gold mines for sale. For some reason, Fox decided to hype these rascals on many of their shows. My video includes a clip from a Fox business program in which a news anchorette, dressed in the tightest of tight minidresses, interviews the group's alleged boss. That kind of skimpy outfit is a common sight on Fox business shows. Many conservatives seem delighted by such visuals -- or so I gathered from a survey of various right-wing websites.

You'd think that the audience would be more appreciative of someone like Peter Schiff, who, in a series of YouTube videos, found evidence that the NIA is a con job. Schiff probably wouldn't look nearly so fetching in a tight black minidress. But if you have money to invest, would you prefer to get advice from a vacuum-skulled Barbie dressed like an escort, or would you rather hear from someone who spent an hour or two doing actual research?

Roger Ailes' network features a program called Fox and Friends, of which I've never been able to tolerate more than five minutes. The show seems to exist for the sole purpose of displaying the legs of the hostess. Here's a sample "review" from a fan:

Fox News made a smart two day substitute hosting move on August 11th and 12th 2009 when they brought in sexy Dari Alexander to fill-in for Gretchen Carlson. And fill-in she did, in two stunning dresses showing off her legs and thighs. In the Dari Alexander photos collage you can see just how sexy Dari Alexander's legs truly are!

This nonsense offends even me, and I'm a sexist pig in the eyes of some feminists.

There's a name for the network's policy: Fox Glam. You can read insider accounts about the look here and here. Bottom line: Fox News wants any woman appearing on camera to go heavy (and I do mean heavy) on the make-up, high on the hemlines and low on the cleavage.

As for Fox, suffice it to say that there is a YouTube montage devoted to leg shots of Fox anchors, who are often outfitted in body-hugging dresses of vibrant red and turquoise, their eyes enhanced by not only liner and shadow but also false lashes. A Fox regular once commented to me that she gets more calls from network management about her hair, clothes, and makeup than about what she says. “I just think of it as a uniform,” she said of her getup.

The media critic Jack Shafer adds that the women you see on Fox are not just winsome, lavishly cosmeticized women, but winsome women paired with older men. He says the network almost appears to be taking a page from the theory of evolutionary psychology, which argues that women are attracted to prosperous (often older) men, and these men are attracted to women whose youth and curves signal fertility. “

The men are kind of frumpy older men,” Sherman agrees, “paired with hyper-feminine women. That kind of kinetic energy between the sexes is one of the reasons Fox is successful. Oftentimes the older male hosts—Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity—in the prime time, at night, are paired with women, debating politics, and the women are generally much younger … It almost goes back to 1940s Hollywood.”

That last remark isn't fair to 1940s Hollywood -- Rosalind Russell plays the epitome of female professionalism in His Girl Friday, and Cary Grant was no-one's idea of a frumpy older man. But the larger point stands. A news show is not date night. I don't mind if a woman on cable teevee looks feminine, but there's a difference between "feminine" and "so-girly-it's-annoying."

Just now, I saw Alex Witt on MSNBC. Her approach seems sensible: Attractive, professional and dignified. Female television journalists should follow her lead.

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The loaded gun

Obama looks safe enough (for the moment), so I'm going to allow myself to slip back into my usual cynical stance toward the president. The following appears on Juan Cole (and comes to our attention by way of Sky Dancing)...

President Obama’s personal involvement in selecting the targets of covert drone strikes means he risks effectively handing a ‘loaded gun’ to Mitt Romney come November, says the co-author of a new report aimed at US policymakers.

‘If Obama leaves, he’s leaving a loaded gun: he’s set up a programme where the greatest constraint is his personal prerogative. There’s no legal oversight, no courtroom that can make [the drone programme] stop. A President Romney could vastly accelerate it,’ said Naureen Shah, associate director of the Counterterrorism and Human Rights Project at the Columbia Law School.

The president ‘personally approves every military target’ in Yemen and Somalia and around a third of targets in Pakistan, the report says. The remainder of strikes in Pakistan are decided by the CIA, so are even further from formal decision-making processes and public scrutiny.

But deciding who is a militant and who is a civilian is fraught with difficulty – the very terms ‘civilian’ and ‘militant’ are ‘ambiguous, controversial, and susceptible to manipulation,’ the report says.

The US’s criteria for who is a civilian are ‘deeply problematic’, it adds. In May, a New York Times investigation revealed that all ‘military-aged males’ are held to be militants.

The Obama administration is so in thrall to drones’ technological potential that alternatives are barely considered, Shah said.

This is why we must follow the old lefty rule: "Vote on Tuesday; protest on Wednesday." But before someone tries try to sneak in a comment justifying a vote for Romney (ratfuckers of that sort are still barred from commenting on this site), please note this piece by the NYT's Charlie Savage. It begins with a description of the executive order against torture signed by Obama:

By contrast, Mr. Romney’s advisers have privately urged him to “rescind and replace President Obama’s executive order” and permit secret “enhanced interrogation techniques against high-value detainees that are safe, legal and effective in generating intelligence to save American lives,” according to an internal Romney campaign memorandum.

While the memo is a policy proposal drafted by Mr. Romney’s advisers in September 2011, and not a final decision by him, its detailed analysis dovetails with his rare and limited public comments about interrogation.

“We’ll use enhanced interrogation techniques which go beyond those that are in the military handbook right now,” he said at a news conference in Charleston, S.C., in December.

The Romney campaign document, obtained by The New York Times, is a five-page policy paper titled “Interrogation Techniques.” It was a near-final draft circulated last September among the Romney campaign’s “national security law subcommittee” for any further comments before it was to be submitted to Mr. Romney. The panel consists of a brain trust of conservative lawyers, most of whom are veterans of the George W. Bush administration.

Steven Bradbury was, as some of you may recall, the fellow who offered the legal justification for CIA torture during the Bush years. Bradbury is on Team Romney.

Marcy Wheeler has seen the actual memo. Here's a paragraph she considers key:

Governor Romney has recognized for years that the sounder policy outcome is the revival of the enhanced interrogation program. And a reluctance by the Governor to expressly endorse such an outcome during the campaign could become a self-fulfilling prophecy once he takes office by signaling to the bureaucracy that this is not a deeply-felt priority.

To which she adds:

First, note the language here. The advisors worry that if Mitt doesn’t explicitly endorse getting back into the torture business during the election, he might not do so. They want to force his hand before he’s elected to make sure he’ll carry through.

That is not the language of advisors. It’s the language of puppet-masters (though I’m sure the equivalent memos from inside the Obama camp aren’t much different).

Actually, the word is "advisers," but let that pass. I think Marcy is on to something here. Maybe the problem with Romney is the men behind Romney. Maybe he has been manipulated by "puppet masters" on a whole range of issues -- hence his wildly fluctuating stances. One string pulls him in one direction, while the other pulls him elsewhere...

At any rate, you have a clear choice this year. You can vote for the liberal, President Drone-Warfare. Or you can vote for the conservative, Governor Drones-and-Torture. If you try to tell me that there's no difference between the two candidates -- well, that's easy for you to say. You're not the one being tortured, are you?

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Suggestion: The Dems should distribute "Dreams From My Real Father"

Bobby Jindal says that gay marriage will lead to the end of the second amendment.

If you want my view as to why Mitt Romney is behind, all you need do is mull over the implications of that statement. No, I'm not saying that Romney's troubles have anything to do with Jindal himself, or with gay marriage. Rather, I'm saying -- have been saying for quite a while now -- that the Crazy Virus has taken over the GOP, and that the public's fear of infection may keep both the Oval Office and the Senate out of Republican hands.

Mitt made that suicidal "47 percent" remark because he has been huffing Crazy fumes. I don't think that Romney would have uttered such an inane Ayn Randism ten years ago, or even five years ago.

The choice of Ayn-droid Paul Ryan also exemplifies The Crazy:

Do you know what Old People love? Their socialized healthcare. Mitt Romney picked, as his running mate, a man famous primarily for formulating a plan to eliminate the single-payer healthcare system our old people would kill to defend.

When the Ryan choice was announced, right-wing pundits all agreed that Mitt's pick would bring out the base in droves. What these brilliant strategists refused to understand is that, under our electoral college system, it doesn't matter if you increase the Romney vote in places like Alabama or Texas. What matters is Florida.

And Ohio. Speaking of which...

Republicans haven't yet awakened to the fact that multimedia extravaganzas like Dreams From My Real Father, however much they may fire up the faithful, will hurt their cause in the long run by making all conservatives look like a gaggle of conspiracy loons.

So this is what it’s come to.

After four years of invective, four years during which the right has called President Obama a traitor, a communist, a fraud, an affirmative-action case, a terrorist-sympathizer, and a tyrant, its shrillest voices have been reduced to the most primal insult of all. They are calling Obama’s mother a whore.

For a while now, pictures purporting to show Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, modeling in 1950s bondage and fetish porn have been floating around the darker corners of the Internet. Now, though, they’ve made their way into a pseudo-documentary, Joel Gilbert’s Dreams From My Real Father, which is being mailed to voters in swing states, promoted by several Tea Party groups and by at least one high-level Republican. At the same time, Dinesh D’Souza’s latest book, Obama’s America—the first of all his works to hit the top spot on The New York Times bestseller list—has a chapter essentially calling Dunham a fat slut. If Obama is reelected, it’s hard to imagine where the right goes from here.

The film (which I have not yet seen) claims that Obama's real father was black American socialist leader Frank Marshall Davis, who allegedly took nude photos of Obama's allegedly slutty mom and sold them to fetishists. A sham marriage to a Kenyan student was arranged because -- well, I'm not sure why. And I'm not sure why Barack Obama Sr. would later come to America to visit his son.

Apparently, the film also works in the CIA angle, which derives, ultimately, from a mangled (or Madsen-ized) version of something I wrote back in 2008. I'd like someone to explain to me why the Agency would recruit an alleged fetish porn queen. (Did they also make an offer to Bettie Page? I bet she would have looked very cute in camo gear training at Camp Peary...)

What matters here is not that a lone crank made a vulgar conspiracy video, one that outdoes even birther propaganda in its lunacy and bad taste. It’s that the video is finding an audience on the right. Gilbert claims that more than a million copies of Dreams From My Real Father have been mailed to voters in Ohio, as well between 80,000 and 100,000 to voters in Nevada and 100,000 to voters in New Hampshire. “We’re putting plans in place, as of next week, to send out another 2 [million] or 3 million, just state by state,” he told me.

Dig: Conservatives carpeted Ohio with copies of this film -- and now Obama is ahead by ten points. Cause and effect...?

Maybe the Democrats should (quietly) distribute the thing.

The larger story is that these conservative Crazy cats have inhabited Planet Kook for so long that they've lost sight of how repellent they seem to normal people. And that's why, in what should have been very favorable election year, the GOP couldn't find a candidate who stood a better chance against Barack Obama.

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Bibi and the bomb

I think it's hilarious that the American media have been so reluctant to play with the image of Bibi and his bomb at the U.N.  (Jon Stewart noted the occasion; alas, he was a little off his game in that episode.) Israelis, of course, have far more freedom to mock. This site contains a collection of modified versions of the instantly-infamous tableau. My favorites:

On a more serious note: Count me among those who thinks that the world will not face an imminent apocalypse if Iran gets the bomb. When was the last time Iran attacked another country?

As you pore through the history books in search of an answer to that poser (you may have to go all the way back to the days of the Parthian empire), you may want to ponder two related questions: 1. When was the last time Israel attacked another country? (If you don't know offhand, ask someone from Lebanon.) 2. By what right does our arrogant nation decree that the Israelis may possess nukes while Iran may not?

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At last! The shock of the new!

Just today, as my ladyfriend and I passed by an outdoor event where some highly-amplified rap music blared, I said: "The problem isn't that I find this music annoying. At this age, I expect to be annoyed. The problem is that we've had rap music for some 30 years now. I'd really like to be annoyed in a new way. What's wrong with today's young people? Where's the creativity?"

One can make the same observations about youth fashions -- in fact, I've made that very point in previous posts. The first time I saw a full-out punker was in the mid-1970s. Today, you can still see kids in the same regalia, and they still think they are on the cutting edge.

The last new thing was the goth look, which I've always liked. Goth girls are sexy. But let's face it: That look started when Beetlejuice came out in 1988, a quarter-century ago. Goth will, I hope be a perennial. But it isn't new.

And then there are those young men who think that they are being ever-so-daring when they wear the beltline of their pants below their crotch. (I presume that their t-shirts are held in place with safety pins.) This may the most moronic fashion statement ever stated. And I'm cool with that. What bugs the hell out of me is that young guys have been doing that shit for at least twenty years now. It's ancient.

New! New! NEW! I want to see the shock of the NEW, goddammit!

At last...here it is, by way of the Japanese avant-garde. A fashion statement that is utterly stupid, decadent, dangerous and ugly. We are talking about something altogether indefensible. But it's new. Truly new, thank heavens. (Or perhaps, in this case, we should thank the infernal powers.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the bagel head, accomplished via saline injections to forehead.

(I'm also impressed by the mis-matched eye coloring sported by the young lady to your left.)

Yes, it's hideous. That's fine. At my age, I expect young people to do their best to freak me out. What's important is that this look is hideous in a way I have not seen before. The kids are not just annoying -- they are creatively annoying.

Bravo!

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A couple of notes

Todd. Frankly, I think Todd Akin has every right to say that Claire McKaskill was "unladylike." And we have every right to say that he's kind of a dick.

More or less seriously, "ladylike" is the analogue to "gentlemanly." Few of us would have any complaint if one (male) debater said of another: "He did not act like a gentleman." Still, even though I don't think that this latest alleged gaffe is much of a muchness, it does provide an opportunity for fun...

Attend the tale of Akin, Todd
He tried to speak and things got odd
His words can make your brain cells fry
Especially if you lack chromosome Y
And yet his state may give the nod
To Akin, Todd
Missouri's answer to Dubya 

Speaking of Dubya... Maybe Bush should have spoken at the convention after all. Turns out Dubya is more popular than Mitt Romney these days.

A Bloomberg News National Poll released Wednesday has Bush receiving a favorable rating from 46 percent of those surveyed and an unfavorable rating from 49 percent. That’s compared to Romney’s 43 percent favorable and 50 percent unfavorable.

That also makes Bush more popular than Obama in most polls before the recent batch.

I understand why presidents become more popular after they leave the White House: They carry the aura of the office while no longer being subject to daily attacks. But Dubya is a special case. He was really, really bad -- and we cannot allow the historical revisionists to convince the next generation otherwise.

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Mitt, love and war

Just now I saw Lawrence O'Donnell flash this image onscreen while decrying Mitt Romney's stance on the Vietnam War. At the time this shot was taken -- summer, 1968 -- Mitt was on a beach in France, having received a deferment from the draft to preach the word of Joseph Smith to the people of Gaul. That deferment was Uncle Sam's special gift to the Mormon Church.

What fried O'Donnell was the fact that Mitt Romney had also participated in what may be the only pro-war, pro-draft demonstration ever held on a college campus. That was in 1965, in Stanford. One must quickly admit that there seemed to be a century's worth of difference between 1965 and 1968; George Romney (Mitt's father) originally supported the war but later declared that the military had "brainwashed" him. He took a lot of heat for that remark, from both the right and the left. I think he demonstrated courage when he admitted in public that his views had changed.

Did the younger Romney do likewise? I see no evidence that he had mustered up the same courage. This analysis indicates that Mitt refused to take a stand:

In 1965, as an undergraduate at Stanford, [Mitt] Romney not only supported the war in Vietnam, he participated in pro-war protests. That same year, he sought and received his first deferment.

A year later, Romney received a longer-than-usual 4-D deferment, which allowed him to do Mormon missionary work in France, despite the fact that other "young Mormon men elsewhere were denied that same status," and the Mormon Church, which backed the war, "limited the number of church missionaries allowed to defer their military service using the religious exemption."

By 1969, Romney had completed his work in France, but sought and received new deferments.

Many years later, in 1994, Romney said, "It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam, but nor did I take any actions to remove myself from the pool of young men who were eligible for the draft." That wasn't true -- he took several steps to remove himself from the eligibility pool.

By 2007, Romney, a presidential candidate, argued. "I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there, and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam."

But that's not what he said in 1994, and if "longed" to serve in the war he protested to support, Romney probably shouldn't have gone so far out of his way to make sure he didn't have to go.

Again, I can appreciate why this all seems like ancient history. But if Romney has misled voters about his decision to avoid military service during a war -- and there's ample reason to believe he has -- that's clearly a legitimate campaign issue. For that matter, if Romney benefited from preferential treatment, unavailable to those who weren't born into a wealthy and politically influential family, that matters, too. 

Before you say it -- of course I know that Bill Clinton also sought to escape military service. (Rush Limbaugh used to call him a "draft dodger." I wonder why Rush doesn't use that term nowadays?) The difference is that Clinton also went on record as stating that he thought the entire war was misguided, and that the American military should get out of Vietnam. He didn't take the stance that others should fight in his stead.

That said, I must also make this concession: The outrage O'Donnell directs toward Mitt Romney over this issue probably wouldn't have been expressed by many young people in 1968. If you weren't alive then, you may not understand that, back then, most with-it anti-war twenty-somethings would have interpreted the "Mitt on the beach" image in a very different way.

Most of them would have seen that photo and said: "Far out, man." Instead of making war, Mitt made love -- on the beach. At least, he made the word "love," in very large letters.

At the time, every hippie in America and every baba-cool in France would have considered him très groovy.

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Mitt's malware

There's an interesting story up about Romney's reliance on a little-known scheme to avoid inheritance taxes...

In January 1999, a trust set up by Mitt Romney for his children and grandchildren reaped a 1,000 percent return on the sale of shares in Internet advertising firm DoubleClick Inc.

If Romney had given the cash directly, he could have owed a gift tax at a rate as high as 55 percent. He avoided gift and estate taxes by using a type of generation-skipping trust known to tax planners by the nickname: “I Dig It.”

The sale of DoubleClick shares received before the company went public, detailed in previously unreported securities filings reviewed by Bloomberg News, sheds new light on Romney’s estate planning -- the art of leaving assets for heirs while avoiding taxes. The Republican presidential candidate used a trust considered one of the most effective techniques for the wealthy to bypass estate and gift taxes. The Obama administration proposed cracking down on the tax benefits in February.

This piece is of interest for a number of reasons. Here's one that the Bloomberg writer neglects to mention: DoubleClick is often considered a conveyer of malware. From Wikipedia:

DoubleClick is often linked with the controversy over spyware because browser HTTP cookies are set to track users as they travel from website to website and record which commercial advertisements they view and select while browsing.[7]

DoubleClick has also been criticized for misleading users by offering an opt-out option that is insufficiently effective. According to a San Francisco IT consulting group, although the opt-out option affects cookies, DoubleClick does not allow users to opt out of IP address-based tracking.[8]

DoubleClick with MSN were shown serving malware via drive-by download exploits by a group of attackers for some time in December 2010.

There's more (from 2009):

Google's DoubleClick ad network has once again been caught distributing malicious banner displays, this time on the home page of eWeek.

Unsuspecting end users who browse the Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings-owned site were presented with malvertisements with invisible iframes that redirect them to attack websites, according to researchers at Websense. The redirects use one of two methods to infect users with malware, including rogue anti-virus software.

On that occasion, a PDF file contained JavaScript which put a virus into your temp folder. (Betcha didn't know PDFs could do that...)

DoubleClick has always insisted that, on such occasions, its service was hijacked by malicious outsiders. On the other hand, Spybot and other cleaners treat everything DoubleClick as a type of threat.

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The state of everything

Things are looking so bad for Romney right now that Obama supporters are allowing themselves to bash Dems again. Believe me, I sympathize -- the day after this election, I'll be overjoyed to get back to bitching about President O and the Democratic leadership.

Matt Taibbi offers some wise words along these lines:

The mere fact that Mitt Romney is even within striking distance of winning this election is an incredible testament to two things: a) the rank incompetence of the Democratic Party, which would have this and every other election for the next half century sewn up if they were a little less money-hungry and tried just a little harder to represent their ostensible constituents, and b) the power of our propaganda machine, which has conditioned all of us to accept the idea that the American population, ideologically speaking, is naturally split down the middle, whereas the real fault lines are a lot closer to the 99-1 ratio the Occupy movement has been talking about since last year.

Think about it. Four years ago, we had an economic crash that wiped out somewhere between a quarter to 40% of the world's wealth, depending on whom you believe. The crash was caused by an utterly disgusting and irresponsible class of Wall Street paper-pushers who loaded the world up with deadly leverage in pursuit of their own bonuses, then ran screaming to the government for a handout (and got it) the instant it all went south.

These people represent everything that ordinarily repels the American voter. They mostly come from privileged backgrounds. Few of them have ever worked with their hands, or done anything like hard work. They not only don't oppose the offshoring of American manufacturing jobs, they enthusiastically support it, financing the construction of new factories in places like China and India.

They've relentlessly lobbied the government to give themselves tax holidays and shelters, and have succeeded at turning the graduated income tax idea on its head by getting the IRS to accept a sprawling buffet of absurd semantic precepts, like the notions that "capital gains" and "carried interest" are somehow not the same as "income."

The people in this group inevitably support every war that America has even the slimmest chance of involving itself in, but neither they nor their children ever fight in these conflicts. They are largely irreligious and incidentally they do massive amounts of drugs, from cocaine on down, but almost never suffer any kind of criminal penalty for their behavior.

For all this, when it came time to nominate a candidate for the presidency four years after the crash, the Republicans chose a man who in almost every respect perfectly represents this class of people.

Romney is an almost perfect amalgam of all the great out-of-touch douchebags of our national cinema: he's Gregg Marmalaard from Animal House mixed with Billy Zane's sneering, tux-wearing Cal character in Titanic to pussy-ass Prince Humperdinck to Roy Stalin to Gordon Gekko (he's literally Gordon Gekko). He's everything we've been trained to despise, the guy who had everything handed to him, doesn't fight his own battles and insists there's only room in the lifeboat for himself – and yet the Democrats, for some reason, have had terrible trouble beating him in a popularity contest.

So you look at it that way, it's difficult to understand why Romney is doing as well as he has been. But if you look at this election another way -- with both eyes fixed on Obama's dubious record (high unemployment, Wall Street-friendly policies, unfettered free trade, the erection of a surveillance state, vile drone attacks and so much more), it's hard to believe that the Republicans couldn't find someone who would mop the floor with this guy.

That's the very point that many of the cable TV talking heads on the liberal-ish networks are making: Romney may be doing badly, but would Gingrich or Perry or Bachmann or Santorum have done better? Cain...well, maybe Cain. He's weird and hard to predict; if he had more natural political talent (and a less-skeletonized closet), he might have gone somewhere. This piece outlines the talent deficit besetting the GOP.

But the real problem isn't the candidates, it's the crazy. The Republican party has become the party of crazy. Make no mistake: The American people like crazy -- to a point. We have passed that point. When your brand is represented on a daily basis by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and the Breitbart crew, don't be surprised if Americans suddenly become wary of handing your nominee the keys to the car.

Assange on Obama. Remember when I said that, as the Romney menace recedes, we become free to criticize Obama again? Case in point: Julian Assange. I, for one, am outraged that the United States has labeled him an "enemy of state", a designation which places him in the same category with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Previously, everyone understood that it was up to the government to keep classified material classified; once the information gets out, you can't declare war on someone who publishes it.

Assange, for his part, has a few choice words for the president...

Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy since June to avoid extradition, made the comments at a packed event on the sidelines of the United Nations general assembly.

Assange mocked Obama for defending free speech in the Arab world in an address to the United Nations on Tuesday, pointing to his own experience as evidence that Obama has "done more to criminalise free speech than any other US President."

"It must have come as a surprise to the Egyptian teenagers who washed American teargas out of their eyes (during the Arab Spring) to hear that the US supported change in the Middle East," Assange said. "It's time for President Obama to keep his word ... and for the US to cease its persecution of WikiLeaks," he said. 

Conspiracy! For those of you who believe that I am over-fond of conspiracy theories (even though I tend to piss off the paranoids who frequent the conspiracy sites run by Alex Jones and his comrades-in-crazy), all I can say is -- if you think I'm bad, look to your right. Within the reactionary media bubble, it's all conspiracy, all the time.

First example: Poll trutherism. At first, I thought that this phenomenon was sinister. It still is, kind of, but it has become so absurd that I'm starting to snicker. Rush Limbaugh has come out as a poll truther. Eric Ericson of Red State refuses to drink the Kool-Aid (well, he sips but does not gulp) -- for which sin, he has earned the "Tokyo Rose" label from the folks at HillBuzz, who want to wreak vengeance on the heretic.  

Second example: Eric Bolling of Fox News, who pulled off a conservanoia trifecta on a recent show.

First, Bolling declared that President Obama declined to meet with world leaders during the United Nations General Assembly to "create outrage" so that "people like us" would talk about that instead of the economy...

Next, Bolling applied the same conspiracy to Obama's "bump in the road" remark, misleadingly claiming Obama was talking about the deaths of Americans in Libya and asserting that it too was a ploy to change the subject of public conversation...

"Did President Obama purposely say something outrageous so he could keep the focus on foreign policy?"

Bolling then raised the possibility that Obama would conduct a military strike in retaliation for American deaths in Libya in an attempt to benefit his re-election...

That last suggestion is particularly stupid. Military actions are often unpredictable. I don't think that any president, Democrat or Republican, would contemplate doing something like that for a reason like that. Can you think of a precedent?

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"Stench!" -- the musical

Update: For a minute, I had planned to delete this post. But I am going to let it stand, as proof that ye olde leg-puller (as evidenced by my works of April 1, 2006-2012) also possesses yankable legs. Truth be told, I learned of the originating column -- by Roger Simon of Politico -- only through the work of a fellow blogger, who also took it at face value. Simon's piece, as it turns out, has a note at the very end (after the cyber-jump) which makes a reference to Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal.

That said, my main point here is valid. Ryan, not Romney, is the one dragging down the partnership. In his illustrious career, Romney has proven that he is little more than an absorbent towel; Ryan is the smelly stuff which he has absorbed.

And now, with some crimson in cheek, I present today's original post...

* * *

This whole Romney/Ryan "stench" thing is pretty freaking hilarious, but it's also ominous. If the reports we're seeing are true -- and the revelations come to us by way of Politico, not Kos -- then the level of insubordination is appalling:

Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”

When Team Romney complained that Ryan had gone off script, Ryan reportedly responded: “Let Ryan be Ryan and let the Stench be the Stench.”

In fact, and against much conventional wisdom, I would argue that it is Ryan, not Romney, who is fuming up this ticket. I speak not of Paul Ryan the human being (a term one must use with a certain irony) but Ryan the idea. Ryanism. Or, to put the matter more objectively, objectivism.

Ayn's Big Idea is the stenchiest philosophy ever conceived by the mind of man.

The "Shruggers" simply cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that we live in a democracy. Democracy is a popularity contest. Past a point, all of that John Galt shit simply is not popular.

Mitt Romney suffers because the odor of Ayn now perfumes everyone in his party -- including Mitt himself. Hence his expressed belief that those who work 40-plus hours lifting heavy objects at Wal-Mart haven't "taken responsibility" for their lives. That stenchy thought is pure Ayn.

(Perhaps we should say that it's pure Aleister Crowley. Philosophically speaking, Uncle Al got there first when he wrote The Book of the Law in 1904: "Mercy let be off; damn them who pity!" "We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched & the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world." The book goes on and on like that. It's the quintessence of stenchiness.)

The old Romney -- the one who created Romneycare -- wouldn't have said such reeky words, even in a private confab with his fellow aristos. But the Mitt Romney now trolling for votes and donations just couldn't help himself. In recent years, Ayn-inflected verbiage has dominated Republican discourse. If you're in that party, you can't help having such thoughts, even if your thought patterns were different just a few years ago.

In short and in sum: Mitt Romney is losing what should be a very winnable election because he has Paul Ryan's stench on him.

Y'know who else suffers from that Ryanesque stench? Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin. For the longest time, that guy looked like a sure winner, but in recent days, his popularity has plummeted. New video has emerged of Thompson telling the teabaggers that he hopes to do away with Medicare and Medicaid.

If Romney loses, many Republicans will draw the wrong lesson. They will argue that Mitt's big problem was that he didn't have a strong enough Ryan/Rand reek. And so, after a few purification rituals, the Stenchies will take over. They will become the true Party of Stench.

Here's the ominous part. When the hard-core Stenchies finally realize that StenchThink will never be popular, will never win elections, they may lose all tolerance for democracy. They may try to attain power in some other way.

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More ominous signs that election rigging may be in the offing

The problem with rigging an election is not, these days, technical. As this blog has shown in the past, and as Brad Friedman has never tired of demonstrating, voting machines make all sorts of trickery possible. The problem is the polling. If the election results differ from the results predicted by pre-election polls (and exit polls), then the public will know that the game has been rigged.

There's one way to combat this problem: Mount a propaganda campaign designed to call the polls into question -- to suggest, in the public mind, that all of our polling organizations have conspired to make Barack Obama appear more popular than he actually is. In the preceding post, we noted some signs that just such a propaganda campaign is underway.

Here's another.

Here's another.

Here's another.

Here's another. Let's quote a bit from this one, just to give you a flavor of what we're dealing with:

Not only will Mitt Romney win come November, I predict he will win by at least 5 percentage points (if not more) over Barack Hussein Obama.

Why?

The polls being conducted these days are over-sampling Democrats, and are over-sampling Democrats ala 2008, for one. Political pundit Dick Morris has stated that if the polls were honest, Romney has an actual nationwide lead over Obama.

Finally, here's another example.

Why would all of our major polling organizations injure their reps by offering deliberately dishonest results? Because -- in the words of the site at the other end of that last link -- "powerful interests" want it that way.

And they call me a conspiracy theorist...

If you want an explanation as to why the GOP's favorite new meme is wrong, see here and here. But the reality of the situation doesn't matter: This is a propaganda campaign. The public mind is being prepped.

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Variously...

Sorry for the light posting. Actually, there's a large-ish piece brewing about THAT movie, the one that caused so much turmoil in Islamic countries. But I am swamped and cannot put much thought into my writing. So here are some links to various reports worthy of your interest...

What they're not telling you about Iran. Iran agreed to halt uranium enrichment in exchange for an end to sanctions. Those who want war will denounce this offer as a ploy.

Skewed polls. This story is potentially important. Apparently, Romney is ahead by a wide margin, according to a website which "corrects" other polls...

Republicans have taken their complaints about media polls allegedly favoring Democrats a step further this morning, embracing an obscure new polling website that re-engineers public polls to add more Republicans to their samples, and which gives Republican Mitt Romney a wide lead.

Some Romney supporters have long complained that public polls suggest higher Democratic turnout, and lower Republican turnout, than they think is likely this year. Pollsters have replied that their samples are dictated by what poll respondents themselves say. (This exchange between Hugh Hewitt and Lee Miringoff is illustrative of the argument.)

Dean Chambers, a blogger on Examiner.com who writes from his home in Duffield, Virginia, took that complaint a step further — producing wide Romney leads far beyond what the Republican's campaign or Republican pollsters have suggested is the case.

He created the site unskewedpolls.com, retooling national polling data this July after reading an ABC News/Washington Post poll that "just didn't look right." Looking at the internal data, Chambers saw that the polling unit had sampled more Democrats than Republicans.

The real importance of this story, of course, is that it gives cover to Diebold shennanigans on election day.

Speaking of election machine rigging: Robert Reich thinks that this is one of four factors that could hand this election to Romney. The others:

1. Continuing rotten stats on the jobs front.

2. Terrific debate performances from Romney. (Reich admits that Obama wasn't "all that" during the 2008 primaries.)

3. The money factor. Yeah, I know that the GOP has been crying poor lately. Don't believe it.

Frum. I don't think I've ever found David Frum worth linking to in all the years of this blog's existence, but this deserves quotation...

The background to so much of the politics of the past four years is the mood of apocalyptic terror that has gripped so much of the American upper class.

Hucksters of all kinds have battened on this terror. They tell them that free enterprise is under attack; that Obama is a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, an anti-colonialist. Only by donating to my think tank, buying my book, watching my network, going to my movie, can you - can we - stop him before he seizes everything to give to his base of "bums," as Charles Murray memorably called them.

And what makes it all both so heart-rending and so outrageous is that all this is occurring at a time when economically disadvantaged Americans have never been so demoralized and passive, never exerted less political clout.

Why is this so? In part, I think that the upper class has come to believe its own propagandists, who have been screaming for years that the big problem facing this country is the Bolshevik Menace.

Here's a bit more from Frum:

From the greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, the rights and perquisites of wealth have emerged undiminished - and the central issue in this election is whether those rights and perquisites shall be enhanced still more, or whether they should be allowed to slip back to the level that prevailed during the dot.com boom.

Yet even so, the rich and the old are scared witless! Watch the trailer of Dinesh D'Souza's new movie to glimpse into their mental universe: chanting swarthy mobs, churches and banks under attack, angry black people grabbing at other people's houses.

It's all a scam, but it's a spectacularly effective scam...

Akin for cash. Wow. I knew that this was how things worked in politics, but I never thought that any politician would be so bold about it. Todd Akin has said that any constituent who wants his attention should write him "a decent check."

I'm not sure that "decent" is an adjective I would use to describe any check heading in the general direction of Todd Akin. The Statue of Liberty wants to know if she should now consider herself legitimately or illegitimately raped.

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Gay Perr-ee

In a previous post, we looked at the long-swirling rumors that Rick Perry, the primate who somehow became governor of Texas, has had gay affairs. You may recall that, at one time, Perry was favored to become the GOP presidential nominee, until the electorate became concerned by his prehensile tail and predilection for bananas.

Turns out a Huffington Post writer named Jason Cherkis became obsessed with the "Gay Perry" story. HuffPo editor Arianna Huffington would not publish the results, citing a lack of evidence. Given Arianna's own history -- she had once tried to "Lady MacBeth" her way into the White House via her closeted Republican husband -- I'm not surprised by her decision to steer clear of the Perry story.

Here's the part that intrigues me. In the following, from a new ebook by Jay Root, "Ted" refers to a Perry aide named Ted Delisi:

Ted said Huffington Post reporter Jason Cherkis had e-mailed the campaign a list of questions about alleged gay liaisons. He said the reporter was going to name names, but there were serious questions as to the veracity of the allegations. Ted said that if the guy did publish something, Perry would sue. He said Perry would be owning a big chunk of AOL, the publicly traded company that owns HuffPo, if this came out. Ted seemed kind of pissed off at the media in general, saying that standards had obviously declined if this is what passes for news these days.

Can't say that many of my readers would disagree with Ted. But I'm wondering -- would Perry have grounds for a lawsuit? Libel is hard to prove, especially if the allegedly libeled party is a public figure. These days, does an accusation of homosexuality count as libel?

From Wikipedia...

There are several ways a person must go about proving that libel has taken place. For example, in the United States, first, the person must prove that the statement was false. Second, the person must prove that the statement caused harm. Third, the person must prove that the statement was made without adequate research into the truthfulness of the statement. These steps are for an ordinary citizen. For a celebrity or a public official, the person must prove the first three steps and that the statement was made with the intent to do harm or with reckless disregard for the truth. Usually specifically referred to as "proving malice".

Presuming that Cherkis intended to write his story in a more-or-less circumspect fashion, I just don't see any grounds for a case here. In our current climate, many American citizens wouldn't see an accusation of homosexuality -- even if false -- as particularly injurious.

Of course, the situation might be different in Texas.

Perry has also been rumored to be an aficionado of strip clubs and well-chested bimbos. Whether that accusation conflicts with the gay accusation is for each reader to decide. I note that Perry's staffers have never made lawsuit noises against anyone who says that he likes B-girls.

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Women for Mitt

The one in front looks like it's that time of the month.

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Escape from Fox World

Salon has published an article based on a theme similar to one I've sounded. In previous posts, I have advised readers to blame the Tea party if Romney loses the election. Salon writer Jonathan Bernstein tells us to blame the Fox/Rush information loop. Same difference:

The truth is that Romney is constantly constrained by what conservatives want him to do and by what they believe. Furthermore, what they want is generally unpopular, and what they believe is far too often simply cut off from the reality that the rest of the nation lives in.

So Romney cannot have a coherent foreign policy because what his voters want to hear is that Barack Obama sympathizes with terrorists. Most Americans, meanwhile, think of Obama as the guy who took out bin Laden. Romney cannot have a sensible tax policy because conservatives insist that he promote large, self-funding tax cuts for the rich. Most of the nation, however, supports raising taxes on the rich, and reality insists that cutting taxes also reduces revenues.

Would a Republican candidate with more conservative "street cred" have done better? No, because...

...there are two problems with that theory.

One is that it’s likely that any winning candidate, after spending years fighting for the Republican nomination, would be so far inside the conservative closed-information feedback loop that he or she would be doing the same things. It’s not because the candidate pressure from the right but rather because he or she has lost perspective on what anyone outside of that loop believes. And the second is: We’ve seen no evidence that Tea Partiers are willing to trust anyone.

I'll go further. I think the Republican "feedback loop" explains why Mitt Romney, king of the flip-floppers, has finally flipped over to the side of ultra-conservatism. He probably will not flip back. He is, God help us, sincere.

This is why Fox News exists: Not just to speak to the gun-totin', resentment-filled hoi polloi, but also to brainwash guys like Mitt Romney -- although in his case (as Gene McCarthy once said of a much better Romney), a light rinse would have been sufficient. Don't make the mistake of presuming that our ruling class is smart. The one percenters are just as susceptible to propaganda as are other people.

We usually think of propaganda as something proceeding from the plutocracy, but the misinformation flow also goes in the other direction. Indeed, that was the Milton Friedmanite program for Global Ideological Conquest. Take the message to the people? Yes, said Uncle Miltie, we must do that -- but more importantly, we must take the message to those who have a lot of money. If our aristos had not been hammered with decades of incessant, seductive, Randroid propaganda, Mitt Romney would now be a more reasonable fellow. He'd be, in short, George Romney. And he'd be about ten points ahead of Barack Obama.

Perhaps we've reached a turning point. The right-wing outrage machine can't get its memes to circulate outside of the Fox/Brietbart ghetto. (Yes, the previous sentence mixed metaphors; I don't care.) Most Americans aren't talking about the much-ballyhooed "redistributionist" video, because most Americans have finally learned to tune out Fox-brand hooey.  

The right has gotten scary. And the scariest thing about right-wingers is that most of them do not know how scary they seem. Some of them do understand that their scariness has become self-defeating, but even they just can't stop. Personally, I wanted to sit this election out -- I still don't like Obama -- but fear of the alternative brought me back.

Look and see: Rush Limbaugh claims that feminism causes small penises. Conservatives are distributing millions of DVDs claiming that Obama's real father was an American communist -- a theory that irritates the die-hard birthers. Obama is being hanged in effigy -- as a chair. Todd Akin thinks Mitt Romney is dragging him down. New Mexico's Republican Governor wants to see proof of "forcible rape" before rape victims can apply for childcare assistance. Mormons are seeking to excommunicate a Mormon writer who has dared to criticize Romney.

And Fox News is trying to gin up a controversy condemning Obama for not denouncing Piss Christ, an inane 1987 provocation by a fraudist named Andres Serrano. Yes. That again. As if Serrano's pseudoart for pseudothinkers had any bearing on our actual problems.

Update: This typically insane conserve-anoia site tries to convince readers that Obama has spent $155 million promoting Piss Christ. In fact, Obama has nothing whatsoever to do with that stupid photo, which was created during the Reagan presidency and which is now being shown at a museum in Brooklyn. You really should read the afore-linked article to see the kind of insane anti-reasoning that passes for argument in right-wing circles. These creeps make the people who call into George Noory's radio show seem like intellectuals.

Frankly, I think people have had it with that kind of crap.

After the 1984 Democratic National Convention, Ronald Reagan (unfairly) said: "They've gone so far to the left, they've left America." Today, those within Fox World have gone so far to the right, they've gone right out of their minds. The people trapped inside that box cannot be heard by those outside. If Mitt Romney loses, he will do so because he lost the ability to leave Fox World.

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And they said Al Gore was wooden...

Joe Biden on cheerleaders: "The stuff they do on hard wood -- it blows my mind!"

That's not a gaffe. That's just damned good reportage. And then his wife added some gushing words of her own...



I myself have not had the privilege of, uh, hearing the urgency. But I can imagine. Joltin' Joe is the best veep ever!

(Well, he certainly beats Dick...)

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The bulge is back, baby!

Remember the Bush bulge, first seen during the initial Dubya-Kerry debate? That meme started here. The science of bulge-spotting continues. Note these pictures from last night's debate between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren...

Now, let's use a subtler version of the same sharpening techniques first employed by the Bush-era bulge-ologists:

Hee hee hee hee. Try the experiment for yourselves, kids. Hone your talents -- we have some Obama/Romney debates coming up. (And before you say it: No, I never did take this stuff all that seriously. But fun is fun.)

Update: Speaking of comebacks -- our old friend Red Dragon is blogging again. Excellent!

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Homer votes for Romney

I bet Homer is in the 47% -- yet nevertheless believes that Obama raised his taxes.

On the other hand, if Obama pulls off a victory, that'll be the third presidential election that Bill Clinton has won. Clinton's convention speech was the moment I first told myself "Maybe Romney doesn't have this one in the bag..."

Clinton's continuing popularity may explain why they're paying Monica Lewinski $12 million for yet another tell-all book. Apparently, she needs money, so she's earning it the old-fashioned way -- by pulling a Judy Exner, "remembering" salacious details she never mentioned before. Maybe her recovered memories will include something about Bill Clinton making secret deals with communist Chinese agents. If she follows the Exner path, around 2035, she'll be "remembering" even more juicy details in yet another book, presuming books still exist.

Please understand that I always liked Monica and I would never blame anyone for trying to make a buck.

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Paul Ryan: The secret tape

Forget that video of Mitt peeing on the peons. The hot new transcript is Paul Ryan talking to his fellow Randroids about the pressing need to transform Social Security and Medicare into profit-making ventures.

-- Ryan describes Social Security and Medicare as “collectivist” and “socialistic.”

-- Ryan’s strategic plan:  privatize Social Security and Medicare in order to convert people from “collectivism” to believers in a “capitalistic individualistic” philosophy.  So that there will be “more people on our team” who “won’t listen to” Democrats.

-- Ryan’s acceptance of Pinochet’s Secretary of Social Security José Piñera’s similar program of Social Security privatization as a “moral revolution” that made Marxists into capitalists who started to read the Chilean equivalent of the Wall Street Journal.  Ryan is overheard, “Yeah”  “That’s right.”

Author Vincent Miller invites us to look to the actual remarks, not just at his bullet points. (If you hit the link, you'll be able to do just that.) Basically, Ryan wants the stock market wheeler-dealers to do with your Social Security money what they did to all of those 401ks.

For more background on Piñera, see here. As you read this, keep in mind that this is the failed, grossly expensive system that Ryan wants to impose on the U.S. (emphases added throughout):

The transition was expensive and funded by slashing government programs, selling off state-owned industries, selling bonds to the new pension funds, and raising taxes. Privatization costs, which also included a government subsidy for workers unable to accumulate enough in their private accounts to guarantee a minimum income in retirement, averaged more than 6 percent of Chile's gross domestic product in the 1980s and are expected to average more than 4 percent of GDP each year until 2037.

But while the reform's supporters argue it has been a major success story, officials both inside and outside Chile now increasingly question whether the high costs and modest investment returns have doomed Piñera's original promise: a decent retirement income for workers at a savings for the government. Last year, the World Bank, which until recently encouraged countries to privatize pensions, published a highly skeptical report on private retirement systems in Latin America; Truman Packard, one of the report's authors, says the bank has told the Chilean government that it must spend more to subsidize the private system and "increase its role in preventing old-age poverty."

The bank found that exorbitant fees and other costs charged by private pension fund managers eat up as much as 15 percent of the contributions made by average Chilean workers, and even more for poorer workers. Investment returns have been far more modest than the hefty 11 percent return claimed by the private managers. The Chilean government's pension superintendent says actual returns for someone earning Chile's minimum wage were only 3.7 percent between 1994 and 2000.

A recent report by the Chilean government brought more grim news, forecasting that as many as half of all workers won't be able to save enough to receive the minimum pension when they retire—even after paying into their accounts for 30 years—and will therefore rely on government subsidies. More than 17 percent of Chile's retirees now continue working because they can't afford to live on their pensions, according to that study, and another 7 percent want to work, but can't find jobs.

A system that fails half of the population, says economist Dean Baker, codirector of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, can't claim to have succeeded: "It hasn't provided security to people." Piñera himself didn't respond to numerous requests to comment on the dismal statistics. But his economics mentor Harberger shrugs at the data. "That [Chileans] weren't able to save enough money," he says, "is one of those things."

That's Paul Ryan's financial hero, folks: The guy who robbed the Chilean economy at the behest of one of the world's filthiest fascists.

The followers of Ayn Rand are insane. They will never admit that their schemes have failed. They will never allow empirical data to trump ideology. They are supremely lacking in reason.

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What about the Senate?

According to Pew, Obama has an 8 point edge over Romney. Rachel Maddow spent much of her show crowing about the new numbers, while wondering aloud about Mitt's sudden reluctance to campaign in swing states. Although he has done a lot of fundraising behind closed doors during the past few days, he seems to have developed a phobic reaction to crowds.

Has the Republican nominee decided to close up shop early? If so, Democrats should worry.

Yes, Democrats: If the party loses faith in the nominee, then the GOP's massive storehouse of cash will flow into the effort to retake the Senate. It's very take-able, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Real Clear Politics tells us that the key races are extremely close. Election Projection, at this moment, has the Republicans predicted seats at 51.

Now imagine what those races would look like if the pile of money known as Mt. Romney starts landsliding into the Republican Senate campaigns.

I was stunned to see that the much-derided Todd Akin has pulled into a statistical tie in Missouri. In Nevada, Democrat Shelley Berkely -- currently a House member -- faces an ethics investigation, while her opponent Dean Heller has pulled ahead.  In Wisconsin, Democrat Tammy Baldwin has caught up to Tommy Thompson, thanks to an infusion of cash, but this situation will shift if the GOP frees up cash for Thompson. Democrat Tim Kaine has -- just today -- established a clear lead in Virginia (although he's hardly safe). If rancher-turned-Senator Jon Tester pulls out another close win in Montana, it'll be because a Libertarian Party candidate split off just enough of the conservative vote. Scott Brown, I am sorry to say, has once again pulled ahead of Elizabeth Warren in MA (49-45); they will have their first debate tonight. Maine presents us a very weird situation, since former governor Angus King is an independent expected to caucus with the Dems, even though he has said that he may not. His lead is comfortable, but shrinking. I've always liked Bob Kerrey, but his chances in Nebraska are looking grim.

The race to replace Joe Lieberman in CN is particularly tight. I like Chris Murphy -- who really does understand victims of the foreclosure crisis (because he has personal experience of it) --but Linda McMahon, former head of the World Wrestling Entertainment (!), has barges of cash.

A massive infusion of Republican cash into these races could change everything. Democrats should not want Romney to look like a lost cause. Not at this stage.

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If Mitt loses, blame the tea party

I still don't think that Mitt Romney will lose the election -- if only because I always bet on the Republican. Besides, things are more volatile than you may believe. A couple of weeks ago, Todd Akin in MO and Elizabeth Warren in MA both looked like sure losers. Now Akin is tied and Warren is ahead.

That said, everyone (even Peggy Noonan) agrees that Romney is in trouble, even though he should be miles ahead of Obama right now, given this rather dispiriting presidency. So why is Mitt flailing?

The classic rule of American presidential politics is that you appeal to the base in the primaries and you go centrist in the general. That's what the "Etch-A-Sketch" remark meant. But Romney can't go there because the Republican base -- the tea partiers -- are restless. They never particularly liked Romney, and they stand ready to rebel against the GOP leadership.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, movement conservatives have come to a very wrongheaded conclusion about this race. They will never admit that Mitt should head to the center. They want him to appeal to the kind of people who consider Glenn Beck a deep thinker. But that strategy can only increase turnout in the red states, which won't win the election.

There's a Woody Allen movie in which a character says : "I bet you think I'm paranoid." Woody responds: "No, I think you're the opposite of paranoid. You operate under the delusion that people like you."

The teabaggers have fallen prey to that very delusion. They do not understand -- and cannot be made to understand, even if shown charts and graphs -- that they are unpopular.

If you're in the hardcore, fire-breathing, Malkin-reading, Breitbart-worshipping conservative base, all of your friends probably think as you think. That's your world. You cannot allow yourself to believe that more than 50 percent of the country has a differing point of view.

(Something similar happens among the very liberal, of course.)

Since the baggers cannot bring themselves to admit that they are unliked, they console themselves with the delusion that Team Romney (like Team McCain before it) has been too nice. They think Romney's attack ads have been wimpy. They want Romney's people to paint Obama as a Socialist Kenyan atheist Marxist Satanic rage-filled babykilling black Muslim militant.

Josh Marshall addresses that misperception:

Campaigns, particularly Republican campaigns, don’t hold off on promising tactics because they’re concerned about being nice. But every gambit that intensifies your hold on your most energized supporters threatens your grasp on less aggrieved and angry people you also want to hold in your column. John McCain didn’t go easy on Rev. Wright because he was just above going full-crazy. It reached a point of diminishing returns. Actually, it got to negative returns as it creeped up into race-baiting and xenophobic territory.

Same with Mitt Romney. Yes, he could get 30% of the electorate to froth at the mouth more than they already will when they vote for him by going full culture war, Obama’s a subversive alien. But most people in the country don’t like that stuff. They’ve heard it for four years and making it the basis of the Romney campaign will only turn them off Mitt Romney.

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Is Romney over?

Well, I finally had a little time tonight (while doing the laundry) to pay attention to politics. Everyone is talking about THAT video and whether it has cooked Romney's goose. I say no. Although even I -- the guy who always bets on the Republican -- must admit that things are looking bad for the Mittster, he can turn this election around with one good debate performance. Besides, there is always the possibility that a major crisis could could ruin things for Obama.

The truly fascinating aspect of that video concerns Romney's audience. Many (perhaps most) of the people he insulted -- the 47% -- live in red states. Leech states, I call them, since they pay less tax money to the federal gummint than they receive. And yet they will nod and applaud Mitt's words. It simply will not dawn on them that those words were addressed to them.

How did this situation arise, and how may we undo it?

(I'll get back to THAT movie -- the one that caused so much turmoil overseas -- very soon.)

By the way: Speaking as someone who'd like to buy a decent HD camcorder when his ship (or at least his rowboat) comes in, and who has been researching modern videography, I had a reaction to THAT video (the one with Mitt) which may surprise you. It looked great! Especially when you consider that it was taken with a cell phone camera...

The two best-looking films of the 1970s were probably Barry Lyndon and Days of Heaven. I suspect that if you brought some of our current consumer-level camcorders to the same locations, you could get even better-looking images.

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A lot has been going on...

...and I haven't been able to write about it. In fact, I was sent something by Jimmy Israel (who worked on THAT movie) which I'm supposed to post here, yet haven't even read it yet. Real life keeps calling me away from the computer.

I'll tell you this: I HATE the East Coast. The easiest way to make me chuckle would be to drop a bomb on Baltimore. The people here would rather eat Boric Acid than say "please" or "thank you." I'm sick of these lowlife dimwits and their endless, ENDLESS cigarettes and their ill-drawn tats and their wifebeater shirts and that look of incomprehension they give me whenever I use words of more than two syllables.

Worse, they simply won't leave me alone. Every single time I venture out of my attic, people I've never met hurl insults at me -- for no reason. True, it has been some years since I was on friendly terms with a mirror, but at least in California, I could leave home and walk around town without being treated like Quasimodo.

The East Coast still feels like a foreign country. Years ago, I spent a few weeks in Canada, and soon felt quite at home there. But this place is...alien. It isn't home. And if the people here won't treat me as a fellow human being, I see no reason to have a differing stance toward them.

Sorry. I'm bitter. Just can't think about politics right now.

Added note: I'm embedding the greatest scene in film history -- the nuclear destruction of Baltimore from the film The Sum of All Fears. The second greatest scene in film history may be found in Silence of the Lambs, when Hannibal Lecter confronts the Senator:

Dr. Lecter: Amputate a man's leg, and he can still feel it tickling. Tell me, mum, when your little girl is on the slab, where will it tickle you?

Senator: Take this thing back to...Baltimore!

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This post has nothing whatsover to do with THAT movie

Josh Marshall wrote the following on September 14:

The cauldron of Israeli politics has been swirling of late with the notion that Defense Minister Ehud Barak has put his chips (both for the future and with respect to Iran) on Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu has put his on Mitt Romney. And as the Prime Minister increasingly works to unseat President Obama, opposition leaders have started to ask who Bibi is more intent on ousting, Ahmadinejad or Obama?

Now comes word that Netanyahu will give an exclusive interview this weekend to Meet The Press, which gives you your answer. Netanyahu is tripling down on a Romney presidency and will do whatever he can to make it happen.

Let me repeat: This post has nothing at all to do with the movie everyone is talking about. If you see a connection, it exists only in your mind, not in mine.

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Bombshell article about the true origins of THAT movie...

I haven't much time to write now, but...well, you simply must read this. If you think you've heard it all, you haven't.

I'm thinking of making a movie of my own: "The Innocence of Pam Geller." Like the idea...?

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Nakoula made a notorious anti-Islam film -- yet he had worked for an Islamic terrorist

Added note: I ask readers to pay special attention to the Eiad Salameh connection, which nails the theory that Nakoula worked for spooks...

Additional added note: Or does it? I've recently received information that places the Nakoula/Salameh linkage in a new light. The claim that Eiad Salameh is a PLO terrorist comes from his cousin Walid -- whom some people (including Chris Hedges) have labeled a serial hoaxer. Walid, like so many of the players in this drama, hails from what we may call the "Pam Geller ring." His accusations against Hilarion Cappucci -- an aged Greek Orthodox cleric -- appear to be spurious.

Still, I have received convincing evidence that Eiad is indeed a crook.

If you're confused -- well, read what follows, and the context should become clear.

Nakoula Nakoula, producer of the film "Innocence of Muslims," has been called in for questioning by the Los Angeles Police Department. This makes sense: The terms of his parole specified that he was not to use the internet without supervision, and he seems to have hopped on the net quite often while posing as "Sam Bacile."

If Nakoula walks, you'll know that the fix is in. On the other hand, keeping him behind bars will keep him away from interviewers.

The really stunning news is that he seems to have been a snitch for the government...

Though many key documents from the U.S. District Court case remain sealed, a June 2010 sentencing transcript provides an account of Nakoula’s cooperation with federal investigators in Los Angeles (and how his prison sentence was reduced as a result).

Nakoula, 55, was arrested in June 2009 for his role in a check-kiting ring that stole nearly $800,000 from six financial institutions by using stolen Social Security numbers and identities. Nakoula was named in a six-count felony indictment accusing him and unnamed “co-schemers” of perpetrating the bank fraud.

Denied bail, Nakoula, a married father of three, was locked up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in L.A. when he began cooperating with Justice Department lawyers and federal agents. During a series of debriefing sessions, Nakoula provided investigators with a detailed account of the fraud operation and fingered the man who allegedly headed the operation, according to comments made by his lawyer at sentencing.

Nakoula identified the ring’s leader as Eiad Salameh, a notorious fraudster who has been tracked for more than a decade by state and federal investigators. In his debriefings, Nakoula said he was recruited as a “runner” by Salameh, who pocketed the majority of money generated by the bank swindles, according to James Henderson, Nakoula’s attorney.

I hate to sound like one of those guys who interprets all new information as confirmation of a preconceived narrative, but this material really does buttress my theory that Nakoula made a deal with either Mossad, an American intelligence service, or both. The government knew about this guy. They knew he was ready to cut deals. He's not bright enough to run his own show. He works for others.

This is not someone who is going to create a bloody international incident of his own accord.

Eiad Salameh -- Nakoula's former boss -- is probably the same fellow called "Eiad Salameh Shu’aybat" here and here. This Eiad Salameh is accused of the same type of fraud that landed Nakoula in jail. Moreover, the author of the afore-linked piece mentions that Eiad is wanted by the LAPD. That detail is congruent with the "Smoking Gun" story excerpted above.

Although much remains hazy, it seems that Salameh is a Muslim accused of funding terrorism.

Eiad was well connected with Hilarion Cappucci, a Christian Syrian born terrorist, and a major explosives smuggler...

Eiad had disclosed to my brother Farid years ago of his intention to work with Cappucci to smuggle explosives via buses with welded covered compartments. Eiad continually received mal from Tunisia while he was linked with the P.L.O.

I don't know what "mal" is, but the rest seems clear enough. Nakoula's relationship with this guy surely would have put him on the radar of both Mossad and the American intelligence establishment.

The obvious question: If Nakoula really hates Muslims so much, then why was he so tight with a guy like Salameh? Hell, with anyone named Salameh?

Another obvious question: If Nakoula is willing to work with an anti-Israel terrorist, then why does his movie go out of its way to proclaim Judaism superior to Islam?

Wired reports that the 2009 bust was Nakoula's third. In 1997, he was nabbed for selling watered-down gasoline; in 1997, he was making PCP and meth. Y'know what's odd about this? California has a "three strikes and you're out" law...

It's one of the harshest sentencing schemes in the country and a law that can send people convicted of even nonviolent offenses to prison for life.

Just ask Leandro Andrade. The father of three languishes in California state prison with two consecutive life sentences for shoplifting nine children's videos on two occasions in November 1995...

Nakoula should be in jail for the rest of his life. Yet he was sentenced to 21 months for ripping off $800,000 -- and he served only a year.

Yeah. Just try to convince me that that isn't suspicious.

Then this same crook immediately went into the movie-making business (about which he knew nothing). His partners were quite a bizarre crew: Jimmy Israel (a shady real estate operator), Steve Klein (a "patriot" fanatic with spooky connections), Morris Sadek (part of the Pam Geller crowd and a likely Mossad asset) and Joseph Nasrallah Abdelmasih (ditto). Oh -- and somehow, Nakoula managed to secure the services of a well-connected lawyer named James Henderson, who was accused of having organized crime connections by the same informant who accurately told the FBI in February, 2001 that Osama Bin Laden was going to crash jets into the World Trade Center.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Klein used the film's one midnight screening as "bait" in a bizarre anti-terrorist sting. Klein showed up to that party in disguise.

On top of all of that is the discomforting fact that when the spotlight first hit him, Nakoula nervously blurted out that his film was funded by Israeli money.

If none of this seems spooky to you, your spookmeter is broken.

Incidentally: There's an interview with Jimmy Israel here. Israel minimizes his participation in the film -- unconvincingly, in my opinion. One slip seems telling:

Israel, who identifies as a "pacifist" liberal with no affiliation to organized religions, and who claims to have no strong opinions about Islam, despite having heard some "alarming" things about the Quran at "seminars," says he supports freedom of religion and expression.

"Seminars"? What kind of irreligious pacifist liberal goes to "seminars" (plural) which discuss the origins of the Quran in negative terms?

Jimmy, who admits that his film had no commercial prospects, also let something else slip out...

Likewise, I can't be sure that this isn't part of some larger deception — anything from a prank to some kind of bizarre intelligence operation. It's phenomenally strange.

"Some kind of bizarre intelligence operation." If Jimmy Israel, who worked on the damned movie, is thinking along those lines, then so may we.

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