I realize that I’m a wide-eyed idealist, naive to the realities of doing business in this day and age, but I still can’t wrap my head around a paragraph like this:

Proposition 2 would require that starting in 2015, calves raised for veal, egg-laying hens and pregnant pigs be provided space to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely. Proponents say it would prevent animal cruelty; opponents say it would unnecessarily harm farmers and consumers by raising domestic prices and exposing consumers to cheaper, ostensibly more dangerous eggs from other countries.

Now, we’re not talking about giving every calf, chicken, and pig be given an acre of grassy meadow to run free, and a string quartet to score the scene. We’re not even talking about letting them see the sun. Nor are we talking about making this happen tomorrow, or a year from now. And this is light years away from mandating that industrial meat operations handle their wastes the way we require cities to do it.

We’re just talking about making their cages, the place they will likely spend their whole lives, big enough for them to be able to extend their limbs and turn around. That’s all. I mean, Christ, if you were going to establish a base-level, lowest common denominator standard for not being completely inhumane, that might be a good place to start.

But there’s so much in this paragraph that’s wrong.

Proponents say it would prevent animal cruelty… No, I don’t think it will. It goes a short way towards mitigating intense, widespread suffering, but that’s a ways off from actually preventing cruelty.

…opponents say it would unnecessarily harm farmers and consumers… When you’re managing a massive, highly efficient industrial factory system of growing meat, you’re no longer a “farmer” in any traditional sense of the word, so please discontinue attempts to play on my sympathies by putting a wheat chewing actor in overalls in front of me. Also, peddle that “concern for the consumer” bullshit to someone who’s buying it, this is all about your profit margins.

It’s just stunning to me that this is even a close contest.

Years ago, I used to play poker with friends every so often. This was well before the current Texas Hold’em craze, so we’d play Draw, Stud, Black Mariah, Low-Hole Chicago, Screw Your Neighbor, what have you. Everyone would buy in for $20, chips would ebb from one side of the table, flow the other way, mass in one pile then split into several, as chips are wont to do.

After an hour or two, we’d end up playing either Guts or Ace-Two-Three for the rest of the night. Both games involved playing for the pot, such that one winner takes the pot, one or more losers match it, and it could grow pretty fast. Inevitably, someone would go in (often with a great hand but not always) and lose a pot that would bust ‘em. If they didn’t have the cash to cover, the table had no choice but to let them write an IOU, otherwise the people that had lost real money wouldn’t have a chance to win it back. So, if the busted player didn’t win their IOU back, someone else would own their paper.

Now here’s the thing about IOU’s on our table. If you had to write one out, well, that was that, you were in the hole and we were okay with that. If you held someone’s IOU, you could sell it to someone else at the table for chips, and the bidding depended on whether or not people thought you were good for it. There were some fairly hilarious scenes where someone watched indignantly as their IOU’s were bought and sold for fifty cents or a quarter on the dollar. In some cases, someone might throw down with “I’ve got twenty Woody-bucks for whoever gets me a beer from the fridge.” Woody’s credit rating was less than stellar.

But under no circumstance was it okay to put someone else’s IOU into a pot in lieu of money. The pot would take your IOU if you were busted, but not until your last chip, dollar, and penny was gone, because everyone else was putting real money on the table. The rare attempts to pull such a stunt resulted in shouting and ridicule, with the offender sheepishly replacing the note with chips or cash.

So here we are, with several “too big too fail” companies, bloated with mountains of IOU’s, trying to force we-the-people to buy them with real money that we get from our I-get-up-every-goddam-day-and-go-to-work-for-a-living wages, at what they say is a fair price. For my family of four, they want us to put up somewhere between eight and fifteen thousand dollars to buy these IOU’s at full face value. And we’re going to have to do this because they took these fucking IOU’s from anyone and everyone, over and over again, and were calling them “chips” the whole fucking time.

These Diamond Jim motherfuckers, these blow-thirty-grand-on-coke-and-strippers Wall Street scum, want my real wages in exchange for their shitty IOU’s. The wages I earn by going to work five days out of seven, fifty weeks out of every fifty-two. The wages from which taxes are taken to keep our roads in repair, to fund my children’s education, to give some relief to folks in a jam and a boost to folks who need a hand getting on their feet. The wages that they all said couldn’t support the tax revenue that might give us single-payer health care, subsidize college tuitions, or build up a respectable transit infrastructure.

Well fuck that. Any bill that comes out of Congress seeking to rescue these dishonest, avaricious sociopathic sons of fucking bitches without getting an equity stake, and without giving me my pound of flesh, is unacceptable. Otherwise, I say we let the whole fucking thing collapse.

I like Bernie Sanders take on it. Too big to fail? Too big to exist.

Y’ever get the feeling that all the hubbub about energy independence, even if earnest, is missing the mark?

James Kunstler’s got that feeling:

The reason our energy debate is so hollow and idiotic is because we can’t face this basic reality. The fantasy-du-jour among both political parties is that we can become “energy independent.” By this they mean we can keep on living the way we do by means other than oil. This is just not true. We have to make profound changes in everything we do from the way we inhabit the landscape to the way we produce our food. Lately, the only change we’ve shown any interest in is changing what our cars run on. But that is not going to rescue us, not even a little. Our inability to talk about anything else except the cars will drag us down into poverty and turmoil.

I turn to the estimable Lawrence for my response:

Peter Gibbons: Yeah. I guess… I don’t know. Sometimes I get the feeling like she’s cheating on me.

Lawrence: Yeah, I get that feeling too, man.

A year ago, I was a committed Democrat. Today, though there’s still no question about whether and for whom I’ll vote, I don’t think there’s a partisan argument from either side that I find very persuasive. I thought I was going to be more jubilant at this point, with a truly inspiring, once-a-generation Democratic nominee facing off with the most entertaining implosion of a campaign the GOP’s run in my lifetime. There was supposed to be pitchers of Schadenfreude, filled at a giant, bubbling, multi-tier Schadenfreude fountain and served into chilled Schadendreude steins by a busty blonde St. Schadenfreude waitress. But I’m just not feeling it.

So I thought I’d share some of the thoughts that are getting my attention these days, but I’ll put them beyond the jump for those that would rather not do that to their beautiful minds. Respect.

(more…)

I’m out tomorrow, travelling this weekend, so the singin’ and dancin’ and whatnot comes a day early. My personal 3-day weekend means early entertainment for you!

But, before we get to dessert, I thought I’d throw out something nutritious. Don’t worry, it’s funny too, but it’s something substantial to chew on. Here’s James Howard Kunstler smacking America around with its own architecture and city planning.

There’s not enough Prozac in the world to make people feel okay about goin’ down this block.

Enjoy the stinging sensations!

Dear Congress and Senate: Fuck You.

I know that this kind of thing drives John Cole crazy, so please don’t misconstrue this as an attack on Obama solely. And it’s not like I’m going to give my vote to McCain behind this, or even stay home. I’ll certainly give money to Obama’s campaign, I may even volunteer.

But not today. Not for Obama, not for the Democratic Senators that voted against amendments to strip telecom immunity from the bill, not for Democrats that supported this subversion of our Constitutional rights and gave another victory to an outlaw administration. Certainly not one fucking dime or phone call for any organization that might channel resources to Steny “Fucking” Hoyer. No, today I’m going to do a little grieving over a couple beers, maybe pour some out for another measure of lost liberty (which I think we can all agree is no longer a “phantom”, Mr. Ashcroft).

Tomorrow, I’m going to give some money to these guys. From here on out, my political focus is on fighting these bastards who care so little for the civil liberties which I hold dear. You wanna talk about guns or welfare or immigration or energy or abortion? They’re important issues to discuss, but all of those discussions are built on the bedrock of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The War on Drugs is in dire need of reform, but what’s the point in even debating drug policy, or any issue of criminal law, if it’s not grounded on the principle that Habeas Corpus is an absolute requirement of a meaningful system of justice?

We start by restoring the Constitution and the rule of law, and then commit to squaring off with anyone, in either party, that finds it an inconvenient way to govern a nation. For me, everything else comes after.

[Update]: From commenter socalmonk at DKos:

By the time the election rolls around…
the only people left supporting Bush will be the democrats in the House and Senate.

Want a better name for it? How about, Holiday from Reason and Good Sense, That Promises To Have Absolutely No Beneficial Effects For Anyone? Or, better still, The American Voter Is a Fucking Chump? Because that’s what this idiotic proposal really says: you think that we’re chumps.

So, candidates, if you want to prove to me that you’re:

• incapable of distinguishing good policy from bad
• incapable of supporting good policy by taking a stand and explaining to America why a bad policy is bad
• capable of pushing really, really stupid policy in pursuit of a demagogue-alicious tactical advantage over your opponents
• think that I and my fellow Americans are idiots that will respond positively to this sort of bullshit

Then just keep this stupid shit up.

We’ve had almost 8 years of putting food on our families and making the pie higher. A top priority for me in selecting the next president is whether or not he or she can make some serious traction reducing the myriad mountains of residual stupid we’re going to inherit from the Bush administration. The thought that he or she is going to put whipped cream and cherries on top of them is fucking infuriating.

Cut it out.

Update: Well stated, by hilzoy:

Clinton is presently making a big deal about the fact that she is “a fighter”. After this primary season, I don’t think there can be any doubt about her willingness to fight. What Clinton’s gas tax proposal tells me is what she’s willing to fight for. She is not willing to fight for what she thinks is right in the face of public pressure. She’s not even willing to restrict her compromises to cases in which public pressure to do something stupid already exists. She will sacrifice principle and the public good when it’s expedient for her to do so.

Update 2: I’d thought that the Gas Tax Hollandaise was about as stupid as pandering, half-assed populist proposals were going to get this season. How wrong I was (h/t John Cole).

“We’re going to go after OPEC which remember is a monopoly cartel,” Clinton said. “There’s nothing free-market about it. They sit in some conference room a couple of times a year and decide how much oil they are going to produce and how much they are going to charge for it. So lets change our laws so we can sue them on anti-trust reasons.”

We’re going to break up OPEC’s cartel, comprised of sovereign nations. We’re going to use U.S. federal antitrust laws to do it. By suing them. Somewhere.

Looks like someone’s trying to lock up the “Idiot Voter” block. The next pander should be aimed squarely at the block of folks who vote for candidates based on weather-related phenomena.