Rin Tin Charlie

It's All About the Bidness

A new trend is starting of cities and counties contracting to private companies to run formerly public libraries. Ordinary citizens are rebelling at the practice in several California cities, and others around the country. fearful that a trusted source of community cohesion is being coopted by the profit model.

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system.

Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort — and maybe not even then?

It should be obvious that yes, a service like a library is held so central to a place it should not be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor. There are several reasons why this is a bad idea, and among them is certainly a sense of community free from the competitive wrangling people do during their work lives. But much more obvious is the library being a source, and sometimes a primary source of objective information, free from possible, or probable ideological corruption of information. Which is rampant and increasing as conservation alternate realities are on the rise to install right wing dogma in government and about everywhere else. Such as the war on science and substituting religious concepts and morality that are bible based and highly subjective. The smearing of the science of evolution is a prime example of this.

But mostly for me, it is the ethos of capitalism and profit worship above all else, in service to wealth and power becoming the first value leading this country into fear and ignorance of other values, such as art and literature and the like, that is most alarming. This God of Profit almost always is followed by other right wing misinformation contrived to dumb down our national reality and discourse, and needs to remain in the realm of the economic rather than allowed to infect the realm of broad knowledge and objective information.

“A lot of libraries are atrocious,” Mr. Pezzanite said. “Their policies are all about job security. That’s why the profession is nervous about us. You can go to a library for 35 years and never have to do anything and then have your retirement. We’re not running our company that way. You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”

Of course, it is the disease of liberal laziness as the culprit, polluting our precious bodily fluids, and if the pointy heads would get a real job then libraries could become what they should be. Just another source of business jesus keeping folks in line.

It's all about the code. The right wing code.

Conflict

I have been thinking about this for several days. The conservative narrative is that Muslims are somehow unique when it comes to violence. That their religion compels them to kill those who are not Muslim. That the central precept of their religion propels them to commit violent acts. What the conservative narrative fails to admit is that all religions have individuals who commit violence in the name of their faith. Take Northern Ireland -- a relatively recent conflict. Roman Catholics against Protestants. Since the 1970s more than 3,000 individuals have died, with more individuals severely injured. Political murders, car bombings, and "human bombs" were all undertaken in the name of keeping the faith. If we follow the conservative narrative, we could argue that their faith is violent, and their faith compels them to undertake violent means to accomplish their goals. That the evidence of violence in the name of faith means that moderates who want peace are acting against what their faith teaches them.

soul coughing rolling

Yes, let's have her advise our children

Several video have shown Christine O'Donnell advising young students about virtue, integrity, honesty, and sexual purity. Is this really the person we want advising our youth? What else can she tell them. That virtue, integrity, and honesty only applies to not having sex before marriage. That when it comes to how one lives ones life, these values do not apply. Given her past, particularly her illegal use of campaign funds for personal expenses, including paying family members for dubious work, what exactly is Christine's message? Don't finish college and just lie about it. Pretend that you were accepted into a prestigious University (Princeton) for graduate school, when clearly that never happened. Don't hold a job for long. Clearly her message to young people is that working hard in college, finding and working hard at a job, living within one's means, and using public funds legally are not worthy values. Clearly her message is that professing a set of core values is fundamentally more important than actually living these same set of core values. That is what brings success.

Sadly, Christine embodies conservatives and tea partiers. Individuals that profess a set of core values in public, but not even close in practice. And, they claim the right to lead the next generation, as well as the country.

Politics of the Damned

It’s kind of darkly ironic, that for the last year, the media and the wingnuts have been droning on about the deficit and too much spending, so here we are dems worried about being seen as not extending tax cuts that would greatly expand the deficit and the wingnuts talking out of both sides of their mouths about more and more tax cuts, and extending them also too for rich people all the while grinning like evil clowns while dems lurch around trying to negate the wingnut debauchery that always seems to take hold, at least with the white and anxious middle class majority who never learn that the wingnuts they elect to represent their tribe do not have their best interest in mind, but insist on swallowing their bullshit whole served up by a servile press. It would be nice to hold a pre election vote to extend upper income tax cuts for pol theater in dems favor if wingers played along, but with blue dog help, these cuts for the rich would likely pass the House, and remember that repubs are not against mc cuts, they just want the rich ones too, so those would pass as well. It is a setup for Murphy’s Law for dems to try to hard too play the wingnut game of lies and deception. They are not very good at it, which to me is a good thing when it comes to the politics of governing. So what’s a good libtard to do? Unfortunately, at least in the short term, it is what is always their only route. And that is doing what is right for the country, and taking whatever unfair criticism that comes their way, because at the end of the day, if dems don’t do what’s right, then who will?

There is an opportunity for Obama and dems to take the initiative here, again doing the right thing, for them to propose their own tax cuts for the mc only, and announce the truth that the temp Bush ones have run their course. And tailor those DEM cuts to dem priorities and tell the rich to suck an egg, and the wingnuts. Rather than stage a phony vote that could well backfire on them in the end. The lizard brain is good at flanking such maneuvers from their prey.

When the right filibusters its own ideals to death

When the right filibusters its own ideals to death

From Salon. More evidence that conservatives and tea partiers have no other agenda than to get rid of our black President.