Combat! - Page 54 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Friday links! Simper at the devil edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links September 16, 2016 0 Comment

“So then I took out a full-page ad in the Times saying they should get the chair.”

I don’t mean to overgeneralize, but everyone is shit. The Ivy League warmongers are in a tight race with the uneducated racists, and everyone who ought to know and/or do better is busy pandering to what segment of those audiences they imagine most lucrative. Also it’s leaf blower season, and nobody signals their turns anymore. Sometimes a small sample of unrelated events starts to seem like the end of civilization as we know it—or at least civilization as we like it—and the best thing to do with that feeling is to get it out of your system. Today is Friday, and H.L. Mencken was right: These dickcharmers are going to outlive us all. Won’t you yell through the windshield with me?

Rumors about Bullock, O’Leary leap from blogs to newspaper

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics September 15, 2016 1 Comment

What’s going on between Governor Bullock and this big check?

Here’s a fun game: try to name the most prominent policy idea of the 2016 Montana governor’s race. Republican Greg Gianforte wants to improve the economy by—wait for it—lowering taxes and lifting regulations. Governor Steve Bullock wants to continue being governor. If ideas were glue, these two couldn’t build a model plane. But it doesn’t matter, because they’d gouge each other’s eyes out before they got all the parts out of the box. Their almost purely negative campaign got even darker last week, when NewsTalk KGVO ran this story, ostensibly about Bullock’s use of the state plane but also about how he uses it to take trips with cabinet member Meg O’Leary.

Rumors that there is something untoward about their relationship have circulated on conservative blogs for some time. Until last week, you never heard about it in the mainstream press, probably because there’s no evidence. But then KGVO ran the headline “Governor Bullock Brought Meg O’Leary to Paul McCartney Concert Instead of First Lady, State Plane Use Questioned.”

As usual when a headline uses the passive verb “questioned,” they omitted the phrase “by us.” A subsequent story in the more scrupulous Billings Gazette contradicted several of KGVO’s implications. It seems like the original piece was pretty thinly sourced. It didn’t say much that hadn’t already been said—also without substantiation—in various right-leaning blogs. So why run it now?

Maybe it had something to do with the news that Oracle was moving 100 jobs from Bozeman to Texas. Gianforte sold his software company RightNow Technologies to Oracle in 2011. His success in creating high-wage jobs has been a major selling point of his campaign, but this layoff undermines that. Is it possible KGVO ran the O’Leary story to overshadow the layoffs? Although Gianforte’s communications director, Aaron Flint, has a friendly relationship with KGVO, it would be irresponsible to say he nudged them. I mean, what are we—KGVO?

You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, in which I challenge the candidates to come up with some idea—any idea—related to policy. The voters of Montana deserve something better than a choice between negatives. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links, hopefully including a fun surprise.

Last year’s median income data is great; last 15 years, not so much

By Dan Brooks in financial reform September 14, 2016 0 Comment

The median income of an American household increased 5.2 percent in 2015, the largest single-year increase since 1967. The poverty rate also fell, and the portion of Americans without health insurance fell to about 10 percent. That’s good news, especially during a recovery whose benefits have disproportionately gone to the very rich and large corporations. The bad news is in the graph above. You will notice that median incomes have risen after the each of the seven recessions of the last 50 years except for two: the last two. Although the historical trend has been for incomes to exceed or at least return to their pre-recession levels during each recovery, the median income is still lower than it was in 2007 or, for that matter, 1998.

Medical marijuana opponent says one hit is like ten beers

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics September 13, 2016 0 Comment

People who had one hit and ten beers, respectively

Respective effects of the quantities indicated

Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, the history of Montana’s medical marijuana law is long and interesting only if you’re high. Suffice to say the 2004 legalization has been subject to multiple reversals and amendments from succeeding legislatures, and now the issue has risen to the level of ballot initiatives. Yesterday, Missoula’s City Club debated I-182, to let doctors prescribe marijuana for PTSD and chronic pain. The con position was advanced by Stephen Zabawa—sponsor of his own ballot initiative to ban medical marijuana entirely—who gave us this, via the Missoulian:

“Quite frankly, you can have one beer, and you’re OK,” Zabawa said. However, he equated one “hit” of marijuana to 10 beers and said the active ingredient will “knock your socks off.”

Just try pot, dude. Before you devote your whole year and thousands of donors’ dollars to making sure no one can get pot, take that one hit yourself and see what it does. It’s true that if you drink ten beers, your socks will come off as if by magic. I’ll bet a hundred dollars to your twenty that you don’t get the same effect from one hit, just as soon as we can get to your doctor and make sure you’re not allergic.

Seriously—I call on Stephen Zabawa to smoke some pot. It’s the only responsible thing. After you hear that one hit gets you ratfuck wasted but before you organize a statewide movement, see what it does. If you’re not willing to try it yourself, have friend A take one puff of a joint while you confiscate friend B’s keys, phone and wallet, then make him drink ten beers. I think the difference in their outcomes will surprise you. Until you conduct such an experiment, your activism is the persistence of a man who has no idea what he’s taking about.

I wouldn’t know either, because I never tried grass. It was illegal in New York, and although you could still buy it we could never remember where, because whenever we got any we blacked out and thew up on our dicks. That’s why I stay out of politics. You won’t find me organizing ballot initiatives. Hell, I don’t even vote. I may not know anything, but at least my ignorance knows its bounds.

Is it better to be known and hated than not known at all?

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture September 12, 2016 0 Comment

Former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO and current fraud indictee Martin Shkreli

On September 11th, New York City watched in horror as a symbol of America’s intertwined economic and political power collapsed. Of course I refer to Hillary Clinton, who left a memorial ceremony at the World Trade Center yesterday and was subsequently diagnosed with dehydration and pneumonia. During the 90 minutes or so the Democratic nominee spent in the Flatiron apartment of her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, various onlookers gathered outside. One of them was Martin Shkreli, who livestreamed himself shouting “why are you so sick?” and “are you alive?” for about two hours. After Clinton left, Shkreli told the Daily News, “Chelsea Clinton does not live in that apartment. That apartment is an advanced medical facility.” He appeared to be lying.