Category: Psychology

You Say It Because It’s True

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Noted African American studies professor Cornell West recently characterized Barack Obama as, “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats,” in addition to declaring that he the President has bought wholeheartedly into “the American Killing Machine.”

While there are a number of reasons why a man who was once one of Barack Obama’s staunchest supporters might have become disillusioned, and in the interview linked above, there does appear to be a sense of wronged entitlement, West complains about not getting phone calls answered and issues with the inauguration tickets.

Having relatives who have worked, or are working in academe, some at fairly rarefied levels, I can state with some level of authority that a sense of entitlement is rather endemic in this environment, particularly amongst those who ply their trade in the Ivys.

So, I do not find Dr. West’s opinion particularly surprising or worthy of note, but I do find the positively kraptastic response to this criticism amongst the intelligentsia and much of the liberal blogosphere to be interesting.

Karoli has a good survey of those responses, in addition to being a prime example of this idiocy:

I don’t understand what the goal is when it comes to Cornel West’s opinion. He says in that same interview that if the only backstop against fascism is Barack Obama, he’ll go with that. If the goings-on in Republican states and the United States Congress doesn’t convince you of that, then look to the Supreme Court’s future to understand what’s at stake. So why come out and call President Obama a tool of the oligarchs? It makes no sense, and is suppressive in nature and intent.

How about this: because it is the truth.

Whether it is Geithner and Summers and the banks, the quashing of even the most casual investigation of torture, the expansion of the surveillance state, the war on whistle blowers, etc., Cornell West’s statement is objectively true.

He is better than the current crop of Republican candidates, but so was Terri Schiavo when she was on a ventilator.

Obama Releases “Long Form” Birth Certificate

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I guess this will make the birthers shut up………Not!!!

My thoughts on this are perhaps best expressed by Cthulhu*:

He f%$#ing caved to the GOP thugs, AGAIN. His BC is sufficient for him to get a license, a passport, and for every god-damned govt function we can think of.

I wanted to see Obama do the same as inn the movie “The American President“, where he calls the phonies out, and declares he is the president, and he’s off to take care of business, f%$# you microbrained idiots.

Of course, that was just a movie, reality is a lot more depressing.

*No, not the unspeakably malevolent super-being, the contributor to the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
†OK, I’ve never seen the two of them together, so Cthulhu might actually be the Cthulhu, but the mere fact that he is on a BBS, interacting with humans‡ would seem to mitigate against this.
‡Yes, I know, this is the internet, where no one knows if you are a dog.

Here’s a Surprise

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Someone has discovered the handwritten notes of Dr. Bruce Jessen, a psychologist who helped design the CIA’s torture program, and it shows that the goal of the program was torture and the exploitation of prisoners. I would further add that the documents show that he knew that torture did not work, and simply produced false statements, which means that there was no purpose to the program beyond producing false propaganda:

Bush administration officials have long asserted that the torture techniques used on “war on terror” detainees were utilized as a last resort in an effort to gain actionable intelligence to thwart pending terrorist attacks against the United States and its interests abroad.

But the handwritten notes obtained exclusively by Truthout drafted two decades ago by Dr. John Bruce Jessen, the psychologist who was under contract to the CIA and credited as being one of the architects of the government’s top-secret torture program, tell a dramatically different story about the reasons detainees were brutalized and it was not just about obtaining intelligence. Rather, as Jessen’s notes explain, torture was used to “exploit” detainees, that is, to break them down physically and mentally, in order to get them to “collaborate” with government authorities. Jessen’s notes emphasize how a “detainer” uses the stresses of detention to produce the appearance of compliance in a prisoner.

But no prosecutions, because Barack Obama is too busy torturing his own whistle blowers.

Why Dr. Jessen still has a medical license is beyond me.

Read the whole article, it’s extensive and chilling.

What Digby Calls, “Another Isolated Incident”

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Nothing to see here, move along:

Roger Stockham, a 63-year-old Army veteran from California who was reportedly angry at the U.S. government, was arrested by police in Michigan and charged with allegedly threatening to blow up a Mosque in Dearborn.

Dearborn police allegedly found Stockham inside his vehicle outside the Islamic Center of America with a load of M-80s in his trunk and other explosives, the Detroit News reported.

If you read the rest of the article, it’s pretty clear that this guy is a head case, but even a head case has his actions shaped to a degree by external influences.

Vos? Sarah Palin iz a Yid*

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When juxtaposed with the phrase, “Don’t retreat, reload,” this is an unfortunate turn of phrase

So Sarah Palin is now claiming that criticism of her “target map” and her shooting inspired rhetoric is blood libel:

“Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions,” Palin wrote in an early morning post on her Facebook account on Wednesday. “But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

(emphasis mine)

<Facepalm>

For those of you unfamiliar with Jewish history, the blood libel is the accusation that Jews use Christian baby’s blood to bake their matzohs for Passover.

This fraud was the cause of the deaths of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Jews over the past 200 years.

Needless to say, the idea that anyone who isn’t Jewish would use the term for something as meaningless as  criticism over their rhetoric is offensive, ahistorical, narcissistic, and just plain wrong, particularly for someone who is not Jewish.

The level of venality for a non-Jew to use this to condemn people for saying mean things about her simply boggles the mind.  I cannot imagine anyone being so self-centered and inconsiderate to do this, so Sarah Palin must be Jewish.†

The response to this has been actually been fairly universal.

Months ago, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, The View‘s resident right winger, called the map despicable months ago.

Additionally, former Bush speech writer turned conservative apostate David Frum, has called her out for unleashing her attack dogs, while National Review nepotism hire Jonah Goldberg, calls the use of the phrase stupid in so many words., and trust me, Jonah Goldberg knows stupid like few others.

Additionally, Jewish Groups, including the ADL, which normally spends it time sucking up to ignorant bigots have condemned the use of the phrase.

Pat Buchanan, though, was true to form, saying that he, “thought it was an excellent statement“.

For what it’s worth, Joan Walsh’s assessment of the statement, that Palin has fatally wounded her Presidential chances, is, I think, completely wrong.

Her analysis misses a basic Republican imperative, to piss off liberals and Democrats any chance they get. Really, when you look at GOP frat boy behavior, it’s clear that much of what they do is driven by this petty need.

By pissing off liberals with the “blood libel” comment, she cements her relationship with the movement conservatives and teabaggers, and pissing off Jews, who constitute a minuscule part of the party, is just gravy, because it shows the Talibaptist wing of the Republican party that she is one of them.

That being said, I would still argue that the simplest hypothesis is the one most likely the correct one, and that would be that she is a person suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

*My best effort at translating “What? Sarah Palin is a Jew?” into transliterated English.
†I’m not asking for evidence of Todd’s circumcision, thankyouverymuch!

How to get a Nobel in Prize Economics

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You have to cover an area of economics that has not been studied in detail before, and is relevant.

Even better if you create a new field of study.

And commenter Hugh at Corrente Wire finds just such an area, though I am unsure if he is aware of this:

… This is my primary criticism of virtually all current economists. None of them write on, or try to construct an economic theory for, kleptocracy either because they are still in denial or because the sheer notion undercuts almost everything they believe and were taught. …

The economics of kleptocracy, whether it be Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, or the United States, tremendously relvant and almost completely unexamined, at least by economists.

Certainly, it does lend itself quite as well to neat equations as do, for example, monetarism or the efficient markets hypothesis, but there is clearly gold, or at least academic glory, in “them thar hillls.”

Interestingly enough, I do think that a lot of the framework has already been laid with the fields of behavioral economics (already Nobels there, Allais, Becker, and Simon) and the the theory of asymmetric information in markets (Stiglitz, Akerlof, and Spence won their Nobel for this).

It seems to me that in the intersection of these two fields, we can find the makings of a rigorous, and relatively quantitative, study of the operations of the economy of a kleptocracy, though I am neither an economist or an Academician, I am an engineer, dammit,* so your mileage may vary.

Even if this does not result in a Nobel, it would certainly generate a buzz, leading to tenure, and the inevitable academic economist groupies.†

*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!
†I’m not certain about the groupies, but that is what classic economic theory seems to imply.

Optimism Can Kill You

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Barbara Ehrenreich looks at the cult forced optimism in the United States, and how it is both dangerous and prevents people from challenging real problems in society.

I was particularly taken by her observation about just just how much mandatory optimism was a part of the infrastructure of the totalitarian Soviet state as well.

Normally I Don’t Like Andy Borowitz’s Humor…

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But his take-down of Ginny Thomas’s “drunk dialing” phone harassment of Anita Hill, is truly an thing of beauty:

Three Things to Do When Clarence Thomas’s Wife Calls You
Posted by Andy Borowitz

Like many Americans, over the past several years I have been the recipient of multiple unwelcome voicemails from the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. These calls have come in the middle of the night, at the crack of dawn, even at the dinner hour favored by telemarketers. Regardless of the time of day, all of these voicemails have one thing in common: she always sounds like she’s drunk-dialing me, except she appears to be completely sober.

………

One final note: if you get a call in the middle of the night and there is silence on the other end, that is not Virginia Thomas. That is Clarence Thomas.

A very well deserved take-down of a classless and corrupt, she is clearly playing on her marriage to a Supreme Court justice to secure large donations for her AstroTurf group, woman.

Go read Borowitz. He is very funny here.

What a Sick F%$#ing Freak

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Right wing activist, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas just called Anita Hill demanding an apology:

Nearly 20 years after Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Justice Thomas’s wife has called Ms. Hill, seeking an apology.

In a voice mail message left at 7:31 a.m. on Oct. 9, a Saturday, Virginia Thomas asked her husband’s former aide-turned-adversary to make amends. Ms. Hill played the recording, from her voice mail at Brandeis University, for The New York Times.

“Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas,” it said. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband.”

Ms. Thomas went on: “So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day.”

Ms. Hill, in an interview, said she had kept the message for nearly a week trying to decide whether the caller really was Ms. Thomas or a prankster. Unsure, she said, she decided to turn it over to the Brandeis campus police with a request to convey it the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Seriously, there is all sorts of pathology here from a woman who is both the spouse of a Supreme Court Justice and an amazingly well funded political activists.

One can only imagine what the Thomas’ dinner table conversation is like.

This Explains a Lot

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Many years ago, Yves Smith worked for Goldman Sachs, AKA the Vampire Squid,* and she said that Goldman Sachs is actually a cult:

As important, Goldman is a cult. I say that as a former employee, based not just on my experience a very long time ago (boy, am I getting old, more than 25 years ago) but also on reports I get from recruits and what I can infer from press reports. If anything the firm has become more inward looking over the years

The people there honestly believe that working for Goldman is the most elevated calling (Blankfein’s bizarre-sounding “Doing God’s work” remark no doubt resonated within the firm) and doing anything else is a fall from grace. Seriously. People who exit Goldman typically take a year or two to get over it the deeply-inculcated belief that departure = failure (this isn’t my own response; I’ve had a number of men volunteer that to me). Similarly, the first person I met at Goldman, which was through personal contacts, made it clear he was blocked in her career (his boss was too close to her in age) said he couldn’t possibly work for another firm. It wasn’t that he had assessed the tradeoffs and decided on balance it was still better to stay; he literally recoiled on a psychological level from the idea of departing. That sort of deep indoctrination was not at all unusual.

And people who had managed not to imbibe the Kool Aid were viewed with some suspicion. I left as a pretty junior person; the only reason I was remembered was a woman in investment banking in the early 1980s was an unusual commodity. Someone who checked out my reputation years after my departure said the party line on me was “She could have made partner, but we would have had to break her.”

(emphasis mine)

I kind of thought that it was just ordinary greed, but this revelation says a lot.

In the United States these days, we tend to try to describe everything in terms of profit and loss, with greed as a motivator.

But profit and loss do not describe anything. If they did, then the Randroid nut jobs out there would be right, and discrimination would have ended, because it interferes with the most efficient flow of commerce.

Goldman Sachs is a cult, and really do believe that they are doing God’s work.

This is so f%$#ing creepy.

*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a, “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.

I’ve Never Called Him Stupid, But Now I Will…

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Because Barack Obama just met with Condoleeza Rice to discuss foreign policy:

US President Barack Obama met Friday at the White House with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice for a chat on foreign policy and her new memoir, officials said.

What’s next, meeting with Mary Mallon* to discuss food hygiene?

Discussing haute cuisine, or for that matter how to win a World Cup, with the British?

Seriously, the idea that you are going to have a friendly chat about foreign policy with the worst Secretary of State of all time, who served the worst President of all time, because ……… Hell, I cannot fathom a possible reason for doing this.

What is going on here is a demonstration of either mind-boggling idiocy, or a truly nasty bit of psychological pathology that requires one to get approval from everyone.

*Typhoid Mary.

QOTD

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I think too often many of us have tried to come up with elaborate financial/economic rationalizations for why the banksters have approached all of this the way they have. The simpler explanation is that they’re sociopathic assholes who think that everyone else must suffer for their mistakes.

—Duncan Black

And yes, my prior post segues very nicely into this.

Sunse? Space Goatse*?

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Click for full size

There is a reason why the comments at io9 are so rude.

Space Goatse†

The Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) has published what is the most detailed photo of a The clearest photo of a sunspot we’ve seen thus far.

But this is not what I, or many of the folks who commented about the picture.

It was about 50-50 between people who thought that it looked like the eye of Sauron, and people who thought that it resembled a certain unspeakable Internet meme.

Me, I never saw the Lord of the Rings movies, so you can guess where my mind went.

In any case, if you want to review the comments on the thread, and you understand the context,* then you may find significant amusement regarding what is otherwise a straightforward science story.

H/t hedgehog on by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS for finding this little “gem”.

*If you don’t know what Goatse is, for the sake of all that is holy, do not Google it!
†Thank SupaChupacabra at io9 for this bit of wit.

When Alan Keyes Calls You Crazy………

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You are completely batsh%$ insane:

“The 14th Amendment is not something one should play with lightly,” Keyes said in response to a question from ThinkProgress at the Tea Party Express press event today. “Lindsay Graham used the term — as people have carelessly done over the years — referring to the 14th Amendment as something that has to do with ‘birthright citizenship’ and we ought to get rid of ‘birthright citizenship.'”

“Well, let me see,” Keyes added sarcastically, “If citizenship is not a birthright then it must be a grant of the government. And if it is a grant of the government, it could curtail that grant in all the ways that fascists and totalitarians always want to.”

This is like Keith Richards telling you that you do too much drugs.

Why Aren’t The Dems Hammering This Every Day?

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Georgia Democratic Gubernatorial candidate, and former Governor, Roy Barnes, is now explaining to the voters that wingnut Republicans are more than poor stewards of the public trust, but that they they are actually an embarrassment to the people, and the state, of Georgia.

Some text from his ad:

It’s hard for industry to take us seriously when the Legislature attempts to outlaw stem cell research, passes bills about microchips in the brain, and talks about seceding from the Union.

………

We can’t bring jobs to Georgia with the rest of the country laughing at us.

An appeal to civic pride, reminding folks that these folks are f%$#ing nuts, and that we should be embarrassed that they win elections, is a simple and easily understood: They are laughing at you, not with you because of these clowns.

This is a message that can, and should, be hammered at every day until election day.

OK, Now We Know that He Was Insane

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Blah, blah, blah!

We now have a report that George W. Bush told former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner that the Marshall Plan was a screwed up “Democrat plan”, and that the real way to help the economy is to start a war for some reason or other:

KIRCHNER: I said that a solution for the problems right now, I told Bush, is a Marshall Plan. And he got angry. He said the Marshall Plan is a crazy idea of the Democrats. He said the best way to revitalize the economy is war. And that the United States has grown stronger with war.

STONE: War, he said that?

KIRCHNER: He said that. Those were his exact words.

STONE: Is he suggesting that South America go to war?

KIRCHNER: Well, he was talking about the United States: ‘The Democrats had been wrong. All of the economic growth of the United States has been encouraged by wars.’ He said it very clearly.

(emphasis original)

This is why we cannot afford to have a military that is so overwhelming that we can invade any non-nuclear power on earth without a 2nd thought.

It’s like giving an 11 year kid with ADHD a loaded gun, and, if anything, the Sarah Palin/Teabagger wing of the Republican Party is even more delusional than Bush/Cheney.

It is inevitable that the minority party will eventually win, and when they do, these will be seriously disturbed people with a world view that could destroy the nation and the world.

Continuing to maintain a tool, and extending it with something like the “invasion in a box” Sea Basing concepts that are in development is a clear and present danger.

The Glenn Beck Conspiracy Theory Generator

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The folks at Political Humor came up with this, and it’s too good not to share.

The odd thing is that this is saner than the original (Beck), but I guess that artificial stupidity is just as hard as artificial intelligence.

If you go to the link (you can click on the picture), then you can see the generator, which cycles through all sorts of psycho-pathological goodness.

Still, it makes me wonder if Glenn Beck is not just some sort of bizarre performance artist putting all of us on.