Atlas Mugged: Making The World Safe For Sociopaths

What do Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan, the Teabaggers, and Lucifer have in common? (If you want to feel the backward, you must click it.) In Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel and current movie, Atlas Shrugged, the ideological template for those wishing to usher in a new Gilded Age run by billionaire plutocrats like the Koch Brothers, Atlas is meant to symbolize …

Afutilestan (IX) XI

On the ninth anniversary of 9/11 (the day that America became unhinged and ushered in a lucrative national security state), we remember the innocent victims and the heroes who lost their lives trying to save them and others. Seven thousand miles away, a hundred thousand American troops and another hundred thousand plus private contractors and NATO troops are supposedly fighting …

My Mind Is Made Up, Don’t Confuse Me With Facts

“Tell me anymore of your sweet little lies and I’ll sic Woody Woodpecker on your woody  ass” Picking up on the theme of my previous post concerning the role that facts play, or more to the point, don’t play, in the poisoned narratives that infect  the Wingnutosphere, Digby draws our attention to an article posted over the weekend in the …

Destroying The Gulf In Order To Save It

Rep. Paul Broun (Wingnut-GA) dishes up the classic cognitive misdirection some people say ploy, which simultaneously feeds his audience’s Obama Derangement Syndrome while giving himself cover from the M$M by not saying it himself. The issue this time is the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico: BROUN: Our President he is utilizing this crisis of this oil spill to …

The Neuro-Cognitive Wisdom Of George Costanza

Given that cognitive scientists believe that up to 95% of our thinking processes are unconscious, with our 400 million year old lizard brain dominating our half million year old rational brain; given that the lizard brain has as its number one priority the perpetuation of the species (demonstrated in males by the power that the little head exercises over the …

Racism, Propaganda, And Health Care Reform

An attendee at today’s teabagger protest on the D.C. Mall In the never-ending triumph of form over substance, politics over policy, and emotionally charged food fights over actual debate, the MSM occasionally interjects some reality into their coverage of complex issues like health care reform. Example in a moment. Take the issue du jour— fictional health care insurance for non-documented immigrants, …