Keynes argued that government policies people stupid enough to take advice from conservatives could be used to increase aggregate demand, thus increasing economic activity and reducing high unemployment and deflation.

if some feller spends like Phil Valentine wishes and ends up in bankruptcy but this person happens to have a wee bit more melanin, shall we say, than Phil Valentine, Mr. Valentine will be joining the crowd chanting “you should have lived within your means” and “quit being irresponsible”.

Ah, but it’s the job of The Market to ensure that Those People are dissuaded from rash economic decisions and encouraged to live within their means by the prospect of 38% APR on car loans or re-adjusting 11% interest-only mortgages backed up by 15% HELOCs, the fine print of which is displayed for at least 3 seconds before signing.

Republicans: the party of thrift and good sense.

A worthy motto for a minor lackey whose owners had the foresight to opt instead for “I invest, therefore I am” … & somewhere, the ghost of Rene Descartes is quietly puking.

… speaking of it getting worse, the Harper conservatives have done away with mad cow inspection and they’re writing legislation that will do away with independent food inspection altogether.

Just say MOOOOOOOOO!

This explains why I just got some Harper junkmail crowing about how they’ve improved the product-safety standards that the big bad Liberals didn’t care enough about to improve for decades (8 years of Mulroney have, of course, gone down Ye Olde Memory Hole). Harper’s following the classic advertising formula: pretend that your worst failing is nonexistant, & that you’re in fact exactly the opposite of what you truly are … thus the beer ads featuring the lucid & witty repartee of slim sexy young folks, or SUV ads with handsome muscular dudes behind the wheel, or fast-food ads where somehow – mirabile dictu -noone is ever obese, etc. …

Only one has come right out and said it. The biggest idiot of the bunch. I’ve had a few others who I’m certain thought it but had enough cunning not to say it where the peons could hear.

Happily, I now work for academics – who have their own set of problems, but are much more my kinda folks.

Huh?

I get enormous pleasure knowing the deregulating assholes eat the meat.

speaking of it getting worse, the Harper conservatives have done away with mad cow inspection and they’re writing legislation that will do away with independent food inspection altogether. I received this email from Jack Layton, leader of the NDP the other day:

Thank you for writing me with your concerns with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). Let me start by saying that we are disturbed that the Conservatives are willing to jeopardize the health and safety of Canadians. Privatizing food inspection and labeling just to save a few dollars is not acceptable. However, we are not that surprised. We believe that there is a much larger agenda underway which seeks to achieve “deep integration” between the US and Canada in the areas of trade and security. Its agenda includes reducing protection in over 300 areas, including pesticide use, air safety, and food safety. You can read more about our work to defend Canadian sovereignty at: http://www.ndp.ca/stopthespp.

[goes and forces self to read more of the article]

Okay, I was totally wrong. He’s as far gone as they are. It looks like 9/11 changed everything for him. Just looking over the descriptions of the commercials he made for the Club for Growth (ugh), I have to ask this question once again: what is it about converting to the conservative mindset that just destroys someone’s ability to do comedy? So if we didn’t fight the Civil War, Barack Obama would be a slave because the South was allowed to go its own way and Illinois was a Northern state and…….okay, I’m totally lost. That movie sounds awful.

Also, never let me go near the Weekly Standard again. That’s a lot of concentrated stupid.

True, dat. And I’d wager that there’s more uninspected and unmonitored grossness now than there was 10 years ago, because these guys really don’t care if big agri poisons consumers. That having been said, it’s still a damn sight better than what we’d have in the Republicans’ ideal world, which would be no inspections or monitoring whatsoever, or more likely (and what’s probably happening right now), payola to officials to look the other way. After all, there’s no reason why anyone should be allowed to get away with poisoning people for free, not while there’s a Republican who can make a few bucks off it.

But are we back to pre-Upton Sinclair practices yet?

I wouldn’t go that far, Jennifer. The meat packing industry is rife with uninspected, unmonitored grossness.

Looks like time to highlight, once again, “A Day in the Life of Joe Republican”:

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his workday. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.

Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It’s noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.

The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.

Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

Time to wheel out the ol’ “are you better off than you were 8 years ago?” “No? Well then, you think it’s going to change if you vote for the guy who promises to keep doing the same stuff? That’s the functional definition of insanity.”

Among such novelties, Hayes argues that The Naked Gun 2 1/2 had a vaguely environmental agenda, which would imply that Back to the Future had a vaguely anti-islamofascist agenda.

But it was this quote which really got to me

Zucker points to a National Journal study that found Obama to be the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. “John Kerry was, and Obama is. Fortunately, Kerry was a stiff. But Obama isn’t a stiff and he’s really adaptable. He’s like a really clever virus who adapts. Obama’s the farthest left of all of these guys. And that’s why he associated with all of those crazies–terrorists, preachers of hate.”

So wait, you admit that John Kerry was the most liberal member of the US senate and then Barack Obama now is, with Kerry still serving? Weird how that happens huh?

And I betcha he doesn’t at all get how frickin’ privileged he is. The “privilege” and “entitlement” (as we moonbats use the terms) are just oozing from the page. Unfortunately, a lot of people who don’t see their own privilege think exactly like he does. And not just right-wingnuts and faux-moderate wankers … a fair number of lefties produce some of the most cogent critiques of privilege and then decide that they, and they alone, are the anointed elect of God who have the power to decide who is privileged and who isn’t (I call these people neo-Puritans, ’cause that’s how they think … of course, they’ll deny it, ’cause they misunderstand Puritanism to be about hatin’ teh hawt sex).

But of course, nothing takes the cake of a privileged white male who has had the world handed to him on a plate whining “[y]ou and you alone are ultimately responsible for your own destiny.”

people like them have been my managers at some of my jobs, working fewer hours and making more money. Weird how it works out.

How many of them think they deserve to make more money than you because the Market is altogether just? I know a lot of people, even some who claim to be religious, who think that wealth and intelligence fit together like a hand in a glove. Which is odd for a religious person given Koheleth’s statement of “nor bread to the wise”.