Transterrestrial Musings

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I read/heard somewhere that a sit com pilot based on the Geico cavemen had been taped. If it makes it to air, I'll watch :)

Posted by Cecil Trotter at April 19, 2007 02:28 PM

Yes, I've heard that as well, Cecil. I'm not sure that I'm as enthusiastic about it as you, but I don't watch many sitcoms.

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 19, 2007 02:43 PM

It seems like it would be a funny sketch (i.e. SNL's Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer) but I'd be surprised if they could make enough good jokes out of it for a full show.

If you look at all of their commercials so far, there's what, 6 or 7 funny lines? Sufficient for a few good commercials, but not a sitcom. Not a good one, anyway.

Posted by Stephen Kohls at April 19, 2007 03:01 PM

"What The Dems Really Think About The Military"

Here's what Republicans really think about the military:

http://www.gemoney.cz/images/money/cz/fotobanka/large/atm.jpg

Posted by Brian Swiderski at April 19, 2007 07:20 PM

Don't give you your day job BS, comedy (or whatever you were going for with that picture) ain't your thing.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at April 19, 2007 07:49 PM

I'll take comedy lessons from Coulterites when I ask al Qaeda for a lecture on nonviolence.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at April 19, 2007 08:31 PM

Brian, you're saying the Republicans think of the Army as an ATM? All I can imagine that you might mean is...

(1) Republicans feel the Army is a good source of money, because Republicans more than Democrats are glad to sign up to serve and get paid an Army salary, or...

(2) Republicans feel the Army is a good source of money, because Republicans more than Democrats are likely to start and run high-tech, aerospace, and defense industry businesses that sell advanced hardware to the Army, or...

(3) Republicans feel the Army is a good place to put money (like making deposits at the ATM), because they value the national defense function of the Federal Gov't more than Democrats, and hence are more likely to send more Federal money the Army's way.

What I can't figure out is why you think any of these is a criticism of Republicans. They all seem on the contrary to be praise of the Republican Party. Are you sure you weren't under the mesmerizing influence of Karl Rove when you wrote your post?

Or is it just that you find a photo of an ATM to be a symbol of ultimate evil and horror all by itself? Had a bad experience with one, did you?

Posted by Carl Pham at April 19, 2007 09:39 PM

Carl: "Brian, you're saying the Republicans think of the Army as an ATM?"

The military in general, and on many levels.

Carl: "because Republicans more than Democrats are glad to sign up to serve and get paid an Army salary"

Since no responsible citizen would enlist right now, that only leaves Republicans and people who don't have a lot of alternatives. But no, this wasn't part of what I'm suggesting.

Carl: "because Republicans more than Democrats are likely to start and run high-tech, aerospace, and defense industry businesses that sell advanced hardware to the Army"

Almost, but you miss the target. Military contracting--I can't call it "defense industry" with a straight face--is an enormously profitable sector, and like all heavily criminalized corporate industries is dominated by Republicans. In addition, their alleged products and services dovetail perfectly with the fascist ideology of their party, so when that party is in power you have a more or less smooth symbiosis of government and corporate industry as fascism advocates. Nothing remotely like the commercial relationships widely suggested in the Newspace community.

Rather, what occurs is a merger of interests. The government determines that it will form policies in order to maximize the profits of these allied industries, and those industries determine to support the personal and political interests of the Party and its leaders. Often this doesn't even need to involve real warfare or actual weapons, just the need to pretend there is some huge threat and the contracts allegedly needed to procure defenses against it. Firms most juiced in with DoD and the Republican Party are selected for exorbitant no-bid contracts, little to no oversight takes place, and the process of looting the taxpayer's money begins. Since Republicans get their taxes massively cut every time they're in power, it's a win-win, stealing from a till their own contribution to which is ever-shrinking.

If anyone notices that billions of dollars are disappearing without anything being produced, the project can just be renamed and reclassified black, and even then a substantial proportion of the embezzled money will end up as dividends to overwhelmingly Republican investors, who then contribute to politicians, who then support unlimited Pentagon spending, and the cycle continues. At the core of its power, the Republican Party is basically a fraternity of criminals, the WASP answer to Cosa Nostra.

Carl: "Republicans feel the Army is a good place to put money"

They feel it's a good place to put other people's money, because it's the most opportune place from which to steal it. Agencies without the power to legally hide what they're doing have significantly less potential.

Carl: "because they value the national defense function of the Federal Gov't more than Democrats"

ROFL. I would be surprised if your typical Inner Party Republican could remember what country this is if they weren't wearing their little flag lapel pins.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at April 19, 2007 11:43 PM

I see. So, stripped of the heavy emotional overtones in your word choice, you're saying that people with certain political beliefs, id est Republicans, when they're voted into office by the majority, tend to implement a particular foreign policy ("fascism") which everyone knows is their passion. Then they hire contractors who supply the goods they feel are necessary to implement that policy. Not surprisingly, the contractors who step up to volunteer have similar political beliefs -- probably even voted for the winning candidates. But in any event the contractors supply the hardware, which proves very effective in implementing the government's policy. That is, the contractors do a good job. They are then paid well for their efforts.

Sorry, I'm still having a hard time seeing what you're saying as a criticism. Sounds like everyone is doing what they're supposed to do. The social contract is functioning smoothly. Debts are being paid, contracts fulfilled, people doing their job well, et cetera.

If the citizenry elects fascist bastards to run the country, surely they'd be reneging on their obligations -- going back on their campaign promises, so to speak -- if they failed to act like fascist bastards once they took office. I don't know about you, but if I vote for Hitler, I damn well expect him to fire up the Panzers and invade Poland the day after he takes the oath as Supreme Leader. I'd want action, not just empty words.

I mean, I do realize the policy preferences in question are not what you'd like. But, Brian, you lost the election, fair and square. Have you forgotten that? Surely you don't think your preferences should be imposed on a majority that thinks differently, do you? That would be....er...fascism. You're not a fascist pissed off merely because his particular brand of fascism isn't in charge, are you?

Posted by Carl Pham at April 20, 2007 12:10 AM

Carl: "you're saying that people with certain political beliefs, id est Republicans, when they're voted into office by the majority"

Usually under false pretenses or through bald-faced bribery.

Carl: "tend to implement a particular foreign policy ("fascism") which everyone knows is their passion."

They tend to implement fascist *economic* policies, but until recently (~6 years ago) the foreign policy component was moderated by Cold War doctrines that emphasized proxy warfare. And I disagree that most people are aware of it beyond some vague notion of "Republican = tough," which is an image they're careful to cultivate despite their abject cowardice when assertiveness would harm financial interests (e.g., China). Do you recall Bush's response to the EP-3 incident? Remind you of any recent events that have been heavily criticized around here?

Carl: "Then they hire contractors who supply the goods they feel are necessary to implement that policy."

No, they award unusually large no-bid contracts to firms who've been loyal to their political interests, who may have no experience whatsoever with the product type or service being contracted, and who don't necessarily ever have to deliver anything in return for the funding. They can charge $2,000 for a toilet seat under an arbitrarily classified program, pocket the cash, deliver part of it as kickbacks, bribes, or legal donations to Republicans, and the worst that could happen is they're forced to give it back as an overcharge and wait for a new contract. KBR has been repeatedly cited for massive overcharging and "bookkeeping irregularities," but keeps being awarded huge no-bid contracts for everything under the sun without even soliciting competition.

Carl: "Not surprisingly, the contractors who step up to volunteer have similar political beliefs"

On the contrary, they sell to the highest bidder, even if they're enemy countries. It's not like Reagan okayed the sale of weapons to Iran out of pacifism, or because he thought getting the Beirut hostages released was worth arming an anti-American terrorist regime. By the time Chinese military spending surpasses ours, the Pentagon will be as transparent as glass to them--a joke where silly Westerners fund paper weapons to feel superior, and funnel money to the very contractors building real ones for the PRC. Republican politicians better start learning Mandarin to keep the gravy train running.

Carl: "I don't know about you, but if I vote for Hitler, I damn well expect him to fire up the Panzers and invade Poland the day after he takes the oath as Supreme Leader. I'd want action, not just empty words."

Bush has indeed been losing popularity with his base for quite some time now. He was quite popular with them while he was invading Iraq, openly torturing people, and talking about himself like he was on a Mission From God like your standard-issue fascist psychotic, but these days his act has lost its luster for the double-lightning-bolt crowd. Democrats are in control of Congress, so he can't act with complete impunity anymore, just qualified impunity; and the public saw his incompetence, stupidity, and indifference on display after Katrina, so there's no going back from that either. He's damaged goods, no longer terribly useful to the agenda, and is a lame duck anyway, so they need a fresh face to bring home the bacon and keep the gravy train a-rollin' and a-overflowin'.

Carl: "But, Brian, you lost the election, fair and square."

What election is that?

Posted by Brian Swiderski at April 20, 2007 01:30 AM

I mean, I do realize the policy preferences in question are not what you'd like. But, Brian, you lost the election, fair and square. Have you forgotten that? Surely you don't think your preferences should be imposed on a majority that thinks differently, do you? That would be....er...fascism. You're not a fascist pissed off merely because his particular brand of fascism isn't in charge, are you?

Good job, Carl!

Posted by Leland at April 20, 2007 07:06 AM

Squidward says: Almost, but you miss the target. Military contracting--I can't call it "defense industry" with a straight face--is an enormously profitable sector, and like all heavily criminalized corporate industries is dominated by Republicans.

There it is in a nutshell. Business is bad when run by people who want to make money. Rich people are automatically evil. I think this is rich envy. Go green, get money!

Posted by Mac at April 20, 2007 11:23 AM

Ugh, I can't wade through this shotgun blast of cliched thought, Brian. You've got every tired trope since the Crusades in there. Moneyed interests, conspiracies on high, a virtuous but ignorant peasantry led to the slaughter -- you could be set down unchanged in 1896 or 1800 or 1791 or on any of a thousand dates, in a thousand places throughout history. You're direct evidence that certain themes are apparently wired into the human mind and recur over and over again, whatever the external realities. You'd descry "fascism" wherever you lived, whatever the circumstances, from a police state to a kibbutz.

So let's just say this. In sum, apparently you are horrified that people act generally according to their self-interest, and that American society is a complex web of interests and tensions pulling this way and that, and you are appalled that to get anything done practical compromises have to be struck, in which no one ever gets exactly what he wants, and someone's vanity or self-interest almost always has to be appeased.

You are, in short, disappointed that we are not Ein Volk with Ein Fuehrer, who all act together in peace and harmony to pursue only "good" goals (which you, unlike all philosophers for the last four millenia, can easily define on a Web forum in a paragraph or two), and for only the most disinterested and noble of motives. You're disappointed that we are fractious, individualistic, ornery, independent-thinking, often selfish, occasionally noble people, and not a hive of harmoniously-acting always right-thinking insects.

Fair enough. Many people think like you. I am pleased that I live in a country where they only rarely have access to the levers of power. You're an excellent scourge, an early-warning bell of excess in one area or another. But to put you -- with your inability to understand and accept even minor dissent, intellectual zeal to the point of trampling on humanity and good manners (you call people names too often, for reasons too trivial), and tendency to substitute unoriginal sloganeering for true reflection -- in charge of any social organization larger or more important than a high-school classroom (and in that highly undemocratic place you'd fit in very well, incidentally) would be gross folly.

Posted by Carl Pham at April 20, 2007 01:29 PM

Mac: "Business is bad when run by people who want to make money."

If they want to make it at all costs. That's the difference between capitalism and thuggery, and between a free market and what Republicans do. If the law says you have to report tainted food within a week of discovering it, a typical Republican declares it the day before the deadline, five minutes after his stock sell order processes.

"Rich people are automatically evil."

Rich people who can't listen to criticism about civic responsibility without hearing "envy" or some other self-aggrandizing delusion, are simply amoral, narcissistic idiots.

Carl: "You've got every tired trope since the Crusades in there."

History isn't exactly a Go game, it does have repeating elements.

Carl: "Moneyed interests, conspiracies on high, a virtuous but ignorant peasantry led to the slaughter"

You don't believe in moneyed interests, government conspiracies, or victims of con artists? I guess John Lennon can rest in peace now that you've found what he Imagined.

Carl: "You'd descry "fascism" wherever you lived, whatever the circumstances, from a police state to a kibbutz."

Now, perhaps I'm wrong, but I begin to get the impression you're answering some inner dialog that has nothing to do with me or anything I've said. Every time I've used the word fascist, it's had an explicit meaning that's been described several times, and which you would not, could not, and did not dispute, but then you respond as if to someone in another universe that's just compared the local crossing guard to Reinhard Heydrich.

These guys torture people, deliberately started a war of aggression they lied through their teeth for, invaded a sovereign nation and killed tens to hundreds of thousands of innocent people without any semblance of defensive or even legal rationale, and you're like "Fascism? What fascism? Next you'll be accusing the mailman." There's a complete disconnect between your reaction and what it allegedly addresses.

Carl: "In sum, apparently you are horrified that people act generally according to their self-interest"

No, I'm horrified when short-term, superficial self-interest is the *sole* guiding principle of a person's actions, and I'm unaware of any broadly accepted moral philosophy that doesn't agree. Moreover, I'm horrified by the surreal hypocrisy of thoroughly id-driven, Caligula-esque people who then top off their 24/7 wank with religious piety. I'm horrified by the laziness and solipsism of people who don't care what's true, because all they want is to feel a certain way about themselves or their country, and regard truth-tellers as enemies. The Republican Party is a seething cauldron of such people, along with several other categories of folly and delusion I've mentioned in the past.

Intelligent, productive, responsible citizens are not programmed robots mindlessly pursuing gratification of greed or narcissism, jumping to the series of buttons men like Karl Rove see instead of human beings. They do not view elections as an auction house for their vote, determined by which candidate promises them the biggest tax cut. They will not give a man the White House to keep "homasekshulls" from using a word, or because they don't like Yankees, or because Pastor said JaaaAYzus loves war, hates libruls, and loves Amurrcans more than furreners.

"and that American society is a complex web of interests and tensions pulling this way and that"

You're mistaking advocacy of specific positions for opposition to the system in which they would operate.

"and you are appalled that to get anything done practical compromises have to be struck"

Compromise implies mutuality, something today's hardcore Republicans fundamentally reject. When possible, they completely ignore all opposition, all criticism, all moral, legal, and ethical restraints, and do whatever they please with and TO the nation, with and to our money, with and to our lives and collective image. They are the antithesis of an American, like photographic negatives of the national virtues.

Carl: "You're disappointed that we are fractious, individualistic, ornery, independent-thinking, often selfish, occasionally noble people, and not a hive of harmoniously-acting always right-thinking insects."

You're addressing a fictional character of your own creation, not me or anything I've said. Some of what you're saying is the polar opposite not only of fact, but of facts already made blindingly obvious in previous comments. The people I describe, while driven by impulse, are not individualistic at all--puppeteered by their impulses because they're so predictable, they march in lockstep, think the same thoughts as delivered to them through talk radio and Fox News, and believe any old shit they're told by people who speak the language of command, obedience, and worship. They are not fractious, keeping internal disputes largely to a minimum while they confront the perpetual Enemy, whatever it is at any given moment, and bask in the warm embrace of The Party, The Church, The Corps, or whatever their hive is.

On the left, of which liberals are but a part, a vast and anal-retentively expounded universe of ideas, culture, criticism, history--some right, some wrong, some foolish, some blindly insightful--everything you could want EXCEPT what right-wingers want: To be unconscious. To believe utterly and without reservation, to act robotically, to see morality as a weapon to wield against others rather than a guide for their own actions, and the freedom of others only a necessary evil to grudglingly tolerate until the right people can take Power.

No matter what is said by a liberal, even if it's more conservative than what the Republican maniac on the radio is saying, all they hear is the language of the Enemy (reason, argument, and humor) and reject it like rotten food. The language of the Righteous, however, is spoken in sermons and commands, raises up mighty terrors and hatreds and cataclysms of emotion, but then softly, paternalistically, evokes the memories of being a child in a parent's loving embrace, and cements their devotion to The Faithful. They don't really know or care what is actually said in these harangues and tirades, but they Believe it totally, and act in parallel on behalf of it. These completely brain-f***ed maniacs then go on internet bulletin boards and equate the ACLU with Khmer Rouge, Hillary Clinton with Madame Mao, taxation of the rich with Stalin's Terror Famine, and proclaim murdering torturers American Heroes.

"But to put you in charge of any social organization larger or more important than a high-school classroom"

I have no desire to lead or manage people, simply to think, explore ideas, and multiply potential. If anyone ever finds my ideas useful, all the better, but I don't depend on affirmation from other people to love the process of forming them.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at April 22, 2007 02:13 AM

The question I'd reall like to ask is:

What democrats think this of the Military?
Would that be Sen Webb? Rep Sestak (ADM-Ret),
Candidate Paul Hackett (USMC),
Chairman Rangel (AUS-Ret)
Chairman Murtha (USMC-Ret)?

Posted by at April 25, 2007 05:06 PM

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