Groundhog Day Roundup / Open Thread

Whether he saw sunshine or he saw shadow, the groundhog is now predicting Sequestration Spring will be sprung upon us right on schedule. Austerity does appear to be in our future, after all, even though it has been proven not to work. For society as a whole, that is.  But if it works out for the plutocrats, then it's all good. The poor can never be too thin, or the rich too rich.

But there's more important stuff to talk about. For instance, a pile of squishy little purple balls has been found in the Arizona desert! Nobody knows what they are or how they got there, although some people think a plant food prankster dumped them there as a joke, since they resemble those little fertilizer globules you stick in your potting soil. Or they could be deep space excreta, or genetically modified grapes. Maybe Governor Jan Brewer will announce they are the long-lost innards of those desert torsos she once claimed to have seen. You decide:

From the Department of Tell Us Something We Don't Already Know: President Obama shoots clay pigeons. It seems that a national scandal had been brewing about the possibility that Obama is just another slimy politician who merely claims to love guns in order to appease the NRA. The national corporate media had kept up a cacophany of demand until the White House finally released the photo to prove Obama's gun cred. Too bad the courtiers of the press don't make a similar outcry about his Kill List and drone assassinations and demand that he produce his alleged User's Manual.

From the Department of Delicious Irony: About 70 Harvard University students have been disciplined after they were caught cheating in a class called "Introduction to Congress." Their defense is that they didn't really cheat because it was a take-home test and besides, you learn about Congress by emulating Congress. Congress critters, too, mainly do their cheating out of C-Span view. But rest assured that at least Harvard treats its cheaters the same way Congress treats its own bad apples. The kids are getting off with warnings or temporary suspensions. There is no mass expulsion.  They will be allowed to stay or return after a brief sabbatical. It is rare that a person of privilege ever gets kicked out for life. Congressional punishments for such transgressions as graft and bribery range from public embarrassment to a slap on the wrist to, at worst, a censure. See: Charlie Rangel, and now, potentially, Bob Menendez. (D-Boardwalk Empire.) Meanwhile, the New York Times is concerned that senators are not being polite to one another.

From the Department of Entomology: Paul Krugman gingerly compares the philosophy of austerity (not the scolds themselves) to cockroaches who keep coming back even when you flush them down the toilet. In my reply, I am not quite so circumspect:

Another thing about cockroaches and deficit scolds: they'll initially scurry away when you startle them with a bright light, But once they realize that the glare of truth and facts can't really hurt them, they come back for more, more and more. They wave their tentacles at us with impunity.

Like most insects, cockroaches and deficit scolds only work in teams. You never see just one cockroach all alone against the world, just like you never see only one austerian being attacked by five Keynesians in any typical panel discussion. It's always the opposite, to give the impression that the anti-austerians are an endangered species. Or that the can of Raid has lost its oomph.

Be they literal or figurative, cockroaches always leave behind a noxious trail in order to quickly rediscover their food source. They are omnivorous and insatiable. They crave media attention, they crave tax breaks, they crave even the tiniest leftover crumbs of whatever meal they last managed to steal from their starving victims.

They may be stupid. But predatory vermin that they are, they have a keen olfactory sense. They can smell the weakness in the alleged guardians at the gate a mile away. And then they swarm.
 

 
From the Department of Pure Evil: yet another high-ranking honcho in the Cult of the Red Beanie (credit, Charles Pierce) has been exposed as an accessory before, during and after the fact of the  priest sexual abuse scandal. I think we should finally just call out this cabal out for what it is: an International Pedophile Ring. In a just world, they'd all be taking refuge in the Vatican Embassy as Interpol surrounded them. In the real world, only Julian Assange is surrounded by Interpol as he is held hostage in an embassy for the crime of speaking truth to power.