"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

May 13, 2010

When You Let Someone Brand You

...eventually he will act as if he owns you:

"WASHINGTON — The Gulf of Mexico oil spill hasn't stained President Barack Obama nor dimmed the public's desire for offshore energy drilling, according to a new Associated Press-GfK Poll.

(snip)

The poll found that 42 percent approve of Obama's actions, 33 percent disapprove and 21 percent say they have neutral feelings about his response.

The reaction is strongly along partisan lines. Democrats lean toward favoring Obama's actions, 58 percent to 19 percent, with 17 percent expressing neither approval nor disapproval. By 47 percent to 27 percent, Republicans disapprove of Obama's reaction, with 23 percent saying neither. Independents are about evenly split between approval and disapproval.

(snip)

The poll also found that the public still supports the idea of drilling offshore for oil and gas. By 50 percent to 38 percent, more people favor increased coastal drilling for oil and gas than oppose it.

While Republicans favor it by a 3-to-1 margin, Democrats lean toward opposing it, 52 percent to 36 percent. Independents are about evenly split. Groups giving drilling the strongest support include men, middle-aged and older people, whites and residents of rural and suburban areas.

The country is split about evenly over which priority is more important in considering drilling, with 49 percent choosing the need for the U.S. to provide its own energy and 47 percent picking protection of the environment."

*

Hmmm. I wonder how come the alleged watch dogs in the press almost never explain fungibility when they discuss drilling, public attitudes towards drilling, or government policy.

Could it...nah, it couldn't...

Media corporations owned by energy, real estate and defense combines couldn't possibly censor out data, could they?

They couldn't possibly want to retain ideological branding of the populace?

*

As a massive disaster spreads throughout the Gulf of Mexico, a representative sample of the population prefers continued off shore oil drilling, in the expectant, pregnant hope that more drilling will ease the burdens of their debt soaked middle class existences. Never really understanding the fungibility of oil, they cast their ballots for assholes who've laid down their ideological brands in the minds of captive populations, assholes who benefit personally from the arrangement.

The what-for of political ideology, in capitalist America, folks...

2 comments:

Justin said...

blockquote /blockquote, my man!

Jack Crow said...

Y'know...it's aesthetic. I really don't like the blogger appearance of blockquotes.

I'll italicize the quotes.