Greed and Selfishness

Almost a year ago I told my political friends that Ted Cruz would be the GOP presidential nominee. They all thought I was joking-- or insane. Oh, look, even Rich Lowry agrees now.

I'm almost tempted to feel sorry for the Establishment wing of the Republican Party-- what I used to always refer to as the Greed and Selfishness wing-- and the cruel comeuppance they're getting from the Hatred and Bigotry wing. They should never have made the deal with the devil to bring that crap into their party. After Nixon's Southern Strategy there really was no other possible outcome.

"We are built to be kind": A question that has intrigued UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner is why people, who we know to be motivated by self-interst to perpetuate the species, are "so frequently and routinely good, and generous, and sacrificing?" And he insists that nobody understood this better than Charles Darwin, who believed that "communities that have the most sympathetic members will flourish and raise the greatest number of offspring."by KenHat tip to The Frisky's Rebecca Vipond Brink ("Here's

An ABC trailer for Selfie, starring Karen Gillan and John Cho, created by Suburgatory creator Emily Kapnekby KenIt would never have occurred to me to watcha TV show called Selfie, for reasons that I hope are obvious, but I heard tell, from someone who's not much of a TV-watcher, that it's not cashing in on the "selfie" craze but is targeting it.

Oink! Slurp! Gobble! Dickie Shelby has an important role to play -- to make the world safe for even lowlier right-wing scum.by KenSo why shouldn't Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby be chairman of the Banking Committee? Just because he's an ideologically scumbag who spends his available time stuffing his maw with deluxe eats paid for either by gummint or campaign contributors?

Don't worry about the GOP. It has not been captured completely by neo-Nazis and Klansmen. Former Bush-Cheney Regime functionary David Frum wants to reassure everyone that "[t]he large donors who supported George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney continue to hold sway within their party." Populism on the right, he asserts, has not taken over his beloved party of greed and selfishness.

There is no way to shame a Republican. None of their selfish, narcissistic behavior ever seems to embarrass them. As Wall Street attorney Oliver Budde explained, "[O]ur ethos in a nutshell: grab every dollar you can, for as long as you can, using every scheme you can think of, and pay out to yourself and your cronies as much as you possibly can, as quickly as you can.

I wasn't raised with any religion. In my own life, I've embraced the teachings of several gurus, Jeus more than any of the others. But organized religion has always repulsed me. Since I started watching Pope Francis I've actually considered joining the Catholic Church. I wonder if Catholics from the Church-without-Jesus sect like Paul Ryan and John Boehner have been thinking about leaving the Catholic Church and joining some snake handler cult.

Republican in-fighting between conservatives and the neo-fascist radicals that have been challenging them, derailed the Farm Bill in 2012. This year Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy agreed to slash food stamps really badly and figured they would pass the bloated bill subsidizing wealthy farming operations (and scammers on the Upper East Side of Manhattan).

Although many Republicans still frown on outright theft-- obviously not all, or Darrell Issa wouldn't still be winning elections-- profiting from the commons is considered a plus in their world of driven greed and selfishness.