Showing posts with label Hulk Not Like. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hulk Not Like. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

In Pursuit Of Normalcy

Never Take Your Eye Off The Ball

The Recall Of Actual Memory = Normal
So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't recall it; but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell, we are suddenly intoxicated, and similarly we think we no longer love the dead because we don't remember them -- but if by chance we come across an old glove we burst into tears.
-- Marcel Proust
The Leader Is Clinically Insane With Poor Impulse Control = Not Normal
Brian Klass, a political scientist at UCL [said]: "We have a seriously dangerous normalcy bias, where we move on because we desperately want to pretend it's okay. Trump's Twitter meltdown today -- which shows a deranged and unhinged person -- will just be forgotten by Monday afternoon. But the deranged man will still control the nukes."
(Chris Cillizza, "Trump's Craziest Day Ever On Twitter", CNN)

The Leader Is A Liar = Not Normal
And then, Friday afternoon, it got worse. Responding to a question by an ABC reporter about whether he believed there was a growing threat of white nationalism worldwide, Trump responded, “I don’t really,” adding, “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”  Our own ears and eyes (as well as statistics) tells us that’s a lie.  Again, this reaction is because Trump gets his base better than anyone.
(Dean Obeidallah, "Trump Still Won't Name White Supremacist Terrorism And His Base Loves It", Daily Beast)

Delusional Cray-Cray = Not Normal
Donald Trump’s suggestion that Britain invented Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election has been branded “completely false” by the UK government.  The US president shared a tweet by William Craddick, the founder of right-wing conspiracy theory news outlet Disobedience Media, on Sunday evening. “Russiagate was designed in part to help the UK counter Russian influence by baiting the United States into taking a hard line against them,” Mr Craddick wrote. ...

... Late last week, [Trump] launched an extraordinary attack against Theresa May over her Brexit negotiation strategy, claiming she “didn’t listen” to his advice over the issue.  Sir Nicholas Soames, Conservative MP and privy councillor, told The Independent that Mr Trump’s peddling of the conspiracy theory was “foolish” and “ludicrous"...  "The trouble is he allows himself to be subject to these great flights of fancy, which unfortunately there are too many people who take seriously,” said Mr Soames, who is the grandson of Winston Churchill.
("UK Government Hits Out At 'Completely False' Allegation", UK Independent)

Republicans Cleave To Insane Leader = Not Normal But Predictable
I think the connection between scientology and Elizabeth Holmes is the “prison of belief”. Look at what happens to [Theranos board member] George Shultz – the grandfather of [eventual whistleblower] Tyler Shultz... Even when his grandson comes to him and says, “You know Grandpa, there’s rampant fraud at Theranos”, he can’t undo or retract or unwind the belief that he has. He’s in a prison of belief of Elizabeth Holmes. He’s committed to her, and for him to say, “Oh wow, that’s terrible”, would mean that he has to go back to the beginning and admit that he was duped and fooled.
(Julia Wong, Interviewing Alex Gibney; "Americans Have A Fascination With Fraudsters"; UK Guardian, March 17, 2019)

We Are Powerless To Resist ZuckCo (And Those Like It) = Not Normal 
Perhaps what the scandal has really revealed is a situation that is too embarrassing, too disastrous to acknowledge. We know that Facebook has been used to undermine elections all across the world, including our own. But we’re in this strange historical moment where we’ve realized it, but we don’t have the power, currently, to do anything about it.
(Carole Cadwalladr, "Cambridge Analytica, A Year On"; UK Guardian, March 17, 2019)


International Mass Shootings = Not Normal
The horror of the New Zealand massacre should be a wake-up call for Big Tech and an occasion to interrogate the architecture of social networks that incentivize and reward the creation of extremist communities and content ...

... Part of what’s so unsettling about the New Zealand shooting suspect’s online persona is how it lays bare how [social media and extremism can] come together for violent ends. [The killer's] supposed digital footprint isn’t just upsetting because of its content, but because of how much of it appears designed to delight fellow extremists.

The decision to call the attack a “real life effort post” reflects an eerie merging of conspiratorial hate from the pages of online forums and into the real world -- a grim reminder of how online communities may be emboldening and nudging their most violent and unstable individuals.
(Charlie Warzel, "We're Asking The Wrong Questions Of YouTube And Facebook After New Zealand"; New York Times, March 19, 2019)

Domestic Mass Shootings = Not Normal 
“Obviously there’s some type of situation that caused the husband to be extremely upset,” Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said in a press conference. “We’re trying to find the connection. Obviously these are not random shootings... Six people lost their lives in a very short amount of time. This is the new normal.”
(German Lopez, Vox, September 12, 2018; "... Shooter In Bakersfield Kills 5 Persons, Self")

The latest nightmare began on May 18 with the news: there had been another school shooting. This time, it unfolded at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, a town of about 12,000 people ... Paige Curry, a student at the school... [said it] didn’t feel unreal at all. “It’s been happening everywhere,” she said. “I’ve always kind of felt eventually it would happen here too.”
(Haley Edwards, Time, May 22, 2018; "School Shootings Are Becoming The New Normal")

Whiteman Daddy Strongman Oligarch As Leader = Not Normal
... there are the inherent structural failings in modern democratic politics. In the United States, unrestricted campaign financing continues to undermine democracy. The spectacular corruption of the electoral redistricting system -- gerrymandering -- only compounds the problem. On top of this, the polarization of traditional news media by Fox News and others is poisoning the capacity of the democratic system to build a sustainable consensus around what is left of the political center, as shown by the debacle of the American gun-control debate.

As Western democracies look increasingly sick, other systems of governance are now on offer. Russian nationalism represents a departure from Western political, economic and diplomatic norms. China has become increasingly confident in its own model, described as authoritarian or state capitalism. And its “Beijing consensus” is held up to the non-Western world as an example of a more effective form of national, and even international, governance.
(Kevin Rudd, "The Rise Of Authoritarian Capitalism", New York Times, September 16, 2018)
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Friday, October 12, 2018

Random Barking Friday: Notes From Above Ground

Just Because We Agree That Any Day Above Ground Is A Good Day 
Doesn't Mean We Agree To Put Up With This Shit
The fascist movements ... that came to power in Italy and Germany boasted their regimes were totalitarian. The most original revelation of the current wave of authoritarians is ... overtly antidemocratic dictatorships ...[are] unnecessary for holding power. Perhaps the most apt designation ... is the insidious term “illiberal democracy.” 
...Erdoğan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Rodrigo Duterte ... and Viktor Orbán ... have all discovered that opposition parties can be left in existence...  in order to provide a fig leaf of democratic legitimacy, while in reality elections pose scant challenge to their power. Truly dangerous opposition leaders are neutralized or eliminated one way or another. 
Total control of the press and other media is likewise unnecessary... a flood of managed and fake news so pollutes the flow of information that facts and truth become irrelevant as shapers of public opinion. Once-independent judiciaries are gradually dismantled through selective purging ... Crony capitalism opens ... a symbiosis of corruption and self-enrichment between political and business leaders... 
Xenophobic nationalism (and ...explicitly anti-immigrant white nationalism), as well as the prioritization of “law and order” over individual rights, are also crucial to these regimes in mobilizing the popular support of their bases and stigmatizing their enemies. 
-- Christopher R. Browning, "The Suffocation Of Democracy" (Article), The New York Review Of Books; October 25, 2018 Issue (Paragraphing added for emphasis)
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The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.
And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.
-- Ernest Hemingway, In "Der Querschnitt"; February, 1925

I move to work in the dark, 5:00AM on public transit in a large urban area. Passengers are dressed for maintenance or construction, administrative or 'food service industry' jobs; almost everyone is looking down at their smartphones, scrolling and texting. A third are women, dressed in expensive workout clothes, heading for the gym; few white-collar, non-managerial 'Individual Contributors' like me ride to work this early. The real flood of San Francisco's Tech workers don't begin their commutes until after 7 o'clock.

San Francisco's Municipal Transit Authority is replacing its fleet of older electric busses, one by one, with new, 'hybrid' ones. There are fewer seats in the new busses.  I get off at the usual stop downtown, walking a nearly-deserted two blocks towards BART. Crossing a street, I register  someone moving on my left, riding towards me on a bicycle, and so make assumptions: I'm a pedestrian, they see me, they'll avoid me.

Suddenly, I hear the sound of pedals being cranked; the rider speeds up and passes, inches behind me; I feel a gust of air as their weight moves through space. And as they move past, I feel the rider pat me, once, on the top of my head, like a Plains Indian counting coup. Standing in the dim street, looking -- at him, a nondescript male: scruff of beard, dark baseball cap, clothing and bike -- I shout HEY!! at his back. 

I'm not particularly surprised (and I think: it's more surprising that I accept this as normal, now); my yelling is mostly for form's sake. He's riding on, casual, slowing to make a lazy S down the street and leaning back in his seat. He starts to cycle back in my direction, maybe take things to the next level -- then turns away. I can hear him, almost conversationally, say, "Welcome to Cali-for-nia, bay-bee."
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5:00AM in the Underground: increasing numbers of homeless, lying on the granite floors as if tossed there, discards, not asleep so much as comatose (I remember living rough in a stressful environment, a literal jungle, and how desperately needed and all-consuming sleep, unconsciousness, was for us).

Below the surface: The display of rock-bottom despair and crazy is manifest and confounding. Most people, myself included, just want to move down to the train platform and get where we're going -- because if we stopped for a moment to look at these people, and contemplate where we all are and where we're going, it would plunge you into tears at the same time it drives you back, within yourself, shrinking away from these Others -- as if they might infect you with lice or bad luck. That what I am could happen to you.

This morning, a man -- skin and hair blackened with dirt, torn clothing scumbled up with diesel soot and grease -- sat on the floor of the BART station, his back against a wall at the base of an Up escalator, legs splayed out, repeatedly shouting a single word, "FUCK!?" at the top of his lungs every few minutes.

He didn't use it as an obscenity. What had happened to him was the obscenity. He was asking a question -- of fate and circumstance; he was making an making an exclamation: This is what happened?? What the fuck???
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As ever, Trump is the parody of the neoliberal consensus, which shows us the truth of its intellectual and political bankruptcy. And the neoliberal Democrats’ answer is not to mobilize the population in protest, not to take direct action against an obviously illegitimate political structure — but to double down on elitism and technocracy by imagining that the FBI will somehow save us. 
--  Adam Kotsko, "Lies And Neoliberalism"; An und für sich, October 6, 2018
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The domestic agenda of Trump’s illiberal democracy falls considerably short of totalitarian dictatorship as exemplified by Mussolini and Hitler. But ... [n]o matter how and when the Trump presidency ends, the specter of illiberalism will continue to haunt American politics. A highly politicized judiciary will remain... racial division, cultural conflict, and political polarization [which] Trump has encouraged and intensified will be difficult to heal. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and uncontrolled campaign spending will continue to result in elections skewed in an unrepresentative and undemocratic direction. Growing income disparity will be extremely difficult to halt, much less reverse. 
Finally, within several decades after Trump’s presidency has ended, the looming effects of ecological disaster due to human-caused climate change—which Trump not only denies but is doing so much to accelerate—will be inescapable... 
Trump is not Hitler ... but regardless of how the Trump presidency concludes, this is a story unlikely to have a happy ending. 
--  Christopher Browning, ibid.; New York Review Of Books; October 25, 2018 Issue 
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MEHR, MIT "WAS SIE GEMACHT HAT":

If you consider the main currents in American culture and politics since the Declaration, a move towards the 'illiberalism' Browning describes in his article doesn't seem like an aberration. More like a logical procession. 

Let's be clear: It's a class war. Who wins and who loses in the current circumstances remains the same, no matter which end of the spectrum is in control.

America's political right will never, truly, upset The Owners. The neoliberal Left wants a Wonderful One World which keeps The Owners intact and in charge. In either scenario, you and I are expendable resources. 

The same tools of misdirection, propaganda, appeals to a mythic America that never was; and at the very bottom of it all, a threat of ultimate power (I kill You!) has been used in that America to sink the pitch and rig the game, since forever. 

At its most basic, Trump and his crew owns the political Right. Every kind of bottom-feeding nightcrawler and slug have attached themselves to The Trump Halftrack -- because there's money to be made, and power to be had; it is really no more complicated than that. The only notable thing is, they are right out in the open about it, now

Even though the 0.01% (that number could even be smaller; I use it only to make the point) will truly benefit from Trump, 'The Base' feel stronger and more powerful. They wave The Flag, wear The Red Hat, and allow free-floating rage to take form in love of the christian nation and racial pride. Their purpose is simply in "being Americans".  Build that wall. Piss in faces of the Iranians. Use force on the streets. Love The Leader.

Neoliberals at home and abroad are disorganized and hiding, for the moment. If Clinton had won the election, they would have been the ones flexing muscle -- but quietly, through internationalist organizations. The same 0.01% would ultimately benefit. 

We'd still be rubes and sheep, like the Red Hats -- but we'd feel better about turning over our autonomy to The Owners, because it's for the greater good. We would have a sense of purpose in building a better future world.  
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I'm not advocating a specific group's point of view. But, all this is an approximation of an answer to the question of that anguished underground dweller, yelling FUCK!!?? The structures human beings have built through five thousand-plus years of history to organize living on the planet have been bent, and altered, to favor a few and eat the rest of us alive.

... and no matter how clear that becomes, there's been little direct action. No matter how crazy things have gotten. There is no shortage of analysis and commentary about what is happening -- Christopher Browning's article is a crystal-clear example. The general outlines are there for everyone to see. 

But even in responding to Trump's lies with truth, his malfeasance with exposure, and narcissistic spewing with laughter, people rarely go into the streets. Given the stakes, our passivity in America is staggering -- and that comment only shows I assume having a high standard of living means people will act to support their best values and, you know, do stuff. 

All I'm sure of is, future historians will go over whatever documentation survives us and shake their heads, or laugh until they herniate themselves.

If you're waiting for the midterms; or Mueller's report; or for a tentacle to pop out of Trump's head while he bloviates at a rally, somewhere -- and then expect that hey presto! All Will Be Just Like It Was -- then something is happening here, but you don't know what it is. 
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UND NOCH IMMER MEHR:  Oh, yeah! Forgot to include the recent UN report which says we're  effectively fucked and will all die in the fire in the fire in the fire, or at least bake a lot. So maybe none of this matters. It could explain why Our Glorious Wealthy have been so openly avaricious lately. Maybe all that talk about "future historians" doesn't mean anything, either. Hey; my bad!
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Thursday, September 27, 2018

Let Us Now Something Famous Men

You Know Where This Is Going
Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing; September 27, 2018 (Osita Nwanevu / New Yorker)
As Dr. Christine Blasey Ford detailed her sexual assault accusation against Trump Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, a photo taken by New Yorker staff writer Osita Nwanevu shows that Ford was positioned directly in front of seven male GOP senators who have worked to ram through Kavanaugh's confirmation as quickly as possible without an FBI investigation. 
"This is what Christine Blasey Ford is looking at as she describes her sexual assault," Nwanevu noted. "I mean this literally. The Dems are there of course, but from her angle at the table, the GOP side of the semicircle is right in front of her."
--  Jake Johnson, Common Dreams; "As Christine Blasey Ford Details Sexual Assault Allegation Against Kavanaugh, This Is What She's Looking At"
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Thursday's hearing will also raise fundamental questions of fairness. And perhaps the biggest risk is that despite its deeply divisive impact, it solves nothing... 
It's conceivable that at the end of the day, Republicans see one truth and Democrats another. If the GOP goes ahead under those circumstances the nomination could enflame the nation's blazing political culture even more.
--  Stephen Collinson, CNN; "A Day That Will Resonate In History"
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President Trump and Congressional Republicans are not afraid to take unpopular actions in pursuit of their ideological goals. 
Last year, they spent many months trying and failing to pass a repeal of Obamacare, even though those efforts were extremely unpopular. And they passed a tax bill that was highly unpopular at the time of its passage, although its [popularity as shown in polling data has] since improved some. The Supreme Court is at least as much of a priority for Republicans.
--  Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight; "The GOP's Least-Worst Option Is If Kavanaugh Withdraws -- And Soon"
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Then, late on Wednesday an anonymous fourth woman accuser emerged when NBC reported that the Senate Judiciary Committee was inquiring about at least one additional allegation of misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Republican Senate investigators asked Kavanaugh about an anonymous complaint alleging that he physically assaulted a woman in 1998, according to a transcript from that phone call...
--  Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge; "Fourth Woman Accuses Kavanaugh"
The New Aristocrats feel entitled to remain untouchable, regardless of the enormity of their crimes. People are starting to wake up to neofeudal realities of life in America, but the sexual privileges of this class are only the tip of the iceberg.
--  Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge; "Exposing The Neofuedal Privileges Of Class In America"
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Thursday, August 23, 2018

Trumplandia Three

Bark Bark Bark Bark
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? ... You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! ... There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immutable, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars... which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today... 
...There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only [ Apple], and [Google], and [Facebook], and [Microsoft], [Bayer, Glaxo-Smith-Kline, Disney, AT&T] and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today... We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. 
--  Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), Paddy Chayefsky's "Network" (1976, with updates)
____________________________

The current news regarding Mr Cohen and Manafort's convictions aren't necessarily as  significant as some (e.g., A Work Colleague) believe they are.
AWC:  (Walks up) Hey; how ya doin? I'm pumped.
DOG: Why?
AWC:  (Pause) You don't watch the news?
DOG:  A couple of scumbag fixers are being processed through our System Of Justice™. One got convicted, the other pled out. That's all that's happened. Unless aliens landed.
AWC:  Okay; I'm not even going to discuss it. This is the beginning of the end of Trump! You just want to shit all over it!
DOG: This is only the second half of the third inning. Two runners got retired trying to steal bases. Cohen and Manafort couldn't hit that well, but still got on base and then thought they'd cheat and got tagged out. They were puffed-up, small-time fixers who believed they were better Players than they were. They thought they were Ty Cobb and Ted Williams and they weren't.
AWC: Okay, I get it.
DOG:  No, you don't. Let me push this a little further: this is just the second half of the third inning -- in this game. There are like about eighty games left to play in the season! Trump is still in office. The GOP is still Führertreu and still runs the Congress, and Stevie Bannon is still hung over and shedding his facial skin all over Hungary. It's a little soon for the forces of Peace and Justice to be saying, "It's over! We're taking the Pennant!"
AWC: You're just saying this because I wanted a sane woman to be president.
DOG:  Not really -- but, hey; I've never successfully carried a baseball metaphor this far through a conversation before. I feel pretty proud of myself.
AWC: The BBC is reporting Cohen can give Mueller information on a conspiracy with the Russians.
DOG:  Uh-huh. It's still the bottom of the Third -- in one game -- and we're not even talking about the Democratic party, or international politics, or economics yet.
AWC: (Walks away)
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I'm capable of being a selfish, venal Dog. The taste of Schadenfreude as Trump's lies twist around the axle of his public life is tempting and sweet: it's satisfying to watch that bloated punk flail and bellow as he becomes stuck in the Tar Pits. But -- as satisfying as that is, bigger things are at stake and Trump's hair and family and public antics have never been the real show.

The Right-wing media echo chamber -- the true fake news -- has spent over thirty years repeating, again and again, that America's central, federal government is a lying oppressor, a tool of liberal one-worlders out to steal our Rights. It's broken, unresponsive. Individual state governments could do a better job...

On the Left and the Right, people know Trump is an abusive boss, a Crap Daddy, a blowhard and a rich fuck-up. They expect him to behave like one. And everyone hopes this, uh, situation will just resolve itself -- somehow -- with the same dramatic arc as a network television program: the Bad Guy gets his way; then, eventually Hubris brings him low. Everything is resolved. And, most important of all, life goes back to normal.

Except, we don't live in a television program. Even so, the drama is entertaining.  And Trump feeds on it, hour by hour -- he's the center of all attention.

One thing about Manfort's conviction, and Cohen's guilty plea, both on multiple counts is the solidity, the concrete reality, of the events. They can't be denied, called 'fake', or lied about. They're a reminder to Trump that his control is an illusion.
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Even so -- no matter what happens to Trump; or to Republicans, Democrats, the Alt-Right and Social Justice Warrior activists -- all the major issues in American politics and the society that were raised and on display during the 2016 election cycle have not been addressed.

And, our national problems are being played out against the backdrop of a global ideological struggle -- between 'Brexit', anti-immigrant nationalism and repressive quasi-fascism on the Right; Kumbayah-neoliberal-globalism, or Socialist-quasi-communism, on the Left.

Whatever happens to Trump in America may affect that debate (e.g., it might help discredit the myth of nationalist, strongman rule), but despite his trade tariffs, his jackass behavior with the UN, the EU and NATO; despite his bromance with Kim Jong Jong; Trump's downfall won't resolve it.
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(Finally, even if the current situation develops into a question of Impeachment being raised -- I don't like quoting myself, but I've already barked about this:)

...any charges brought by a special prosecutor must be referred to the United States Congress. The House Judiciary committee would hold hearings to determine whether the charges against the president were impeachable offenses. 

Unless the November midterms change the balance in Congress, the Judiciary Committee may still be dominated by Republicans. 

Partisan politics may rule; the Right has run roughshod over the country to get what it wants, so they may shut down any inquiry and to hell with the media and the People. If they do, that's an end to it.

There will be CSPAN coverage of the committee sessions, and video clips of Democratic members crying that this is the darkest day in America since the Civil War -- that will be true, but it won't matter. Trump, vindicated, Tweets for days, strutting and preening. Ivanka goes shopping with Louise Linton and they have a 'Spa Day'.
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But, let's say the Judiciary committee does hold full and transparent hearings. They vote to refer the matter to the full House (here, the Rules Committee would determine how debate and voting would proceed). A simple majority (218) is required when voting on Articles of Impeachment. This means 192 Democrats have to find twenty-six Republicans to join them. It's possible -- but if the vote falls strictly along party lines, it will fail.  That's the end of it.

Trump crows over his 'success', his 'win', in a never-ending series of press conferences, takes a full week off in New Jersey and golfs every day, making Impeachment jokes to the neutered press. President Vladimir Putin of Russia calls Trump to congratulate him.
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So, let's assume Articles of Impeachment actually pass in the House and are referred to the Senate for the president to be tried. When Clinton was tried in the Senate, there were hours of debate and plenty of grandstanding; the same will happen here. The spectacle will 'consume the nation', but remember -- it's theater. Get some popcorn, but I wouldn't spend extra money for the really good kind.

A two-thirds vote is required in the Senate to convict a president on any charge. 67 Senators voting 'Aye' on any charge results in a conviction, which also means a vote to remove the president from office.

If Trump were tried in the Senate, it's probable that, like Clinton, the number of Senators voting to convict would not reach 67. Trump would be "shamed", as Clinton was -- but he remains in office, and that's the end of it. 

The thing about public shaming:  the person being punished has to feel as if the penalty actually means anything. Trump would care less about being disgraced as the third president in history to actually be tried for Impeachment in the Senate. For him, "not getting a two-thirds vote" and remaining in office equals "winning".  

Perversely, Trump would feed on a 24-by-7 news cycle being focused on him, for months on end. After the vote(s) fail, he will bellow, preen, strut, and celebrate with an all-night party at More-Lego, attended by all the bottom-feeding, alt-Right and white supremacist glitterati, flown in at government expense -- and with a manly, affectionate embrace from surprise guest, Stevie Bannon. President Vladimir Putin of Russia will send flowers to Melania.
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MEHR:  NETT u. SPASS!!

If I'm going to be self-referential, might as well trowel it on. From the wayback machine:
[Trump's] campaign depends on tapping the kind of inchoate rage that we see or experience on the street, or at work. If Trump were to win, it would mean a period of social and political dislocation in America which no one in memory has experienced. I could make a joke about a similarity with H.P. Lovecraft's return of Chtulu and the Old Ones, but in fact nobody knows where it would all lead. 
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Monday, October 16, 2017

America: Toad Away

Yet Another Long Howl:  Obligatory Voluntary Assembly To Follow

DONNA: ... he's resting after an attempted murder. I don't want people going over there and getting him all Fertushed.
TOBY: 'Fertushed'? You know -- don't bring the Yiddish if you don't know what you're doing.
-- Donna Moss (Janel Moloney) and Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), The West Wing
Events continue to happen, as we knew they would. And hearing about them is almost like eating a chocolate Eclair, rubbed down with Vaseline, while watching the news.

Enjoy it while you can: after The Incident, or when The War begins, whichever comes first, ingesting them will be mandatory, and watching the Compulsory News will be -- well, compulsory.
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The Fire, This Time
Wonderboy says climate breakdown is "fake". Meanwhile, in Kiddietown, I overheard two women complaining over lattes that unhealthy air quality, due to the still-uncontained fires in Napa and Yuba counties, had disrupted their running schedules.

"I mean, like, I just feel it when I don't run; you know?" One said. "For sure, it's all tragic? But I so don't like it. I feel fat." "Yah; yah; totally," replied her friend. "They should, like, take care of that."

The fires are still burning. So far, at least 30 people are dead, 5,000 homes and businesses destroyed, and tens of thousands of persons forced to evacuate. The devastation is incredible.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the population of Puerto Rico, heading for one month after Hurricane Irma, still do not have power or potable water sources.

Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The War
In an interview with Forbes (as quoted by the UK Guardian), Wonderboy said he is not "stupid, like people say -- I'm SMART !!"  So smart, in fact, that when asked about reports that Secretary of Oil State Rex Tillerson had become unhappy enough to consider resigning this past summer, and referred to him as "a moron", Donny replied, "I think it’s fake news. But if [Tillerson] did [say] that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win." Donny repeated this again later, adding, "I don't undercut anybody."

Dear Leader, And Weasel  (David Becker / Reuters)

This was backed up by the Whitehouse Media Wrangler, Missy Sarah, who has gained a few more pounds. Missy said jesus was the lord really, and Wonderboy was just joking; and the reporters just want to make up things to write about, and were all poopy-heads who would 'learn a thing or two' after 'The Incident', praise somebody's god.

In his sly way, Donny also said he had “just about the most legislation passed of any president, in a nine-month period, that’s ever served. We had over 50 bills passed. I’m not talking about executive orders only, which are very important. I’m talking about bills.”

Donny has said this before, and was shown to be a liar. When some people tried to wash his mouth out with soap afterwards, Donny ran away, shouting ("I'll show you!") that he would send everyone to a FEMA camp after The Incident, or The War; whichever comes first.


"Where Do You Go / When You're Toad Away?"

(Donny paused to show the interviewer some "great, totally great" drawings he had made -- each showing himself, ordering airstrikes, signing large documents, and cheeseburgers. His own signatures on the drawings were large and spiky, almost dominating the drawings themselves. Donny said the drawings were "the best drawings ever by anybody," and because he is The Leader, he is right.)

Donny also showed his motor skills, Tweeting that he would replace the Affordable Care Act all by himself. “Since Congress can’t get its act together on HealthCare, I will be using the power of the pen to give great HealthCare to many people – FAST.”

All America (especially the old, poor, infirm and sick) felt safe and happy in the knowledge that Wonderboy, just like god, knows what is best for each and every one of us -- except non-white persons, about whom Wonderboy doesn't give two hoots.

Donny continued to say things -- silly things, just to get any grown-up to watch him. But the Grups were busy doing grown-up things. Donny thought it might be time for The Incident, or The War -- which would legally allow him Bonk Bonk On The Head any bad Grup who would not stop everything they were doing and watch him, watch him, watch him.

Mock, Pseudo-, Crypto-, Quasi- Newsy / Truthy
And, people continue to say how bad Donny is; how disruptive to the rest of the class. They say it over and over. And, guess what?  Nothing happens.

But, there are news items in the press that don't seem to find mention, or are lost in the fog, in our great U.S. media.  A few examples:
  • "Trump ramped up his war with the news media on Wednesday morning, suggesting that it might be appropriate to challenge the license of NBC News in response to what he claimed was its “fake news”(UK Guardian).
  • "The hack into the accountancy giant Deloitte compromised a server that contained the emails of an estimated 350 clients, including ... US government departments [State, Energy, Homeland security and Defense; US Postal Service, NIH, Freddie Mae and Mac], the United Nations and some of the world’s biggest multinationals, the Guardian has been told" (UK Guardian).
  • Little Stevie Bannon, six years old, did his best John Adams impersonation -- with all his grumpy imperiousness, the everyone's-a-fool-but-me attitude, that big paunch and everything -- appearing at the annual "Value Voters" convention in Washington, D.C.  Stevie said that he, and those like him, were 'at war' with the GOP leadership, and that he would like to put a pillow over Yertle The Turtle's face. And run 'Alt-Right' candidates to replace establishment Republicans with Parteigenossen who believe in Little Stevie's wonderful world vision of Sugar Mountain, for white persons (USA Today).
  • Wonderboy, when shown a graph of the reduction over time of all U.S. nuclear warheads (down from ~30,000 in 1965, to <3,000 today), did not like that. Like five-year-old Richie Rich, he wants lots of everything -- and so demanded a "tenfold increase" in U.S. nuclear weapons. He also asked his briefers, three times: "Why haven't we used them? What good are nuclear weapons if you don't use them?" Three times, leading Secretary Of Oil State Tillerson to refer to Donny as "a fucking moron".  Given North Korea, given China; given that Donny can order a nuclear strike if he wants -- there are reportedly hushed conversations among White House senior staff about what to do if Wonderboy "lunges for the nuclear football" (Washington Post).
  • "There’s endless debate about what impeachment is for and what it is. At the end of the day, it’s really not about criminal infractions or which misdeeds might be impeachable... the architects of the constitution wanted a path to avoid what we would now call a coup....You need a constitutional framework ... by which a President who is clearly dangerous to the Republic or not capable of filling the job can be removed. The odds of this happening any time soon or any time during Trump’s term seem close to nil. But this is the kind of President it was designed for." -- Josh Marshall (Talking Points Memo)
Our Dear Leader appeared before the 'Value Voters' on Friday the 13th, stuffed into a khaki uniform and shouting about historical union with Vienna or something; I don't know. That loon rants and raves so often we just tune him out, now, hoping he'll go away; thank god for President Hindenburg.  But no matter what Wonderboy does, strutting and preening and capering, nothing happens. Guess we'll be invading Poland next.

Springtime For FP
Recent elections in Austria have made Sebastian Kurz Austria's newest Chancellor. A 'center-right' politician of the Oesterreiches Volks Partei (Austrian People's Party), Kurz at age 31 will be the youngest leader of the country in its history. The OVP has dominated Austrian politics for decades, generally making a coalition with the country's Socialist party in its Parliament -- but that is about to change.

This time, Kurz will make a partnership with the far-right 'Freedom Party', founded in the 50's by alleged ex-nazis, and which had a rebirth in the early 2000's. The FP never received more than a fractional percentage of the vote -- until now. Elections earlier in the year brought the FP within shouting distance of leading the entire country. They've pulled in nearly 27% of the national vote -- while at the same time in Germany, the far-right 'Alternative For Germany' party recently won over ninety seats in the Bundestag. Apparently, fascism isn't just for jokes, anymore.

A coalition between Austria's centrist conservatives and proto-fascists would result in more political credibility for the far right -- which doesn't surprise, really: despite its history after the 1938 Anschluss, when WW2 ended the Allies considered Austria a nation which had been 'occupied' by Germany. So, even though many Austrians had cheerfully, gleefully supported the nazis, the entire population of the country was given victim status.

There was no effort to denazify the country after May of 1945, as was done in Germany. That Austria later gained a reputation as an unreconstructed hotbed of nazi sympathizers was no surprise, either.

Sad Vlad: Winnah And Champeen
Reports continue in the New York Times and elsewhere showing the extent to which giant (ostensibly) American Tech companies were used to manipulate the voting population in 2016.

 Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / Getty / UK Guardian

None of this should surprise anyone. Cyber warfare is an extension of signals and cryptography intelligence developed during WW2, resulting in Britain's Blechtley Park (now GCHQ), America's Arlington Hall (now the NSA), and in Russia, what became FAPSI. The difference is, hacking a foreign government (or business competitor)'s computer system is no longer just about stealing secrets or reading communications traffic. So much critical public and private infrastructure is digitally connected that (as with the Stuxnet worm attack on Iran) it's vulnerable to outright sabotage.

It's ironic that the products of a Marxist-Stalinist-Oligarch society used the highest expressions of capitalism and personal enrichment of a tiny technocratic elite (Facebook, Google, Twitter) to affect the course of a critical national election -- and this, after the U.S. allegedly 'won' the Cold War. This was probably not lost on Sad Vlad, the Putin, who may have herniated himself laughing over it.

Harvey Weinstein: Unrepentant Bag Of Redacted
Tubby Harvey, who has apparently used his position as a Hollywood deal- and star-maker ("I'm a famous guy," he said to one of the women he'd abused, who was wearing an NYPD wire) into a bullying, sociopathic domination of everyone and everything around him for nearly three decades, is [redacted] [redacted].

Within a week, he's been fired from a company which had his own name on it, one of the preeminent media talent and production agencies in 'the Biz', his own brother on its board of directors saying what a [redacted] he is; he's been kicked out of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; his wife has left him because [redacted]; and he is facing multiple legal actions, and criminal investigations for alleged rapes in the UK, where there is no statute of limitations on such a crime.

His fall was so swift. It was as if, suddenly given an opening, the entertainment industry went after him for what he had done -- in part, revenge for being bullied all those years, and out of self-preservation. It appeared obvious many in the biz, men and women, knew Harvey was a [redacted] [redacted] [redacted], and that he [redacted], but remained silent. The women abetted his acts out of fear -- because he was such a power in the industry; one phone call from Harvey Weinstein could make or break a career.

The men abetted Harvey's behavior, both out of fear he would Go Tubby on them, and because so many men dominating the film industry treat the women in it as chattel, just as Tubby Harvey had.

Auf nicht wiedersehen, Harvey, you Momzer.
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MEHR, Mit Eine Erklärung:  I toyed with the idea of apologizing for the forgoing, but I won't. 

As it is, I'm frustrated by the utter senselessness of many aspects of our culture -- how things have come to be as they are -- as well as the continuing harm to people, to animals, to things. We know (hell; even children understand) that if you do certain things, or act in certain ways, the outcome isn't good. I don't bring the Yiddish for just any set of circumstances. And I don't just mean fat Harvey.

That we are, collectively, where we are is confounding, saddening and disorienting. I'm surprised that I haven't just created a post which repeats a single epithet, over and over, three thousand times.

Instead, I keep returning to a single pair of phrases: It can't go on like this, and, This cannot end well.
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UND JETZT NOCH IMMER MEHR:  Via Soul Of America, this from Dave Zirin at The Nation [paragraphing added for emphasis]:
"Coach Pop [Gregg Popovich, Head Coach, San Antonion Spurs] called me up after hearing the president’s remarks explaining why he hadn’t mentioned the four US soldiers killed in an ambush in Niger. Trump said, 'President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls, a lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate, when I think I’m able to do it.'
Maybe it was the bald-faced nature of this lie, maybe it was Pop’s own history in the military, but the coach clearly had to vent...
'I want to say something, and please just let me talk, and please make sure this is on the record... I’ve been amazed and disappointed by so much of what this president had said, and his approach to running this country, which seems to be one of just a never ending divisiveness. 
'But his comments [on Monday, October 16] about those who have lost loved ones in times of war and his lies that previous presidents Obama and Bush never contacted their families are so beyond the pale, I almost don’t have the words.
'This man in the Oval Office is a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others. This has of course been a common practice of his, but to do it in this manner—and to lie about how previous presidents responded to the deaths of soldiers—is as low as it gets. 
'We have a pathological liar in the White House, unfit intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically to hold this office, and the whole world knows it, especially those around him every day. The people who work with this president should be ashamed, because they know better than anyone just how unfit he is, and yet they choose to do nothing about it. This is their shame most of all.' ..."
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Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Slow-Motion Train Wreck

The Barbecue Next Time


[NYT] WASHINGTON -- President Trump shared on Twitter a cartoon on Tuesday morning of a train running over a person with a CNN logo covering the person’s head, three days after a fatal collision in Charlottesville, Va.  Mr. Trump deleted his retweet minutes later.

His Tweet later ("Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the #Fake News Media will never be truly satisfied ... truly bad people! ") confirmed it -- See? Whatever I say will never be good enough -- intolerant! Sad!
Late Monday, Mr. Trump also shared a post from the account of a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist suggesting that the news media is ignoring violence in Chicago. The account owner, Jack Posobiec, is known for promoting false narratives such as the “Pizzagate” hoax and a conspiracy theory about the murder of a Democratic aide.
And then, we had Tuesday afternoon at Trump Tower. Ha ha ha.

For some reason, I'm reminded of a poem which a friend once told me about (which I've labored to find since): a circus tent, filled with people enraptured by watching a clown light matches with his toes -- so enraptured, that they are surprised when the roof of the tent is blown away, and they find the world has come to an end.

The only legitimate Brennenen Zeitfragenen these days are, How long does this particular sideshow go on? How many people will (to use a Watership Down reference) have to Go Tharn before we move to The Next Stage?  And, What Will that Next Stage be?

One possible answer: Over at The Soul Of America, there was a shared post which neatly summed up the Past-Is-Prologue we've been witnessing over the past seven-plus months.
A discredited ruling ideology, declining standards of living, the memory of lived prosperity and absolute despair for the future: this is as toxic a society as you can imagine. Now add to that waves of immigrants fleeing the storms and heat waves of South and Central America. An increasingly violent, increasingly militarized border, and an increasingly aggressive ICE. The continued decline of white Americans into a national minority. And a wealthy elite, controlling the most powerful propaganda apparatus in history, desperate to find a scapegoat for the country's ongoing deterioration.
Any questions? See you at The Barbecue Next Time !
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Friday, November 11, 2016

Zukunft

That Which Has No Shape

Zukunft (Zoo/kun/ft): The Future. The word Kunft is from kommen, which is to come. And the word zu can be translated as to, so in a way Zukunft means nothing other than: to come.

(And, all you wags out there: Turn the page now.)
_________________________________


What Michelle Goldberg Said.
All over this country, the deplorables arewilding. “US Hate Crimes Spark Anxiety in the Wake of Trump Win,” says a Financial Times headline. Reports CNN, “Fears of heightened bigotry and hate crimes have turned into reality for some Americans after Donald Trump’s presidential win.” Fliers at Texas State University said that in the wake of Trump’s victory, it’s time “to organize tar and feather vigilante squads and go arrest and torture those deviant university leaders spouting off all this diversity garbage.” ...

Trump has taken time to denounce the protesters filling city streets to express their horror at his election but not the people committing violence in his name. He has not, for example, said a word about the Trump victory parade that the Ku Klux Klan is holding in North Carolina.

What Peter Thai Larsen Said.
...an explicitly inward-looking America would have a far-reaching impact on the world. Protectionist measures might prompt other countries to retaliate... Countries that previously sheltered under the U.S. military umbrella would rearm, adding to regional tensions.

There are no other hegemons ready to step in. The European Union is grappling with a stagnant economy, a wave of migration and the threat of an expansionist Russia. Several of its members could suffer Trump-like insurrections next year. ...

China, meanwhile, will strengthen its grip on Asia: the Philippines and Malaysia are already cosying up to the People's Republic. However, China's extraordinary growth over the last three decades has largely depended on its ability to hitch a free ride on the global system of trade and finance policed by the United States.

What Valerie Volcovici Said.
The election of climate change skeptic Donald Trump as president is likely to end the U.S. leadership role in the international fight against global warming ... Trump has called global warming a hoax created by China to give it an economic advantage ... He has appointed noted climate change skeptic Myron Ebell to help lead transition planning for the Environmental Protection Agency.

What Mandos @Ian Welch Said.
5. The Supreme Court appointment issue is the worst thing to come out of this. A court that has assisted an unjust legal and social order has ensured the perpetuation of its worst elements.

What Digby Said.
Popular disgust with the status quo propelled Trump to the presidency as a Republican. It arose because after decades of being played for dupes by their leaders, the GOP base finally caught on that they were being bullshitted. Finally, people rebelled. Also against Democrats more interested in business interests than voters'. What made Trump their champion was how he out-bullshitted the bullshitters. Somehow, in spite of his sketchy personal history, this made him seem more honest and trustworthy. We will see how far Trump's talent for bullshitting gets him with supporters once he breaks their hearts.

What TT Said. Kind Of.
(See it Here At The Nation.)

What Dan Wright Said.
There’s no way to sweep this under the rug: the American people have voted to end the empire. The entire imperial apparatus lined up behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to become president. Former CIA Director Mike Morrell even publicly endorsed Clinton and called her opponent an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

But it was ultimately Donald Trump who prevailed in the election. Trump spent the entirety of his campaign attacking the foreign policy of George W. Bush and one of its chief advocates, Clinton. First Trump took down former Florida Governor Jeb Bush in the primary by slamming the Iraq War and Jeb’s ambivalence surrounding it. Then he used Clinton’s support for the Iraq War and regime change in Libya to call her “trigger happy” and dangerous.

... Trump’s realism and Clinton’s history of aggression and interventionist positioning led to a neoconservative exodus from the Republican Party. The neocons uniformly opposed Trump from the beginning and before long they all endorsed Clinton. By election day, almost all of the 2003 Iraq War architects and cheerleaders supported Clinton or at least said they would not vote for Trump.

In the final debate, Clinton said she would launch an air war against Russia and the Syrian government to establish a No Fly Zone in Syria, then accused Trump of being a “puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin for not supporting it. Trump coolly responded that he thought it would be good for the country and world if America and Russia got along.
_______________________________

 What Matt Taibbi Said.

... Shunned during election season by many in his own party, President-elect Trump's closest advisers are a collection of crackpots and dilettantes who will make Bush's cabinet look like the Nobel committee. The head of his EPA transition team, Myron Ebell, is a noted climate-change denier. Pyramid enthusiast and stabbing expert Ben Carson is already being mentioned as a possible Health and Human Services chief. Rudy Giuliani, probably too unhinged by now for even a People's Court reboot, might be attorney general. God only knows who might end up being Supreme Court nominees; we can only hope they turn out to be lawyers, or at least people who played lawyers onscreen...

Trump made idiots of us all [i.e., in the media]. From the end of primary season onward, I felt sure Trump was en route to ruining, perhaps forever, the Republican Party as a force in modern American life. Now the Republicans are more dominant than ever, and it is the Democratic Party that is shattered and faces an uncertain future.

And they deserve it. The Democratic Party's failure to keep Donald Trump out of the White House in 2016 will go down as one of the all-time examples of insular arrogance. The party not only spent most of the past two years ignoring the warning signs of the Trump rebellion, but vilifying anyone who tried to point them out. It denounced all rumors of its creeping unpopularity as vulgar lies and bullied anyone who dared question its campaign strategy by calling them racists, sexists and agents of Vladimir Putin's Russia.

... Most of us smarty-pants analysts never thought Trump could win because we saw his run as a half-baked white-supremacist movement fueled by last-gasp, racist frustrations of America's shrinking silent majority... no way he could topple America's reigning multicultural consensus. How could he? After all, the country had already twice voted in an African-American Democrat to the White House.

Yes, Trump's win was a triumph of the hideous racism, sexism and xenophobia that has always run through American society. But his coalition also took aim at the neoliberal gentry's pathetic reliance on proxies to communicate with flyover America. They fed on the widespread visceral disdain red-staters felt toward the very people Hillary Clinton's campaign enlisted all year to speak on its behalf: Hollywood actors, big-ticket musicians, Beltway activists, academics, and especially media figures...

Candidate Trump told a story about a conspiracy of cultural and financial elites bent on finishing off a vanishing white middle-class nirvana, first by shipping jobs overseas and then by waving hordes of crime-prone, bomb-tossing immigrants over the border.

These elites lived in both parties, Trump warned. The Republicans were tools of job-exporting fat cats who only pretended to be tough on immigration and trade in order to win votes, when all they really cared about were profits. The Democrats were tools of the same interests, who subsisted politically on the captured votes of hoodwinked minorities, preaching multiculturalism while practicing globalism. Both groups, Trump insisted, were out of touch with the real American voter. Neither party saw the awesome potential of this story to upend our political system.
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Monday, January 19, 2015

And No One Is Surprised










 Via the New York Times online. Oxfam's reports can be found here.

It's all about frogs, and slowly heated water. For an additional look at How The Future Will Be, see the frightening I Was An Amazon Chew Toy, which involves dogs.

Any questions?
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Saturday, October 20, 2012

Roger Ailes Calls NYT "Scum"


 Imagine The Surprise

 The "Roger Ailes" Balloon For The Upcoming Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
(Photo: Flikr Hive Mind)

Roger Ailes, appointed by Little Rupert Murdoch to run Fox cable news, referred to reporters for the New York Times as "lying scum".
________________________________________________________________________


I posted a much longer rant about this, but frankly I'm a little tired of bile, including my own.  Human nature is often disappointing, small and mean; Ailes is a good representative of the kind of person who makes the world worse, dirtier and more confined in which to live.

There's enough in the public record about his actions which define him clearly; I don't need to add to it, and you don't need to read it.

As the old Zen saying goes, If you sit by the river long enough, the body of your enemy will float by. One day we'll read Ailes' obituary, and the effects of his actions in the world will be what defines him, as it's true for all of us.

Until then, go outside; enjoy the day. Spend time with friends.

Ailes will still be who he is, and he will be fat.

________________________________________________________________________

Friday, August 31, 2012

Fat Gina Speaks



Shut Yer Gobs An' Gimme Another Tax Break, Ya Fookin' Peasants


Die Dicke Gina (Twitter via LA Times Online)

David Lazarus in the LA Times Online shares the wisdom of the ages with The Fookin' Masses, as channeled by the world's richest female -- a person who apparently doesn't actually do anything, except spend money and, uh, eat.
...here's the world's wealthiest woman, Australian mining tycoon Gina Rinehart, with some helpful advice.

"If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain," she said in a magazine piece. "Do something to make more money yourself -- spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working."

...Rinehart made her money the old-fashioned way: She inherited it. Her family['s] iron ore prospecting fortune of $30.1 billion makes her Australia's wealthiest person and the richest woman on the planet... "There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire," she said... "Become one of those people who work hard, invest and build, and at the same time create employment and opportunities for others."

...Why are people poor? Rinehart blamed what she described as "socialist," anti-business government policies, and urged Australian officials to lower the minimum wage and cut taxes.

"The millionaires and billionaires who choose to invest in Australia are actually those who most help the poor and our young," she said. "This secret needs to be spread widely."
Lower their minimum wage? Of course -- only through austerity, obeying one's betters, and enforced thift can the toiling, little people someday leave the fields and stables, and become one of the house servants! -- perhaps, even Gina's Chocolate and Foster's Fetcher!

Australia's mining billionaires have (with the support of Little Rupert's media in Aussieland, Aber Natürlich) demanded fewer taxes on their profits, fewer environmental restrictions on the pollution levels of their industrial processes, and have paid Rightist politicians for decades to give them what they want -- much like the 196 people in America who expect to purchase the 2012 election.

Fortunately, for Australians and regular humans everywhere, there are sentient beings in their current, center-left government. Reading Big Gina's sweaty, waddling remarks infuriated Australia's Treasurer, Wayne Swan, who has criticized Rinehart, along with other Australian mining barons, for financing "self-interested" campaigns against the Australian government's position on mining taxes, limiting environmental degradation, and criminal penalties to prevent persons who are 'more than plus-sized' from wearing spandex in public.

Swan said, "These sorts of comments are an insult to the millions of Australian workers who go to work and slog it out to feed the kids and pay the bills," Swan said. "[Rinehart apparently regards Australians as] lazy workers who drink and socialise too much."

The president of Australia's mining union, Tony Maher, also chimed in: "At the same time as trying to import cheap foreign labor and avoid paying tax, Rinehart claims it's millionaires and billionaires who are the greatest [force] for social good."

"What planet is she living on?" Good question. Whatever planet that is, clearly, Big Gina believes that she is one of the Owners of it -- the part with sofas and chairs that don't break down too easily.

The Rich, like chronic or sexually-transmitted disease, will always be with us. Unless some other events intervene, I predict we'll have to continue putting up with similar, self-serving blubber for some time.


Friday, August 17, 2012

Hulk Decide

Or, Those Things Which Herr Hulk Does Not Care For



We inaugurate yet another DogBlog category for the three people and the superintelligent parakeet who read them: Hulk Not Like; or, a category of Things found wanting by the second cousin to the Jolly Green Giant, deserving of opprobrium and HULK SMASH!!!

More later this weekend on what or whom Monsieur Le Hulk is displeased with.



MEHR: A friend has observed that they like the "idea behind" Hulk Not Like, but wish I wouldn't use images that contain profanity.



Well, okay then. Let it not be said we don't provide a fair and balanced offering of Hulk images.