I Lift Mine Eyes To The Hills

And See The Naked Fat Guy

(Photo: ©Indecline, via Art Newspaper, August 17, 2018)

Back in the day, I was associated with the Billboard Liberation Front (a little odd, considering what I once did for a living, but there you are). 

The basic concepts of the BLF (and don't take my word for it: read the Manifesto) were essentially that the materialism and commercialism expressed in billboard advertising were part of the mass deadening of our culture, and so fair game for artistic manipulation which revealed said deadening -- like Adbusters, except the BLF came first and wasn't available in bookstores. You had to look up and experience it -- or, actually do it. 

So when I recently noted the art collective, Indecline, had been out and about in Los Angeles, it stirred a few memories.

(Photo: ©Indecline, via Art Newspaper, June 22, 2018)

Consider the logistics necessary to do something like this in an urban area -- reconnoitering the site; having access to the platforms; creating the artwork to match fonts, sizes and background colors; hauling all materials up narrow ladders; and completing the work rapidly enough to avoid being seen, and any unpleasantness with the local constabulary. Normally, this is done in the dead of night.

Indecline had already garnered some notoriety prior to the 2016 election by creating, and publicly displaying, life-sized statues of a naked Wonderboy in several large American cities (regarding their naked Il Duce statue, placed in New York City's Union Square, a spokesman advised, "NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small").  Earlier this year, they had created a jail cell in a Trump hotel in New York for a Trump lookalike in a MAGA hat.

I should note that, sadly, no one performs this sort of consciousness-raising exercise on a billboard regarding the state of the Democratic party. But don't worry; it's all in Good Fun, and the future is bright and shiny and tasty and fun.

And, Wonderboy continues to gain weight in office, while the rest of us are driven mad -- meaning there will most likely be future billboards in need of liberation. Like this one:

(Margaret Bourke-White, 1937)

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Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?

1.)  To Avoid the Collapse Of Western Civilization.

In der offiziellen Version ist das Huhn ein beklagenswerter Feigling, vor der Glorreichen Zukunft davonläuft und falsche Nachrichten verbreitet. (In the official version, the chicken is a deplorable coward who runs away from the Glorious future and creates fake news.) 

There are, at a global level, two “mainstream” forms of hegemonic politics, each with their own oligarchical backing. One of these is the Clintonian-Merkelist-Obamist-Sorosian politics that is a confluence of at least overt social-liberalism and a variety of economic neoliberalism.  The other one is a Trumpian-Putinian-Bannonite-Orbánist instrumentalization of parochial nationalism. 

The former represents an oligarchic politics, democratically unrestrained trans-national capitalism, that has the potential to do great harm to the world if left unchecked.  The latter represents a con game that starts out with cotton candy for the True People and eventually ends up with states under the control of local and not-so-local looters who instrumentalize nationalist conflict for crony enrichment — this too, is oligarchy.

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2.)  To Challenge A Corrupt Patriarchal Power Structure.

"I'm not exactly sure why the chicken crossed the road... I attempted to question the chicken but he wasn't really communicating with me." (The Dodo, July 12, 2018)

(Actual Quote:) "I recently uncovered the nature of reality from a man on a flaming pie, who handed me a[n] herbal cigarette. I now know that previously I was a body in a vat being poked by a malignant demon. I was only an ape then, but after millions of years I evolved so that I could have the brain power to lasso the demon with my electrode and thus escape. I was chased by a large white balloon, but made my getaway from the Island. Since then, I have set up my own very successful religion in the U.S.  So, all in all, make sure you always trust your senses, never question organised religion, and don’t engage in any philosophy beyond The Matrix 1-3. 

Simon Maltman, Bangor"

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3.)  To Express Incredulity At The Level Of Malevolent Stupid Which Is Allowed. 

At the Friday propaganda session, when Missy Sarah told Another Big Fib, she was immediately shamed by the Chicken. All the Boys and Girls laughed at her because she was such a Big Fibber.

Some reporters will outright call Sanders a liar. Others are more reluctant to break out the L-word but still become frustrated at the way she regularly obfuscates and bends the truth. Whereas [Sean] Spicer was known for big blowups, reporters say that with Sanders it feels more like a million small things. “There’s almost sometimes an exhaustion writing the stories of the daily briefing because the number of things she says that are patently false are too many to let your story be weighed down with them,” one White House reporter says. 

-- Jason Schwartz, "The Puzzle Of... Sanders"; Politico, May/June, 2018 -- the puzzle, of course, being how a government based on such obvious boldfaced lies and illusion can continue. 

We mean utterly baseless and over-the-top lies, not the standard obfuscations and misdirection we're used to in Aremica -- but real, Foxy Murdoch-style, verging-on-Joseph-Goebbels-type lying.

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4.)  To Maintain Its Balance In An Uncertain Future. 

Don't Drive Angry.

Essentially, businesses have been in a sweet spot for years, in which profits have gradually risen while interest rates have stayed low by historical measures. If either of those trends were to change, many companies with higher debt burdens might struggle to pay their bills and be at risk of bankruptcy. 

...If inflation were to get out of control and the Fed raised interest rates sharply, companies that can handle their debt payments at today’s low interest rates might become more strained. Moreover, with federal deficits on track to rise in the years ahead, the federal government’s borrowing needs could crowd out private borrowing, which would result in higher interest rates and even more challenges for indebted companies. 

The International Monetary Fund included a warning about this run-up in global corporate debt in its most recent Global Financial Stability Report. If inflation were to rise more quickly, Tobias Adrian, an I.M.F. official, said in a news conference, it could “trigger a sudden tightening in financial conditions and a sharp fall in asset prices,” which is I.M.F.-speak for [Ruh-Roh]. 

-- Neil Erwin, "What Will Cause The Next Recession..."; New York Times

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MEHR, MIT EINE KLEINE ANFRAGEN: A message for the three humans, and the Superintelligent Parakeet, who read this blog:

Please go here and do whatever you can to help Arthur. You can click on the "donate" button on his site; or, use the following link, because this is a request that you donate money. 

It doesn't have to be a huge amount. For the price of a couple of lattes and a Boo-Boo Burger, you can do the needful for another person.  Twenty bucks -- ten bucks. Just your pocket change, even.  

This is someone who should have a listing on Go Fund Me! just to keep them alive and in their home -- but they don't; it's just us. Come on; it's a mitzvah, for Christ's sake. 

I never ask you three reprobates to do anything, ever (and, hey; you approach the Parakeet at your peril) -- but I'm not kidding. Please give Arthur some help.  

Please feel free to pass these links around to others.  C'mon, do it.  Thank you.

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Random Barking: Don't Know Much Psychology

Musings Of An Ex-Cigarette-Smoking Man

Research into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder made clear that physical, neuro-chemical effects occur when people experience significant traumatic events, evoking a "fight-or-flight" response, which is a function of our DNA; as hardy meat puppets, we're hard-wired for survival.

Neural pathways created in the brain are triggered when, later, people perceive -- subconsciously, for the most part -- that they're in circumstances similar to that original event, reliving, replaying (and actually reinforcing) the same emotions they experienced in it.

As a definition, PTSD was first used as the Vietnam War began winding down (for America, anyway), and only became a medically-accepted diagnostic category in the early 1980s. The Veteran's Administration was quick to adopt that addition to the DSM-III, but not necessarily to act on it or treat it.

My Dog Trainer (who specializes in PTSD, and has been in the Biz since the mid-70's) agreed that the relationship between trauma, brain chemistry, and cyclic reinforcement of bad experiences is likely.  I've worked with them for a while, and a something we've talked about occasionally is the effect of broad social or political events on the mental health, and trends, in culture and societies.

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In college I was introduced to Loren Eisley through his autobiographical All The Strange Hours. He was born in 1907, and was already in his early twenties during the Depression. There was no way he could describe experiences in his life, on his way to becoming an anthropologist, without mentioning that historical event.

In trying to understand The Depression, any statistics are useless. Every anchor-point that defined a person's place in a community, their sense of identity and self, was threatened. The anxiety people felt (a constant fear in anticipating more loss, shame, powerlessness; death) went on, every day, for years with no end in sight. 

People adapted -- as organisms, that's what we do. But their spirits were bent by the gravity of events, and the effects rippled out through their lives, because that's what History does. 

The political Right has purred for years that FDR's 'social experimentation' after his election "really made the depression 'Great' ".  The truth is, a Republican-led government left 'the markets' to sort themselves out without interference. The Oligarchs of the day didn't care; their lives remained much as they always had been. They left the People on their own.

Herbert Hoover believed in a rugged individualism, where strength built character. Asked decades later how he dealt with critics who blamed him for the Depression, Hoover quipped, "I outlived the bastards". Meanwhile, people struggled to adjust and survive. Until Roosevelt was elected and tried to do something, anything, they did so without hope. 

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Eisley never spoke about what The Depression did to people directly. America is composed of physical places, but also it's very much a geography of the mind: Eisley described hopping freights and moving through Hobo Jungles, towns of the Great Plains, writing sketches of the people he met there, dislocated physically and mentally by The Crash. One night, a hobo told him what he believed was the great lesson of life, hoping Eisley would get it: "Men beat men, kid. That's all there is."

Something in those side-glance references to America during those years reminded me of  late-evening conversations I'd overhear as a child, between my parents and their peers. When they'd talked through current events, surface details of their jobs and days, they worked down to the big events, to the Second World War. Reminiscing in that layer could take time.

Among married couples, the men watched their language (for the most part), and only made brief mention of the details of their war if they'd served in a combat arm. The wives talked about waiting, home, families, radio news, and finding work.

If the talk went on long enough, someone would finally mention The Depression, and something about the conversation took on a different character. The War was something to be proud of, and their voices were energetic, confident, talking about it. And it rubbed off on the children: attending the first day of First Grade, when roll was taken some children answered 'Present' or 'Here'; but a good number of kids responded, "Yo!"

But our parents sounded like distinctly different people when talking about the Depression. I don't remember details -- but sharing these memories sounded different. I could sense a current of uncertainty passing between them, a helpless fear; survivors reliving a disaster that came out of nowhere, and repeating every memory sounded like thank god we got through it; I never want to see anything like that again.

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Reading Eisley sparked a connection for me between the America after 1929, and my mother's compulsive saving of string, rubber bands, pencils, tin foil. How she seemed to expect bad news or a worst-case end to anything; a stock response was, "You never know". My father, despite a level of professional success, bonuses and good reviews, worried that his job was always in jeopardy; his favorite phrase was, "Get with the program".

There was no apparent reason for either of them to live as if anticipating the ceiling would collapse, but they did. And, children talk -- we discovered our parents had similar motivations, fears, even memories. They all had their own Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder -- and the veterans in particular.  One friend's father was a survivor of Corregidor, the Bataan death March, and four years in a Philippine POW camp. Another kid said quietly his father would wake up, shouting for a long-dead shipmate, several times a week.

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It seems obvious that people are affected by the events they live through; that trauma marks us, and it's obvious what we're living through, now, is having the same effect. Never mind the details; we all watch the news. Many people more intelligent than I am present an analysis of What It All Means every day. I only bark about it.

I keep remembering the opening section of a John Gardner short story, "John Napper Sailing Through The Universe" (1974): he and his wife arrive home after a party, full of drink and making their way up to bed. Gardner has a sad vision of the future: ...fumbling, helping each other as we must... [We] take our teeth out. I'm ninety-two. The planet is dying -- pestilence, famine, everlasting war. The nation's in the hands of child molestors. True Dat.

All I'm considering at the moment is how the echoes of the history we're living through continue to affect us, rippling out across time. How just being in the room when something happens -- seeing an image, hearing something shouted or whispered -- shapes perception. How, like gravity from some body unseen in space, experience bends how we act in the world, and our expectations of it.

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And now, something completely different: Socio-Political Commentary!

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Old

The Only Serious Thing In The World

Harry Bertschmann, "Stuttgart No. 6", 1957  (Bertschmann Studio / NYT 2017)

The New York Times recently presented a showcase article about an artist, a painter living in New York City. They've produced a body of work and it's clear they have some chops, a vision -- but they're still trying for that Big Break to achieve recognition. And they're 86 years old.

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American culture really has no idea what to do with the Old (and 'old' is a plastic term; so, anyone over 55, say) beyond separating them from the most important thing in American culture: their money. In that, Olds are no different than any other segment in our population.

In the brave new 5G world, everyone is a unit or resource, part of a demographic group to be influenced, led, monitored and monetized. To the Powers, what people do with their little lives isn't so important -- it's what percentage of their income can be shorn from them during those lives that's key.

In 2016, The New Inquiry webzine dedicated an issue to aging, and in an editorial comment noted

In the ... capitalist core (that is, those regions which have long since sundered the multigenerational household as the central economic unit), old age isn’t held in the public esteem it vaguely remembers it should be due...

But ... (m)any of the indignities of old age are, on inspection, the indignities of being socially discarded — feelings of isolation, a fall in status, loss of autonomy. That is, these are not organic facts of the body but outcomes desired, at some level, by someone. Why that is, and who benefits, are both painfully obvious and logically obscure.

The general assumptions made about old age have to do with physical changes, a reduction and a diminution. Older people "retire", leave the jobs where they labored and the homes where they lived and (possibly) raised families, and slowly disappear from public view.  Who cares what they did in their lives? They're no longer vital or real contributors to the world. That's all in the past.

And journey's end is death, the ultimate reduction and mystery.  Olds are a reminder of The End of everything our spiritually crippled culture asserts is most important. Small wonder most people are almost eager to ignore them, unless of course there's money to be made.

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People with a desire for artistic expression make efforts to translate their insights and experience, birthing them into the world through whatever medium. American culture takes art seriously, and boasts of the achievements of our artists, but doesn't support those artists and won't take them seriously unless there's money involved (if so, Jeff Koons is the greatest artist humankind ever produced).

Often the image of that effort is connected to youth --  the young artist, the unheated garret; trying for recognition and fame, the "big break". Most people wouldn't connect being a "struggling artist" with being an Old -- but I'll bet you lunch that it's more common.

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When the New York Times published Harry Bertschmann's story, it was a reminder that artists frequently make trade-offs between creative time and material security, Working The Day Job. Bertschmann was no different; he worked for decades doing advertising art, and making that choice affected Bertschmann's path as an artist.

In that review, the NYT story took a traditional perspective -- an underlying assumption that art must result in financial success and name recognition to have any intrinsic worth: Bertschmann knew Rothko and Kline and Motherwell; they got famous and rich, and he didn't.

The usual conclusion of a storyline like this will depict the unrecognized artist, aging, living in solitary poverty -- a cold-water, sub-basement apartment; a description of finished canvases stacked beside the pallet and mattress, the stained, pathetic hotplate.

But this story has a Cinderella ending: good news, that Bertschmann is becoming known, late in life, with a promise of financial reward: the NYT article was timed to appear a week before a solo show of his selected works at a prestigious, upstate gallery. There's lots of buzz and potential for sales.

Don't misunderstand: I'm all for Cinderella endings. I'm glad Bertschmann and his wife will have more money, more security -- and, that his work will be shown. People will see it -- and whatever alchemical magic happens when we see, hear or read art can take place. That's why Art gets done. I would suggest that if Bertschmann were here, he'd say that's what he's been doing for 60 years; it's why he's on the planet.

At the same time, there's a reminder that perspectives and assumptions about art, about aging, and life and death, served up by our culture are terrifyingly inadequate. In spite of itself, the NYT article of Bertschmann's story gives a glimpse of that -- and that sometimes, in this world, there are happy endings.

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Not In The Stars, But Ourselves

Random Barking:  Oprah

Annual programs, like the Golden Globes earlier this week, celebrate the entertainment industry. It's a way for the public to vicariously experience an event honoring the work of familiar actors and actresses.

I like movies, but avoid watching self-congratulatory presentations like the Globes (the last Oscars I watched were sometime in the late 1980's). They're ways of participating in the American film and television celebrity culture which dominates our public entertainment. I opt out.

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Every summer, there was an annual celebration held in my home town, with a parade down our two main streets. Every year, the organizing committee found some entertainment star to make the parade's 'Grand Marshal'. My father had something to do with organizing these parades, and by my adolescence had spent some time observing a number of film and television notables.

(I won't list them, except to mention in the early Sixties, I was stunned to meet Grand Marshal "Aunt Jemima" -- a heavy-set black woman, smiling and pleasant as she shook my hand, playing the iconic namesake for a brand of high-fructose corn syrup.

(On television just days before, I'd seen news film footage of police, dogs and water hoses attacking civil rights marchers in Mississippi. Even as a kid, I knew in my bones that was ugly and wrong, and remember thinking as this actress shook my hand: how could she stand, smiling, head bound up in what used to be referred to in the majority culture as a 'pickaninny' kerchief, wearing a calico dress with a shawl over her shoulders, smiling, surrounded by a room full white people -- with things like that happening? Well... it was an acting job.)

The characters these actors portrayed on the big or small screen were acceptable -- it was their talent to make us believe the make-believe. But (with a few exceptions) as I watched them interact with other adults from their 'public personas', I began to believe the idea of "celebrity" was about artifice, pretense, in the real world -- and to me, not acceptable, because as a kid, I was constantly getting in trouble for play-acting, "not being yourself" -- but every child can recognize that as typical, and double-standard, adult behavior.

It took much longer to learn that, in the larger world, acting from a persona as an adult is not only expected, it's often supported behavior -- particularly in entertainment, or politics. These days, the difference between the two is so slight as to be trivial.

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The difference between entertainment and politics is that art has power -- but only a politician can arrange to deport 200,000 Salvadorians, initiate Kill Drone Tuesday, authorize mass surveillance of all Americans' personal communications or the invasion of a middle eastern country based on manufactured evidence.

So as I read about the possibility being 'floated' for an Oprah Winfrey run for President in 2020, my immediate visceral reaction was negative: this was more celebrity-politics, reality teevee bullshit. Do we need another billionaire running for office? I thought; do we need another figurehead, utterly without experience in government, allegedly running the country? And, who will run them?

Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire, a competent business person; an entertainer; a black woman who has struggled through prejudice, misogyny and ignorance to succeed, in the way Americans are taught to accept and value 'success'. I understand all this, and (beyond my knee-jerk dislike of wealth and the wealthy) offer no criticism of her achievements.

The UK Guardian this morning referred to Winfrey as "one of the world's best neoliberal capitalist thinkers" -- but is that what we want? Is another neoliberal capitalist what the citizens of America need? I asked myself.

Online, there was a lot of verbiage about Hoping For Oprah, tossed into the air like confetti at a national convention. The pundits and even Our Leader were all a-twitter, literally -- and it isn't as if  we don't have bigger, real things, to worry about. One post by Ian Welch noted that

[None of  the possible Left candidates for U.S. President in 2020] have more star power and fundraising ability than someone like Oprah. ([who] does run a company, and does it competently.)...  Then we add in the billionaires, like Facebook CEO Zuckerberg. What other billionaire is now thinking “screw buying politicians, they can’t be trusted. I’ll just run myself?”...

2020 isn’t going to be a normal election. It is going to be far crazier than 20[16].

And heck, if I had a vote, I’d vote for Oprah (or Clooney) before most Democratic politicians, especially if they say “universal healthcare, fuck the bankers and no wars” like they mean it.

I suspect many Americans would too.

Remember, Trump won, in the end, because enough people were sick of regular politicians to take a flyer on him. A celebrity with more charisma and brains is entirely viable and will be considered seriously.

I foamed a bit more, reading this, until I was finally able to focus on what I thought was his main point: Given where Americans are, a candidate who appears competent and believes in at least baseline progressive policy ideas, is worth voting for. 

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As The new year opens, the notion of a wealthy, (presumed) progressive celebrity, with no experience in government, becoming President of the United States matters less than the direction of Left politics in America. Our fortunes, our families and our lives are in danger. It is that serious. No joke.

If we do not have a political party whose stated aims are people first, not profit; real representation in government; real inclusion; real equality; healthcare; fuck the banksters; and no war -- if we don't have a political movement which says this, first, and a lot else besides -- then which celebrity Liberal figurehead runs for President won't matter. 

If having that kind of political party is possible, then we should ask that its standard-bearer support those aims, and not be owned by the same status quo groups which believe they own all of us. That candidate could be Oprah, or Clooney, or Gillibrand, Warren, or Sanders -- as long as they talk the talk, and mean it. Policy first, then Celebrity.

But we don't have this, now. The Democratic party is (presumably) the most well-organized and well-funded liberal / progressive political organization in America. But it's wounded, adrift, and the list of Democratic politicians not career collaborators in a corrupt system is very short. 

Whether the Democratic party is even relevant in 2018 is an open question; just being the only big Liberal game in town isn't a definition of relevancy. Being the party of more Centrist is not relevancy. Just to survive, we cannot stand in the Center -- that time is long past. The Democratic party needs to be shaken down to its foundations and rebuilt to meet real demands of our times and our people. 

If we can't rebuild the Democratic party, or develop a political organization which represents the future we want and need, then America is done. 

Electing another billionaire celebrity, without massive changes in our national priorities, is no more sustainable than the path being chosen by the current billionaire celebrity in office. The future is ours to lose, or to fight for. 

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Republican Finish Tax Bill; Perhaps Will Provide Details Later

Step Outside

Up There (Getty)

They haven't yet determined how to charge us a fee  for looking up, into the universe -- but would very much like to, because it is who They are, and is what will please Them.

But even so, step outside and look up. 

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In The Waiting Room Of The World

Sound and Rhythm

I should like to be able to love my country and still love Justice. I don't want any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping Justice alive.

-- Camus

Random Barking: Burning Down The House

After Harvey

 Previously Flooded Houston Neighborhood; September 1, 2017

It is hot in Kiddietown. Baking hot. Pipin' hot. The kind of Hot where Dogs get under things, in the shade, and just watch stuff happen. And smell things. We bark randomly at what appears to be nothing.

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The media coverage of Harvey's hitting Texas seemed to fall into neat categories, from the relative safety of Kiddietown: pre-game warnings and warmup as the storm approached land; cellphone video of the effects of high winds, before-and-after photos showing effects of unbelievably torrential rain; and, in Harvey's wake, the brave pluck with which those affected, and the rescuers, soldier on. Cut to commercial.

A good example of this last -- Thursday's ABC World News Tonight (A Walt Disney Production) aired a segment  showing one ABC reporter on-scene in Houston, 'embedded' with a helicopter unit. They lift off -- and suddenly, are diverted to evacuate people sheltering in a Middle School -- dry at that moment, but threatened by rising flood levels. The people had to be airlifted out -- quickly!

The helicopter lands near the school. The ABC reporter was filmed assisting in the evacuation, even at one point appearing to give orders to someone off-camera; okay, let's go! Rapid cuts between shots makes for rising tension; will they make it? Will they have enough time?

All those at the school (including Dogs; film crews love photographing Dogs in emergency situations) were airlifted to another shelter. We watch them, dazed, walking into another building -- brave evacuees! -- and presumably all was a happy ending.

I'm bothered by this, as I am about the sensationalism of news reporting generally, the demand for a happy ending before the last commercial break. And, what's being reported has to conform to that story arc. Real conditions on the ground can't be controlled --  they're messy, and prompt some to ask uncomfortable questions. Can't have that.

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A friend has family in Texas; the texts fly back and forth. Both have their own families; all live in / around Houston. One has lost their home and very probably everything in it -- and, because they relied on the information from the City of Houston, didn't purchase flood insurance. The chance of that would be a "once-in-500-year" event in their part of the city.

The other family member and their people are dry so far but surrounded by flood zones. They've spoken with others in their area, who watched armed men commandeering boats from their Coast Guard crews at gunpoint. and those same people and boats were seen systematically looting neighborhood homes. They've heard sporadic gunfire.

They live in Katy, near a reservoir which may breach, and have to be ready to evacuate within 30 minutes of notice -- but, have been given no instructions on how they are to leave an area surrounded by flood waters, or where they are to go.

Over at The Soul Of America, there was a link to a similar take on what Harvey means, in spite of the media coverage:

...an air of unreality hangs about the flooding of Houston. Those of you with memories of the 00s will remember how Gore was mocked for his animations of oceans flooding cities. ...

The press so far has -- understandably -- concentrated on happy rescues, people doing things for people. Underneath this news is a sort of failure to express the probable extent of the casualties and what this means economically.

...We gotta change our infrastructure. We gotta severely reshape our economy. Capitalism isn't built to solve this problem. That isn't even to say we abolish capitalism, it is simply a call for recognizing its limits and acting accordingly.

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And in the midst of it all, Our Leader's appearance in Texas. He never spoke about the People with any empathy, never said how he recognized their fear and loss; he only spoke about them in relation to himself. The focus must be on Him, the magnificent one -- the vengeful one (reminding FEMA in a Tweet, "The world is watching!" Don't fuck this up or you'll deal with me). At his side, the Faithful Melania, in six-inch [redacted]-me high-heeled pumps, off to see how the peasantry is faring in this icky weather -- like her husband, tasteful; classy.

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Bad things are happening. Nearly every sentient human senses that hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning and other storms are becoming more and more powerful, destructive, and that climate change (I heard the term, "climate breakdown," yesterday) is a principal factor.

But, we know what our Leader's feelings are about that. Fake news; fake science. USA. USA. Climate breakdown isn't real to the Leader. Perhaps it will be when Mor-e-Lego is submerged by another hurricane hitting Florida, but I doubt it. He'll find a way to make the country pick up the tab for it. We already pay for his many jaunts. And his golf.

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The mainstream media's presentation of Harvey's landfall and aftermath is a reminder of how much more of things, iceberg-like, are out of our sight below the waterline. Not only things which we don't see, but which by some collective, unspoken agreement we aren't allowed to see.

It is, if we look, a way of judging how much difference there is between comfortable assumptions of how life In These Times is, and the real. If you look closely enough, you might see a nation fracturing along lines of race and class, net worth and age; and it seems God's away on business.

Heading off to work early each morning, I see more homeless, broken, addicted and profoundly, heartbreakingly disturbed human beings on the streets than ever before. A friend, working in Tech in Kiddietown, had his first-ever anxiety attack and ended up in an Urgent Care ER in the Tenderloin; being there for several hours was a cultural eye-opener.

And around the corner from where network news is filming a man carrying a Dog to safety, our national politics is teetering between two different visions.  One, identified as liberal, believes a strong Federal government is essential to ensuring all of The People are served, and protected from the excesses of Capital. It's a compact between a government and its people: You are our highest priority. We are here for you. The spirit of the New Deal.

(It's worth noting: there is a body of opinion that [no matter what laws have been passed making some provisions for our citizens] the New Deal was window-dressing, a band-aid -- in the early 1930's, it saved and perpetuated systematized inequality, that same structure of power and class that has existed in America for generations.)

But there's another group in our national politics which sees that same power and class structure as being too unbalanced  -- towards the poor. That in true Randian spirit, the poor are responsible for their own poverty. That the 'business of America is business', not foreign nonsense. That the country is only a loose confederation of fifty regions and doesn't need a Federal government messing in the business of the States: America, circa 1860. And, if some wealthy person believes we should change the number of states, why not?

And if some States want to declare that -- slavery, say; or 'separate but equal' clauses, are legal -- along with lower wages for women; healthcare determined by "market forces"; relying on corporations to determine 'safe' levels of chemicals in air and water -- well, the States should be able to do that.

The High School Civics Class Version of America is what the media and networks assume is the surveyor's mark, the fixed assumption we share about the world we live in. But that vision doesn't allow for boats taken at gunpoint, looting, nazis marching in the the Old South, robotics, and poverty. It doesn't allow for a Tech industry poised for a great leap forward, which will enrich some, and leave others unable to afford the pretty toys and wonderful services yet to come.

The High School Civics Class Version doesn't allow for the rise of an unstable, corrupt leader, with both major political parties explaining that their continual Fluffing of Corporations and The Rich is just a necessary pragmatism. It doesn't allow for Ferguson, or Charlottesville, or the picture of Hillary Clinton as she warmly embraces Henry Kissinger.

And The High School Civics Class Version doesn't allow for that unstable leader to be a potential target in an investigation for corruption and potential treason. It also doesn't allow for that same Leader to be at the helm of the Joint Chiefs, his principal advisors all four-star generals, as he decides how to deal with a nuclear North Korea backed up by the People's Republic of China.

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None of this is any great surprise, and my observations are not unique. Just more tears in the rain.

Hurricane Irma is developing in the Atlantic. It was just declared a category 3 storm (Harvey was a 4 when it slammed into Texas), and, all things being equal, NASA has predicted it could make landfall in Maryland -- that the District of Columbia will be right in its path.

Other meteorologists predict a track to send it slicing across Florida, not too far from Mor-e-Lego, and some have it sliding across the Caribbean to strike Texas. Again. We'll see -- because we're not going anywhere. The hurricanes will come to us.

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MEHR, MIT WASSER:  

 2 hurricanes in ten days and the mother fucker in the White House still says climate change is a hoax   #Irma  #Harvey
--  Tweet, via Red painter @Redpainter1; 31 August 2017
(From TomClarkBlog)

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Funny

Dick Gregory (1932 - 2017)
Jerry Lewis (1929 - 2017)

Dick Gregory and Jerry Lewis, 1960's

A long time ago, I found myself at a screening of a 16mm film, "Dog Of Nazareth", which portrayed the life of The Jesus and his faithful canine companion. The trailer to the film was actually more interesting -- because whichever moment in His life was being portrayed, the camera was always focused on the Dog. It was hilarious (in that long-ago time before Life Of Brian), and there was much sacrilegious laughter withal.

A notable alternative comics artist was in attendance. We ended up smoking out on the street, talking about the film we'd just watched, and mused about what was humor, anyway? And the fellow said: Humor was a juxtaposition, a collision of opposites which for a split second forced an observer to temporarily abandon their routine assumptions about reality. "Some find that threatening," he went on, "and they respond by getting angry -- but for the other ninety-nine out of a hundred people, they're going to laugh."

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This is late in getting posted, but, still: Dick Gregory passed away last week; Jerry Lewis died Sunday. Both were fixtures in my 1950's, Sixties, and early Seventies, for different reasons, and both were Funny Men from completely different perspectives.

Gregory was funny because his juxtaposition of opposites was in his very presence on a New York stage -- a black man, reminding white audiences about race and class, who was allowed to do what, and where; on what basis, and why.

Wearing a white shirt and three-button Brooks Brothers suit, he balanced himself on a stool and talked in rolling sentences, punctuating his routine with long pauses as he slowly dragged on his cigarette.

“He would find a white waiter and say, ‘Bring me a Scotch and water,’ and there would be this palpable gasp from the crowd,” said Robert Lipsyte, a former New York Times reporter who helped write Mr. Gregory’s 1964 autobiography...

“They’d watch as the waiter brought him the drink. He’d take a sip and then say, ‘Governor Faubus should see me now’ ” — a reference to the Arkansas governor who in 1957 opposed the integration of the Little Rock schools. “He won over the whole audience. They were suddenly liberal again."

It can be argued that Gregory was acting as a band-aid, something to soothe the guilt of his audiences so that they could convince themselves that they weren't really racist, weren't really supporting and perpetuating a class structure that (also) excluded people of color. But Gregory did something revolutionary, in a soft way. At a time when it really was stepping over the color line to do so, he delivered -- a measured voice, slow, even in tone -- reminders of how things actually were.

His voice was like taking your chin, not unkindly, and turning your head to see something that was bound to make you uncomfortable. What you did with it after that was your business -- but for some people it would be one more step up, out of ignorance.

He juxtaposed sardonic observations of life against the privileged assumptions of middle-class, white America ("... a restaurant waitress in the segregated South who told him, 'We don’t serve colored people here,' to which Mr. Gregory replied, 'That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people. Just bring me a whole fried chicken.' ”), and made humor. His audiences laughed, but on some level understood the joke came at a cost. And, he made it possible for other black comics and entertainers to make their way to the stage.

I recall (as old Dogs do) his running for President on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket in 1968 -- the same year that saw Martin Luther King, Jr. and RFK gunned down; that saw Hubert Humphrey the Democratic Party's candidate against Richard Nixon, The One. And a little more than a year later, in Southeast Asia, I found a good number of my black room- and team-mates knew exactly who Dick Gregory was.

A monologist, a comic, a teacher; Gregory didn't quit. He saw comedy as a vehicle for instruction, for consciousness-raising, and even as he passed away was still involved doing what he did best. Losing his voice, now, seems one more cruelty of fate, time, and tides.

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By comparison, Jerry Lewis was someone who didn't ruffle many feathers.  He was as mainstream a comedian as any in postwar America, and while his humor wasn't as socially-focused as Gregory's, his family had been among the waves of Jewish immigrants coming to America -- each of whom could be part of a community, but who had to navigate a world run by Gentiles and the anti-Semitism which, like racism and sexism and homophobia, persists.

Jerome Levitch had parents who were small-time entertainers, "his father [Danny] a song-and-dance man, his mother [Rae,] a pianist — who used the name Lewis when they appeared in ... vaudeville and at Catskills resort hotels. The Levitches were frequently on the road and often left Joey, as he was called, in the care of Rae’s mother and her sisters. The experience of being passed from home to home left Mr. Lewis with an enduring sense of insecurity and, as he observed, a desperate need for attention and affection."

Lewis followed his parents into performing as a comedy 'sketch artist'. His idea of humor was personal, idiosyncratic, a nebbish with slapstick. The story of his paring with the lounge-singer-smooth Dean Martin was one of those near-magic, serendipitous connections: In mid-1946, Lewis was doing a routine at the Havana-Madrid club in Manhattan, lip-syncing popular songs while performing some of what would become his signature slapstick; Martin was singing.

One night, they started riffing off each other in impromptu comedy sessions after the last show. Their antics were noticed by a Billboard magazine, reviewer, who wrote, “Martin and Lewis [have] all the makings of a sock act,” meaning a successful show.  And they were -- very successful, personally and financially.

When they parted, it wasn't pretty. Dean went on as part of the Rat Pack. Jerry learned filmmaking and began directing his own movies, which showed him as a talented comedian -- and became an almost perennial fixture with his annual telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy foundation.

I remember bits and pieces of them as schmaltzy, almost embarrassing (my parents would let the show run as teevee background noise) -- but I also remember having the sense that 'Jerry's Kids', in wheelchairs, or with braces and crutches, were not objects of pity. I didn't learn compassion from a Jerry Lewis telethon, but prosaic as it sounds, it wouldn't be far wrong to say it helped move me towards an understanding.

The comedian Jerry Lewis stayed out of politics, but Lewis the man was a conservative (per Wikipedia, he remarked that Donald Trump "would make a good president because he was a good 'showman' ") -- his obituary in Variety effectively claimed him to be racist, homophobic, a hack who had long outlived any usefulness as a cultural reference.

It's undeniable: his movies didn't question the established order; his characters were full of inventive slapstick and terrific comic timing -- but they weren't like Chaplin's Tramp. They were inoffensive, wacky, fumbling, based around shtick that began seventy years earlier in Vaudeville; they didn't reference the world of Selma and Saigon, JFK and Johnson, Goldwater and the Cold War. They were mainstream, part of American entertainment's cultural noise. Even so, it's also undeniable: Lewis did raise a great deal of money, ostensibly to benefit young humans just starting life, having been dealt a different hand than the rest of us.  

Lewis was a 'showman' -- for him, comedy was a craft, an art form, more than a method of showing some deeper truth about ourselves or the present. It was part skill, part competition, and he was a success -- not only by the yardstick of the entertainment industry. And, he did make people laugh. That's worth something, just on it's own.

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Now they know what we do not. Two more Mensches leave us. I'm sure they had their moments of egoism and assholery, of weakness and excess, like the rest of us. But, they made us laugh -- reminded us to laugh, for different reasons, even if our laughter was in spite of.  And for that alone, I'll miss their being fixtures in the cultural landscape.  And, we live in a world with a limited supply of Mensches.

Gregory, 2009;  Lewis In 2016

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Absent Friends

You Know Who They Are

Mozart: Adiago, Concerto For Clarinet and Orchestra

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Pardon Me

Same As It Never Was

While all agree the U.S. president has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.  FAKE NEWS
Trump / Twitter, July 22, 2017

Donald Trump is a pivotal historical figure. He'd like hearing that, but not for the reasons it's true.

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Trump is an Oligarch, the first of his ilk elected to national office in America, the culmination of a long string of compromises, inertia, and bad choices in our history and politics. Trump came to power in an alliance with opportunistic associates, the best political con artists of the early 21st century; and voters loosely described as Tea Party and Alt-Right, who have unquestioningly accepted 30 years of indoctrination in the alternate reality of the Right's echo chamber.

The image of a corrupt, bombastic national leader is one Americans have always used, with a smirk, to dismiss the problems of 'somewhere else': the behavior of a Berlusconi, a Mugabe; a Ghaddafi, a Middle Eastern prince; or the leader of a 'Banana Republic'. Now, America has just such a leader.

Nine months after the election, it's fair to say the majority of Americans do not understand how this could have happened, are frightened of what will happen next, and don't know what to do about it.

Far from being steward of a nation of some 400 million people, Trump sees the presidency as an extension of his own person, a grand stage on which to strut and preen and demand validation, over and over. He personifies what American culture holds out to the world as the apex of success and fulfillment in life -- being a billionaire business 'leader', wielding power, able to afford a wonderful life, with treats, and a separate system of taxation and justice.

Trump has no real political agenda, because the presidency of the United States is just his latest acquisition. It's a sweet little property, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to the kind of access needed to work deals so 'big', so 'huge', that they will elevate him and his family into world-class Oligarchs. 

His administration may not last another twelve months, but his becoming president is one symptom of a metastatic disease within America's political structure. And like the towering rages he treats his subordinates and family to, as Trump leaves the presidency, thwarted by a liberal conspiracy, his greatness stolen by a fake-news media, Trump will urinate in the Lincoln Bedroom, set fire to furniture, spray-paint obscenities on the Roosevelt Room walls and cut paintings out of their frames on his way to the helicopter.

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A little speculation: Trump was determined to be president. He saw no difference between "winning" a national election and making any other successful corporate power play -- you pull out all the stops, play rough; even play dirty if it will gain an advantage. In that context, it's very believable that Trump would see back channel help from a foreign government in winning that election to be no different than approaching a business associate for assistance in closing a deal. 

And why not accept some help? Trump has what we now know are thirty years' worth of business and personal connections with Russia -- and at least a handshake relationship with its ruler, Vladimir Putin, whom Trump respects and believes he understands. During the campaign, Trump sent signals in the many complimentary things he said about Putin. He praised the Russian president in terms Trump likes to use to describe himself -- tough, rich, uncompromising; a Player. 

But Trump wanted to win. And he may have considered that if he became president, Russia could become an ally to fight ISIS, possibly even a partner to help broker peace in the Middle East, instead of an adversary. It's a bit of a stretch -- but an alliance-in-all-but-name with Russia would remake the balance of world politics overnight. It's the sort of game-changing strike without warning which Trump and his principal strategist, Steve Bannon, are fond of.

There would be skeptics in the GOP like Graham and McCain, who mistrust the Russians; and among Europeans, who are closer geographically to Russia than we are. The Chinese wouldn't like it. But somehow, Trump might believe -- if he could just become president -- it would work. And, a political fait accompli would tend to obscure any Russian hacking that might happen before the election, which was already obvious to U.S. intelligence and then-President Obama. Any investigation of that activity would be buried, because Trump would be in charge.

After, Trump just knew he would be covered in glory, with huge, big, big, big; hugely big approval ratings -- proving to everyone that he was loved and adored (no, worshiped) as no American Leader before him had been. Craving uncritical adulation appears to be one of Trump's principal motivations. It may be the only one.

Trump would then have all the domestic political capital with a Republican-controlled Congress he needed to build border walls, deport people he doesn't like; repeal Obamacare. Easily elected to a second term, he would continue to encourage his surrogates and camp followers to realize the fevered, wet dreams of power, domination and punishment which America's political Right has nurtured for generations.

So, in this consideration, help was offered and/or asked for, and was delivered. If that sounds like a bridge too far, here's a question: Why was there so much attention focused on Russia, and contacts with Russians that have direct connections to Putin, by Trump and his coterie of advisors both before and after the election? What was the reason?

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You have to wonder how Putin viewed Trump's becoming president. Financial sanctions levied against Russia by the Obama administration hurt Putin (and his associate)s' ability to more efficiently skim off the top and launder the proceeds, and he had no intention of taking it lying down.

The cyberarm of the GRU (Russian military intelligence) has been probing American governmental and commercial systems for over twenty years. Their goal has never been to run scams like Ransomware, or weaponize software code in something like Stuxnet -- but in developing the ability to use cyberwarfare as one part of an asymetric attack on a target; in this case, the United States.

Putin's KGB career involved analyzing American culture and intentions, and it's likely he understands roughly a quarter of the adult U.S. population has swallowed thirty years of right-wing codswallop, which always ends with a Federal government determined to sell America out to a one-world, globalist liberal conspiracy.

America is full of fault lines, primarily involving race and wealth inequality. Russians view even the flawed diversity and democracy in the U.S. as expressions of weakness, especially when compared with their own nationalist, authoritarian government. Putin wants to diminish U.S. influence in the world, and anything which exploits America's partisan divide against itself gives Russia more advantage -- in Syria; in Ukraine; and in offshore accounts.

A straight hack of the DNC to obtain more raw intelligence about the organization of a major American political party is one thing. But hacking to obtain information, and then using the product to tip the scales of a U.S. national election is something else. Trump presented the Russians with an irresistible opportunity: all hackers are Geeks with Kung-Fu powers; there's a lot of juice in just pulling the hack off successfully. 

The product of the GRU's hacks, used properly, could destabilize the United States -- not in an obvious way that could be seen as an act of war (e.g., bringing down the electrical grid or disrupting the banking system), but by kicking the confidence of Americans in its government and basic democratic institutions further to the curb.

Trump's election would leave the U.S. further divided and uncertain, its government distracted, its president a weak, bombastic narcissist who only accepts advice from a tiny circle of family or uncritical 'alternative' advisors. If even a part of that could be achieved, with a minimum of resources and effort, Putin might consider it an exquisite kind of payback.

Putin knew Trump might expect an America under his leadership becoming a closer partner with Russia. Publicly, Vlad said he welcomes closer relations. He would like the sanctions against Russian individuals and its banks lifted -- but it is certainly advantageous to Russia if America is kept off-balance and distracted. So, Putin could suggest the possibility of A Great New Friendship... but it will always remain just out of Trump's reach, so long as Vlad wants it that way. Bizarrely, Trump needs Putin more than the reverse is true.

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So, very possibly, Trump accepted assistance offered by intermediaries from Putin. He saw the Russian hacks and release of the product as right, a necessary edge in an election against a hated liberal icon, sowing confusion and discord in a political structure that the outsider Trump claimed to detest.

Crooked Hillary, the Fake News conspiracy against him, would be outmaneuvered. He would fight and fight and fight -- and win, because he was Donald Trump; and all would love him.

That's all that mattered.

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I keep hearing conversations with some variation on If only this turd were swept out of power, everything could go back to normal. This perception is a mistake. Mike Pence in the Oval Office might seem more socially acceptable; we could pretend everything was The Same As It Ever Was. But Trump's fall means elevating a religious fundamentalist to the presidency, and even though Pence outwardly appears to be 'normal' (relative to Trump), he is equally as threatening and destabilizing. Look at his record.

Pence aside, the damage has already been done. There is no viable alternative to the continued rule of America by the individuals who crawled in behind Trump as he was inaugurated. Their goal is to continue dismantling the social contract between government and citizen that was the cornerstone of FDR's New Deal. And they will not cease, unless someone stops them.

And by that I mean a Poland-style, hundreds of thousands in the streets, saying No Pasaran stopping them. But with few exceptions (in particular people who already know what the score is and are so full of rage they feel they have little to lose), everyone just wants it to be The Same As It Ever Was.  

But who or what will offer a change? The Democratic party appears rudderless. The same neoliberal PTB who wanted Hill-O as Leader seem still to be in charge -- and their message isn't about Resistance. It's about connecting with the people they believe voted Trump into office; feeling the pain of ordinary Americans.  It's about playing a longer strategic game.

Yesterday, Senator Chuck Schumer, Representative Nancy Pelosi and DNC Chair Tom Perez announced the 2018 campaign direction for their party. Reduced to it's essence, their 'answer to America's working families', is the same as Michael Dukakis' during the 1988 presidential election -- "good jobs at good wages" -- meaning they would focus on addressing basic economic issues, in order to define the Democratic party as being more than "just against Donald Trump".

It's easy to see the decision behind this rebranding, but it doesn't encourage standing up, or fighting back. It's like handing an aspirin to a person slowly being crushed to death, and touching their hand -- tenderly, and with love. Under the circumstances, this kind of response is inadequate.

Something more active needs to be done. But given the lack of response from the population and Left politicians, how much worse will it need to become before a larger number of people act? 

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Trump has gotten what he wanted -- the limelight of history: Top of the world, Ma! In what happens next, he is a pivotal figure, a cause utterly out of proportion with the effect he will have on our lives. That anyone suffers because of this Clown is tragic, and ironic. Chickens, home to roost. Somewhere the gods are laughing, fit to bust -- and Vladimir Putin, of course.

The ascension to the presidency of a right-wing buffoon with limited impulse control is bad: The Past Is Prologue; just look at what's happened in seven months. The buffoon made Leader at the same time the Congress is dominated by Republicans, with a probable conservative bias in the Supreme Court, is very bad.

If it's determined the buffoon president solicited or agreed to assistance from a foreign power, in order to affect the election which barely gave him a victory, it's not just extremely bad for America -- it's an unprecedented Constitutional crisis.

And Trump is only a symptom. All this, The fact that he is where he is, makes obvious our political structure is dysfunctional and schizophrenic. That we're becoming a culture where the needs of Americans -- employment; housing; safe water and air and food; medical care; one system of justice -- won't be addressed unless they can pay for them. That we all feel something is out of control, getting perilously close to an edge. That things can't go on like this.

As if it wasn't obvious. As if anyone had to actually say so.  But we do. We need to say it publicly, loudly, and often, until we believe it.  Because at the moment, a majority of Americans are still betting that Same As It Ever Was is still a possible future.

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MEHR, MIT DAS TIERLIEBE: 

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Reprint Heaven: When In These Coarse Current Events

Nothing To See Here

(Original Foto, Courtesy Danny Dutch, That Guy, via The Soul Of America)

Sad Vlad, The Putin (called 'Pooti-Poot' by George "Lil' Boots" Bush, in that bizarre, Mitfordian slang his Familia di Criminale use to describe other people), is like that guy who claims not to have a dinosaur.

Vlad does, in fact, have a dinosaur. He has Ted the T-Rex in his barn -- I mean, we can hear Ted bellowing all the way down to County Road 47; hell, we can hear him down to the Interstate. Some nights, Ted spots cars full of joyriding teenagers, out cruising the Rural Routes between the farms, and chases them all over the place. He doesn't ever catch them -- probably, he just likes running after them -- and there are big three-toed footprints, afterwards, everywhere. Plenty of kids have had big dents put in the roofs of their cars, by something, out on those dark roads -- but the two auto-body places we've got don't mind the business.

Cattle are missing in eight counties, and plenty of people haven't seen their pets for a while -- and piles of shit, seven feet tall, appear here and there almost every day. What Vlad doesn't plow under, he sells as fertilizer -- and he's been selling that shit to just about the whole damn state for a long time, now. Some people from Monsanto were sniffing around Vlad's farm, trying to figure out where that manure was coming from, but they just kind of -- disappeared.

Vlad and his family are constantly getting people stopping by the house, asking about that damn dinosaur. He explains, patiently, with that flat-fish expression of his that no, they do not have a dinosaur. Vlad claims to be so tired of this, all the folks from Des Moines and Ystaad and Tunbridge Wells and Saskatoon with their kids, piling out of overloaded station wagons and asking to use the restroom -- that finally, he made himself a sign, right there, on the hood of an old 1949 Vonyets tractor: We Do Not Have A Dinosaur.

If you continue to insist he does, Vlad will take a step back and look at you. Dinosaur? You been out in the sun a while? Ridiculous. Those things've been extinct for a good, long time ("Just like my old buddy, Alex," Vlad says with a sly grin). If you can hold it, there's a Tastee-Freeze a couple miles up the road with a bathroom, Vlad says. We got a farm to run, here; you all have a nice day.

Except, this is where he gets his cake and sells you dinosaur shit, too: There Is A Fucking T-Rex In Vlad's Barn. You know it. He knows it. You can't really prove it -- I mean, no one has actually seen Ted -- but when you put together that noise coming out of Vlad's barn, all those footprints, lebenty-billion pounds of crap all over the place and a whole bunch of missing cattle ... remember Ossie's Tazer, or whatever they call that: When all's said and done, the simplest explanation is pretty much gonna be right.

And the folks at the County Seat claim to know nothing about it. Vlad's been a good friend to the County folks -- lot of that fertilizer money went to see them get elected last fall. And there were those big piles of shit that appeared every morning on the front lawns of their opponents' homes.  Vlad had some problems with that previous administration -- some back taxes; not addressing his land rights issues, questions about how he runs his fertilizer trade. But now the election's done, word is that all may disappear. And, the County Commissioner has a new John Deere Combine -- he claims it's a lease. Others aren't so sure.

There are plenty of people out there who will tell you that Vlad's a good guy. He means well, runs a tight farm and, up front, always treats you with respect. But there's no denying that his neighbors -- the ones who bring their cattle into the barns every night, the ones they've spent a biggly amount of cash reinforcing with steel -- are a little nervous about Vlad.

Some of them say he has funny ideas about expanding his farm -- that he has some kind of Plan, and Ted The T-Rex is a big part of it. Others say he likes doing crazy-ass things just out of pure, human fuckery.

All I know is, Vlad has that sign, We Do Not Have A Dinosaur, and almost every night I hear that big lizard, bellowing to beat the band as he chases some car full of teenagers, having a helluva good time. You can complain, but the County Commissioner will just tell you -- probably on Twitter -- what a silly goose you are and you best shut up now. Sad!

Random Barking

I Dreamed That Dream Again


In a room crowded by Nabobs and Archons, Exalted Persons with collagen and plastic bags of saline in their Parts, who rub orange cream on their skin, who enjoy Oil and a State Of Emergency at home, gather together beneath the Eye to pay homage to those who own us. (News Item)

But before champagne corks pop in Manhattan and Berkeley and other capitals of liberal America, people might want to consider the government’s track record of holding elites accountable over the last decade. It’s not a pretty picture from the standpoint of justice or fairness. ... because America doesn’t prosecute anyone with money or power anymore. ... much has changed since Charles Kushner, Jared’s father, went to jail in 2005 for tax evasion and witness tampering.

--  David Dayen, "Why Trump Didn't Have To Obstruct Justice: The US No Longer Holds The Powerful Accountable"; Fiscal Times, May 23, 2017

(Courtesy Soul Of America.)

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Up

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And, courtesy of First Dog On The Moon at the UK Guardian online (Click To Enlarge! Easy! Fun!):

 

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