Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Reprint Heaven: Sarajevo


Unraveling

(From 2016)
Cousin Ignatz, Asleep At Princip's Post: Sarajevo, 2014 (Matthew Fisher / Postmedia News)

Roughly twelve hours and [103] years ago, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the Grand Duchess Sophie, were shot by Gavrillo Princip, a member of an assassination team sent to the Bosnian city by the government of Serbia.

Collectively, the team was the gang which couldn't shoot straight: armed with crude grenades, a few pistols, and carrying some form of suicide pill, they waited along the route Franz Ferdinand's car would take as it drove beside the Miljacka river, which cuts through Sarajevo (local Austro-Hungarian authorities had helpfully published the Archduke's route beforehand).

Most of the team either was poorly positioned, or chickened out at the last moment.  One conspirator did throw a bomb at the Archduke's car, which bounced off its folded-back fabric top and exploded near a second car traveling just behind. Several people in the car had minor injuries and it continued on to a local hospital.

The Archduke's driver, Leopold Lojka, continued to Sarajevo city hall. When Franz Ferdinand arrived, he effectively unloaded on the hapless administrators about the state of their local security ("I come to your city and am greeted with bombs!"). Meanwhile, back at the river, the would-be bomber had jumped into the Miljacka and swallowed his suicide pill -- which he promptly threw up. The police arrested him, barely managing to keep him from being lynched a mob of pro-Austro-Hungarian citizens, and so save him for later trial and execution.

At approximately 12:30 PM, having finally accepted the thanks of the Sarajevo city fathers, Franz Ferdinand and his wife got back into their car, planning to go to the local hospital to see those wounded in the bomb attack that morning. They used the same route, in reverse, that they had taken into the city, driving along the river. But when the Chauffeur, Lojka, came to a particular intersection -- to his left, a street; to the right, a bridge over the Miljacka river -- he was confused.

 The Royal Couple (Seated, At Rear) Leaving City Hall: Fifteen Minutes Left

Believing it to be the route he needed to take to drive to the hospital, Lojka slowed and turned left into the street.  Almost immediately, he realized he'd made a mistake and stepped on the brakes. The car came to a stop a few yards into the street, and Lojka moved to put it in reverse gear.

 The Intersection, 2014: The Archduke's Car Turned Left, Into This Street;
The Restaurant Where Princip Bought Lunch, Now A Museum (Photo: CNN)

At that same intersection was a small restaurant. Gavrillo Princip, last member of the Serbian assassination squad, had gone inside to buy a sandwich, angry and dejected after the team's failure that morning. Standing on the sidewalk outside the cafe, he saw a large, dark-green automobile turn out of the boulevard and come to a stop directly in front of him. In the very rear seat were the Archduke and his wife.

The heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne had been delivered, less than ten feet away, from an armed assassin who had come to the city specifically to kill him. If you were writing a novel or screenplay, anything that coincidental would be branded as implausible. No one's gonna believe that.

Princip didn't hesitate. He dropped his sandwich, pulled a pistol out of his jacket and stepped towards the car, firing several shots, managing to mortally wound both the Archduke and his wife. Lojka, the driver, was ordered to rushed the royal couple to the local military governor's residence. Sophie died on the way. A military officer in the car, checking on the Archduke's condition, asked the wounded man how he was; Ferdinand said, "Nichts (It's nothing)", and died.

Just over a month later, Europe was at war. Over the next four-plus years, the entire social fabric of the continent and much of the world changed irrevocably. Monarchies ended; millions died; the map of the world changed as the victors annexed territory from Germany and Austria Hungary, and new countries were created. New technology was developed -- and, in the Versailles Treaty, the groundwork was laid for a second, even more horrible war to begin by 1939.

(And, in 1918-19, the Spanish Influenza infected 500 million people and killed 40 million, worldwide; it was the largest number of deaths due to pandemic disease since the 'Black Death' Bubonic Plague outbreak in the 14th century [~200 million].  In the U.S., millions were made sick, and 675,000 died [0.6-plus per cent of America's population at the time, 103 million]. It's often referred to as the "forgotten epidemic" -- just one more terrible event in an ocean of violence and atrocity.)

 Cousin Ignatz, Worn Out By All The History
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Why the history lesson? We're living through history. When we read about events in Europe during the Interwar Years (1918 - 1933 or so), there's a feeling of being slowly pulled down into a drain of inevitability -- revolving-door failures of parliamentary governments in France; Britian's declining empire; the manic Totentanz of global capital leading to 1929; the rise and fall of Weimar; Italian, German and Japanese fascism. Regional war and civil war. 

Like the story of the Titanic or the Hindenburg, you know where the story is going. You know it will end in Nanking, Kristalnacht, Dunkirk; Auschwitz; Stalingrad; the Warsaw Ghetto; D-Day; the Führerbunker; Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But you read about the years leading up to all that with a mounting sense of horror, because we all know how it ends.

While the Brexit may be not have been a "shot heard 'round the world", the Tories are hanging on by their fingernails in the UK; the Scots still wonder about independence; the Greek, French and Italian economies are still at risk. Putinland, the Great Bear, still pushes the envelope here and there -- Ukraine and Syria. As IS loses on battlefields in the continuing slow-motion atrocity that is the Middle East, suddenly they appear in a Philippine city, on a London street. Disproportionate numbers of Black people are shot in major American cities on a routine basis. Climate change is not fake news.

America, ruled by Babbitry, greed and illusion, retreats from the world stage; its leader is Bloated, Sick, and Raving, surrounded by car-wash dilettantes. Other nation-state players, great and small, are happy to rush into the vacuum we leave behind, and any of them could easily start a larger conflict -- India, Pakistan; Kim Jong Fat Boy's Fun People's Republic Of Chuckles, and South Korea; Iran and Saudi Arabia.  

And no matter how you want to characterize it, there's a confrontation -- between those who want a globalist, centralized world (unfortunately, organized around the goals of international finance and business principals, together with the most powerful nation-state actors), and those who don't. The balances in the old alliances created after WWII have all but unraveled.  Kleiner Mann; Was Nun?

Hope you're not looking for an answer. I am, after all, only a Dog, and no one listens to me.
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Wednesday, May 24, 2017

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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Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Random Barking: The Daze Of Wonderboy

And A Child Shall Lead Them
Being President doesn't change who you are. Being President reveals who you are.
-- Michelle Obama; September, 2012 Speech, Democratic Nominating Convention
Yesterday they were ruffians; today they control our lives. Tomorrow they will wind up as keepers of the public lavatories.
-- Juvenal, The Satires; 2nd Century, A.D. 
These days, consistent with the magnitude of the Ruh-Roh, it's easy to gravitate between an addled hope and a bitter apathy.  And somewhere in there one must labor, and eat Kibble; look at art; read other things, sniff other Dogs.

1.)  What Atrios (And Others) Said

“This is now a consistent pattern of obstruction [of justice] by the President,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent ... “The loyalty oath dinner, the request to squash the Flynn investigation and Comey’s firing over Russia all point to a President Trump who has no respect for the rule of law, and doesn’t realize that he should not run the country the way he ran his businesses.”

--  Markay, Suebsaeng, Winter; Daily Beast, May 16, 2017:  "Trump Officials On Comey Memo: 'Don't See How Trump Isn't Completely F*cked' 

 2.)  What Digby Said:
For me, none of what he has said or done over the past four months as president comes as a surprise. The way he has behaved over the past week — firing FBI Director James B. Comey, undercutting his own aides as they tried to explain the decision and then disclosing sensitive information to Russian officials — is also entirely predictable...

Early on, I recognized that Trump’s sense of self-worth is forever at risk. When he feels aggrieved, he reacts impulsively and defensively, constructing a self-justifying story that doesn’t depend on facts and always directs the blame to others.

To survive... Trump felt compelled to go to war with the world. It was a binary, zero-sum choice for him: You either dominated or you submitted. You either created and exploited fear or you succumbed to it — as he thought his older brother had. This narrow, defensive worldview took hold at a very early age, and it never evolved. “When I look at myself today and I look at myself in the first grade,” he told a recent biographer, “I’m basically the same.”
--  Tony Schwarz (Trump's [Co-]Author of  'Art Of The Deal'), "I Wrote 'The Art Of The Deal' With Trump. His Self-Sabotage Is Rooted In His Past," The Washington Post, May 16, 2017
(Quoted by Digby)
3.)  Little Davy Brooks Has A Sad
 At base, Trump is an infantalist... Immaturity is becoming the dominant note of his presidency, lack of self-control his leitmotif... Trump seems to need perpetual outside approval to stabilize his sense of self, so he is perpetually desperate for approval, telling heroic fabulist tales about himself.

...Other people are black boxes that supply either affirmation or disapproval. As a result, he is weirdly transparent. He wants people to love him, so he is constantly telling interviewers that he is widely loved. In Trump’s telling, every meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes but his guests stayed two hours because they liked him so much.

...We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.

--  David ("Bucky The Beaver") Brooks; The New York Times, May 15, 2017; "The World Is Led By A Child" (Column)
4.) Führertreu In The Bunker
The president’s appetite for chaos, coupled with his disregard for the self-protective conventions of the presidency, has left his staff confused and squabbling. And his own mood, according to two advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity, has become sour and dark, and he has turned against most of his aides — even his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — describing them in a fury as “incompetent,” according to one of those advisers...

... Late Monday, reporters could hear senior aides shouting from behind closed doors as they discussed how to respond after Washington Post reporters informed them of an article they were writing that first reported the news about the president’s divulging of intelligence.
--  Thrush, Haberman; "At A Besieged White House, Tempers Flare And Confusion Swirls"; The New York Times, May 16, 2017
5.)  Nasty Penguin's Friend Breaks It Down For You

Right in public and everything, where people can see.

6.)  What Chris Hedges Said:
Forget the firing of James Comey. Forget the paralysis in Congress. Forget the idiocy of a press that covers our descent into tyranny as if it were a sports contest between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats or a reality show starring our maniacal president and the idiots that surround him. Forget the noise. 

The crisis we face is not embodied in the public images of the politicians that run our dysfunctional government. The crisis we face is the result of a four-decade-long, slow-motion corporate coup that has rendered the citizen impotent, left us without any authentic democratic institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become omnipotent. 

This crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalized bribery and empowered those public figures that master the arts of entertainment and artifice. And if we do not overthrow the neoliberal, corporate forces that have destroyed our democracy we will continue to vomit up more monstrosities as dangerous as Donald Trump. Trump is the symptom, not the disease. 

-- Chris Hedges, "Trump Is The Symptom, Not The Disease", TruthDig, May 14, 2017
7.)  Then, There Is That Odd Resemblance

Between Wonderboy and Slim Pickens as Major "King" Kong, in Stanley Kubrick's 1963 Doctor Strangelove.  You will of course recall Maj. Kong's actions in the last five minutes of the film, and what that led to.


The U.S. is prepared to launch a preemptive strike with conventional weapons against North Korea should officials become convinced that North Korea is about to follow through with a nuclear weapons test, multiple senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.  [Note: This was April 13, 2017; two guided-missile frigates were in the South China Sea at the time. Chinese officials were apparently able to dissuade the North Koreans from conducting the test.] -- NBC News
Any questions?
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MEHR, AUSSER DEM HUND-TRAINER:  My Dog Trainer is a Red-Diaper Baby. He's (apparently) Buddhist-leaning, but hasn't forgotten where he came from; ironically, he makes a more than comfortable living helping HNWIs deal with serious emotional issues -- he believes it's a responsibility to do this, even for the rich, and he's very good at it.

I'm not a HNWI; part of his practice are people like myself, a financial lightweight managing 48-year-old PTSD that Group at the VA didn't budge very much. Intrigued enough with my individual circumstances, he accepted me a a client, charges me about a third his normal rate, and I owe him a debt I can't repay.

Some days, we just talk, as two Old Guys headed down La Chute will do; this week, looking at the current bread-and-circuses Clown Car Government, I asked him for a professional appraisal of Wonderboy.

He'd read the Brooks' column quoted upstream in this post, and the Schwarz article (where he'd recalled Trump claiming not to have changed much from the boy he was in First Grade). "[Brooks'] description of Trump, like a child desperate for approval to stabilize his sense of self, is right. But, all children are like that. The difference is, Trump is a 70-year-old man still behaving like a six-year-old boy. And that comment about First Grade is right in line with that.

"How does it end? Resignation is always a possibility, but not likely. You heard him speak to the Coast Guard academy graduates today?  'You have to keep fighting; you can't give in' -- all very familiar stuff for someone with his pathology. 

"When you equate behaving in a certain way with survival, and that's linked to very old, deep stuff -- then he'd rather die than give up. In fact, to do so would be capitulation -- in his case, to his father, who from all accounts was not a very nice guy."
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Wednesday, May 10, 2017

All This, All Of It, Cannot End Well

Abrupt Termination

Our Leader: Stark, Stoltz u. Richtig, On The Day Of His Ascension To Power
Three figures stand out prominently among all those whom Trump has fired since appearing in Washington. While The Leader has fired many lesser figures, these three are particularly deserving of attention for what they appear to have in common.

Sally Yates (fired Jan. 30, 2017): Acting Attorney General. Ordered the DOJ not to defend Trump's travel ban, issued within days of his taking office. As acting AG, Yates was a principal figure in the investigation into Trump's circle and potential connections to Russia; she was investigating the Russian ambassador to the U.S. and members of the Trump campaign team he had been in contact with. Yates warned the White House and was ignored, then fired -- ostensibly for her refusal to carry out Trump's travel ban order. 

Preet Bharara (fired March 11, 2017): U.S. Attorney for the District Of Manhattan. While Bharara had been criticized for not more aggressively pursuing 2008-Crash-era financial oligarchs, he was still a capable and respected prosecutor. He refused to resign after Trump announced he wanted all U.S. attorneys to do so, and demanded to be fired; Trump fired him. At the time, Bharara was investigating Trump's HHS Secretary Tom Price's financial investments. He was also investigating corrupt Russian businessmen and officials. A Russian attorney in one of the cases Bharara investigated fell or was pushed from a window the day before he was set to testify in another matter.

James Comey (fired May 9, 2017): FBI Director. Comey revealed on March 20th that there are ongoing, multiple criminal investigations in connection with Russian government officials' tampering with or attempting to influence the 2016 election.
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...[Understand events in the context of] the Family, Brand-driven, Kleptocratic nature of the Trump White House. The core aim is for the President to be popular, to succeed, a goal in key ways even more important to the thirty-something Kushner/Trumps than the 70 year old President.

Politics or policy and ideology, whatever you want to call it, is changeable and secondary, just as Trump can shift from authoritarian isolationist to faux values driven internationalist in a day and a half.  This is precisely what you’d expect from people who [execute political and policy about-faces] ... Words and policy have no meaning.

What matters is protecting and maximizing the value of the new family acquisition: the presidency.

Chas Danner, In The Intelligencer, New York Magazine, April 2017; "Fragile Peace Accord Reached In The White House's Bannon-Kushner War" [Paragraphing added]

(Courtesy of Soul Of America)
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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Mellville / "Moby-Dick, or, The Whale"
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UN AUCH NOCH IMMER MEHR MIT GOEBBELS:
Yesterday, some 24 hours after the compelling testimony of Sally Yates and James Clapper made his shady Russia ties impossible to deny, Donald Trump fired James Comey, the FBI director leading the investigation into said ties. Today, Trump will meet with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian diplomat who the Steele dossier claims is his handler for Russian intelligence...

Firing Comey was, simply put, the stuff of banana republics. If this is allowed to stand, if Republicans in Congress laugh this off, it means that we no longer live in a functioning democracy. Yesterday, a journalist was arrested in West Virginia for shouting questions to Trump’s odious HHS secretary, Tom Price. Stephen Colbert was attacked via the FCC, a fancy federal way of threatening his First Amendment rights. Laws are being written to criminalize protest, and paid alt-right goons are appearing at events to stir up trouble and create the impetus for doing so. Oh, and the New York Fucking Times now has a feature in which we’re supposed to write nice things about our Great Leader.

This is Fascism, guys. As some of us said months ago. ...
Multiple sources have reported that there are tapes, audio tapes, of the Russian ambassador offering money and help to Trump, to Jeff Sessions, and to Paul Ryan. I’ve heard there is also audio of multiple Trump family members engaging in illicit conversations, recorded by foreign intelligence services. If these tapes exist, will they be leaked? ...

...This is going to be the end of Trump, or the end of democracy in this country. This is not a hyperbole and not a joke. This is the gravest threat to our way of life since the Civil War.

Greg Olear / The Weeklings, May 10,2017; "After Comey: Will Democracy Die In Darkness?"
 (Also courtesy of Soul Of America. All links in the original)

MEHR, MIT ZEITGEIST: I have been asked to explain what the Blog Category, "Kicking The Baby", means. It's a 2011 reference to then-Senator Jon Kyl of (aber natürlich) Nebraska, a fool and a poltroon, who made public comments in the Senate about "90% of all funding for Planned Parenthood" being used to provide abortion services -- what we once called a gross and distorted lie, but now refer to as "alternate facts". 

[Note: Poltroon -- 1. An abject or contemptible coward. adjective. 2. a rare word for cowardly.]

Herr Kyl later said his remarks were not intended to be "factual", but only to emphasize and illustrate his point. Not too sure what that point was, now, but I'll bet it was a real Corker.

But: Kicking The Baby. As seen on South Park, Kyle has fun by "Kicking The Baby" -- booting his little brother, Ike, through a window. Ike -- not Kyle -- is then scolded by their mother for breaking the window.

Kicking The Baby makes it appear as if Ike was to blame. It is ascribing qualities or behavior to Ike that were not accurate, in order to portray The Baby in the worst possible light -- or, if you prefer, it's Lying In Order To Defame And Demonize Ike The Baby. Or, Planned Parenthood.



Almost any position can be made to appear defensible -- so long as you grossly distort and lie, and later state you only did so to illustrate and underline your main point. Whatever it was.
MONGO: You know, [Fill In Blank With Name Of Anyone You Dislike] is an unindicted pederast who continues to be one of the largest distributors of child pornography in North America.

NOT MONGO: Are you insane?? There isn't a shred of truth in any of that! Everything you just said is a lie !!!

MONGO: Oh, I'm sorry. That wasn't intended to be a factual statement.
Do I need to explain further?  No? Ausgezeichnet, Kinder.
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Thursday, May 4, 2017

And Reduce The Surplus Population

Sickness


Here is what the bill actually does:

Takes a machete to Medicaid. The bill would cut $880 billion over 10 years from Medicaid, the program that provides health care to about 74 million poor, disabled and elderly Americans. That’s one-fourth of its budget. As a result, 14 million fewer people would have access to health care by 2026, according to a C.B.O. analysis of the earlier bill, which contained similar Medicaid provisions... [and] special education programs, which receive about $4 billion from Medicaid every year.

Slashes insurance subsidies. It would provide $300 billion less over 10 years to help people who do not get insurance through employers and have to buy their own policies. This would hurt lower-income and older people the hardest. For example, a 60-year-old living in Phoenix and earning $40,000 would have to pay an additional $12,370 a year to buy a policy, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Many people who find themselves in this situation would have no choice but to forgo insurance.

Eliminates the individual mandate. Many people hate that the A.C.A. requires people to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. But without the mandate, fewer younger and healthier people would buy coverage. This would lead to what health experts call a “death spiral” as insurers raise rates because they are left covering people who are older and sicker, leading to even more people dropping coverage. Eventually, companies could stop selling policies directly to individuals in much of the country.

Guts protections for people with pre-existing conditions. An amendment by Representative Tom MacArthur of New Jersey would allow states to waive the requirement that insurers sell policies to people with prior health problems and not charge them higher rates. The chief executive of Blue Shield of California said the bill “could return us to a time when people who were born with a birth defect or who became sick could not purchase or afford insurance.” Republicans say they will require that states with waivers offer high-risk pools and find other ways to help treat these people. The bill offers $138 billion over 10 years to help states pay for such programs. Health experts say this is far too little; Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Foundation estimates that at least $25 billion a year would be needed.

Makes insurance less comprehensive. The bill would also let states waive a requirement under Obamacare that insurers cover a list of essential services. This means people in some places might not have access to maternity care or cancer treatment. This provision could also hurt people who get insurance through work, because federal regulations allow employers to opt into the rules of any state for the purposes of determining annual and lifetime limits on coverage, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution.

Defunds Planned Parenthood. Republicans have included a provision that takes federal money away from the organization, which provides birth control, cancer screenings and other health services to 2.5 million people, mainly women. About 60 percent of people who use Planned Parenthood depend on government programs like Medicaid.
--  New York Time Editorial, 5/4/17: "The Trumpcare Disaster
    (All Links Above In Original)
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...In in the summer of 2009, Ryan argued that the healthcare bill was moving too quickly through Congress without an adequate CBO estimate and a full understanding of the legislation. "If you rush this through before anyone even knows what it is, that's not good democracy," he explained... "I don't think we should pass bills that we haven't read that we don't know what they cost."

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Just a few hours before a scheduled vote on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the House voted 429-0 to strip out a provision in that legislation that would have exempted members of Congress and their staffers from some of the most radical changes to health care law...

“They planned to exempt themselves from Trumpcare until they got caught,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) accused Republicans from the House floor.
-- Alice Ollstein, TPM, "House Votes To Eliminate Congress Carve-Out From O’Care Repeal Bill"
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Today, I hope there is a hell. If such a place has a use, it is to house people who celebrate with a cold beer after voting to endanger the lives of millions to enrich the already wealthy. These people should be trembling in fear before the justice and wrath of God. But since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to [do] things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious towards parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God’s decree, that those who practise such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practise them.
--  Adam Kotsko / An und für sich: "A Theological Reflection On The Obamacare Repeal Vote"



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Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Right Action

Adolfo Kaminsky, Forger

Courtesy of The Paper Of Record (please god never let the Ruperts 'acquire' it, as they lust to do): An amazing story, told principally in silhouette animations; almost like Javanese shadow-puppets -- which if you think about it isn't a bad analogy for whatever this is that we inhabit. Some people I know will understand why this story resonates.

A  small meditation on our ability, with a single act, to change the direction of the lives of others whom we will never see. Never let anyone say that art has no power.  Enjoy.


(If for any reason you can't see the embedded video, go here.)

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Thursday, April 6, 2017

Can't You See That I Am Not Afraid

C'mon C'mon C'mon C'mon C'mon Touch Me Babe

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MEHR; MIT DER BOOM, UND DER BING, 
UND DER BING BING BOOM BOOM BANG:

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Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Sleep

More Random Barking

We read stuff, and we learn things.

You yearn, you hunger, for Daddy to take care of you, to give you candy, and an occasional afternoon off. And, to beat you whenever it pleases them you deserve it.

And -- admit it, now -- you do deserve it. You know that you do lots of stupid stuff. You have to be watched carefully, all the time, so that you don't lie, or slack off, or 'borrow' things that don't belong to you. Or touch each other in places where you shouldn't. Or ask questions like Why do Mom and Dad and their friends have it so soft, with treats? How come the police open our emails and listen to our mobile calls? How come boys get fifty cents an hour and girls only get thirty? Will there be another war? Why do the brown people next door get taken away by the police? How come they shoot black people? What's that little helicopter thing flying over our neighborhood?

See, the world is really big. You just don't know enough to figure it all out. It's all so confusing! And tell the truth, now -- who wants to rubberfy their little heads with all that? But Daddy, and Mommy, Do know. Jared Kushner knows. And they Care; they really do. They'll take care of everything.

So, sleep now. Sleep. There's candy for you, tomorrow, after all your work is done. If you're good.
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If you followed the link (be advised, you may have to take a Google test; that's what you get for accessing sites that know better than you and went to an Oxbridge college, too), the article is "Angry Voters Are Nostalgic For Powerful Elites", by Janan Ganesh in the online Financial Times.

Similar themes were being discussed by Very Serious people out on the Intertubes, even before the U.S. election. In Austria, it was "Faced With Angry Voters, The Elites Sour On Democracy." Glenn Greenwald noted that the Brexit was just one more proof "Of The Insularity And Failure Of Western Establishment Institutions." And Jeff Bezos' Washington Post quipped that "Everyone Hates The Elites. Even The Elites."

Ganesh is, outwardly, a member of the Labor Party in Britain who once declined to attend local Party meetings because they were "too dominated by Trots". Ganesh describes himself as essentially liberal on social affairs, center-right on economics; he co-authored a book in 2006 with a dyed-in-the-wool Tory, entitled Compassionate Conservatism.

That was all before The Crash, however, when conservatives could afford to ignore The Peasantry, which was besotted on ARM loans and cheap refinancing to turn their homes into ATMs. After the Crash, governments were unable to pay for their whining (or much else), and as a result turned the failure of private banks into public debt the Peasants would have to pay. And there would be Austerity for at least 99% of everyone. Yay!

Ganesh's thesis is simple: So long as Elites actively use their power for the material betterment of the people, "voters do not mind elites."
[They] do not want a putsch against elitism. If anything, they want its restoration. They want the ordered world they grew up in, when a measure of central direction kept jobs secure and neighborhoods familiar... The West is not in revolt against elites. The people who voted Britain out of the EU and Donald Trump into the White House ... are nostalgic for a time when elites were more, not less, powerful.
...To read about the architects of [that era] is to bathe in shameless, seigneurial elitism. ...They were extreme in their isolation from normal people. Some had beliefs that touched on the pre-democratic. But that was the point: it was their expert imposition of order on chaos that was so prized, and so missed when that order turned to flux in the 1980s and beyond.

...The trouble is that “oligarchy” is a serviceable description of the social system that angry voters miss. A system of large companies with implicit political duties to maintain jobs onshore, of government as a screen between worker and market, of the armed forces as a large employer and source of cultural mores, of immigration levels set by tight diktat rather the interplay of supply and demand, of free exchange as a curbed and conditional thing.
The masses deferred to elites as long as the elites managed the masses’ exposure to the brute realities of the market. The fraying of that contract led to the bitterness of today. ... In 2016, voters did not ask elites to abdicate their power. They punished elites for [abdicating it].
This assumes that the world, so complicated a place, filled with human folly, can only be tamed and controlled by the Barons and Dukes of Capital which literally and figuratively litter the planet. Genesh's perspective is a love letter to the world Our global HNWIs want -- a New Feudalism, one more financial Crash away.

This perspective also assumes that 'voters' (read: human beings) are children, or chattel, who need to be managed -- sometimes sternly -- rather than addressed and enabled as equals. That government is not a compact between citizens and the representatives they elect; that it is supposed to elevate only the interests of a few over the rest of the population; and that government holds property to be sacred over persons. It's a perspective which seems to suggest that the 'voters' don't have to be considered as human beings at all.
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Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Id's Of March

Random Barking

JFK In Berlin, June 1963 (AFP / Esquire)
At Amherst College in late October, 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave a short speech in honor of  Robert Frost, but in a broader context of the Arts, and Artists (you can listen to it here). Roughly five weeks later, JFK was dead.

When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.

In the same speech, Kennedy also observed that A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces, but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.

(Kennedy made another, longer and more formal speech -- this time about science and the environment -- in October, 1963; read a transcript here. Then compare it with this.)

So, just a question: Whom do we honor, as a nation and a culture? What kind of persons are held up (and, by whom?) in America as examples of right choices and right action -- those who we hope our children will emulate and become? The values and behaviors we promote as the "content of our character"?

Insane Murderous Clowns :  ©2016, Victor Juhasz / Rolling Stone
The failure to bring Trumpcare to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote was a blow to Wonderboy and the Clown Car government. Nearly every media organization (beyond Fox, the Washington Times, and Breitbart, now the White House's propaganda mouthpiece) used headlines  with some variation on "Republicans Pull Healthcare Bill; Sharp Rebuke To Trump".

Make no mistake: the Ryan/Trump plan would have created chaotic disaster. It would have thrown 16 million people, at a minimum, under a Trump In 2020 campaign bus, and directly caused physical pain and real misery. The healthcare industry would have gone into a competitive frenzy -- an inconvenience for the wealthy, but a catastrophe for the sick, the chronically ill, and the poor.

But, make no mistake about this, either: The largest factor leading to the bill's being pulled was not an overwhelming rejection of it in the Congress -- but because a key number of House Republicans, the self-styled 'Freedom Caucus' (whose Kangaroo Court-membership is secret) believed Ryan/Trump's legislation was insufficient. That the cuts and changes weren't severe enough.

Media organizations and any number of liberal pundits can crow about how terrible a blow this all is to Wonderboy, and Little Paulie Ryan. If it were due to a concerted and organized resistance to Trump and his cabal, we should be celebrating.  But it isn't: Trumpcare never made it to the floor because of the continuing struggle between traditional Beltway insider Republicans, and Alt-Right teabag, Evangelical crazies, for control of the Republican party.

That internecine war is far from over.  But no matter what your political analysis of all this is, once one side or the other in that conflict is dominant, or both sides make a truce in order to save the GOP from possible Midterm election losses -- the next time, there will be nothing (let me repeat that; there will be nothing) standing in their way.

After the bill was pulled, Schumer and Pelosi crowed about 'victory' -- but the Democrats had little to do with it. There is no organized Resistance. Paris is occupied and the Germans are free to go anywhere, say anything, take anything. They will lock down your borders -- no one can get in, but (depending on what happens in future) it's also harder to get out. Their judges will sit in your courtrooms. Their teachers in for-profit schools will build a curriculum around 'Alternative Facts'. They will pump chemicals in your rivers, CFC's into the air. And one day, they will come in trucks for your Communists and Jews -- they've already come for Latinos and Muslims.

And there will be nothing to stand in their way, until the Resistance is real, and not simply a pretty graphic or soundbite used to sell trendy clothing or music or tickets to an event -- and not until there is a real alternative to a political structure which benefits so few and takes from so many.
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MEHR, MIT EIN SCHLAG IM GESICHT:  Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, which (according to SourceWatch) was founded before Bill Clinton's run for the to become the Democratic candidate for President, "and after the 1992 election gained notoriety as [his] 'idea mill'."  

The PPI is the think-tank for the Democratic Leadership Council, a group founded by primarily conservative southern Democrats, which essentially believes Republicans are people, too also, and that we should learn to compromise with them in order to, you know -- get stuff. Some things.  A few. One?  

Okay -- we'll let them take things from us, but they have to promise to think very, very seriously about giving us some things, too. How about maybe just 'lend' us stuff? 

Will Marshall contributed an op-ed piece for yesterday's The Paper Of Record, titled "Why Democrats Should Work With Trump".  The title says it all.  

This little crayon-written missive attracted 1,288 replies; no I did not read them all, but those which said, in essence Are you fucking kidding me? What planet are you living on, dude? were overwhelmingly in the majority.  My favorite:
[Peter, In Connecticut]
If someone is punching you in the face, try to get them to slow down, or maybe not hit so hard. Compromise is a wonderful thing.
(100 Recommend)
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Tuesday, March 7, 2017

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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