Blog Archive

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Toddlers




Boo Hoo.
“I don't wanna be “forced” to keep Arsenic out of the chicken I sell.”
Boo Hoo
“I don' Wanna share the planet with people who aren't just like me”
boo hoo
“I don't wanna pay the people that work for me”
boo hoo
“i don't wanna help pay for the highway, or the fire department or the hospital, if it might help someone whom I don't like”
boo hoo
“I wanna keep using words like “nigger” and “spic” and “cunt” and “faggot”, because I am more Important than any one's feelings”
boo hoo
“it is my Right to be a bully and a fool”
boo hoo
“it is my Right to poison the Earth”
Boo Hoo
“I don' wanna accept that there are more ways of viewing the World than just mine. Mine is Right, after all.”
Boo Fucking Hoo.
“I don't wanna join the 21st Century, I'm more comfortable in the 11th”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Here is a 1997 Debate between George McGovern and Bill Buckley( )



In light of the ascendancy of the Right since McGovern ran for President, 1972, I think it's instructive how Buckley relies on veiled insults and innuendo to “win”...while McGovern relies on the strength of Ideals.
This makes me think about how the Right “won”, in the last 40 years.
It relied on Ridicule, and Erasure.
I didn't even hear of McGovern until circa 2004.
He didn't exist.
“Liberalism” was universally regarded as a synonym for “weak” and “stupid” and “dangerous”.
Bluster and Bullying and the studious ignoring of Objective Reality...the widespread use of Euphemism and a Hyper-Selective remembrance of History.
Buckley never rebuts McGovern's assertion(backed up readily with facts) that Reagan tripled the debt and grew the deficit and set about systematically destroying the Public Sector and the Labor Movement and embroiling us in numerous brushfire wars and invasions and skulduggery(some of which we are still feeling the direct effects of(Afghanistan, Central and South America, etc).
Never is it mentioned that it was Nixon who opened up China to American Corporations, and took care of our debt by leaving Breton Woods, and essentially reneging on it(the “party of responsibility”), and that it was Reagan who jiggered the tax code and business law to encourage the outsourcing and one sided globalisation...all the while lying incessantly about what they were doing and why.


Buckley's references to “Illegitimacy” as a major problem goes without comment....perhaps George didn't want to dignify it.
It is a red herring, as it is only a Big Fucking Deal if one is ensconced firmly in Patriarchy, while never investigating the actual Causes of the purportedly rampant “Illegitimacy”(like bad men, and the moribund level of wages, vs. inflation).

It's worth a watch, if you have time.
Compare Buckley's performance with what's coming on TV out of Boulder tonight.

…...................................


Rhymes with “rock”....



(at least that's how I've been pronouncing it...)

Charles Koch is disappointed.

(http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/charles-kochs-frankenstein-problem-he-created-tea-party-monster-and-now-hes)

(I couldn't read the original article, on the WSJ, because I've already used up my free ones(who keeps track, and how?!))

Seems Mr Kock doesn't like all the shouting and crazy-talk, the witch hunts and
shameless hatred,the frothing ignorance and epidemic foot in mouth disease... that he and his friends helped to create.
As I've said so many times, going back years, they fed the Rough Beast meth, beat it with a hammer, and set it loose upon the world in order to shore up the relevance of “conservative values”, after so many folks have finally noticed that the 40 year experiment in Piss on My Head is, and has been, a fucking disaster, along with the attendant “Culture Wars” and the general effort to prove that “Government is Dysfunctional”(by making damned sure that it is).
Now that Beast is running(sic) the government that they despise...running it right into the ground....but because folks like the Kock Brothers(and Coors and Mellon Scaif and a hundred others, going back 80+ years) have so lavishly funded this “movement” and have been so organised and sneaky...destroying Democracy in a very real sense...there's nothing to be done.
The Beast will have to tire itself out...or, more likely, engender such a reaction from everyone else that all the Gerrymandering, Voter Suppression and related Shenanigans in the world wont be enough to keep the Goptea going.
They have no Ideas, it turns out...at least none that will be Insane enough to pass muster with the Beast.
Soon, I expect Rush or Beck or that Savage “person” to call Charles out for being a “Rino”...or even a “DemocRat! Plant”.
Such is life for billionaires who venture into 21st Century Righty Politics.
Eventually, they get eaten.



Friday, October 23, 2015

Patricia



It began in earnest about an hour ago(9pm, CDT), in my Left Big Toe.
As if it were in a vise.
It quickly spread through the Gravel Ankle and up the leg, and by now it was in both legs...all the way to the Titanium Hip, then the bone one.
Now it is in every joint.
I had already experienced a lesser Weather Pain Event, not two days ago...before I knew there was a Hurricane approaching. We had the usual Fall Low Pressure System, and I lay around for half a day and felt much better.
Achy and Irritable, but ok.
That's how today has been, until the switch was flipped and Patricia moved into range of my Skeletal Barometer.
Now, I am Toast.
It hurts like hell, and I know from experience that it will only get worse.
The damned thing is heading straight for me, barring the High over Colorado dipping unexpectedly to the South.
The TV Weather Guy out of Austin has been breathlessly telling us about maybe a foot of rain over the next two days, as our Indigenous Low meets up with Patricia's extraordinary Low(946 MB as of 20 minutes ago).
I felt this one at around 800 miles away.
Wilma, I felt at right at 1000, as it crossed Cuba...and Katrina, at 1100, as it passed over Florida.
Unlike those storms, I was paying attention to Patricia's approach...I was expecting this, in other words, rather than attempting to control for such expectations.
I still have no idea what the mechanism is that's at work with this phenomena(Weather Pain).
I hypothesize that it is either perturbations in the Gravity Field, or some other Scalar Field of which we are currently unaware.
As always, Research Grants are welcome.




Thursday, October 22, 2015

On Hill on the Hill

(or, Gowdy-Doody gets trapped in a broom closet)

(I ain't gonna vote for her in the Primary, but this pic is priceless)


Mr. Gowdy
I understand that you're taking one for the team...likely in the hopes that Hillary will get mad and say something that can be useful in a 30 second spot...
However...To all of us non-Goptea Nutbags out here in the Nation, you are looking increasingly like a fool.
If you stop now, you might be able to retire with a little dignity(if that matters to you)...and go be a librarian or lawyer or something.
folks won't even remember, after a while.
The cat is effectively out of the bag that this is an entirely political exercise...at least for (again) all of us Non-Nutbags.
The ones who believe that there's fire where there's only copious hot air are already gonna vote for the craziest goptea possible...the rest of us will not be convinced, if we haven't been already.
There's no "there" there.
So what's the point?
Please stop...this mendacious windbaggery should be beneath Members of the US Congress.

Monday, October 12, 2015

Vile, Vapid Vacuity

Sinclair the Prophet


I've been avoiding News for several weeks...which means that I have limited my news consumption(unpack that terminology!) to a once a week perusal of Huffpo and Alternet and Right Wing Watch, with a weekly binge-watch of Rachel and Chris Hayes.
I have heard things floating in from the living room in the morning rush to get ready for school, as well...as I attempted mightily to not hear them(by blasting such disparate gems as Scheherazade(sp-2-(Rimmsky-Korsakov(sp-3))) and various Strauss Waltzes).
It is to no avail....the Republican Party is in total chaos, which should surprise no one, at all.
“Circus” doesn't even begin to cover it.
Watching a week's worth of Maddow this morning, I keep thinking of Sinclair Lewis.
From “It Can't Happen Here” to “Elmer Gantry” to “Mainstreet” to “Arrowsmith” to “Babbit”....he was fucking prophetic.
He managed to zero in on the vapid materialism and jingoistic non-sense that has come to define us, as a nation, and he did it almost a hundred years ago.
I admit that I do not care for his style...I find him hard to read, and am constantly reminded of Middlemarch...which I also didn't enjoy reading...but his portrait of the Ugly American is spot on, from where I sit.

The Vulgariat...the Hillbilly Borg...the Lumpenbillies...
Morons, ascendant!
“Know-Nothing-ism” as a thing to aspire to while apparently hating everyone, including themselves.

The Democratic Party has it's large problems, of course...Hillarious as the face of Corporate Shillery...portraying a “Liberal” as a Brand, devoid of meaning.
But the Dem's existential crisis is nothing compared to the GOP.
They embody the Stupid and the Liar, all mixed up together.
To be an effective Liar, one must have some intelligence...and an ability to remember one's lies.
This is impossible if one is also Stupid.

….unless the folks you are lying to are even stupider:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhMepzqJvIw
( please cut and paste, it's worth it)

During the Bush Darkness, I thought it couldn't get more surreal....that the dangerous ideologues who emerged during that era were the nadir of American socio-political discourse.
The near-Fascism evident in those folks...and their local analogs...was frightening.
Then came Tea...
and I watched as the GOP fractured, and the “Conservative Movement” devolved into a gaggle of shouting illiterate assholes, so very proud of their ignorance and so certain in their incoherence.
As I've lamented so often...here was the Anti-Enlightenment personified.
“Get Back into the Cave!!!” is their rallying cry.

The “Freedom Caucus” that currently has it's claws around the throat of the GOP is a minority...not only in the Electorate as a whole, but in the GOP, itself.
The True Believers would fit into a couple of drunk tanks, and yet they have managed to break the US Government...paralyzing Congress to such an extent that nothing can get done.
If Boner of Orange decides to quit on schedule, the impossible scenario of there being No Speaker of the House becomes a reality....which means that nothing at all can get done, because the House will not be able to legally convene.
Will anyone notice, after 6 years of so little getting done, anyway?LOL.
Whom will the shouters and mouthbreathers blame?
Will it be Obama's fault?
Petty and Stupid, the Tea People I know are oblivious to what's actually happening...to them, Obama is an Evil Dictator and the country is in Ruins, over-run by Muslim Mexicans and Communist Libtards bent on making them have Gay Marriages while outlawing “christianity”, and taking all their guns.

“ They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race... They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden;... that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight;... that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ... 'Where does she get all them the'ries?' marveled Uncle Whittier Smail.”- from “Mainstreet”

The GOP, and by virtue of their 40 year hegemony on “Thought”, the rest of us, are wallowing in confusion...and this is not unexpected.
The entire Counter-Revolution was based on contradictory lies, incoherent obfuscation and rank hypocrisy. The Coalition of “Establishment GOP”, Big Bidness and the Lumpenbillies was never about Truth and the American Way...it was about getting and keeping Power.
The latter of the three legs of that shaky stool were either blind to this reality, or purposefully pushed it below their awareness.
The Reagan Mythos was, rather, about Believing Real Hard in things that do not make sense when scrutinized and help up against one another.


“A village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to conquer the earth... Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicate to the sayings of Confucius. Such a society functions admirably in the production of cheap automobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfied until the entire world also admits that the end and joyous purpose of living is to ride in flivvers, to make advertising-pictures of dollar watches, and in the twilight to sit talking not of love and courage but of the convenience of safety razors.”-Ibid.

After all these years of Liberals being driven into obscurity(some of it deserved), and leaving the Coalition of the Worst America has to Offer in complete control of the Government and worse, the Mind of America, here we are , today...the top 3-4 GOP Presidential Hopefuls are blatantly Ignorant, Pandering and even closer to being outright Fascists that even I would have predicted.
The front runner, in spite of all his foot in mouth disease, is the perfect example, as I've said, of Lewis' Buzz Windrip:

“He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts — figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect.”-from “It Can't Happen Here”

As I've said recently, Trump could win the thing.
According to my surveillance, if Sanders gets the Dem Nomination, what used to be called Reagan Democrats will join their frothing brethren in championing Trump....which would likely spell the end of the USA as we know it.

“The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his "ideas" almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store.
Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill.”
― Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

On the Permission to Read.



My youngest son came home the other day and said he needed me to write a note giving him permission to read the Hobbit.
I was taken aback, as I don't remember ever—ever!---needing permission from anyone to read any book I wanted.
His teacher told me the next day that it is due to certain parents who object to things like Harry Potter,etc. ---due to their fear of witchcraft.
….as if reading a book about a boy-wizard will undo the religious indoctrination that their particular children undoubtedly receive.
I suppose that books about Climate Change...or Dinosaurs...would also potentially find themselves on the list of books requiring Permission—wouldn't want to place Creationism, let alone Exxon's version of Science, on shaky ground.
In the last ten years or so, the education policy of the State of Texas has taken a turn towards the dangerously ignorant...sanitizing the curriculum of anything disturbing or less than “We're Awesome!!”...replacing Jefferson with McCarthy...and Biology with Myth...Our History(Warts and all) with a Rah-Rah Jingoism better suited for tin pot autocracies and the truly backwards.
There is an opportunity, for next year, to counter this slide into idiocy:The American Library Association puts on a full court press at the end of September with Banned Books Week(link below).

A cursory look at the ALA's material on Banned Books...including the History of such perversity(Inquisition, Savonarola, the Nazi's, Fahrenheit 451)...is instructive.
That a vocal minority of Holier-Than-Thou shouters, with overlarge toes, can effectively dictate what is available freely in the Public School's Library is frightening in this light:
So much for the Enlightenment concept of Free Inquiry, and Kant's rallying cry of Sapere Aude!(“Let us dare to Know!”).
A Free Country would find this kow-towing to the minority of the backwards anathema.
Perhaps having a policy of “Opt Out”, rather than “Opt In” would be an acceptable first step...
I understand that the current climate of fear and hatred is hard to counter, and that those who are driving this climate are very vocal and quick to shout at anyone who resists their hegemony, but I firmly believe that it is our duty as educators to challenge such myopic anti-intellectualism....such simplistic, sound-bite demagoguery.
We should endeavor to light fires in these kids' Minds, in order to create curious and thoughtful adults, rather than homogenous and well behaved drones who persist in their parents' Flat Eartherism.
The last time I was in the Elementary/Jr High Library, I noticed a sort of shrine, with a book by Sarah Palin in the center.
I wonder if permission is required for that book to be read....


Principiis Obsta; Caveat Ruinam.



http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/banned-books-week-roundup-2015/

http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/righttoreadguideline

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/park-cities/headlines/20141114-highland-park-isd-says-six-books-will-require-parental-permission.ece