Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Part Duh

One might at least creatively, rhetorically, make the argument that certitude is not bulletproof and absolute about, say, how precisely the universe "began," or the exact process by which species of biological organisms have developed over hundreds of thousands or millions of years. I wouldn't want to bother to engage in any sort of intellectually honest "debate" with such a person, because right away their motives would have to be in question. But it's at least theoretically conceivable that a person could raise some (again, intellectually honest) questions as to the specifics of such theorized processes.

But there's no excuse for this, there's no rationalizing how a grown-ass adult, even if English is not their first language, cannot understand how the sun appears in the east every morning, and disappears in the west every evening. We are supposed to be beyond the times where we told ourselves and each other various stories about that process. There is no chariot, pulled by celestial beasts and driven by a heroic mythical demiurge, laboriously towing the giant golden ball across the sky in slow motion day after month after decade after millennium.

As easy as it would be to drum another cynical eye-roll about how stupid these "1 in 4" are, this pseudo-statistic (and while I believe that 2,200 is too small of a sample, any contingent is still too large, on a subject like this), larger questions are begged, if we pull back far enough. One question we might ask, in the context of, say, "who the hell is educating these people, and how?" is what we expect our educational system to do, in the most general sense. In other words, if we expect our archaic Prussian model to merely churn out compliant workers, people who dutifully vote and pretend it made some difference, then hell, that's what you got. Keep on keepin' on.

But if we harbor notions of "greatness," however one chooses to define that, whether "continued" or "restored," we have to revisit that model, and its extenuations, accordingly. For one, even if we did decide we simply want our compliant-worker-drone model, one must ask, doing what? Considering the factors of overpopulation, leveraged comparative advantage in emerging markets (that is to say, cheap labor in overpopulated Third World countries), productivity gains (accruing primarily to owners, almost completely at the expense of labor), automation and commodification of routine tasks, and hypermobility of capital, the irrefutable issue facing Americans is the cold fact that there are simply more people than there are things for them to do to secure a living.

So what do you do with them, what do you "teach" them in the institutions of learning, the highest of which have devolved into a naked racket, a system of indentured servitude where one rolls up six figures worth of loans, and scrambles to pay them back down, in 10-15 years (of their prime years of life) if they're lucky (and they frequently aren't)? What is to be expected of such an "educational" system, frankly, when there are fewer and fewer options for them as employable drones?

I observe the experience of my daughter, who is in seventh grade, and I can only wonder, what is the point? To take but one example, her math class is something called Common Core. There is no textbook, only a series of worksheets that comprise the homework. "Notes" are taken in class, but for some reason are collected afterward by the teacher, presumably to show the accrediting body that notes are being taken.

However, as any of us who have learned a new concept already know, things like notes and textbooks are useful for reference, a way to preserve those oh-so-valuable experiential moments in the classroom for future study and guidance. It is a persistent assumption that those experiential moments cannot be replicated by the mere hunting and compilation of data, that there are interactive and interpersonal dynamics that must be internalized to attain true educational self-actualization.

There is some truth to that assumption; there are experiences in bonding, socialization, and team-building that are difficult or impossible to transfer to a wholly online paradigm. But again, a live interpersonal experience that mostly involves the mindless ticking of boxes, without understanding how the process of learning continues apace, becomes, while not completely valueless, certainly a process with diminishing value. Rather than instilling a love and appreciation for the edifying experience of learning a useful skill or idea, one learns how to navigate a bureaucratic maze posturing as a learning institution; instead of mastering a concept, one learns how to pass the test.

So we have to decide, at some point, probably when it's too late, that we would rather not be a society that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing, that while the things we can optimize and quantify and goal-seek on a spreadsheet have and add some value, they do not comprise the entirety of that value. They do have some value, don't get me wrong. But we have been misled to believe that it's the be-all-end-all, the ultimate goal of the process. And in a world where the knowledge is free, if you know where to look for it, if we can pull up a Khan Academy or Academic Earth video and learn something cool, what the hell are we going to "school" for, and worse yet, paying for an experience that has less and less meaning and value?

1 Timothy 6:10

So plutocrat performance artist Tom Perkins, apparently trying to leave no doubt amongst the proles as to whether he really is an asshole, lobs this little polemic:

In order to vote, [Perkins] proposed, everyone should have to have paid at least $1 in taxes.

"And those who have paid a million dollars in taxes," he continued, "should have a million votes."

Perkins demurred afterward, claiming that he had "intended to be outrageous and [he] was," but it was probably the truest expression of his beliefs about society at large -- and by association, the beliefs of many of his pelf-grubbing peers. These beliefs are simple, and pervasive, and borne out by the things they say and the things they do.

They believe firmly that poor people are poor not because of luck or circumstance, but because they're lazy and/or stupid, that they're basically children of a lesser god, and only by the benevolence and forbearance of their betters, and an occasional crumb from the table, can they be truly managed to a level of competence that is tolerable to the elites. They believe that they comprise the sum total of "greatness" this country still has to offer, choosing not to look back and see what really made the US great, a true world leader, for a considerable period of time. They have the luxury of being able to fuck things up, and then to sit back and complain about it.

To be (somewhat) fair, you have to give Perkins this much:  he's not an entitled idiot who walked into Daddy's money and just assumed he hit a triple. He has degrees from MIT and Harvard. (Then again, George W. Bush has a coveted Harvard EmBeeAyyy, doesn't he?) Still, Perkins does at least seem to have (or did at one time in his life) a marketable skill. The problem is that he thinks that skill gives him some sort of helicopter view over the rabble, and the right to exercise it as such.

Coming from a guy who weaseled out of a fatal yachting accident with a measly $10K fine, the whole thing is, pardon the expression, too rich. It's all just so terrible for them, the ingratitude of the peons. Not quite enough to change places, mind you, but terrible nonetheless. They have it all, but it ain't enough. They need us to love them, apparently, or at least admire their swagger and fortitude.

But that would be like a rape victim sympathizing with their attacker; the family of one of Ted Bundy's or Richard Ramirez' victims sympathizing with the animals that slaughtered their loved ones for the thrill of it all. There's Stockholm Syndrome, and there's mental illness catalyzed by extreme trauma.

The one-percenters, in their inexplicable defensiveness, have chosen to fight fire with stupid, to lash out at the least fortunate with the most despicable plaints. The peons need to organize enough to grab Perkins and his scummy ilk by their custom silk lapels and say:  Listen close, motherfucker. You won life's lottery. You and your children and grandchildren will never know for a day what 99% of us know every day of our lives -- that life is struggle; that we're lucky to cadge a paycheck-to-paycheck living doing something we can barely tolerate through the best years of our lives; that we're one bad break, a job shift to China or a health-care scare, from the street.

It barely merits pointing out that, since the political system is already owned lock, stock, and barrel by rich assholes like Perkins, that the "one dollar, one vote" principle he espouses is already in play, has been in play as long as any of us can remember. I don't know what system he's talking about; the system I know is one where rich people (like Perkins, who sits on Faux News' board) pit poor people against each other with imaginary distractions.

These idle rich fuckfaces use the system not just for their own benefit, but for their own amusement -- while you try to figure out how you're going to make it through the next week or month or year, they look for a new toy to play with, something else to keep score. It really is a game to them, and my long-standing contention that "Wall Street hates Main Street" couldn't possibly be clearer now. Although it does overstate the point; to hate something you actually have to care on some level, and they don't care. At all. At all. At all.

One assumes that Perkins' greatest expense, aside from taxes and stepstools to plant his nose up Danielle Steel's ass, is a team of minions to help him get his pants on around his giant fucking balls every morning. It's a toss-up at this point whether a more satisfying fate for him would be for him to be rendered destitute by some random ill fortune, or just to see his head on a pike.

Either way, Perkins is 82, so he'll be dead, sooner rather than later, but not soon enough. And some stray three-legged dog will stroll by, and piss on his headstone and take a massive dump on his grave.

Gay for Play

Well, it's about time -- a well-known college player from a highly-ranked program who will almost certainly be drafted comes out as gay before the draft. Short of an already established player coming out, this should have a pretty good-sized response, perhaps even an impact.

Or not. No doubt some knuckle-draggers will have some nasty things to say about Michael Sam, the same sorts of assholes that thought it was cool to call Richard Sherman the n-word after Sherman's amped-up outburst at the end of the NFC Championship Game. The hell with 'em.

Sam's declaration will get some chatter, but it wouldn't surprise me too much to see people either shrug or openly support his announcement. It's just not that big of a deal anymore. If English rugby players -- you know, the guys who do most of the same things American football players do, but without pads -- can come out and be accepted by their teammates, then this should not be a problem.

Still, it takes some guts on Sam's part, in that it could affect where he lands in the draft, and thus his pocketbook. But one would assume that he'll be happier not having to hide or play games, and maybe some of the few remaining holdouts on this issue will grow up a little in the process.

The Voices in Their Heads

Okay, we get what Bill Nye was trying to do. It's a respectable sentiment, anyway. But to call that dog-and-pony show a "debate" is an abuse of that word. There is no debate, there is science and not-science. There is the scientific method, and testable hypotheses, measured against the immovable derp of raw belief, and faith unsupported by evidence or reliable outcomes.

The nincompoopery of "intelligent design" was a frequent topic in this blog back in the day, when it infested school districts, eventually getting dumped unceremoniously on its ass by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The problem was not that science and religion were at some unbridgeable impasse; the problem was that "intelligent design" was neither of those things -- it was politics, and as such did a disservice to science and religion.

Now, this Ken Ham strain of "creationism" isn't even politics -- it's just marketing, in this case, marketed as some sort of sensible dialogue between equally-matched (if ideologically opposed) interlocutors. The reality of it is that it barely qualified as Firing Line for morons.

To paraphrase one of the Slate commentator's points, religion has more to lose by the absence or dismissal of a Prime Mover, than science has to lose by the (somehow) irrefutable proof of the existence of the divine hand. Were such a Hand to be demonstrated, it would be in the form of universal laws to be tested and verified.

Conversely, if it could be disproven (again, somehow), it not invalidate creationists' barrage of whoppers and claptrap in the fields of archaeology, geology, and many other sciences, it would completely undermine their moral cornerstones, the ones they routinely infest the political world with. After all, without the celestial graybeard judging, testing, and (occasionally) rescuing us, the many biblical prohibitions and commands would be without merit. Obviously, it would still be wrong and immoral to (for example) kill, steal, and lie, but the obsession with, say, homosexuals would lose overnight what remaining ground it still clings to.

The problem is that implying intellectual discourse -- on the creationists' home turf, no less -- legitimizes to that claque what can only be seen with honest eyes as incoherent jabber, a tangle of fables that, in its attempt to heave itself into discussions of science, only appears more and more illegitimate.

This Flintstones level of interpreting the historical past just holds us back further, impedes our collective ability to regain our footing as scientific leaders, casts us as the slow kid in the classroom of industrialized nations. The idea that hard-pressed taxpayers and school districts are supposed to waste scarce resources teaching this guff in science class would be funny, if only they weren't so dead serious about it.

Animals With Human Faces

So this happened within the last 24 hours. I think most of us would like to think that zoos are artifices of nature, sort of a cocooned Edenic environment where exotic fauna are gathered and stewarded with love and care.

But as we continue to be the only animal that deliberately fouls its own nest -- and indeed accelerate that hideous dynamic -- the truth is that zoos are museums, storage sheds for species that are murdered and poached into extinction, because small penis or some other lame excuse. (And yes, I sincerely hope that anyone involved on either end of the poaching game gets eyeball cancer and dies in agony.) We overbreed and overcrowd without a care for a damned thing, destroying habitats with the mindless vigor of a swarm of army ants, but it's other species that need to be "managed." Right.

I honestly have no clue why we search for "earthlike" planets out in the celestial firmament. So we have more things to butcher and despoil, so we can exploit and destroy ever more inconvenient creatures? Maybe the reason so many of us are drawn to post-apocalyptic fiction is that, despite the chaos and turmoil that drive such narratives, there is also a restoration of balance, which we no longer have any sense of.

Nature bats last, always, and it will be a hard rain that falls.

Kristallnot

Here's an idea that is only part polemic:  the next whiny, thieving billionaire asshole to complain about Obama being Hitler, should get the literal result of his assertion -- that is, stripped of all valuable possessions, herded on to a boxcar, trundled out to an isolated work camp, starved, beaten, tortured and forced to fight to survive, until being loaded into a fucking oven. Hokay? Enough of this shit already.

It's just beyond disgusting, this incessant whinging from these slimeballs who have everything they could want, and it's still not enough. Apparently they need the admiration of the peons as well. Well, fuck you, Tom Perkins, Steve Schwartzman, et al. Do the world a huge favor and kindly fuck off and die already. We don't need you and the nothing you produce, but expect everything in return for.

I sincerely look forward to the day when enough people realize how badly these assholes have ripped them off, and have added insult to injury, and we finally get the guts and brains to bring the tumbrels and guillotines on to Wall Street, and we put an end to this self-serving bullshit once and for all. Better yet, an economic collapse that evaporates their paper profits, catapults them and their useless skill sets into a Mad Max hellscape, and forces them to do something worthwhile to survive, would just about be worth it. Many of the rest of us are already on our way there, thanks to their shenanigans, so might as well lean into it.

Gradually, Then Suddenly

Brother Orlov has some (fairly extensive) observations about how this house o' cards comes tumbling down. Food for thought, and a solid counter to the incessant chunder from Suze Orman types, constantly telling the peons to make hay while the sun shines, even when there is no hay for those folks. So forget the hay, maybe use the internets while they're still relatively free, and figure out how to build a decent raft. Because the small cadre of shitbirds who have precipitated current and future conditions will, when the time comes, make sure everyone else puts in more skin well before they do.

Same Old Trip It Was Back Then

In the week since Philip Seymour Hoffman's untimely demise, I find myself taken aback by two entirely predictable sentiments:  one, the obvious sadness of a vibrant talent squelched in its prime; and two, the small but noticeable segment of know-it-all commenters around the internets who feel comfortable in judging Hoffman's final actions.

Perhaps we've all become inured to the jabber of various internets morons, but still, one holds out hope that once in a great while, some of these bozos find occasion to do something more productive, like jerking off, or eating mayonnaise straight from the jar. But of course, there's always a pocket of dipshits who can feign outrage and indignation over any little thing, no matter how little it actually affects them.

People are welcome to agree to disagree over whether addiction is a clinical or a behavioral disease; perhaps, like homosexuality, there are different factors of causation. So for some it may be biological, some environmental, or some combination. The idea that complete strangers and onlookers can somehow intuit what Hoffman's problem was is ludicrous. Hopefully, given the man's body of work, everyone can at least agree that this was a man of prodigious talent and artistic courage, given that he had very few true commercial successes -- indeed, for the most part, commerce did not seem to factor into most of his role choices.

It's a common trope that the "artistic temperament," as it were, leaves one more open to issues of substance abuse. You can probably chicken-egg that one to the end of time, trying to figure out which is causal or effectual. I can tell you firsthand, from my long-ago years of slugging it out as a dive-bar musician, that it's not always as simple (as opposed to easy) as it might appear. A touring musician's life is certainly not torture, but it's also not a picnic, and a steady diet of fast food, alcohol, speed, and random women can, to say the least, be dissociative after a while.

For a successful stage and film actor, it must be several orders of magnitude past what I saw and experienced in my decade on the road. Film shoots, from what I've always read, are intensive, weeks or months of long days, frequently in strange locations, hours of tedium in between short bursts of activity. And any time you're on a stage, in front of an audience, your task, whether you're an actor, musician, or cat juggler, is to get a roomful of (possibly hostile or at least indifferent) complete strangers to like you.

Like most fans, I feel sad for the brilliant future work we will no longer get to experience from Philip Seymour Hoffman, just as I wonder what sort of magic Jimi Hendrix or Randy Rhoads would have produced had they not died tragically young. And fortunately the dumbass detractors seem to be a minority, albeit an obnoxious one. Sometimes it's just best to murmur a hope of peace for Hoffman and his family and friends, and move along, and hopefully one day those folks will find something better to do than piss on someone's grave for no good reason.

Super Bowl 48 Prediction

This year's matchup is sort of the turd icing on your typical Raiders fan's cake -- a hated divisional rival versus a former divisional rival (Seattle, of course, was moved from the AFC West to the NFC West in the 2002 league realignment.) However, any real football fan can appreciate the classic strength-versus-strength matchup here, with Denver's record-setting offense going against Seattle's aggressive, bone-crushing defense.

Casual fans got to meet all-pro trash-talker Richard Sherman in the wake of Sherman's game-saving coverage at the end of the NFC Championship Game, rousing the usual knuckle-dragging fucktards out of their caves for some routine racism. Just a reminder that, to (very) loosely paraphrase Faulkner, it isn't 2014 everywhere; in some places, it's more like 1864. While I found Sherman's amped-up woofing off-putting, to say the least, the fact of the matter is that he backs up his trash talk with his play, which is all any fan of the game can ask.

Further, Sherman turns out to be a decent guy, a sharp kid who made it from Compton to Stanford and tries to serve as a role model for other inner-city kids looking for a ladder to climb. He's an outstanding student of the game, and there's no doubt he's spent the last couple weeks watching how Peyton Manning deploys his fleet of receivers. Sherman will almost certainly have an impact in the game, either a pick or some key tackles, or some combination.

But assuming the weather is not too terrible (and it appears just to be very cold, but no rain or snow), the odds are with Denver. The Seahawks' defense only allowed about a third of opponents' red zone offensive drives to end in touchdowns, so expect some of the Broncos's efforts to peter out into field goals, diluting their impact somewhat. And to compound the "strength-versus-strength" trope with even more specificity, consider this:  Denver's offense is first in the league in converting on third and fourth down, and Seattle's defense is also first in preventing such conversions.

(If you're a sports-stat geek, you are probably already aware of Football Outsiders, but if not, you'll love it. They compile a mind-boggling array of numbers, but in a way that doesn't require a PhD in statistics to comprehend.)

Anyway, it seems that the Seahawks' offense might be the weak link here, not by a great deal, but in the sense that they just won't be quite able to keep up with Manning and the Broncos' offense. Manning is infamously the most astute and obsessive film student in the game, and you can bet he's dissected Seattle's powerhouse secondary just as much as Sherman has picked apart the Denver offense. Look for Manning to victimize safety Earl Thomas, with WR DeMaryious Thomas over the top, and TE Julius Thomas (yeah, I know, all these Thomases, and none of them related, afaik) up the seam. Earl Thomas has been burned in coverage a few times over the past month or so by opposing QBs, and so will probably be considered a point of vulnerability to exploit by Manning.

Early looks at this matchup made me assume a slow first half, followed by Denver breaking away in the second half, but I think Seattle may keep it closer after all, if returning speedster Percy Harvin can break even a couple of big plays off for them. Denver's run D is weak, and Seattle RB Marshawn Lynch seems to be in his trademark "beast mode" lately.

To the extent that I have a dog in this fight, I would like to see Seattle win it, if only because they have never done so before, and because it would be slap in the face of the twittard racists (who I sincerely hope will kindly do the world a huge fucking favor and die before they reproduce). But Manning will probably come out of this with his second ring (which would be the first time a QB has won a SB with two different teams), though the Seahawks will make him work for it. It should be an excellent game regardless.

Prediction:  Broncos 31, Seahawks 30.

[Update 10:00 PM PST: Holy shit, talk about being wrong on almost every factor. The only thing I got right was that Seattle's defense was just unstoppable -- getting a safety on the very first play from scrimmage, holding Denver to just 11 offensive yards in their first 3 possessions, and shutting the Broncos out until the very end of the 3rd quarter, when they finally allowed them their only points for the night. Denver's secondary was banged up, playing backups in mostly soft coverage, and Russell Wilson took advantage of that with a decisive performance.

This may be a case of two organizational ships passing in the night, going in different directions. Seattle is young, and has relatively few key free agents in this coming off-season, while Denver in general -- and Manning in particular -- skew older, and may lose key slot receiver Eric Decker to free agency. Certainly the Broncos should be expected to at least make the playoffs next season, but the Seahawks will easily be the Vegas odds-on favorite for another full run.]

Order Distorters

This week's bucket o' bullshit, in the wake of a predictably vanilla ('scuse the pun) State of the Onion speech, comes to you courtesy of failed veep tool and P90X spokes-prick Paul Ryan:

"We have an increasingly lawless presidency where he is actually doing the job of Congress, writing new policies and new laws without going through Congress. Presidents don't write new laws, Congress does," Ryan said.

Ryan backpedals against the other exec order bullshit that your senile fascist aunt probably forwarded to you when she was in her cups, that The Blah Guy has issued a flurry of orders, to grease the skids to herding the freedom-oriented folks into those FEMA camps out in the boonies. (Never mind that they are still flapping their yaps, which would seem to, erm, logically undermine their "point," but whatever.)
If only there were some way to verify those assertions, right? Not that it matters, since as always, facts are completely orthogonal to whatever argument it is that they think they're making. So the new talking point, according to Ryan, is the "scope" rather than the number of executive orders (since again it turns out that Obama has issued the fewest exec orders for a two-term president since Grover Cleveland, and in fact is barely ahead of Poppy Bush, and only two ahead of Gerald Ford, who only served two years as the fill-in between the disgraced Nixon and the single-term Carter).
No matter how easily and often these lies can be refuted, this "lawless imperial dictator" guff will no doubt be the midterm mantra, as gerrymandered incumbents run -- unopposed, in many cases -- to screw their constituents ever more.

Weekend Pimpology

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath for the compendium of 2013 posts, Lucky '13, to hit the Kindle Book store, and it will, definitely within the next week. Only so many hours in the day, and for some reason I continue to show up at my day job, even though I'm now getting cornholed on the health insurance I don't even use. Another $200/month I don't have, for something I don't use. Yes, this is certainly "reform" that will make my future life on a fucking sidewalk so much better. Awesome. Remind me again why I voted for this fucking guy, and how much worse the other guy would have been.


Anyhoo, until that magickal day when you can pick up Lucky '13 (which will kick off with a free download weekend), you can always grab the 2013 list of assholes, Baker's Dozen, for just 99 cents. If you have Amazon Prime, you can borrow it for free (and I still get paid).


Thanks for your support. Party on.

Risk / Reward

The meritocracy strikes again:

JPMorgan Chase, after a year marred by scandal and stiff regulatory penalties, has decided to award its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, $20 million in compensation for 2013, an amount that will further inflame the debate over the accountability of senior bank executives.

The award, announced in a company filing Friday, is 74 percent higher than the $11.5 million that Dimon earned in 2012. By approving a hefty raise, the bank's board is signaling that it remains firmly behind Dimon after 12 months in which JPMorgan suffered several bruising legal setbacks, including a record $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department over soured mortgage securities.

In justifying the $20 million package, which includes $18.5 million of JPMorgan stock as well as a base salary of $1.5 million, the board said that JPMorgan had advanced in many ways under Dimon. And to many on Wall Street, as well as some other long-serving chief executives, Dimon wholly deserves the raise. "I think he's worth more than that," Warren E. Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, said. "Overall, I think the shareholders of JPMorgan and the American people should be happy that Jamie Dimon has been running the bank over this period."

Yes, peons, be grateful that your superiors have given the most visible member of their class an eight-figure sinecure of stock options, in exchange for paying record fines for hosing shareholders and banks. You would go to jail for such things, but in the other America, you get rewarded for risking other people's money.


Almost six years into Obama-dom, and the "sociamalism" drumbeat continues apace. Either that word no longer means what I thought it did, or he's pretty damned bad at it. If Obama's a socialist, then I'm Ron Jeremy.

The Evil of Banality

Easily one of the most disturbing docs I've seen in a long time. A brutal reminder of the absurd, mindless cruelty that lives in people. If you can make it through this thing without at least wondering if a massive die-off might be such a terrible thing after all, you're a better person than I am.

Not one of these evil bastards has even a shred of remorse for the massacres they and their death squads committed in Indonesia in 1965-66. The attempts to show Anwar Congo as haunted by his deeds fall short; Congo is clearly just dismayed that he has nightmares and can't rid himself of them. Tough shit, asshole -- if there were any such thing as karma in this universe, Congo and the rest of his cohort would be withering away from a slow, agonizing death from eyeball cancer.

Perhaps the most revealing part of the movie is how, when you get right down to it, the Indonesian death squads were not really political. Sure, they wanted to kill commies. But only because the commies wanted to get rid of the Hollywood gangster flicks these criminals enjoyed. Aside from the death squads and genocidal ambitions, it's really like watching a street crew from a mob movie, shaking down merchants for protection money, running for office so as to legitimize their theft, throwing their weight around, siphoning parasitically from the honest labors of others. The commies would have shut down the protection racket, where Suharto recognized that these paramilitary gangs had a constructive use for his own genocidal ambitions.

Movies like The Act of Killing inadvertently provide an explanation for why mainstream dreck packs houses; by the time you're done with this thing, even Grown Ups 3 or Transformers 6 or Tyler Perry's Tyler Perry Puts on a Dress -- Again would be an acceptable palate cleanser.

Fun for the whole family. See it at your own peril.

Rising Tides, Sinking Boats

It's virtually impossible to imagine anyone being surprised by the report that 85 individuals now possess as much as half of humanity. Now, there are qualifiers of sorts -- if you're even an average schmuck in the US or Europe, chances are that in terms of assets and income, you're ahead of a healthy chunk of folks who live on a dollar or two a day, and don't own a pot to piss in. The average American frequently forgets (or doesn't even know) that 1 in 3 people live in either China or India, and 1 in 2 -- half of all human beings -- live in Asia.

Still, as the Krugster points out in what has become more or less a weekly homily to be ignored by our betters (or bettors), inequality is increasing everywhere, here as much or more than anywhere else. This seems to be mathematically at odds with the supply-side mythos, the Reaganauts who spoke wistfully of "trickling down" and a "rising tide lifting all boats." There is only so much stuff even magnificently wealthy people can buy and own and use, so it gets hoarded or "invested," usually overseas in both cases so's to avoid paying even a percentage point or two on their precious.

I politely suggest that if you find yourself on the short end of the stick, your options are few and far between. You can bend over and take it for the rest of your life; you can talk about how much it sucks, as if Barry O or Elizabeth Warren will actually do anything about it. Sooner or later someone, or some group, will choose the violent insurrection option, but the problem there is that usually an ineffectual or flat-out wrong target is chosen. Political figures operate at the behest of their owners; they have little choice but to dance with them that brung 'em.

Which leaves identifying properly the operators of these collectively ruinous enterprises, the soulless bastards who would rather dump a kajillionty dollars into astroturf teabagger propaganda efforts, than to put the same money -- or even less -- into something that benefits someone other than themselves. The animals Krugman describes, the smug, vile pricks who want to be Leo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, always get away with it, leaving their rented dogsbodies in DC to take the abuse and hyperbole, while they scuttle off to the Hamptons or the Bahamas and hoard their pelf.

Obviously, not every single wealthy person is a shiftless douche who inherited every dime they have. But many of them are, and act like it, or act like they're the only ones who have ever worked for anything, and everyone else is just some worthless combination of dumb and lazy. Worse yet, even among those that earned every cent they got with no help from anyone at any point in their lives, they mostly (Warren Buffett being a notable exception) persist in avoiding any and all taxes if they can help it.

As we always say, this is not politics, it's math. Increasing inequality by definition means reduced opportunities and mobility for everyone else. To the people who refuse to say anything bad about them because they hope to be them someday (just read the LA Times comments, if you can stomach it), all you can tell those folks is, good luck with that. They might as well spend their entire next paycheck on Powerball tickets, for all it'll get them.

So let's get after these assholes, once and for all. Properly identified, one then has the option of bringing out the tumbrels and guillotines, or better yet, developing ways to disintermediate them. Their worst nightmare, the unproductive rich, is for their rackets to no longer work, the idea that they might actually have to work for a living. Refuse to participate in their system. This is why Bitcoin is starting to attract so much scrutiny, as is Silk Road, Kim Dotcom, and other players and aspects of the parallel system. They can't stand the idea that one day, enough of us might come to the realization that we can do just fine without them, that we never really needed them in the first place.

Money and value are, after all, simply tacit agreements on what things are "worth" for trading. What would happen if enough people decided that they no longer agreed with that collective understanding? As the Orlov article points out, even a 10% hit would cripple them. It would cascade downstream -- but it already has been, and will only get worse anyway. Might as well have at least some control over our fates, right?

NFL Championship Game Predictions

Busy weekend, so I didn't have time to check with any of the stat sites I normally rely on for close analysis of these two games. Also, too, since I dislike all four teams, I find myself not really caring much.

Still, it's a chance to guess somewhat correctly, so here goes. As always, caveat bettor.

AFC Championship Game -- New England (+5.5) at Denver:  If the NFL were the Catholic Church, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning would be living canonical saints. As much as I dislike both teams, I have to admit that both QBs have made careers out of making the teams around them better, with rigorous study and skill.

Yes, the Patsies pwned a marginally competent Indianapolis defense back in Boston last week, but Denver, to say the least, ain't Boston. Yes, the eventual Super Bowl champ Baltimore Ravens went into Denver for last year's conference championship and came out victorious -- but with some seriously lucky breaks. Don't see that happening this time around, but Brady and Manning will at least keep it interesting, and if you're betting spread, the Pats should beat the 5½-point spread, but that won't be quite enough. Omaha! Omaha!

Prediction:  Broncos 38, Patriots 35.

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NFC Championship Game -- San Francisco (+3.5) at Seattle:  Given the Seahawks' fearsome 15-1 home record over the last two seasons, and the Niners' wild-card status making this an exhausting third playoff weekend in a row, it seems like the spread should be larger. Yet San Francisco is surging at the same time Seattle has hit a relative slump. Seattle's lone home loss came at the hands of an Arizona Cardinals team that narrowly missed the playoffs, and a then-winless Tampa Bay team took them to overtime during mid-season, so that home record may not be as bulletproof as the record implies.

In their last 5 games (4 regular season and last week's playoff game hosting the Saints), Seattle QB Russell Wilson has thrown 4 TD and 3 INTs, and been sacked 17 games. San Francisco's success has been contingent on aggressive defense and controlled QB play from Colin Kaepernick that minimizes mistakes and gives underrated RB Frank Gore time to wear down opposing defenses. Still, Seattle's own punishing D should be able to salvage this, and get them into their first Super Bowl since the 2006 season. But if there's an upset to be had today, it's here.

Prediction:  Seahawks 21, 49ers 20.


[Update 1/19 8:15 PST:  Well, finally go 100% for the day, though not without some help from the refs in Seattle. And what the fuck is up with Richard Sherman? Good player, might want to dial it down, at least until he actually has that ring. We'll have some Super Bowl predictionsguesses for you the day before game time. In the meantime, back to your regularly scheduled programming.]

Can't Win Them All

After eight years in a coma, the world's leading living dead man, Ariel Sharon, finally shuffled off this mortal coil. Stranger perhaps than the pre-loaded, fake-shocked encomia from the press are the contradictory assessments of the man from the polar opposites of the Israeli political scene.

Palestinian youths at the Khan Younis refugee camp burned Sharon’s photograph and handed out candy in celebration of his death. A leader of the Fatah Party in Ramallah called him a war criminal. A spokesman for the Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said Sharon’s hands were “covered in Palestinian blood.”

Sharp-edged assessments of his legacy were not confined to Palestinians. A leftist historian recalled Sharon’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982. A human rights activist branded Sharon a symbol of impunity for the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Beirut that year. But some of the harshest words came from supporters of Israel’s settler movement.

Orit Struck, a member of the Israeli parliament, called Sharon “one of the great builders of the land of Israel, and its greatest destroyer.” She said she thanked God that Sharon was struck down by a stroke before he could return more land to the Palestinians.

So Sharon was, it seems, more or less equally despised by all. The Palestinians despise him for expanding Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories; the Palestinians and Lebanese hate him for invading Lebanon and tacitly encouraging the atrocities of Sabra and Shatila; and the Jewish settlers loathe Sharon for withdrawing from Gaza and evicting Jewish settlers. Maybe it's a "confederacy of dunces" thing, maybe it's just that no one can win in that corner of the world.
Maybe the next generation will be able to remove themselves from the transgressions and assumptions of the previous generations, but probably not. It's more a matter of Palestinians simply outbreeding Jews, aside from the Orthodox and the settlers, with whom mainstream Israelis have some issues to begin with.
Sharon probably did what he felt he had to do for the good of his beleaguered nation, at any particular time. That doesn't help; nothing does. When you have one group claiming to be an exalted chosen, and another group vowing to drive the first group into the sea, you're just not going to win. If both sides must hew to holy books, maybe they could each start with the Golden Rule, and have just an atom of empathy.

Self-Awareness

Looks like ol' Team B Gates has decided to cash in his chips with the expected level of subtlety and acuity:

I was put off by the way the president closed the meeting. To his very closest advisers, he said, "For the record, and for those of you writing your memoirs, I am not making any decisions about Israel or Iran. Joe, you be my witness." I was offended by his suspicion that any of us would ever write about such sensitive matters.

Um, okay. Seriously, what's wrong with this guy?

Free Download

Here's your assignment, Hammerheads -- go grab my new mini-book, Baker's Dozen, free for the next 72 hours. Give it a quick read, drop a review on the Amazon page, tell a friend or a forum thread of like-minded individuals. This will take you all of 15-20 minutes total, won't cost you a dime, and you'll be doing a good deed.

Thanks for your support. Stay tuned -- next weekend I'll be pestering you to do the same things for the launch of our collection of posts from last year, Lucky '13.

Irregulation

"Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard." -- H.L. Mencken

"Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid." -- John Wayne, Sands of Iwo Jima

As they say, timing is everything:

As West Virginians were learning Thursday of a devastating chemical spill in the Elk River that has rendered water undrinkable for 300,000 people, the US House of Representatives was busy gutting federal hazardous-waste cleanup law.

The House passed the Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act that would ultimately eliminate requirements for the Environmental Protection Agency to review and update hazardous-waste disposal regulations in a timely manner, and make it more difficult for the government to compel companies that deal with toxic substances to carry proper insurance for cleanups, pushing the cost on to taxpayers.

In addition, the bill would result in slower response time in the case of a disaster, requiring increased consultation with states before the federal government calls for cleanup of Superfund sites - where hazardous waste could affect people and the environment.


....


The legislation was passed by a vote of 225 to 188, mostly along party lines, with all but four Republicans supporting the bill and all but five Democrats opposing it. One of those Democrats crossing party lines to support the changes to environmental law was Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia.

Well then, what say we just leave them to their own devices. Sounds like they got it all under control, and they don't need no gubmint goons tellin' 'em how to run things.

Friends 'n' neighbors, I don't know about you, but I'm tired of the discredited notion that there is any merit in trying to convince people with facts and ideas that they might not want to keep voting against themselves. Maybe the best way is to let them do it -- and deal with the inevitable consequences.

You don't like regulations? Fine, enjoy your poisoned rivers and your collapsing mineshafts. You hate paying taxes? Cool, good luck cleaning up your mess, since you don't believe in the evil gubmint forcing those nice bidnessmen who did it to clean it up and make your families and homes and communities whole again. You think the minimum wage is wrong on sacred principle? Fine, get on out there and see how much the world values your back and your high-school diploma. There are plenty of people working their asses off in a variety of menial, physically exhausting jobs, barely getting by. Feel free to join them.

Maybe after reading and writing about this nonsense for so long, I've just hit a wall, and no longer have any empathy for people who refuse to read a book or think about things for a hot second. It's like having a dumb kid who insists on sticking his fingers in doorjambs, even though household pets can see how doors work. But it's rare for kids to smash their fingers in a door a second time, right?

So maybe it's time to settle this once and for all with a referendum, not a media noise meter -- do the majority of people want to have a basic safety net for when shit happens and life goes south, or do they want a Randian Wild West show, let the devil take the hindmost? The recent sci-fi novel The Beam has an interesting take on this electoral and cultural divergence, but I've only read the first few chapters so far. The basic premise is that, every six years, citizens get to vote on whether to be freelance entrepreneurs, living with the outcomes of the risks they take, or wards of the state, surviving on a measly but secure stipend.

I just don't have any patience for this Deer Hunting With Jesus shit anymore. The political climate is as toxic as the river these coal fucks just trashed, and the majority of people in that state have consistently voted to poison their environments and wreck their communities, for jobs that will kill them long before they're old enough to collect Social Security.

Cut bait. Let 'em reap their whirlwind already.

Health Care, Housekeeping, Cyber-panhandling, Notes and Errata

Here's something fun:  for my first paycheck this year, I got a nice surprise -- every two weeks now, I get about a hundred bucks more deducted for my basement-level health plan. Happy New Year, right? Considering I not only have decent health insurance, but am a member of a manager-level public-sector union, I can just imagine what others are dealing with.

 

The easy snark would be to drop some #thanksobamacare smackdown, but of course there's more to it than that. You'd think with a variety of corporate-owned media entities jabbering 24-7-365, someone would step up and talk about what "Obamacare" really is. But it doesn't seem like they have.

 

So let's be more clear about this, since the media (and indeed Obama himself) have failed to do so -- what we call "Obamacare" is really an amalgamclusterfuck of industry-written regulations, mandating health care not so much to insure people who can't get insurance, but to ensure that when indigent people visit the ER and skip out on their tab, someone (that's you 'n' me, bunky) covers the tab.

 

So I'm well aware of what I'm being forced to pay for now, something I rarely if ever use. If it wasn't this, it'd be something else -- the hallmark of bureaucracies in general and post-industrial societies in particular is that, since you have more people with less to do, but everyone needs to look like they're doing something, what remains of the American middle class has to get used having someone's fucking hand in their pocket at every turn.

 

Can't ask the .1%ers to pay a little extra taxes, since they're job creators, right? (Just not here.) And by definition you can't ask the indigent and unskilled to pay for it, since they're barely eking their way through life. (And yet, there are people who earn a better living than I do, advocating for the rights of the disenfranchised. Awesome. Where do I get one of those folks to advocate for me being nickel-and-dimed to death?)

 

But I don't have an extra $200 a month to throw at bullshit either. I drive a 20-year-old car to work. Already I'm going to spend the rest of my life paying down interest on $200 textbooks, for a degree that should have come in two-ply. And now this, so that some bloodsucker can optimize their fucking stock portfolio on everyone else's back.

 

Anyway, I don't really care to hit folks up for money, because I know things are tough all over. But here are a few ways you can help a brutha out, with very little (or no) money and time:

 

1. Check out our sponsors. Whether or not you buy anything, it helps.
2. If you have Amazon Prime, you can borrow any of my books for Kindle from Amazon for free, and I still get a royalty.
3. Spread the word. Nothing is more valuable than word of mouth.
4. My political books are all lower than $2.99 in price, so if you want to buy one, they're really not that costly, and never will be.
5. If you play guitar, or would like to learn, check out my Amazon Store at the top of the right sidebar. If you buy through that portal, I get the royalty and the sales commission. Most of the guitar books are $2.99 or lower, though a couple of the longer ones are $3.99, and they all have enough material to keep just about anyone busy for months.

 

The new Hammer book, Baker's Dozen, is available for download, only 99 cents. Starting Sunday, the book will be available for free for 72 hours. It's the Assholes of 2013 list, essentially. Grab a copy for free, take 30 seconds and write a review, and tell a friend at one of the kewl-kid blogs. Easy enough, doesn't cost you a dime, and you're out maybe 15 minutes of your day.


I had hoped to release the 2013 collection, Lucky '13, at the same time, but due to a multitude of other commitments and projects, I'm still working on formatting and cover design. Should be ready to drop next weekend; considering I didn't get Mockalypse and 12 in '12 out until April, I can live with mid-January for these new ones.

 

As always, thanks for your support.

In Other News

Random observation from checking out my stats dashboard:  there have been more pageviews here with the keywords "arnold schwarzenegger in a gay pron" than for "arnold Schwarzenegger gay porn" (because of this classic post). Discuss.

NFL Divisional Playoff Predictions

New Orleans (+8) at Seattle:  As close to a dead lock as you'll find this weekend, this replay of the Week 13 matchup will probably not be as bad as the 34-7 throttling the Saints endured, but still won't be pretty. Seattle has the #1 pass (and #1 overall) defense in the league; while New Orleans' #2 pass D keeps them in this, they have been vulnerable to the run all year. Look for Marshawn Lynch to power through early and often. Seattle's infamously loud stadium will probably thump into Puget Sound seconds after the game concludes.

Prediction:  Seahawks 31, Saints 13.

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Indianapolis (+7) at New England:  This is the only game of the four this weekend where the teams did not play each other during the regular season. My loathing for all thing Brady and Patsies is deep and abiding, and well-chronicled and archived, so I won't belabor it. Suffice to say, though, that Brady and his team have gotten it done despite an epically hard-luck season; after shelling out record cash for their all-world tandem of tight ends, Aaron Hernandez sits in jail awaiting trial on first-degree murder charges, and Rob Gronkowski, after going through four forearm surgeries and a back surgery last offseason, is out again, this time with a torn ACL and MCL.

After being that snakebitten, and having no true #1 WR or RB, somehow the Pats managed to go 12-4, although they played just four playoff-bound teams in the regular season (winning two, each by three points). However, New England closed strong in their final two games, and did not lose at home all season. After their astounding comeback last weekend, it would be nice to see the Colts power into Boston, kick ass and take names, but it's unrealistic to expect T.Y. Hilton to put up 224 yards every game, and Andrew Luck has no other big-play receivers to throw to. The Colts were streaky all season, beating good teams and then getting blown out by the Rams and Cardinals. Hate to say it, but take the Pats and the points.

Prediction:  Patriots 31, Colts 20.

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San Francisco (-1) at Carolina:  Apparently the jury is still out on Cam Newton; nothing else explains the 49ers being favored here. Carolina beat San Francisco 10-9 back in Week 10, at Candlestick, and the Panthers' defense is second only to Seattle's in rushing and total yards. Since a 1-3 start, Carolina has only lost once, a 31-13 defeat in New Orleans, despite having the statistically toughest schedule (based on opponents' 2012 records) in the league. The Niners showed up and performed well in the frigid tundra of Green Bay last week, but a cross-country road trip to face a well-rested team might just be a bit much to ask.

Prediction:  Panthers 16, 49ers 13.

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San Diego (+9.5) at Denver:  Not counting the SF-Carolina line, which I consider erroneous, this game is the most likely to be an upset. Odd fact: the other three teams still in the AFC Playoffs (Colts, Patriots, Chargers) are the three teams that beat the Broncos in the 2013 regular season. Of these, only San Diego beat the Broncos in Denver, just a few weeks ago. In that 27-20 victory, the Chargers were the only team all season to hold the record-setting Donks' offense below 400 yards.

Other odd facts:  San Diego OC Ken Whisenhunt was the Steelers' OC in 2005 when that #6 seeded team (as the Chargers are) barnstormed through three road games (including Denver, for the AFC Championship) to eventually win a Super Bowl; Peyton Manning has a 9-11 playoff record overall, and 8 one-and-done postseasons; since 1990, the #1 seed in the AFC has won just 2 (of 23) Super Bowls, and been knocked out in the first playoff game 10 times; Denver has a dead-even (zero) turnover differential, almost unheard-of for a 13-3 team. Manning fumbled a record (for him) ten times this season, losing six, including one against San Diego in Week 15. This one is ripe for the taking, if the Chargers want it badly enough.

Prediction:  Chargers 31, Denver 30.


[Update 1/12 10:00 PST:  So much for the Panthers' defense. The swagger that they rode through the first half got jujitsued against them in the second half by a couple of excruciatingly long, patient Niner drives, until Carolina finally started losing their shit, getting stupid penalties and blowing coverage and tackles. If San Francisco can keep up their current momentum, they can and should give Seattle a run for their money; only the weather and a little bit of luck prevented the Saints from catching up to the Seahawks yesterday.


As for the AFC matchups, obviously I was pulling for San Diego, but they couldn't quite close the deal, and they would have been chewed up and spit out in Boston next week anyway. It pains me to acknowledge this, but the AFC Championship Game matchup really will be between the two best teams in the conference, taking into consideration that there are only a few teams in the conference that are even solid, much less consistently good. We'll see how the week and the weather go, and predict accordingly next weekend for the Super Bowl matchup.]

Bridge(t) to Nowhere

Let's go ahead and stipulate that Chris Christie has demonstrated multiple times that he is probably not temperamentally suited for the White House, or even a Senate seat. He's an asshole who enjoys being an asshole; you don't even have to get into any cheap "throwing his weight around" shots to make such a point, there's no shortage of YouTube clips attesting to this.

That doesn't mean Christie's a bad governor or even a bad guy. His love for his state and its people seems palpable. In fact, Christie's passion for pretty much everything he talks about is his major selling point. He loves Springsteen more than you or I will ever love just about anything in life, and there's something to be said for that. And his ability and willingness to run athwart fellow goopers makes him more appealing to non-Republicans / conservatards.

No doubt Bridget Kelly, the senior aide whose unfortunate email commentary got her unceremoniously dumped, got a decent severance package out of it, presumably with a non-disclosure agreement of a year or three. There might even be some folks out there who genuinely believe that Christie was completely out of the loop on jamming up the GW Bridge going into Fort Lee.

In the end, it doesn't matter what anyone thinks about Christie, since he almost certainly will not be the GOP nominee in 2016. There is also a chance, lesser but still possible, that Hillary Clinton, who will turn 69 shortly before Election Day 2016, may not be the Democratic nominee. But the Republicans are going through an identity crisis, indeed something of an ideological implosion. The only thing keeping them alive in the House is a comical level of gerrymandering.

Christie is the media's current flavor of what a leading Republican candidate should "be" like -- a Republican governor of a Democratic state who polls high, likable for the most part, unafraid to buck party orthodoxy, gives "good head," in the journo sense that he's almost always going to be more quotable than the next guy. But he's also the crack-free version of Rob Ford, in a sense, because he is so insistent on never taking shit from anyone and always having the last word, it becomes a pattern, a defining characteristic.

Christie's bulk, fair or not, doesn't help him either -- in such a heavily driven media age, a short or fat person is simply not going to do well, and Christie is both those things. It's not just the "Secretary of Cake" jokes either; like aging cancer survivor John McCain in 2008, an obese candidate in his 50s is going to receive extra scrutiny as to his running mate, the implication being that succession planning is of utmost importance. Again, fairness is not a consideration here, it's just the way things are.

Even if Christie were to change his attitude and drop a hundred pounds tomorrow, the thing is that the media get tired of their pets after a while, and now that Christie's bumptious Everyman schtick has been found to have a vindictive, petty side, that's the tack they're going to take. His reputation may be shot before we hit midterms later this year, much less 2016.

The kneejerk conservatard response, as you might guess, is Benghazi. Because of course it is. In this instance, however, there may actually be a pebble of wisdom buried in their dross, in that it behooves Democrats and or liberals to just let this thing run its natural course, and leave it until they need it, as opposed to bringing it up at every cocktail party and neighborhood barbecue, as the 'baggers do with Benghazi. Somehow they have talked themselves into Benghazi as if it were Pearl Harbor or 9/11 (well, it did happen on September 11th), and cannot fathom why everyone is slowly backing away from them. It's one thing to make a molehill into a mountain, but quite another to build a cabin on said mountain and refuse to leave.

Also, too.

Diet of Worms

They flutter behind you, your possible pasts, right? Case in point:  one Dennis "The Worm" Rodman. He could have gone into coaching or front-office after finishing his playing career, and carved out a perfectly respectable name for himself, coasting on his NBA Hall of Fame pedigree and a hard-earned reputation as a fearless rebounder.

Instead he decided to embrace his inner weird, go on a bender with the likes of Madonna, and now he's a 52-year-old pineapple-headed buffoon, thinking he can undo generations of psychotic cultural programming in the world's most isolated nation with a basketball game. It's a noble thought, I guess, but so utterly negligent of the surrounding circumstances and context as to negate any good faith Rodman might have intended.

Because this is North Korea we're talking about, and no one really knows for sure the whole picture, there's also a reasonable argument to be made that the Switzerland-educated Kim Jong Un is, by NK standards, more "liberal" or at least comparatively more moderate than his father's and grandfather's henchmen, who make up the inner circle. At the very least this makes for a wide variety of analyses of the public purging and execution of Kim's uncle, Jang Song Thaek.

The thing is, serious analysis is irrelevant to Rodman being sponsored to coach a game in an indisputable dictatorship, a place of almost absurd levels of cruelty, poverty, famine, oppression. It doesn't put Rodman on a par with having lunch with Hitler, not quite, but it's pretty damned ugly, as ugly as Rodman playing Marilyn Monroe to Kim's JFK. This is how he'll be remembered, as a useful idiot to a powerful, murderous man-child. Just embarrassing.

Heightening the Contradictions

Let's cut right to it -- Arizona deserves Steven Seagal for a governor, just like California deserved Schwarzenegger. Stoking a second career as a slightly upscale Dog the Bounty Hunter and widow's peak advocate, Seagal accurately represents the long-standing, ongoing deep well of yahooism in Arizona state politics. This is, after all, the same state that, just in the last couple decades, had in its state house a corrupt used car salesman, a grown-ass man called "Fife," and, um, Jan Brewer.

So, yeah, I hope Seagal runs and wins. I hope he immediately appoints serial torturer, waster of taxpayer dollars, and modern day Boss Hogg Joe Arpaio as Attorney General. I think these are the sorts of moves that might clarify things for people.

The 'bagger Wolverines are remarkably consistent in their anger, because it keeps them warm. They get away with stunts like this because no one else is as angry as they are. They use volume and aggression to make up for lack of numbers. Old, angry retirees have only so many distractions. They count on the fact that everyone else either has a job, or trying to find one; they don't have time to fuck around with this Minuteman horseshit.

So maybe it's time someone else got angry, and maybe this would be just the thing to wake them up. Maybe when the entire state, and not just Maricopa County, has Shurf Joe and his unlicensed, unregulated posse of child molesters and reprobates crawling up their collective asses, pulling them over for no goddamned reason and popping taillights like Alex Karras in Porky's, then maybe you have some clarification as to exactly what the nature of your enemy is.

Some Folks Is Even Whiter Than Me: The Romneying

In which we are reminded yet again that only Democrats apologize, that no matter who they fuck or who they fuck over, Republicans, conservatives, and teabaggers never ever apologize for anything, however grievous the transgression. You could catch Mitch McConnell abusing puppies and farm animals, and Redneck 'murka would respond with a #StandWithMitch Facebook page. Because fuck you, pussy librul.

On the other hand, every slight from a "liberal" or a "Democrat," however picayune or imaginary, demands blood for blood. You will never hear Willard Mitt Rmoney apologize for calling 47% of Americans moochers and parasites. But some dingbat MSNBC commentator makes a ham-fisted funny, and lawd-a-mercy-Goshen-ta-Christmas, it's on, muthafuckaz.

Hopefully Harris-Perry has learned her lesson, and will reserve future insights and opinions for comparing homosexuality to murder and drunkenness, or talking about how happy blacks really were in the Jim Crow South, before welfare made them all wards of the state. You can say that kind of shit all the live-long day, and people will back you on it. How you like them apples, podna?

Also, too. Holy shit.

NFL Wild Card Predictions

Have not bothered to write any football stuff this season yet, as my team, the hapless Oakland Raiders, have been mostly unwatchable and utterly wretched for more than a full decade now, and life is simply too short.

So now that the playoffs have begun, let's take a stab at some semi-educated picks. As always, no wagering.

Kansas City (-1.5) at Indianapolis:  Since the Colts just beat the Chefs down in Arrowhead two weeks ago, and this game is being played in Indy, your guess is as good as mine as to why KC is favored at all for this. Neither team had a particularly rough schedule this season, and the Colts went 6-2 at home (though it should be noted that one of those losses was a 38-8 ass-kicking at the hands of a thoroughly mediocre Rams team).

The line of thinking may be that the Colts' offense is hamstrung by a lousy running game and only one decent wide receiver; their #2 WR, Darrius Heyward-Bey, has had a number of critical drops, and Luck appears to have lost confidence in him. The Colts certainly had a strong first half of the season, beating likely Super Bowl opponents Seattle and Denver in Weeks 5 and 7 respectively. But since their Week 8 bye, the only team with a winning record the Colts have been able to beat are the aforementioned Chefs.

Andy Reid is a cagey strategist with solid playoff experience, and this should be closer than the previous meeting, but I think the Colts squeak this one out, unless they completely whiff on containing dangerous Chefs RB Jamaal Charles. There's always an upset or two in the course of the playoffs, and technically this qualifies as one of them.

Prediction:  Colts 21, Chiefs 17.

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New Orleans (+3) at Philadelphia:  Another surprising spread; while I agree with Philly as the favorite, any time a slumping dome team heads into a surging outdoor team in the middle of a serious cold snap, you should be looking at a minimum spread of 6-7 points. Factor in that the Saints have one of the worst home-road offensive differentials among any of the playoff teams, while the Eagles appear to have mastered Chip Kelly's innovative offense, after a slow start. No doubt part of New Orleans' strategy is to match up all-world tight end Jimmy Graham against wounded duck (no pun intended) safety Patrick Chung, but the nasty (wind chill in the teens; possible snow) weather will equalize that approach.

Ordinarily this would be a old-school last-team-to-score-wins shootout, but again, the weather will probably mitigate that to some extent. Still, there's a lot of talent on both teams here, so it should be interesting. The over-under on how many times the broadcasters mention that Nick Foles and Drew Brees attended the same high school is 13.

Prediction:  Eagles 37, Saints 27.

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San Diego (+7) at Cincinnati:  Sunday's AFC wild-card matchup is also a situation where the host traveled to the visitor's stadium during the regular season and defeated them. However, in their Week 13 17-10 victory in San Diego, the Bengals were more evenly matched with the Chargers than, say the Colts and Chefs were in Arrowhead. Both Cincinnati and San Diego had 19 first downs, and nearly identical times of possession.

But San Diego in December is not Cincinnati in January, and West Coast teams do not do well in snow, which is likely tomorrow in Cincy. Both teams tend to turn the ball over frequently, and QBs Andy Dalton and Philip Rivers are streaky and take risks. Chargers RB Ryan Mathews appears to have gotten past his earlier struggles with injury and ball security (giggity), but Bengals LB Vontaze Burfict, a first-round prospect who went undrafted because of personal issues (and the fact he attended Arizona State), is turning out to be the steal of the last few years, leading the team in tackles. Burfict will probably give Mathews nightmares as he tries to run uphill through the snow, both ways.

The Bengals' running game is not much better than the Chargers', but it's better enough to make a difference. Add in the snow, and it looks like a frustrating day for a San Diego team that punched respectably above its weight several times this season.

Prediction:  Bengals 20, Chargers 6.

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San Francisco (-2.5) at Green Bay:  Easily the toughest game this weekend to prognosticate. The weather, the rivalry, trying to guess which Colin Kaepernick will show up, or how close to 100% Aaron Rodgers really is. But all of that, in the end, is hype, and the fact is that this is simply strength against weakness -- the 49ers' potent running game against the Packers' horrifically weak run defense. SF has more healthy players on both sides of the ball, and can merely dink-and-dunk to Michael Crabtree and Vernon Davis, while punching Frank Gore up Green Bay's porous middle, made more vulnerable by LB Clay Matthews' season-ending thumb injury.

Rodgers has talented offensive weapons, to be sure, with powerful rookie RB Eddie Lacy figuring to be key to their ability to stay in the game. But the Niners' D are hungry ballers (again, giggity) who really just want to get back to Seattle to settle a contentious divisional rivalry. They don't have the weaknesses that Green Bay's defense does, and will concentrate on stuffing Lacy, forcing Rodgers to throw in what may be a record Arctic blast.

Somewhat perversely, said cold is the Packers' best hope; were it not for such conditions, this game would probably be a blowout.

Prediction:  49ers 16, Packers 13.

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[Update 1/5 6:00 PM PST:  Well, I suppose this is why they actually play the games, and why I watch them. I figured I'd go 3-1 or 2-2 for the weekend, but had assumed the whiffs would be on the Indy and Green Bay games, if anything. Philly and Cincy seemed like locks, but primarily because of the weather, which turned out to be a non-factor in both games.

So now the Colts will head to Bahhhston, and San Diego to Denver in the AFC, and New Orleans to Seattle and San Francisco to Carolina in the NFC. Needless to say, I'll be rooting for the underdogs in the AFC, but it's a bit tougher to do so in the NFC; I would actually prefer to see a Seattle-Carolina matchup for that conference. We'll see; stay tuned for divisional predictions this Friday or Saturday before kickoff.]

Don't Really Give a Duck

Couple of final thoughts on the stupid Duck Dynasty thing, and then I'm gonna let it go. This episode is moderately interesting to me, in the way that Paula Deen's and even George Zimmerman's transgressions were interesting -- that the events themselves were absolutely dwarfed by the cultural buttons that were pushed, and the quickness and stubbornness with which the usual barricades became populated.

A lot of these things simply revolve around "Red" America being unable or unwilling to cope with, or even get a handle on, the rapid advances taking place in the nation's culture at large (if there can truly be anything resembling an "overall" culture, in a nation with 320 million people, and countless points of origin). The world is leaving them behind, as those things tend to happen, and they can't stand it. It's not just because Black President, though that's certainly a catalyzing factor. It's the small coincidence that the same fuckers who shipped their jobs overseas and poison their water tables also happen to own the media channels that immerse them in swollen rivers of disinformation.

So you have large swaths of people who have been ripped off and burned for generations, and don't say shit, coming un-fucking-glued over whether Cracker Barrel will continue to sell cheap swag from their favorite teevee show. Hokay then. I don't think there's anything to reason with. It's all just spittle and foam.

If there's one thing about this nonsense that's important to reiterate, it's that this is not a free speech issue. Really? Yeah, really. Go back and read Phil Robertson's comments, comparing gays to people who fuck animals, or criminals, drunkards, adulterers. Check out some of Reverend Phil's previous episodes of this sort of jabber on YouTube; he didn't just start doing this when the GQ writer showed up on his doorstep.

Now replace "gays" with "blacks," or "Mexicans," or whatever you like. Wasn't that all that long ago that those groups were in those sorts of conversations. It becomes easier to consider the basic fact that this guy made some indisputably disrespectful comments about groups of people -- or, in the parlance of A&E or any network, customers. That's really all there is to this; again, if you think you have a First Amendment right to talk shit about your customers while you're on the job, I encourage you to give that a shot, and let us know how that works out for you.

Bottom line is that Phil Robertson has a right to speak his mind, and did so. The people he talked disrespectfully about have a right to say, "Hey, asshole, we resent you comparing us to criminals and goat-fuckers," and they did so. And Robertson's bosses at A&E have a right to discipline their employees, and they did so. The difference here is that the Robertsons clearly don't see themselves as "actors," perhaps because their backyard is the studio.

But that is what they are, actors in a sitcom, and just like Charlie Sheen got his ass taken down a notch when he got too big for his britches, started believing that he was the show and could tell anyone and everyone to go fuck themselves, that is what is happening here. There is a weird cultural sway the family holds over (again, we are talking about a fucking teevee show, and a lousy one at that, right?) their viewers, a very Face in the Crowd kind of vibe at the heart of it all, with Phil as Lonesome Rhodes. Nobody can tell him nuthin'.

Even the Song of the South Uncle Remus reminiscences of happy, godly blacks picking cotton in the Jim Crow South, when you think a half-second, are enormously offensive and ignorant -- and loaded with more conservative cultural assumptions. What Robertson is really invoking there is not directly a time when those people knew their place, but certainly a time before they were on welfare having a zillion kids. That's the underlying sentiment of comments like that, and we all know it.

That's why they call that sort of shit "dog-whistle" speech -- because it goes right past most people, because it wouldn't occur to them to catch something like that. But you can't tell me that someone who grew up in a place and time where blacks couldn't even enter a restaurant or drink from a water fountain doesn't know what he's fucking saying.

Obviously, the show inherently exploits stereotypes, and in so doing creates some cultural friction and even tension. That's at the heart of it -- to show these goofy hillbillies making beef jerky and blowing shit up in the swamp, then easing toward the more universal tropes of family and (for some) faith. See, these crazy good ol' boys really are just nice guys who love their families and Jesus, and not necessarily in that order. Their blood is red, just like ours. [rolling eyes]

Personally, I hate cheap, trite shit like that, and what little of the show I have seen felt like a consummate waste of time even by reality teevee standards. I suppose if I wanted to know how to field-dress a possum or convince people that I had a steel plate in my head, the show would be the place to start.

But sooner or later, especially since this is a nation that increasingly lives and breathes manufactured outrage, someone on one side or the other of these magnified cultural tensions eventually says something stupid, crosses a line most people have learned to recognize. And because the perpetually aggrieved and threatened side, by definition, always have their backs up, conjuring grave offenses if none can be legitimately be found, we play the game.

The media do their dance, and make no mistake, this will be fodder for many a race in the coming midterm season. The multi-billion dollar perpetual campaign industry depends on it. When already mis-/dis-/under-informed people rely on simplistic, shopworn tropes to circumscribe their "values" that they deploy in the voting booth (on the off chance that they get off their asses to do so in the first place), nothing good can come of it.

Stranger Than Fiction

Folks of a certain age will recall Reagan's apocryphal Cadillac-driving "welfare queen." Turns out, not only did she actually exist, but welfare fraud was the least of her transgressions. Very long article, but well worth the read.

Head Count and Upcoming Books

Couple of quick housekeeping things:

1. Please do me a small favor, and leave a quick comment, even if it's anonymously, even if it's just one word. In checking stats, the site seems to be getting traffic from one of those "vampirestat" things.
2. I'm finishing up a couple of Kindle books. Like last year, there will be a compilation of selected posts from this past year (with new foreword and introductory commentary for each piece), and a 99-cent mini-book of the "notable jerkoffs of 2013" type. I'm finalizing formatting, cover, and title for each, and plan to release them by January 1st.

There will be a third book, later in January, which I'll discuss in more detail soon. I don't do fundraisers, and I don't cyber-panhandle. The books are something I enjoy doing, and for folks who might wish to contribute, it's an opportunity to get further value.

Check out the Amazon Store at the top of the sidebar, if you're so inclined, and if you happen to purchase anything from any of the 4 (so far) pages, please let me know about your experience, good, bad, or indifferent.

So thanks in advance, have a safe and sane holiday season, and stay tuned for more snark here at The Hammer.

Get the Duck Out

And you thought the "War" on Christmas was bad, as far as imaginary grievances go. This is one of those pseudo-cultural eructations that gives me the urge to shoot out the teevee and the computer, and head for a nice cabin deep in the woods. This country has lost whatever it had left for a mind.

For the record, I don't much care one way or the other about what Phil Robertson had to say about anything, anymore that I would care about what Spongebob Squarepants or the bottle blonde from The Big Bang Theory had to say about anything. (But you should read the entire article for yourself, simply because it's an interesting story, and Drew Magary, originally "Big Daddy Drew" at Kissing Suzy Kolber, is a damn good writer.) What Magary noted in his follow-up to the now-infamous article is about what I would have assumed -- that the Robertsons are essentially decent folk, a bit different, but we're all a bit different in our own way, I suppose.

The difference is that most of us don't have an employee-employer relationship with a cable network. Remember way back when last weekend, where we talked about how everything you see on teevee, no matter how much you lurve it, no matter how much integrity you might think it has, exists mainly to sell you shit? That, in spades. Maybe the Robertsons seriously think that the show is just a harmless bit of fun, where they get to goof around, make sure the world knows how much they love them some Jebus, and soak the rubes for swag and hundred-dollar duck calls.

But A&E -- you know, the network that airs the show and has a vested interest in protecting the brand -- just wants to keep the gravy train on the tracks. So when the lead character of its hillbilly sitcom goes and starts speaking his mind in a way that might make sponsors nervous, it's a bidness problem, pure and simple.

Swamp Thing

So....religious hillbillies turn out to be exactly what they say they are, and people seem to be shocked, surprised, dismayed even.

Or, you know, it could just be another lame publicity ploy, bullshit to make the pop-culture machine churn. Gosh, can't imagine it might be that.

The New Model

I am most likely the worst holder of an MBA degree you can think of, since I routinely piss and moan about the multitudinous vicissitudes and perfidy of the rentier grifter class, the shameless scamboogery with which they run this nation for their own benefit and no one else's.

But I'm always on the lookout for newer, fresher revenue models to emulate. So I'm strangely in somewhat respectful awe of this here revenue model, the ease and guilelessness with which hack comic Byron Allen has become a hack tycoon. Keep an eye on his low-ball licensing and distribution model, because it's likely to be some variant that will eventually provide your satellite, cable, and internets content.

And why not? For every Vince Gilligan or David Benioff or Kurt Sutter, there are a hundred Byron Allens, giving the people what they really want. I've often said that the corporate news exists solely to get you to buy cheeseburgers and pills and trucks and tampons, but the fact is that all media exists for that purpose.

Every football game; every talk-radio blowhard; every true-crime spouse-kills-spouse dramatization stretching twenty minutes of story to two hours; every karaoke competition that stretches an hour of material to twenty weeks; every group of inbred southerners hicking it up for the cameras, opening storage sheds or teasing alligators or whatever the hell it is they do. All of it exists for the singular purpose of distracting you long enough to open your wallet for a Duck Dynasty chia pet or some such.

Tea and Simpering

No doubt the latest set of polls 'n' graphs on dwindling teabaggery will push all the usual buttons and pinch all the usual nerves. It will be discounted in the expected circles with disdain as lamestream mediot bullshit.

And in some concentrated areas, that may actually work, in the gnarly pockets of doofery and befuddlement that pepper the land like so much randomly blasted buckshot. There's no shortage of people who, if Obama declared that the sun would rise in the east tomorrow, would denounce the flashing neon commie conspiracy such a statement stood for. And they've made goddamn sure that their elected representatives act accordingly.

But they're now about to find out the hard way what sort of game this really is. When Frank Zappa famously said, "Politics is the entertainment branch of industry," he understated the case, if anything. At the very least, at risk of stating the painfully obvious, it is first and last a money game, run by people with lots of it, and they've run out of patience for these bumptious rubes who were easy enough to gull into slitting their own throats, but damned if they'd shut the fuck up and stop yammering for two seconds.

Really, the only time your average teabagger stops to take a breath, it seems to be just long enough to cash whatever check he gets from the eeeevil gubmint. Then off he goes again, denouncing anyone else who got a check.

When this aforementioned fiscal hypocrisy is the defining characteristic of your "movement," you can be sure that its fuel is of the fossil variety -- polluting its environment and rapidly depleting. And so now the adults in the Republican establishment, perhaps calling the 'baggers' bluff to go rogue and set up a third party, have forced poor ol' John BonerBoehner to sack up and shut this nonsense down.

Because it's starting to cost them money. The Koch Brothers didn't get obscenely wealthy with hopeless, unproductive charity contributions. And while their little foray into astroturf politics may have gleaned them some short-run benefit, even they have to see how it's starting to backfire.

Not that it will matter too much in the end. For one, the districts are so heavily gerrymandered that very few are actually contestable in any real sense, so for the most part there's not much effort; for another, even if, say, Democrats take half  -- or all -- of the 'bagger seats in the House next year, what are they gonna do? You think they'll take some populist tilt at Wall Street, make the banksters give back the stolen pelf? If so, I have a nice bridge on some pristine swampland for you.

The Confessions of Commander Ga

Unsolicited book plug:  if you have not yet read The Orphan Master's Son, you really should. That's all there is to it. It's as close as you could find to a detailed look inside the cruel absurdity that underpins and overlays and permeates every atom of the Hermit Kingdom. (Another, lesser-known but just as informative work, academic in nature, is The Cleanest Race.)

So it is that Dennis Rodman's most notorious BFF, needing to prove himself against his inner circle, continues his purge by having his previous closest aide (and uncle) executed. No doubt Kim Jong Un found out the hard way that, by letting his higher-ups conduct negotiations with other, more developed and civilized nations (which, uh, is most of them), by definition they were getting a first-hand look at life outside the walls of the compound.

And that (despite the inexplicable lunacy of this jagoff; what free westerner in their right mind supports this wretched regime?) is really all the hilariously named "Democratic" "People's" "Republic" of Korea is -- a giant cult in a giant compound, ruthlessly herded and abused by a small cadre of people who know the truth, but profit from and insist on the lie.

Lots of Famous Songs Created in DPRK in 2013

Pyongyang, December 10 (KCNA) -- Lots of songs in praise of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and the socialist motherland have been created in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea at a time when confidence in the WPK is growing deeper than ever before among the local people.

Among them is the song "Always under Party Flag", a paean for the WPK and one of the masterpieces in the era of supreme leader Kim Jong Un.

For its high ideological and artistic value, the song evokes strong emotions for the party flag among the people, leading them to harden their will to remain loyal to the WPK.

A song titled "The Leader and the General Are Always Together" was created on the occasion of the birth anniversary of President Kim Il Sung, the Day of the Sun (April 15). For its ideological, emotional and philosophical profundity, the song well represents the honor of the Korean people advancing toward a rosy future under the blessing of Generalissimos Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, eternal leaders of the DPRK.

"Ode to the Motherland" is also one of the masterpieces created in the era of Songun. The song arouses feelings of ardent love for the socialist motherland, making one recall with deep emotion the great feats Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il performed on behalf of the country and the people. With fresh and passionate rhythms, it reflects the strong will of the Korean army and people to glorify their homeland.

All people in the DPRK say that the song is as valuable as National Anthem.

And you can really twerk to it.

The Golden Rule

Can't deny that Obama gives a hell of a speech, when he chooses to do so. So what? Does anyone seriously think anything will come of this, that suddenly the industrialists and financiers and rentier scumbags that own fucking everything are suddenly going to have a come-to-Jesus moment on their lives of hoarding, grifting, and accumulation?

Please. This is like Lucy with the football for poor ol' Charlie Brown. Maybe the minimum wage gets bumped up fifty cents, or even a buck. That would almost give it the purchasing power it had in 1968, while gas and food typically go up what, four or five percent per year in some cases? Is that going to take even a nibble out of the 1% owning 40%, of 6 Wal-Mart heirs being worth over $100bn, just for picking the right parents?

Everyone talks a good game about the virtues of hard work, and the promise of economic justice and opportunity. But who gets rewarded? Spreadsheet-diddlers and influence peddlers. Wake me when the talk turns into walk. There is zero credibility, and zero chance that anything actually gets accomplished that will return even a smidgen of the stolen pelf to its rightful owners.

When any name politician finally screws up the nerve to tell Jamie Dimon and his ilk to go fuck themselves already, then you'll know that you're finally getting on the right track.