Protest and Survive

Great interview in one of the local free sheets, with a gentleman who did a couple years for the high crime of crashing a land auction. What's particularly galling about this case is that not only did the judge rig the jury selection process by stocking it with people who pledged their allegiance to his decree rather than their consciences, but that it wasn't even allowed to be discussed at the trial that the auction in question had been ruled illegal.

There are other worthy tidbits throughout, not the least of which involves a cop who, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, realized his basement was being shoveled out by on of the Occupy kids he had been told to truncheon in Zuccotti Park.

I differ from Mr. DeChristopher in his hope or belief that the cop might have been transformed even a little bit by such an encounter. Oh, it might have made him think a bit, but probably not enough to question seriously why he mindlessly did what he had "been told" to that kid and others like him, not enough to change the trajectory of his ways or beliefs.

DeChristopher's dismay (I was hoping for more palpable contempt, but the guy is simply too nice) for the chickenshit bien pensant liberal baby boomers is also choice -- and also not enough to get them to change their ways. They are clearly content to believe that shopping organic and voting Democratic is sufficient, that climate change is a problem for the next generations to figure out. They hung on, made their money, and they're going to by-god take as much of it -- as well as the health care and Social Security funding of the next generations -- with them as possible.

The problem is, since they have most of the money, they have most of the political power, and so pay for a system that keeps inert just long enough for them to finish their days in comfort, and then everyone who's left can start sacrificing.

I don't think Americans of any generation will start to take climate change seriously until there's a truly catastrophic -- and I mean like mid-five figures of casualties -- event, something like twenty Katrinas or Sandys all at once, on an "important" US city like Los Angeles or New York. Somebody famous will have to perish.

And even then, because the system more than anything counts on inertia, counts on people's willingness to be distracted from their fate for just one more day, there's always the chance that it'll go away. Think of the huge events of this new century already, man-made or natural -- 9/11, Fukushima, Katrina, the extended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. After all the news coverage and the hand-wringing in the aftermath, what actually changed in the wake of any of these things?

Did 9/11 change our approach to dealing with the Muslim world? No, we still prop up corrupt petrocrats, sell them weapons, let them oppress their people into a senseless rage, and then wonder what the fuck is wrong with "those people". Did we take any measures that showed that we take seriously the clear ramifications of global warming and carbon concentration in the atmosphere after Katrina or Sandy or the 2004 tsunami? You tell me.

Consider -- in the space of a few minutes, nearly a quarter-million lives in fourteen countries were ended, and hundreds of thousands more transformed, by the tsunami. Yes, it was caused by an earthquake, and no, there wasn't anything man-made about an undersea subduction. But it should have been a potent reminder of the power of nature, and the powerlessness of humans to stop it.

It's not just Americans, though we certainly set the stage for all this. The Chinese and Indians, after all, are just following our model, empowered by the blessings of globalization and the credo of The Chicago Group. It's difficult to blame them for wanting to catch up with us in standard of living.

Yet that bears consequences, when 1 in every 3 humans lives in China or India, and 1 in every 2 -- think about that, especially if you're in America, which has comparatively sparse population density overall, every second human being -- lives in Asia. And most people live in cities, and most cities are near oceans, and the levels are rising, and will take as long or longer to reverse than they did to set in motion.

We don't all have to go full eco-activist and go to prison, in a system that's rigged to begin with. But if enough people, just in the US, looked at the three primary factors -- what/how we drive; what/how we eat; what/how we consume in general -- all of which are within lost people's control, a real dent can be made in this very real and growing problem.

Bot World

I'm glad to see the estimable John Robb back on regularly at Global Guerrillas, as he frequently has that futuristic take on things. Case in point:  the steadily increasing presence of bots in the routine tasks that affect our lives and perceptions of the world. Most of us are probably aware to at least some extent of the proliferation of automated algorithms in financial trading, or article "spinners" used by internet marketers.

But it's becoming more and more prevalent; the notion that a bot could be used to spin a million Wikipedia articles is staggering. The idea that the same tech could be used to generate more conventional content -- books, magazines, movie scripts -- is annoying. That bots are doing most Wall Street trading should be a cause of concern. The possibility that bots may, sooner rather than later, be driving us around -- and that there may be insurance ramifications that necessitate having them drive us around -- should be alarming.

Even setting aside the sci-fi Skynet scenario of AI taking over, or the already problematic issue of near-constant government surveillance, think of how many jobs are lost just in the four proposed uses for bots (and of course there are and will be many more uses). In a groaning, increasingly overcrowded planet, with resource scarcity issues looming on all fronts, with any and every function automated, what exactly are all those unemployed people supposed to do?

Words With Friends

When it comes to pedantic arguments over "correct" usage of this or that word, I tend to be something of a fence-straddler. I personally know and use the right word in the right manner, because I regard them as tools with specific functions. Just as you wouldn't use a screwdriver where a wrench is called for, why would you use "literally" for an analogy that is clearly figurative, or even fantastical?

However, as a practical matter, correcting someone on their incorrect usage is off-putting, a clear dick move. They are not going to learn from your noble example. Save your time, and your reputation, and move on. I recall seeing some fluff Sunday morning show piece about a couple of guys who would go around to restaurants and "help" them correct their menus, usually over misspelled words or misused apostrophes. Life is just too short.

The "literally" thing actually makes a small bit of sense to me, because there's not really a common-usage adverb -- aside from "figuratively" itself, which might be somewhat unwieldy in a casual conversation -- that conveys the figurative nature of the exaggeration in question. We know that the speaker's head did not literally explode, and yet it's scarcely worth the trouble to point out that that word does not mean what they think it means. They know, that just happens to be the handiest word at their disposal.

Now, I'll admit that I take a breath when I see the aforementioned misspellings, and especially the misused apostrophes, because the rules on those are so simple -- possessives, not plurals. Writing "ect." (or saying "ek cetera") is another peeve, because "et cetera" has a literal meaning, an actual function. "Should of" instead of "should have", that sort of thing. Approached as tools with functions, these things are not at all complicated.

But habits -- especially bad ones -- form through inattention and lack of caring. This is what the corrective pedants, well-meaning as they are in their quest to preserve the care and feeding of our noble, evolving language, may not quite get. People use "ect." and can't get the correct "your" or "there" homophone because they don't give a shit. By definition, correcting someone who clearly couldn't care less will not correct the mistake, but merely annoy that person.

Back in the chat forum days, I had several lively discussions about this subject with professional academic linguists, people charged with the mission of identifying, classifying, and organizing the various phonemic and grammatical constructs of languages. As a kid, I was fascinated by a variety of languages, and gained at least minimal competency in most of the major European languages.

The more you learn about language -- especially one as widespread and multiply sourced as English -- the more you realize that it is never static, it's a river that flows slowly but flows nonetheless. As with political systems, the outcomes of languages are frequently a result of a large enough mass of users who don't know or care to understand the nuances of what they're engaging in. They deploy it to convey their own immediate use, and some of it will accrue habitually. The more they read and/or write, the more competent they will be in hewing to convention, as one might imagine.

And that, ironically, is where preservationist linguists fall short, imho. It's easy to understand the impulse to chronicle and archive one of the thousands of dying languages around the world, spoken only by a dwindling group of elders in a remote village. But that impulse contradicts what we've noted above, that languages evolve with use. A dying language, by definition, is no longer one that is being used. It is intellectual lepidoptery to stipulate that a language that is dying out precisely because of its lack of use and interconnectivity has any utility, beyond capturing the oral history of the remaining few who speak that language.

In the end, the pedantic attention to upholding the simpler and more obvious conventions of language comes down to cash in many instances. I've been on plenty of hiring panels, and thus reviewed hundreds of résumés over the years. And I can tell you right now, when I encounter a misspelled word or a misused apostrophe on a cover letter or résumé, I don't bother correcting jack shit. I don't have the time. It just goes straight into the round file, I won't even bother to finish reading it.

And I'm far from the only one; I have heard and read plenty of hiring managers say the exact same thing. Ultimately what it comes down to is whether or not someone can be bothered to pay attention to what they're (as opposed to their) doing, and if they can't, hiring managers won't waste their time with that stuff.

Pawns

Another day, another Gaza cease-fire, another opportunity for Hillary to get some distance from Mr. Popularity and burnish her fo-po cred for the inevitable '16 run -- which, since it's only 27 months out and hundreds of millions of dollars need to be raised, should be official any day now. (Even better, rather than Jeb, conventional speculation is now projecting Clinton's opponent to be none other than Mitt Romney. Again. Awesome. Is this the greatest political system on the fucking planet, or what?)

So as much as nobody really wants to consider all sides on the awful, insoluble subject of Israel vs. Palestine, perhaps no other issue demands close attention to both clear perspectives. Neither side has ever expended huge amounts of effort dealing in good faith; unilateral withdrawals from a seething seaside ghetto mean little when elsewhere, families are uprooted from their homes because Zionist settlers want their property for themselves. And Hamas insists on indoctrinating its hate early and often, and doubling down on its charter's stipulation of killing and driving out all Jews.

American politicians have long been accustomed to prescribing clear, simple pronunciamentos -- almost all of which are at the very least devoid of context or perspective, and are frequently just flat-out wrong. This reinforces the notion that electorate craves or needs simplistic resolve, that there is no room for nuance. Certainly it must never be admitted that maybe large swathes of people around the world don't like us and are riled up because we haven't been friends to them.

Every year on December 7, there is a solemn ceremony of remembrance at Pearl Harbor, the attack on which took place in 1941. No doubt there will be similar ceremonies for 9/11 long after you and I and our children have passed on.

The mantra for these tragedies is that we must never forget, which is certainly clear, simple, true, resonates with just about anyone, regardless of their political bent. And yet it seems inconceivable to most Americans that other countries -- who lost many times more people, not to mention generations of strongmen, torture, fear, and all the other trappings of authoritarian regimes propped up by American support over the years -- might hold a grudge. We must never forget, but they've just got to let it go.

I am not suggesting that the way to end all strife is to have a massive group hug and chant "Kumbaya". I am suggesting that basic empathy, on the part of all sides, is key to achieving any resolution. Israelis need to understand that treating every Palestinian miserably, in all aspects of their daily lives, is going to beat them down until they have nothing to lose. Palestinians need to get that, as long as they keep endorsing leaders who use women and children as human shields, while they themselves kick back in Qatar or Bahrain and watch the bloody PR campaign from afar, Israel simply has no percentage in accommodating Hamas' tactics.

Tea for Two

In a world full of phantom scandals, the attempt to make deposed IRS factotum Lois Lerner look like the Obersturmbannführer of the imaginary teabagger persecution wing ranks as one of the more desperate, right down there with your Benghazis and your border security rambunctions.

Look, I'm about the last person to stick up for the IRS, especially since it's expanding as part of Obamacare, but there's just nothing to this one. These shithead astroturf teabagger groups tried to apply for non-profit tax status, but keep their political advocacy. And you can't do that. Hundreds of liberal groups were denied that status as well, but you don't hear them crying.

Even more pathetic is the way this plaint is tinged with dark undertones of "animus" and targeting, as if these poor patriots were being followed around and harassed by gubmint goons. No, such cheap and cowardly tactics seem to be the province of gun nuts, who are all too happy to pick on veterans and women who happen to disagree with the notion that an anonymous asshole strapped with an assault rifle in a Chipotle is a good idea.

All Lerner said -- in a private email, poor judgment in using her gov't account aside -- was that the talk-radio hosts catering to these maroons were "assholes" and "crazies". It's hard to disagree with that assertion, and in fact, it does transmit to the listeners, by osmosis if nothing else.

But it seems clear that right-wing radio, more so than what passes for a left-wing counterpart, traffics specifically in affirmation, rather than information. That crazy uncle that keeps forwarding Glenn Beck rants to you isn't trying to stay informed, no matter what he says or thinks. He's affirming his imaginary grievances, mustering ad hominem arguments to bolster his lame assertions that the blah guy has fucked up everything and anything, most likely on purpose.

It's amazing to think that what passes for political debate in this country is, more often than not, merely an exchange of fnords, a distraction created by a select few to keep the many at each others' throats, lest they pay attention to the hand which is always and forever in their pockets.

Crime and Punishment

As if there weren't enough reasons yet to feel guilty about watching sports, especially football, consider the current kerfuffle over Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice. Rice, as you probably know by now, was caught on video in a hotel, punching his girlfriend (now wife) unconscious, then dragging her out of the elevator.

For what is (last I checked) a violent crime (that is to say, aggravated assault), Rice not only managed to avoid prosecution, but in a league that routinely suspends players for four games for testing positive for marijuana use (yes, even in Denver and Seattle, where it's legal), NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Rice for just two games.

One might say that this is simply the price sports fans pay for enjoying sports -- not the culture of macho posturing and woofing (and yes, in some cases, even domestic violence or suicide), but the culture of enablement that pervades star athletes. For the rare few that make it to the pros, these men and others that have a decent shot are, in many cases, coddled and feted and spoiled from the time they show potential in high school. Whether they knock up a cheerleader, or beat someone's ass in a barroom brawl, the athlete with star potential always has family members or alumni boosters to step in and take care of the mess. After all, the player is a cash cow for these concerned parties, should his career happen to last beyond the 4-year average for NFL players.

An even more egregious comparison to Rice's slap on the wrist would be Terrelle Pryor, who in a convergence of NCAA and NFL punitive action, not only fell to the supplemental draft (costing him millions), but was pre-suspended -- that is, before Pryor was even drafted, he had this punishment imposed on him, thus serving as draft baggage -- for five games. Pryor's high crime? Accepting a couple of free tattoos while he was at Ohio State, possibly a 350Z as well.

See, when it comes to exploiting people, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has the National Football League beaten every conceivable way. To be sure, the NFL makes tons of money off the players, but the players are adults by that point, belong to a professional union that negotiates on their behalf, get high salary minimums, etc. It's millionaires playing for billionaires, but everyone (except the cheerleaders) is at least making some money.

The NCAA, on the other hand, has no such safeguards for its wet-behind-the-ears, straight-out-of-high-school chattel, nor any compunction about using them to turn a buck. The schools make a fuckton of cash selling expensive tickets and jerseys with these kids' names on them, not caring whether or not said kids have enough to eat, much less whether they're able to read in the first place. (which, ah, might in a rational world affect one's chances of, you know, getting into college).

That's bad enough, but heaven forfend any of these kids making a few bucks off their own name, on their own time. Should a player have the temerity to sell autographs or accept a free tattoo, and not give the NCAA their taste, the NCAA will be up their asses with a quickness. And they act the whole time like they're doing these kids this enormous favor by "giving" them a communications degree that won't be worth shit in the real world, because the market is already saturated with retired athletes turned analysts. And good luck if you blow out your knee before making it to the pros.

So I dunno. Do we boycott the hypocrisy of the NFL and NCAA, show them that we're not going to support this nonsense anymore, any of it? I'm getting very close to that point, personally. People who don't watch sports won't get this, and that's understandable, but whatever the sport, fans will appreciate the fact that we become conditioned to look forward to these spectacles. I was a baseball fan from a very early age; my parents had Dodger season tickets until I was about 7 years old, and I followed most of the California MLB clubs until the '90s, when the sport just became unwatchable. It should not take four hours and five pitchers to get through nine fucking innings, sorry.

But I've also watched football and (to a lesser extent) basketball since second or third grade. For those of us conditioned to wait for the season, to run fantasy football teams (I usually run three or four teams online every season, and play a small weekly book with friends), to watch the games so closely that you can analyze and even predict plays, formations, blocking schemes, it's a hard habit to break.

At this point, though, perhaps sports fandom is the moral equivalent of eating a lot of fast food -- all that tasty fat and sodium can't take away the fact that you're perpetuating and participating in the routine torture and slaughter of factory farming, and just because football is fun to watch (though less and less so, the more overburdened with commercials it becomes), you're still supporting the exploitation, and in most cases eventual physical impairment, of young men -- and the abuse of their spouses.

Free Willing

Interesting op-ed from Rolling Stone's Tim Kreider on the effects of the freebie economy on creative occupations, especially writers, especially journalists and article writers. We covered other aspects of this brave new economy a few months back, and to be sure, the pissing contest between Amazon and the traditional publishing houses still has some thrashing to go before the dinosaurs finally sink into the tar pits.

To recap the high points from before on these various types of professional and creative media:

• Music is now a loss leader rather than the central product. It is tacitly understood that, since at least a plurality of consumers know or expect to be able to download it for free, the producers hope to use it to get consumers to actually purchase swag, concert tickets, etc.
• Books are still a product, but Amazon has created an economy of scale and a royalty scheme that flattens the landscape for self-publishing, and disintermediates all the middlemen of the traditional industry. As more people get used to electronic reading, especially when coupled with the ease, portability, and capacity of devices, they have become accustomed to lower prices.
• Short-form factual writing -- again, informative articles and journalism -- are simply clickbait. The revenue model for websites is strictly ad-based, usually with some combination of Google Adwords or AdSense, Kontera or some such, or even just privately contracting ad space on your website to various buyers. The barrage of cheap and easy "[#] Ways [noun] [verb] [object]" (one typically ludicrous recent ClownHall example is titled "15 Ways Liberals Are Like Bratty Kids") has resulted in a simple go-to template that has been abused practically to death, but shows no signs of abating.

The last example in particular speaks to how and why people like Kreider, who can actually write and provide context and analysis, get hit up for freebies everywhere they turn. Since consumers seem content with the bare minimum, and just about anyone can Google a random subject and generate a list in a short amount of time, listmaking has become a handy substitute for analysis.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of that dynamic is that, while musicians and authors can at least theoretically pin their content either to cross-promotional products, or scale up their audience on Amazon, the journalist has no such options. What we've seen happening is basically your HuffPo model -- create and run your own portal, sell a shitload of ad space (again, the actual product at the end of all this) and then try to corral writers who don't mind trading valuable time for a slim chance at name recognition.

This is one of those issues I keep trying to chicken-egg, back and forth, over and over. Does the lowest common denominator shift because content is cheap and easy, or is the content curation model simply giving people what they wanted all along? In the aggregate, it seems now that too many people are ready and willing to consume a news-like product, devoid of nutrients and context, and unwilling to figure out the context on their own, from, I dunno, a history book, or even a longer article.

It all comes back to asking oneself why precisely we want to inform ourselves, if it's actually to understand how the world works and to make informed decisions based on that knowledge, or just as affirmation of imaginary grievances, or just to be a part of ephemeral cultural phenomena, to anonymously register our impotent outrage on some network news chat board, as if it had any meaning or use.

Ultimately, this is where talented writers like Kreider will lose out, if he's unable to suss the new paradigm. I think his former RS colleague Matt Taibbi has a better grasp of what the new journalism model is for people who actually do journalism, as opposed to people who just want to be a cable news anchor. By complementing his journalistic output with well-researched, topical books, and shrewd, acerbic TV appearances, Taibbi may just be carving a path for a noble but dwindling breed.

Vulgar Display of Moron

One of my pet peeves (and yes, as you might guess, I have many) is when individuals need to be told something that you really shouldn't even have to tell a child. The various ways in which we interact in public places -- driving, shopping, parking, eating in restaurants, attending sports and entertainment events -- require a shared understanding that there are other human beings on this planet. Some folks, because they're just that fucking special, don't trouble themselves with such ordinary considerations.

When someone boxes you in with their lousy parking, when they leave their shopping cart in the middle of the aisle and waddle off to look for an item, when they let their screaming brats run and make noise in a pricey restaurant, when they talk on their fucking phone in the middle of a fucking play, like it's a rock concert or something, the message to everyone else should be clear -- fuck you. I cannot be bothered to maintain even a basic, fundamental amount of common respect for anyone else. I am the only one in this parking lot/supermarket/highway/whatever who matters.

Particularly in the instance of stage performances, where your average dipshit should realize going in that a level of quiet engagement on the part of the audience is necessary both to the enjoyment of the play, and the ability of the performers to do their jobs, you have to really wonder -- why do these idiots go in the first place? If you want to sit there and tweet and eat and play with your toys, why not just stay home, or go to the Starbucks? It makes no sense.

Hopefully these theatres, especially those with name performers, stop leaving it to the actors to browbeat the idiots, or set up special "social media" areas (because, holy shit, their need to live-tweet their attendance at a Kevin Spacey play simply must be accommodated), and just toss them out on their asses.

Doing the Same Thing Again and Again, Expecting a Different Result

The civilian body count in Gaza continues apace, despite the unsurprising revelation that the incident that triggered the current round of conflicts was not perpetrated by Hamas after all. It will end after some number has been reached to generate sufficient outcry by the rest of the world at Israel.

Not that that absolves Hamas in particular -- they really do dig tunnels and stockpile missiles in civilian areas, specifically to goad the Israelis and gin up world outrage, while the Hamas leaders sit in Jordan or Qatar or wherever, and watch it all take place on TV.

But Israel also needs to get it through their heads that, between Gaza and the settlements, the outrageous treatment of Palestinians in their daily lives leaves them quite literally with nothing to lose. Anyone would figure that if there's no reward for good behavior, only more punitive actions, then you might as well try another tack.

At the end of the day, though, Israel really is the only thing resembling a democracy in the region, and certainly more democratic than its neighbors (excepting perhaps Lebanon, which tends to be too weak to avoid meddling and infiltration by Syrian and Iranian entities). The world may be repulsed at the civilian body count Israel is producing, but most are also repulsed at the radicalized Islamist "culture" perpetuating right in Israel's backyard.

It's okay to be objective and call horrible things and people for what they are. What ISIS and other radical groups do in the context of Islamic religion or Arab culture should be separated from those things specifically. What those groups do and impose on their hapless people is nothing more than raw power. Sure, there are things about decadent western society that repulse even most decadent western sensibilities.

But the difference is that we don't force, with violence or the threat of violence, our women to wear beekeeper suits, or beat them if they leave the house unaccompanied, or whip or stone them for having sex. That would be at least one way in which you could differentiate one culture as being objectively superior to another, especially one that hasn't produced anything useful or innovative for hundreds of years.

Back to Gaza. Israel is going to have to make a good-faith effort not just to stop the fighting, or to make concessions entirely contingent on the cessation of any and all hostile incidents, but to curtail the activities -- again, at a local or even neighborhood level -- of settlers and ultra-Zionists, who make the lives of Palestinian residents as miserable as possible. If they do something about that, they might not find themselves back in this fix every year or so.

Free Kindle Books and Random News

Next weekend (August 1st through 3rd) you can pick up Baker's Dozen and Lucky '13 for your Kindle, absolutely free. You're welcome, America.

The plan to bring The Hammer to an end at the end of this year is still very likely to happen. It really just depends at that point how much time and interest I have. Obviously there hasn't been much content lately, for a variety of reasons related to work and general morale and motivation that would sound too self-pitying if I got into it.

And what content there has been seems to revolve around the rather exhausted theme of fat-cat bashing. A few wealthy people are running the world, and your life and my life, and there's not much any of us can do about it. Fine, you get it already. There's only so much more beating that dead horse can take before it disintegrates.

All of which is to say that while I'm not hell-bent on shutting this thing down outright, I'm also not interested in keeping it going just to keep it going. So we'll see.

Anyhoo, as far as the Kindle thing goes, it's been a fun experiment, which I plan to continue as much as possible. There will be another year-end retrospective, as well as an Assholes of the Year mini-book, to release first week of January 2015. Sometime after that, probably in March or April, all six will be bundled together into one package, and sell for probably $1.99 or so.

I'd like also to do a full 10-year retrospective, but to do it right, it should probably be something like picking one post from each month, which obviously is an enormous undertaking. Please let me know in comments if any of this sounds interesting to you.

While the books move some units here and there, none of them ever really had substantial volume, sort of like how this blog itself, while it has very steady, decent traffic, never cracked into the higher levels of fandom. Long-time readers will recall that this was something that annoyed me somewhat back in the day, but I stopped worrying about it quite a while back, at least 5-6 years ago.

Things either click or they don't for a variety of reasons, but the leg-humping necessary to try to convince large numbers of people to check something out is just something I've never been comfortable with, beyond occasional open-thread pimpery at some of the posher joints. So it goes.

Anyway, two free books for your perusal, August 1-3. Grab one, leave a review if you're inclined, etc., etc. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Velikaya Voyna, Letom Akuly

So, now that some time has actually passed since Malaysia Flight 17 was shot down, by Russian-backed separatists using Russian-supplied weapons, have we actually learned anything new?

Putin is a bastard. Well, no shit. Good thing he got the Winter Olympics this year, and the 2018 World Cup. Sanctions are one way to hit this prick, another is to delegitimize his prestige goals. So we'll see how many of these outraged countries boycott the World Cup in 2018. But that's a pretty effective way to take the piss out of the guy.

Despite what armchair tough-guys Poor Ol' Straight Talk and Huckleberry Closetcase are braying every Sunday morning on the network circle-jerk, we aren't going to war with Russia. Here is where The Googul, or a history book, or even a decent memory, is helpful. Despite being in some sort of conflict or other since World War 2 ended, almost none of those military actions have been against countries that can actually fight back. Oh, your Iraqs and Vietnams and such like can muster enough guerrilla insurgency to wear us down and make us leave, but I'm talking about countries who can strike back in the US. That hasn't happened, and it ain't gonna happen.

Russia may be something of a Third World despotate (albeit an enormous one), in terms of laws and life expectancy and such, but they aren't in the same league as the banana stands and oil cans we're used to knocking over with our swinging dick.

What we're seeing in Ukraine is a civil war, pure and simple, and it's one that at least in part could have been avoided by more prudent action on the part of the US and Europe. Continuous instigation to get Ukraine into NATO and/or the EU, or to get them on the IMF debt hook, was always going to be unacceptable to Russia, just as Soviet incursions and overtures into (for starters) Cuba and Nicaragua were completely unacceptable to us. Do these people not recall the Saint Reagan years, or was it all just a collective coke-fueled dream?

"So what?", you might say, and not without some justification. "Fuck the Russkies, we run this popsicle stand, baby! USA! USA! Dee-fence, unh-unh! Dee-fence! We're the hegemon, we run the show, we call the shots."

Well, ah, yes and no. This is a classic case of "we got the guns, but they got the numbers"; yes, we have 11 aircraft carriers where no other nation has any, and we have state-of-the-art machinery in every phase of war -- land, sea, air. Hell, our killbot roboplanes are more sophisticated than all but a few conventional manned air forces.

But this has all come at a cost. Fat, drunk, and stupid, as Dean Wormer acidly observed so long ago, is no way to go through life, son. Militarists can jabber on about how the defense budget is at or near an all-time low as a percentage of GDP, but that is meaningless in the context of banana-republic levels of economic inequality and mobility. It is a zero-sum game; all those aircraft carriers and killbots come at the price of something else along the line -- a school, a road, a bridge, an educational grant, something to give someone in the lower dalit strata of 'murkin life an opportunity besides working multiple shit jobs just to survive, or worse yet, becoming a Juggalo.

In the meantime, they attempt to whip the maroons into a jingoist frenzy about Russia, or Syria, or whoever. Ambrose Beirce famously said that war was God's way of teaching Americans geography, but he would be disappointed to know that that is no longer even true, as in order to teach someone something the other party has to be willing to learn. And Americans just don't give a shit about where any of the multifarious objects of this or that week's Two Minutes of Hate are, or what the history or context might mean.

(Or that, uh, it ain't just Ukrusky separatists that shoot down passenger jets. There's your inconvenient truth, podna.)

The thing is, you're supposed to completely ignore the fact that the owners are screwing you over, every day in every way, that quite literally the more people they fuck over, the wealthier they get. Instead, you get bombarded with either a barrage of "the world is going up in flames" stories, again devoid of meaningful context or analysis, or completely meaningless features on the comings and going of "royals", or how some imperceptible change in yet another interchangeable comic-book movie franchise is, like, rilly rilly important.

When 1% of the people control more assets than the bottom 90%, it's a recipe for destabilizing levels of inequality. An increased level of anxiety and fear becomes systemic, and must be, via the corporate propaganda machine, projected onto The Other as much as possible. Whether it's assholes in a country you can't find on a map, or teeming hordes of Central American maras coming to steal your flat-screen teevees and virgin daughters, it's always someone else's fault. Pay no attention to the leveraged-buyout specialists behind the curtain.

Not to fear, though, gentle reader -- though your job has been outsourced to Bangalore, you will still be able to purchase the item you once manufactured for less money, so long as it doesn't exceed your gubmint assistance allowance. But hey, those Apaches are swell, aren't they?

The 1% needn't worry about any of this, mind you -- they can and have put millions of their countrymen out in the street without a care in the world, because increased capital mobility. And if there's one thing they know, it's that large groups of people will literally go live in tents before they'll mobilize and at least try to do something, anything about the fuckers that put them there.

And on the off chance we actually were to send any sort of ground force into Russia, or Ukraine, or anywhere else for that matter, there won't be any one-percenters' kids in the action. There is never any rich skin in this game.

Also, too.

We Just Disagree

The settlers are dicks. So are Hamas. This nonsense will continue until the Palestinians get that they are basically the Washington Generals playing the Harlem Globetrotters, over and over and over again, destined never to win. There will always be these radicalized events that escalate into official violence, and when neither side is willing to give in on its most egregious tactics, you're going to get what you got, which is one side with a missile defense system that actually works against the constant barrage of rockets, and another side whose death-cult propaganda allows for their kids to be martyred. In turn, the rest of the Arab Middle East uses the plight of the Palestinians for their own propaganda purposes, while studiously refusing to take any of them as refugees.

A frequent tactic of modern religious believers -- evangelicals in particular -- is to contrast death counts between believers and atheists, comparing the hundreds of years of religious wars against the 20th century totalitarian systems that murdered millions of people for the sake of atheist ideologies. It would be easy enough to characterize this most recent spate of violence in Israel as a Jews vs. Muslims religious cage match, or the ISIS insurgency as Sunni vs. Shi'a internecine bickering.

The root of these issues are really just the usual old things -- power, control, water, territory. Religion is part of it, sure, as are culture and history, and the inability to drop a fucking grudge. But it always comes back to monkey killing monkey over pieces of the ground.

Return of the Ladies' Man

Speaking of dipshits who don't know when their fifteen minutes is up, remember Todd Akin? He's the knuckle-dragger in one of those flyover states who botched a fair chance at unseating Claire McCaskill, until he tried to play amateur gynecologist on teevee, and the wimmins were not amused.

After an apology that fooled nobody, Akin scuttled back into the woodwork, presumably distributing aspirins for sluts to keep between their knees. While nature may abhor a moron, America clearly loves them, and so of course Akin is back, with a book no less, one in which he retracts his bullshit apology, no doubt much to the relief of his true believers.

Here's Akin's assessment of how ladyparts can magically shut down their capacity to conceive:

“My comment about a woman’s body shutting the pregnancy down was directed to the impact of stress on fertilization. This is something fertility doctors debate and discuss. Doubt me? Google ‘stress and infertility,’ and you will find a library of research on the subject.”

We all make jokes about morons such as Akin pretending to be ob-gyns, but the serious fact about conservatives in general, and Akin in particular, is that this is their stock in trade, taking fairly obvious scientific distinctions -- in this case, fertility studies correlating "stress and infertility" in the context of infertile couples trying various methods in order to conceive -- and implanting (see what I did there?) them with their own biases. Conflating such studies with scientifically and statistically unverifiable -- that is to say, a steaming load of shit Akin pulled straight out of his own ass -- conjecture about rape victims biologically self-aborting, speaks volumes about the inability of these people to understand the difference between empirical data and tarted-up religious dogma.

What this really is all about, as Akin himself has made clear, is his obsession with abortion.

Akin later says during his time as a state legislator, he wished he could have done more to “end this evil,” referring to abortion, which in his view “easily trumps slavery as the greatest moral evil in American history.”

There's kind of an art to this sort of thing, if you think about it, to not only be completely hyperbolic over something that has actually been decreasing over the last twenty years, but to brazenly assert that it is a much bigger transgression than the centuries of rape, oppression, torture, murder, abuse, the sundering of families, the fucking buying and selling of human beings, forcing them to work until they drop, and keeping the profits, this should remove all doubt and permanently affix Todd Akin as an idiot and a scumbag.

But if you need just one more reason to convince you let it be his impassioned -- and completely incorrect -- defense of George "Felix Macacawitz, Junior" Allen:

In part, Akin uses the current political atmosphere and media to argue that trackers who follow candidates on the campaign trail are just looking for a candidate to slip up.

In that context, Akin defends former Virginia Gov. George Allen’s comments in 2006, when he called a tracker of Indian descent “macaca.” Allen would go on to lose to Democrat Jim Webb. The incident is even credited with dashing Allen’s national political ambitions.

“He could not possibly have known that, in the Portuguese language at least, the word means ‘monkey.’ Allen is not Portuguese … and neither was his opponent,” Akin writes.

Well, for one, Allen's opponent was Jim Webb, not the Indian cameraman whom Allen called "macaca". Second, while Allen may not be Portuguese, neither in particular is that word. It's a generic term used by European colonials in Africa to denigrate their native subjects. And hey, ho, whaddya know -- Allen's mother was a French national born and raised in Tunisia! This was all duly researched, verified, and chronicled back in 2006, does Todd Akin not have access to the Google, or does he only use it to feverishly squint at "stress and infertility" findings?

Perhaps just as revealing as Akin's stubborn guff is the comments in the linked article. As it predictably devolves into what Akin supposedly means, when it is perfectly clear to anyone who can actually read, the real point gets lost in the shuffle. The real point is that Akin's implications are multiple, and all of them are indefensible.

Akin's use of the phrase "legitimate rape", coupled with other comments of his, insinuate pretty clearly that he believes, though he provides no evidence or proof, either that rape must be violent to be "legitimate", or that some number of reported rapes are exaggerated by the victims. In fact, he appears to believe both of those things to some extent, though again he indicates no evidentiary knowledge of either one.

The assertion of the female body having mechanisms to shut down pregnancy as a biological response to violent rape, is perhaps one of the dumbest things ever to be uttered by a supposedly sentient human being. It betrays a complete lack of knowledge of history, particularly the history of warfare, where rape has been routinely used as a tool of war and conquest. One of the primary reasons we got involved in the Balkans in the late '90s, in addition to the Srebrenica massacre, was the widespread allegations of mass rape by military personnel. Again, rape has historically been the norm for conquering troops, as the easiest and quickest way to change the demographics of a conquered region.

More specifically, the statistical incidence of pregnancies resulting from rape is significant, and would seem to belie Akin's assertion of biological shutdown mechanisms. One would think that if it were that simple, there would be fewer than 32,000+ pregnancies per year resulting from rape. Maybe the mechanisms are broken; whatever the case, if they are not 100% infallible, one must ask if women -- adult women with their own identity and agency and rights, mind you -- can be trusted with the responsibility over their own reproductive health.

I don't have much patience with "civil" commenters such as "Hank" in the Politico comments, disingenuous tools who lament the callous incivility of intellectually dishonest liberals in practically the same breath as they launch some tired shot at Bill Clinton. Fine, Clinton was a cad and a dick, and his treatment of women has been execrable. That has no effect on the fact that Todd Akin is either a vicious liar, or an impossibly stupid person who has no business anywhere near a position of responsibility.

But the real issue here, as always, is control over the sex lives of women. Let's put it out there right now -- if any of this touched on the sex lives of men, there would be no debate, real or contrived. That shit is settled. Nobody tells us where or when to put our cocks. But somehow this bullshit persists over what women can or can't do with their junk. I think the main difference is that there are actually other women who assist in these stupid battles, where you would never find a man who would participate in repressing -- or even affecting, even a little bit -- our right to do what the fuck we want.

It takes a dickhead like Todd Akin to crystallize these nonsensical attempts to control the reproductive activities of women, but it is only with the active or passive acquiescence of other women that any of this stuff gains any traction. We can't do it without you, ladies.

The Mouth That Bored; Or, A Farce to Be Reckoned With

Life is uncertain, but July has come to mean two immutable facts of life -- one is the sweltering itch of swamp crack, and the other is Sarah Palin honking something stupid into a towel, knowing that her idiot fan club will worship it like it's the Shroud of Turin. Not content to rest on her mama-of-the-year credentials, Palin continues her tireless quest to become the go-to rainmaker and prognosticating mynah bird of the dim set.

It doesn't matter that, as inept as Obama has been on multiple fronts, no laws have been broken, and you'd think even a maroon like Palin would know that you need to be able to cite chapter and verse what part of the legal code has been transgressed. Chewed-on complaints and stale "battered wife" jabber won't cut it.

Then again, who knows? It's midterm season, which for the Goopers means keeping turnout low but passionate. They'll hold the House, and if they can take the Senate, they can easily ramp up the mischief factor, and may even find a way to stretch some penny-ante bullshit into impeachment. Unlikely, but all of this would have been deemed unlikely 5 or 6 years ago, when these hooting jerkoffs had gleefully plowed the country into a garbage scow.

Palin has even asserted that she could and should host her own talk show, or be on The View panel. And why not? People make fun of, say, Fox and Friends, and rightly so, but The View has had more than its share of mouth-breathing fools (including current F and F cupcake Elisabeth Hasselbeck, uncomfortably sandwiched between leering doofuses Steve Doocy and Not Steve Doocy) spouting some of the dopiest things imaginable.

It might be worth giving Palin a small platform in the dingbat ghetto, braying her nonsense at bored hausfraus who are just waiting for Dr. Oz to sift through their poop, just to get her out of the nation's ass already. On the one hand, she fits perfectly Dorothy Parker's classic observation that if you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the sorts of people he gives it to; on the other, no matter how much filthy pelf she rakes in with her dumb jokes and dumber assertions, her kids will blow it all on magic beans and monster trucks.

Eat, Spray, Love

So apparently we are running out of ideas for useful, informative articles. Lest someone get the wrong idea, let's make something abundantly clear -- fist-fucking six dozen hot dogs down your gullet in ten minutes does not make you an athlete, it makes you something of an asshole. The fact that professional hockey took some years to get squared as to teams and rules does not equal the hard truth that "competitive eating" is more a joke than a real sport.

It's disgusting to compare the sheer gluttony of butt-chugging hot dogs to what Babe Ruth or Michael Jordan accomplished in their careers, even vicariously. Maybe it's because I was raised in a poor household where food was prepared to last 3-4 days at a time, but I am well conditioned to believe (secularly, anyway) that gluttony and waste are sins.

But as a sports fan as well, it's very difficult to reconcile the idiotic notion that trenchermen are "athletes" in the same sense that genetically blessed, superbly conditioned humans who do things that few other people can do, are athletes. Any asshole can chug water for a few weeks to extend their stomach, and allow themselves to gorge on dozens of hot dogs and tacos or whatever. That is not a skill, and athletics require some sort of skill. I am only mildly comforted by the thought that Joey Chestnut's dumps must be episodes of furious grunting and rectal brutality (much like Gary Busey's sex life).

I suppose complaining about nonsense like this is a lot like complaining about shitty music or hot weather -- like the poor, they will always be with us. But at least no one's trying to claim that Justin Bieber is Mozart, or that a 110° heat wave is actually a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

Studies Show

I don't place much stock in "studies" and "findings" normally -- anyone who actually gets paid to do some of the shit these people do should instantly be suspect. Seriously, if your "job" involves keeping people awake and letting them shock themselves instead of sitting quietly and thinking, something's hinky. We all know how scientific method and testable hypotheses work, but a lot of this stuff is just make-work for grant funding.

And yet, there is something that resonates with this study, something we can quite clearly observe by going to just about any public place -- real or virtual, Costco or Facebook -- and just watching people, how they act and react. It's not a value judgment to postulate that people in general, and perhaps Americans in particular, are tethered -- addicted, even -- to external stimuli. It's tough for many people to just shut it off.

It's like that person in your office or family that is hooked on interpersonal drama, to the extent that they'll go out of their way to create said drama, if there's none to be found. They get some sort of adrenaline rush, something like that. I've never understood it, but we all know it's there.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to presume the same sort of thing going on here, that the more you force people to slave away just to get by, the more they start to live and perceive through their work families. Which is the other thing about all these studies -- what do you actually propose to do about your findings?

Scott Brown's Legacy

Longtime readers of this here cereal box know that a persistent (if intermittent) theme here, in between all the f-bombs and fat-cat rants, is the idea of possible pasts. Playing the "what if" game is useful as a strategic, speculative pursuit, as it forces us to think about alternative outcomes.

More specifically, it's the notion that fate sometimes turns on a dime, that a seemingly small event can have a catalytic "butterfly" effect on its surroundings. One such example is the death in 2009 of Senator Ted Kennedy, as his passing took place at a critical point in "negotiations" over what would eventually become the Affordable Care Act.

Somehow, the Democrats managed to lose the seat that Kennedy had held for nearly half a century, due to a spectacularly inept and tone-deaf campaign by Martha Coakley. Coakley lost the seat -- and with it, the Democratic supermajority in the Senate to one Scott Brown, a photogenic, amiable doofus that the Republicans seem to grow on trees. Brown proved to be the linchpin in what became the now-standard GOP practice of might be called ABWOW -- Anything But What Obama Wants.

Only in a turgid industry like politics would pure, stupid obstructionism for its own sake be considered a strategy, but that and the constant threat of filibustering is all that has kept the Republicans going since 2009. Brown filled the Senate seat just long enough to force Obama to accept a ham-fisted, loophole-riddled sack of shit whose primary purpose is to hold doors in place on windy days.

Had Kennedy lived even a year longer, chances are that the supermajority could have forced through the public option, the single-payer system that is the standard in every other industrialized nation. Sure, your betters in the corner offices might not get the nine-figure salaries they so richly deserve, but the last five years of impossibly wealthy corporations and owners whinging over every fucking dime would not have happened.

Let's accept as a given that regulatory legislation written primarily by the industry it's designed to regulate is guaranteed to either be useless or more harmful than the situation it's intended to remedy. This was seen as a feature, rather than a flaw, by Brown and his cohort. And now we have what we have, which is another layer of bureaucracy in the IRS, a health-care racket whose pricing structure is exactly as much of a theft mechanism as it ever was, a baroque clusterfuck of industries bloated with lobbyists and marketers, gouging their captive markets and laughing all the way to the bank.

So now this week, we have one of the more bizarre eructations resulting from the ACA. Some dipshit craft store has decided -- based on its own ignorant interpretation of how certain birth-control options actually work -- that it cannot, in good conscience, be party to the IUD holocaust, or whatever it is these overbreeding, Christofascist weirdos call it.

Legalistic and moralistic angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin arguments aside, what sucks about this is that it gives license for any and every business, whether for reasons of mere penny-pinching or for some fanciful interpretation of Bronze Age legends, some bullshit excuse to duck out of something that could and should have been very simple and easy. No, now because someone "believes" something that is empirically not true, they can weasel out of it. Yeah, that's gonna work.

The public option would have worked, and well, because it would have disintermediated all the parasitic middlemen who drive up costs with marketing, admin, and sales. Ask yourself how well your grandmother's cancer was abated by fucking admin.

None of this had to happen. And now Brown is running for Jeanne Shaheen's seat in neighboring New Hampshire, because there is always more damage to do, more precious money to be made. People will die, and other people will go broke, because the health-care system in this country is an abomination, something that should be strapped into an electric chair and fried like an egg.

But as long as Scott Brown and his benefactors continue to make money and make a flawed process even worse, I guess it's okey-doke. I mean, hell, Jeanne Shaheen is just an Obama puppet, and he's evil. Some 80-year-old fart in Nashua said so, so it must be true. Cool, pops, pay for your own fucking bypass, then. Frankly, I have no interest in subsidizing these morons. Talk about doing the impossible for the ungrateful.

Whenever the post-mortem on this country and this species is written, whether it's five or fifty or 500 years from now, the thing our successors will note about us will be exactly what we noted about the previous civilizations we've unearthed, thinking that we've surpassed them with our intellect, might, and technology. That thing is the tendency to be our own worst enemies, to undermine our own rational self-interest for the sake of superficial qualities of glad-handing and smiling contempt. Your mastery of Candy Crush on your smart phone does not make up for not seeing what is right in front of you.

When Mitt Romney smiles, I see nothing but discomfort -- the inner pain of a man who regards the unrich as another species, and does not understand why the customs of this society compel the best and brightest to break bread with such people, to pretend that they like or even comprehend them. For every rich guy with a conscience, there are a hundred Mitt Romneys -- and because they sincerely regard their infestation of the political process as a bulwark against takeover by the rabble, they're the ones that actually run the show.

As always, people who willingly vote for politicians who can barely conceal their contempt get exactly what they deserve.

Primary Colors (Slight Return)

It's interesting how the two most prominent political outcomes this year so far have been so willfully misconstrued by the media dupes.

First you had Eric Cantor, whose district had been redrawn more rural and red than it had been. This turned out to be a disaster for Cantor, whose applecart got overturned by some Randian yabbo from a small private college. Could this be the resurgence of the teabaggers, or simply a case of a low-foreheadvote turnout, a challenger who had a decent ground game, and an incumbent who so took his victory for granted, he spent over $160k schmoozing in steakhouses instead of glad-handing the rubes in his district? Much discussion was had over the various possible causes, thus ensuring that many boner pills and insurance policies got sold.

More recently you had the primary runoff in America's most useless state, Mississippi, between ancient pork-chaser Thad Cochran and another in the endless procession of teahadis, Chris McDaniel. It's actually a damned shame McDaniel didn't win, because it would have been hilarious to watch him try to turn the pork off. No fuckin' way, champ, yours is a state that produces only two things:  jack and shit. If it weren't for the rest of the country supporting your welfare state, Mississippi would be nothing but a couple of football colleges and a Faulkner museum, surrounded by subsistence farmers.

So both these electoral outcomes were framed, as these things tend to be nowadays, as responses specifically to the teabaggers. (And yes, I refuse to call them by their preferred name, because it's stupid, because it doesn't mean what they think it means, and mostly because they won't stop acting like petulant assholes.) Cantor's defeat was a jumbled mess of analysis, but the upshot was that the insurgent won, which could only mean a repudiation of "establishment" mores. Cochran's squeaker victory, on the other hand, proved how establishment Republicans -- with a little help from Democratic "friends" -- could beat back this insurgent tide.

As you might imagine, I have a different interpretation than the people whose paychecks depend on peddling the conventional interpretation of things. Politics is an industry, pure and simple, from the pols themselves to the donors, the lobbyists, the cable news networks, the dipshit analysts who never get anything right but still keep their jobs, the massive amounts of commercial time sold, etc., etc. There's a lot of money involved here; there's a tremendous amount of energy and effort and pelf that goes into manufacturing all that consent.

This is really about incumbency. Industries rely on stability and predictability, being able to make solid projections and plan strategy accordingly, so as to optimize profit. So when politicians with incumbency ratings normally associated with third-world despots suddenly find themselves challenged or even defeated, the point-one-percenters who put them there get fidgety.

They don't care about chumps like David Brat or Chris McDaniel particularly -- they can either pay those guys to go along with the program, or make sure they get nothing done and then bankroll the next primary challenger. Everyone's a revolutionary until they start getting paid.

What the owners care about is the idea that the peons might start thinking that they actually have a choice in these things. Everything about the system is designed specifically to keep the peons out of the process, the obvious barriers to entry being cash in hand and net worth. So when some rabble-rouser comes along and disrupts the industry's stability and predictability, they don't like it. It makes them nervous.

And I'm really not sure why it does, or should, make anyone nervous. The incumbents aren't going anywhere, the percentage will still remain comically high. Business will proceed as usual. Rick Perry will have a few more unforced errors, which will embolden the faithful and enrage the unbelievers, but will only sway the backers insofar as it affects Perry's actual poll ratings, his ability to get elected and carry out their agenda.

Some other clown-shoes psychopath will step of the primordial ooze of the primary system and get the support of Perry and the rest of the moron claque, and the operational plan will continue apace. The Republican voters will continue to fabricate and exaggerate, and the Democratic voters will nag their doubters with threats of another 15 years of Nader-baiting, since we can all see what a slam-bang job they've done keeping abortion legal and the median wage stagnant for forty years now.

Font of Sorrows

It's fascinating to think that just about every major event that has taken place in the past century can be traced directly back to the actions of a gang of Serbian anarchists against a relatively minor Austrian noble. I've always been a big fan of alternative and speculative history, but when push comes to shove, there's nothing like the real thing.

#thanksobama #gavriloprincip
 

Deep Thoughts (World Cup Edition)

For the most part, I can take or leave soccer, though I used to check out English Premier League back when I had a pirate satellite card, and the World Cup matches are enjoyable enough. Still, sports in general, from the NCAA to the NFL to the Olympics to the World Cup and on and on, make me feel guilty anymore. The athletes are either indentured servants (as in the NCAA) or impossibly wealthy, playing in stadia built for asshole billionaires by gullible and/or captive taxpayers, with the empty promise of good jobs dangled before them like a hologram carrot.

As Brazil is, like it or not, an overpopulated Third World hellhole, its corrupt government has, in preparation for this year's World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics (but it will be winter there, as it is now -- discuss!), expended no small amounts of pelf and brute force, flash-building huge venues out in the Amazon jungle, and clearing slums with abandon. More things to feel complicit in, which is a shame. There's an abundance of valuable things to be learned from various sports, but money -- or more specifically, greed -- ruins everything.

We spectators, demanding our circuses if we can't have the bread to go with them, are accessories to all of it -- the indentured servitude of college athletes, the blown-out knees and CTE concussions of the NFL, the almost literal slavery of the cheerleaders, the fleecing of the taxpayers, the destruction of the cities that outbid everyone else for these white elephants. At least cities are finally starting to get wise to the Olympic racket, as the IOC and FIFA are in perpetual deadlock for most corrupt sports organization.

Also, too -- that fucking weirdo donkey-biter from Uruguay? Let him play, but with a Bane mask over his mouth. I don't know what that dude's problem is, but I'm surprised someone hasn't just turned and started swinging straight for his chompers. Let's see how well you gum your opponents, asshole.

Primary Colors

It's difficult to decide exactly what is the most tedious aspect of Blind Lemon Clinton's will-she-or-won't-she pas de dunce:

• the sheer inevitability of her candidacy (and really, the "my turn" campaign is usually a Republican thing);
• the shameless crying of poor mouth, at a country still reeling from an economic setback caused in great part by, um, the repeal of Glass-Steagall;
• the promise that Preznit Hillary will sell out the working class almost as quickly as your garden-variety Koch-sucker;
• the predictable scramble by the overpaid talking heads to provide their breathless analyses of loose cocktail party chatter;
• the continued use of "commentary" from proven shitbirds like Newt Gingrich, whose peanut-gallery bullshit will be exactly the sort of thing that nudges nauseated fence-sitters -- who will by then be exploring real estate in Croatia at the prospect of being "given" a "choice" between Clinton and yet another Bush -- over to Clinton, so we can get pretty much what we were going to get in the first place.

Oh, just run already, dear, it'll be a historic moment and all that. Not because of the woman thing -- hell, even a woman-hating country like Pakistan has had a female president already -- but because the bottom is falling out of this country, the foundation is giving way. The transnational merchant princes won, in no small part thanks to Hillary's husband Rubinizing the economy and leaving it the exclusive province of the sociopathic spreadsheet diddlers.

Perhaps the Clintons genuinely thought that the rising tide would lift all boats, that massive productivity gains and ease of financial regulations and securitization would create enough wealth for all. And it did, to a point. But left in the hands of a greedy few, for whom the word "enough" has no definition, even crumbs stopped falling from the table. Obama hasn't had the testicular fortitude or the juice to do anything about any of this, and will most likely be rendered as lame a duck after the midterms as Saint Billy Jeff was.

Say what you will about the teahadis -- FSM knows I've said my share -- but one important part of their argument that actually resonates is that their country has been taken away from them, and no one in Warshington gives a shit about them. Of course, their country has been taken away from them by the bottomless rackets that run this country, and own the media, so as to convince them that it was gays and illegals that did it, but whatever. The core is true enough.

So it will be a(n) historic moment, no doubt. The next president will get to preside over the continuing implosion of a once-vibrant republic, a society that actually gave a shit whether its children could read or count, communities that understood the nature of community and mutual good, businesses that actually paid their employees enough to survive on, to purchase the things they made or sold.

For a time I thought there might be some catalyzing domestic incident that expressed this discontent on a large scale, not necessarily violent, but something that would be apparent to all. It seemed like the Occupy Wall Street movement might be just the thing, but sure as shit, the corporate toadies rushed to their battlements to marginalize and defame these people, while the NYPD let every scumbag they could out of jail and set them loose in the park.

People are simply too atomized anymore, connected electronically, but not socially enough to translate into any meaningful action. The cops are paramilitarized to the teeth, and get away with pretty much anything anymore, so there's no percentage there either. There's not really anywhere to turn -- either you get lucky and generate enough multiple revenue streams to eke your way through what passes for a life, addled by pills and distracted by sports and reality shows, or get pulled under, quickly or slowly, the result is the same.

So here you go, Hillary, congratulations. How do you like it?

Best of Breed

Usually one encounters magical thinking in a cloak of a conservative stripe, such as Iraq War dead-enders from the Cheney regime. Religious wingnuts who quite literally believe and expect that their invisible buddy, the same guy who lets infinite, routine evil take place every day and everywhere, is looking out for them, if only they believe correctly and sufficiently. Climate-change deniers, birthers, people who are simultaneously convinced that Obama is both singularly dumb and inept, yet cunning and ruthless enough to pull off incredibly baroque conspiracies. You know the type.

There are liberal magical thinkers as well, and one of the more interesting types is the bien pensant reproductive rights absolutist, the pastry-brained doofuses who will write impassioned defenses of the "rights" of people who refuse to take personal responsibility for their lives, yet have nothing to say at all for the rest of society, who are forced to financially support those rights.

This is just awesome:

“When we first had the twins, the only person in my family getting aid was my oldest son,” she said. “We didn’t have money to buy them car seats to get home [from the hospital]. …We didn’t have money to pay for diapers, wipes, shampoos, and toiletries. … I am here to tell you that I am trying my best to be a great mom. I do not need to be punished for deciding to have children.”

Right, so let's punish everyone else by making them foot the bill for your "decisions". Is that how this works? Setting aside the fact that, in California and most other large states, car seats are free through the WIC program, there is this tone, this preening tone of expectation on the part of both subject and writer. They were owed this stuff, see.

Lady, I doubt most people care whether you "decide" to have two or four or ten children. I don't, except to the extent that the planet is already overcrowded with the human virus. But the tacit deal that you accept when you sign up for public assistance is that you're in a bit of a hole, and so maybe it's time you stop digging. Is it too much to ask that you at least put down the shovel?

I get that what families receive on CalWORKs or CalFresh or TANF is a relative pittance, and that compared to what corporations and super-wealthy individuals skip out on tax-wise, it's practically nothing. Still, there is something immensely off-putting about someone complaining about having to wait in line for free shit. I know, if I drop it by your house during my lunch hour from work, would that be easier on you, dear? I mean, come on. Birth control is free. No one is making you have kids you can't afford. There is no excuse for this nonsense.

But what's worse is the insinuation by the writer of the article that the family cap is just eugenics in a different guise. Old wine, new bottles, yada yada. Well, bullshit. I sure as hell couldn't care less about race as it pertains to this issue, and I doubt most people do either. What I care about is working my ass off to just get by, and having 25% taken off the top of my measly paycheck, getting nothing for it, and these people fucking complain about stuff being given to them.

Or the deadbeat douchebag who got incentivized into doing the planet a favor and getting a vasectomy, only after having seven or eight kids by almost as many women. This too apparently is the nose of the eugenics camel poking into the proverbial tent. Why does Melissa Ortiz get to "decide" to have more kids that she can't afford, and the rest of us can't "decide" in turn that we shouldn't have to support them for her? Why does everyone else have to pay for a dipshit like Jesse Lee Herald (who is white, btw) to mindlessly spray his seed into every available orifice? Hell, if anything, this should be standard procedure. If there's one thing the world could use less of, it's freeloading dipshits.

Flying Spaghetti Monster knows I shudder at the prospect of being on the same side of an issue -- any issue -- as the denizens of the feces-throwing Faux News monkey house. I don't want to be on the same side of anything as Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity. But goddammit, I think working-class taxpayers are being squeezed quite enough, thank you. Anyone between 40-50 years of age is already looking at a royal reaming in the decade to come, as retiring boomers hoover up the medical and Social Security dollars. The goalposts will get moved on us, because we should have to retire later and poorer so those motherfuckers can get their hip replacements. And we'll get jack shit in return.

And to add insult to injury, we're supposed to just sit by and subsidize people who refuse to get out of their own way. Well, forgive me if I politely decline. I'm absolutely in favor of helping people who have had a run of bad luck, are doing what they can to get rolling again. I'm glad there is a safety net for those folks, and it should stay there, and in fact be increased to some extent (increased funding, better job training). And I've talked to them personally, listened to them while they break down over losing their jobs, having a spouse fighting cancer, any number of things. It breaks your heart. They want to get back to what they've earned, and I hope we continue to help them as much as possible. But that's not who we're talking about here.

So in the meantime, perhaps the folks that can control the major aspects of their lives -- such as whether or not to have four kids while on the dole -- should start taking a little responsibility for themselves. I have very little patience for that "tough love" shit, the Dr. Phil sort of hectoring at hapless bumpkins who never got the memo about impulse control and decision making. But this is one of those times when it's true. No one's proposing to bring back Buck v. Bell, but there is an expectation that people make an honest effort to pull their own weight.

This is one of those externalities of the vaunted "post-scarcity" society we have apparently sought as a by-product of globalizing outputs through Third World despotisms. But the thing is, when you have more people than you have things for them to do, you have to be careful about the activities you continue to incentivize. I mean, if someone's willing to pay me to sit around and fuck all day, I'll take their money. But as misanthropic as I am, I'd like to think that even the average 'murkin is at least smarter than that.

Mitt Happens 2: The Mittening

Despite the breathless tone of this article, I seriously doubt Mitt "Mitt" Rmoney would consider lowering himself to the indignity of running for Lord of the Peons again. There's far more precious pelf to be made as a kingmaker, hence the "ideas summit," where the occupants of the next Gooper clown car converge to ponder newer and better ways in which to separate morons from their personal belongings.

With the recent passing of Eric Cantor to K Street nirvana, the Republicans have themselves in a dilly of a pickle. The teabagger hyena they thought they had on a leash has gotten loose, and is rabid, and once enough of the public has been alienated from their nonsensical "uh wants muh country back" jabber, is going to ruin their brand, at least until the Democrats find a way to fuck up their end of it all, which they inevitably do. (Depending, of course, whether one chooses to believe that these things are mistakes or designs.)

To the extent that "conservatives," regardless of their wealth or social standing, tend to see poor people as another species, Rmoney's defining characteristic is that he underscores such a sentiment. The Mittster is indeed the apotheosis of the clueless swell, born on third base and bragging that he hit a triple, and seeing the less fortunate as some vile combination of stupid and lazy.

If there is ever a time where enough people get sick and tired of being treated like shit by a tiny elite that literally thinks they're better and superior in every way, it will be because of that sentiment, that assumption of stupid-lazy on the part of teh poorz. For now, there are enough of the downtrodden who prefer to remain merely envious of the idle rich, because they still hold out hope that they might join them, than to simply see what's been right in front of them all along, and get royally pissed.

In the meantime, here are the people you get to pretend to choose from in a couple of years. How do you like them apples, America?

A Good Use for Drones

Kill all poachers. Fucking end them already. It would be nice to get the scumbags who buy the products as well. I have no sympathy for any of them. I hope they all die, the sooner the better. Find a commercial or ornamental use for their body parts.

Misdiagnosis

So now that Very Important People are showing how aware they are of this inequality thing, alarums have been raised, and remedies proposed. Here OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria throws some ideas into the ring for consideration:

Main remedies are activation policies, meaning get services in the governments that will get the people who are unemployed or seeking for employment with the job opportunities.

This is not being done enough. The United States spends one-fourth of what the rest of the OECD countries spend on this particular service, getting the unemployed or seeking employment with the employment opportunities.

Second, skills, education and skills. There’s a big mismatch between the skills and what the market is demanding. Therefore, your — you have people have diplomas, but they can’t do very much with it. Third, use a tax structure and use a budget in order to support companies that may be providing jobs or better opportunities.

And last but not least, remember, this is a problem that is affecting the capacity of the United States to get the people at the lowest revenue levels and at the lowest education levels to get up in the ladder, in the social ladder, in the ladder of opportunities.

Ah, the fabled "ladder of opportunities," esteemed tool of the privileged class who long ago pulled it up after using it. Look, Angel, chanting "jobs" and "education" like some oligarchist mantra means nothing at all when there are few jobs worth having anymore, far too many individuals chasing all of those jobs, and higher education is a fucking racket.

The implicit promise of the "jobs 'n' college" evangelists is that those things work hand-in-hand to improve the lives of individuals. And that's how it should work, certainly.

But the reality of it is that rather than a promise, it's more of a threat -- that if you don't go to college, and set yourself up for 10-15 years of indentured servitude in order to pay off the costs of said college, after which maybe you can start making real money, if there's enough jobs in your area, etc., etc., you're screwed.

These rackets serve not only to enrich the coffers of those who run them and profit from them, but they serve an ancillary purpose -- the masses of people who are herded into these rackets, and get on the financial hook, are instantly rendered compliant, complicit in the racket. They now have a vested interest to not be disruptive, to not ask too many questions -- or the wrong questions, such as why wages stagnated while productivity doubled, why the only people to profit during the so-called Great Recession were the already wealthy, why the "practical" thing to do with the one life you've been given is to be some indentured wage slave to some bastard who will fuck you over at the first opportunity, if it will make his stock portfolio go up a quarter of a point.

They don't want you asking questions, or protesting your ration of crumbs -- not that it matters; should you find the sack to get on your hind legs and say something out loud they'll just send Erin Burnett or some other water-carrier down to make fun of you, marginalize you before your plaint even gets a fair hearing.

They would prefer that you either go along to get along, or just say "fuck it" and give up your eternal tilt at an indifferent windmill. I don't think it can be overstated, how little the elites give a red-hot monkey-fuck about you, your families, your communities, your country. Make no mistake, as far as they're concerned, you're either a tool for them to use, or an impediment to their efforts. That is the extent of what you are to the people who actually run this country, run the world.

Serious People jabber about this condition of persistent, escalating inequality, make modest proposals, hem and haw as if this is some trick of the tail, a logistical impossibility to correct. Folks, it is almost heartbreakingly simple, and it does not have to involve tumbrels and guillotines (though you'll get no argument from me should it go in that direction).

The mechanics of a capitalist society, to the extent that we still live in a truly capitalist society, are premised on carrots and sticks, incentives and disincentives. Ideally (heh), the carrots and sticks should be applied as needed, regardless of the situation. From a purely systems analysis perspective, it's not supposed to be a question of who applies those carrots and sticks, so much as what applies them. In systems dynamics, they are applied to optimize the overall efficiency of the system.

In the post-World War 2 era, it worked that way for a few decades. Americans of that time realized that an empowered working class spent its money on goods and services, thus enriching the companies who produced those things. Rich people paid taxes, and paid their workers a wage they could live on and spend money on. It was tacitly understood by all that incentives and disincentives would be applied by the system to keep the machine humming.

But as you may have noticed, it no longer works that way. Rich people and corporations get carrots, everyone else gets sticks. There is nothing resembling even application. This is because the system is no longer run and maintained by systems people, relatively non- or bi-partisan people who understand the utilitarian notion of the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

In deregulating the finance and lobbying industries, Saint Reagan essentially sold the system to the elite money class, who of course simply run it for their own benefit -- and everyone else's detriment. It is not enough for them to gain, everyone else must lose in the process. Saint Clinton continued this new dynamic and globalized it, put the final nail in the coffin with the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Bush the Lesser drove the cock home with the jackhammer fury of a thousand Ron Jeremys, Obama has done jack shit to remove said cock, and if you think either Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush will ever consider not doing whatever Wall Street tells them to, you should really stop huffing industrial solvents.

On and on it goes. It will continue, probably worsen for most. It will not change, no matter how much you wish, no matter how fervently you participate in the useless voting ritual. It is true that only one party wants to get rid of the EPA, Department of Education, the minimum wage, a woman's right to choose, and so on. But it is also true that neither party will ever stand up to the people who have perpetrated this economic monstrosity that pervades everything else, not even a little bit.

I feel like a broken record most times anymore, bringing up this topic. Not because I'm bored with it -- far from it. I'm utterly fascinated by this tiny claque of transnational merchant princes, who actively -- deliberately, mind you -- are on an open mission to fuck this country over, and everyone in it. I'm fascinated by people who have more money than they could ever spend, and yet it's still not enough for them. I'm amazed by people who look at the millions of lives they adversely affect as some big fucking game.

I'm fascinated by the poor people that these soulless fuckers rook into voting against themselves, an enormous swath of chickens who can't wait to enthusiastically show their support for good ol' Colonel Sanders. How could you not find these people interesting. how could anyone not watch this dynamic and be compelled by its narrative, by its inevitable outcomes?

And people like Angel Gurria fascinate me perhaps most of all, because Gurria probably thinks he means well. These dogsbodies of the merchant princes, they should know better -- I mean, they do know how to read fucking spreadsheets and charts, right? But they seem sincere in their convictions that if "we" just made "opportunities" available for "them" to bootstrap themselves, the problem would solve itself. No matter how much evidence over the last generation is available and observable, they faithfully hew to their standard "remedies" -- go through the "higher education" racket, get balls-deep in debt so you can get a better job (doing what?), spend most of your working life trying to repay that debt and not get your job shipped to Asia. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So I mentioned that this situation is simpler to resolve than the Serious People make it out to be, and it is. But there has to be willingness to use carrots and sticks on everyone, not just carrots for the owners and sticks for the peons. Incentivize keeping companies stateside and not exporting labor. Incentivize paying a living wage. Disincentivize screwing your workers, the way shitheel companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's have become accustomed to doing. Make corporations pay their fucking taxes. Disincentivize offshoring profits. Disincentivize overcharging for college education. Start a massive infrastructure work project, like Eisenhower did with the interstate highways. Enact a 1-2% redistributive tax on the "high net worth" assholes, say, anyone with over $10M in wealth. Spread it around. Institute a one-time debt jubilee, paying down either a certain percentage or amount of interest-bearing debt on people's homes and educations (which are usury and overcharging in the first place). The Masters might be surprised at how quickly the economy surges from such measures, and everyone, including the owners, would actually profit from these measures. After all, if the peons have more money, they will buy more stuff. Shocking, I know.

Obviously none of this will ever happen, but what's really pathetic and disheartening is that no one with access to the corporate media would even consider mentioning such things. If there's a system that's incredibly self-regulating, it is the system that manufactures "official" opinion and consent. And the pillaging of the rentier class will persist for exactly as long as the peons are willing to put up with it.

Dork by Dork West

I'm not above occasionally checking out some fake hairy Persian titties; it's my Sattiday mawnin' cartoon jam, yo. But what's really hilarious is her idiot old man's self-fellation at the 'roo:

"I ain't going after nobody on the radio," he said, according to The Associated Press. "I'm going after Shakespeare, I'm going after Walt Disney. I'm going after Howard Hughes. I'm going after Genghis Khan. I'm going after Henry Ford..."

Uh-huh. Sure. Check out Shitspeare in all his lyrical glory, just as a f'rxample. Forget the historical incoherence (Romans versus Trojans? At the Battle of Thermopylae? Does he not have people who can Google this shit for him, at least? Do "Spartans" and "Persians" suddenly not rhyme? Should I be ashamed at doing a close reading of a moron like Kanye West?), he just flat fucking sucks as a writer, even by the impossibly low standards of this sort of music.

At the risk of one, stating the obvious, and two, sounding like a cheesy self-help author, one of the essential keys to "greatness" is doing something that most other people cannot do. Read those Black Skinhead words aloud to yourself, if you can do so without giggling. It's pretty standard repetitive junior-high woofing, that literally just about anyone could do. No fresh insight, nothing interesting in the rhyme scheme, none of the things that talented hip-hop artists actually do. It's just awful.

I know, complaining about a jagoff like Kanye West is like complaining about the weather. Soon as his fifteen minutes are up, some other no-talent asshole will take his place. Still, it would be nice to find out for sure, just to watch this dickhead go away, and hopefully take his fucking Autotune machine with him.