Look, if McConnell isn't actually a Russian asset, he might as well be, since he's taking their money and doing their bidding anyway. It's something to ponder, that it took fewer than a quarter-million Kentuckians to completely fuck this country over, well before Trump came along. Good job, folks.
"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
-- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Starving the Beast
Ho-hum, another week, another set of openly racist tweets from Captain Shitposter. What are the odds that he washes his tiny, tiny hands after each and every rage-dump? What are the odds that any number of important stories will be obscured in the coming week by tedious "debates" over whether he is or he isn't? We already knew the answer to that long ago. There is no point in watching the nonsense, engaging with it on any level, arguing with people who for whatever reason still support this fucker, none of it.
H.L. Mencken's old newspaper of record did have a quick and noteworthy response, which may as well have ended with and the horse you rode in on. Victor Blackwell of CNN had an on-air response that was, to be sure, sincere and poignant, and well worth watching. But it wouldn't be surprising if, in the next segment or today or tomorrow, CNN turns around and has Kellyanne Conway or Seb Gorka or some other pock-faced turd sitting there explaining the vampire's point of view as part of some panel of interchangeable shitheads.
The corporate media need to portray their dereliction of duty as the very opposite of that: we're doing our jobs, because when the chief executive says something, it's news. And so it is. But when what that fucking thing says is clearly racist, it is then the responsibility of said stenographers to point that out with clarity and conviction, not mealy-mouthed qualifiers such as racist-tinged or racist-infused or a slight hint of racism with hints of oak and french fries and stale cheetos.
Les Moonves and Jeff Zucker weren't lying when they said it was good for business. Because they don't really have much of a revenue model anymore. It's easy to forget that by 2015 most major media outlets were in full-on panic mode -- newspapers especially were going the route of laying off the young and handing a few golden parachutes to the lifers, if they were lucky. But even the cable outlets were shitting a collective brick by the time Fatboy waddled down his fucking escalator that barmy June morning and threw his wig into the ring.
H.L. Mencken's old newspaper of record did have a quick and noteworthy response, which may as well have ended with and the horse you rode in on. Victor Blackwell of CNN had an on-air response that was, to be sure, sincere and poignant, and well worth watching. But it wouldn't be surprising if, in the next segment or today or tomorrow, CNN turns around and has Kellyanne Conway or Seb Gorka or some other pock-faced turd sitting there explaining the vampire's point of view as part of some panel of interchangeable shitheads.
The corporate media need to portray their dereliction of duty as the very opposite of that: we're doing our jobs, because when the chief executive says something, it's news. And so it is. But when what that fucking thing says is clearly racist, it is then the responsibility of said stenographers to point that out with clarity and conviction, not mealy-mouthed qualifiers such as racist-tinged or racist-infused or a slight hint of racism with hints of oak and french fries and stale cheetos.
Les Moonves and Jeff Zucker weren't lying when they said it was good for business. Because they don't really have much of a revenue model anymore. It's easy to forget that by 2015 most major media outlets were in full-on panic mode -- newspapers especially were going the route of laying off the young and handing a few golden parachutes to the lifers, if they were lucky. But even the cable outlets were shitting a collective brick by the time Fatboy waddled down his fucking escalator that barmy June morning and threw his wig into the ring.
At the Movies
[Just the one movie this time. I'll do my best to avoid any major spoilers, but shit may happen. After all, it's a Tarantino movie.]
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- Tarantino's latest opus dropped Thursday night, and the premise seemed intriguing: a washed-up cowboy actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt-double sidekick (Brad Pitt) navigate Hollywood in 1969, the former vainly attempting to resuscitate his flagging career, and the latter vainly striving to keep some sort of role in that career, since he can't have a career of his own (due to being effectively blackballed).
Oh, and did we mention that DiCaprio's next-door neighbors way up on Cielo Drive in Hollywood are none other than Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie)? Reader, you can rest assured that violent hijinks will eventually ensue, a couple hours or so down the road.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- Tarantino's latest opus dropped Thursday night, and the premise seemed intriguing: a washed-up cowboy actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt-double sidekick (Brad Pitt) navigate Hollywood in 1969, the former vainly attempting to resuscitate his flagging career, and the latter vainly striving to keep some sort of role in that career, since he can't have a career of his own (due to being effectively blackballed).
Oh, and did we mention that DiCaprio's next-door neighbors way up on Cielo Drive in Hollywood are none other than Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie)? Reader, you can rest assured that violent hijinks will eventually ensue, a couple hours or so down the road.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
The Power of Doing Nothing
The 1980s were an interesting time to be learning to play rock guitar, specifically in the hard rock (or "hair metal") sub-genre. As the music itself began shedding the more jam-based cliches of the '70s bands, two budding superstars began coming to prominence: Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen. When Rhoads was killed in a plane crash in 1982, with only two albums under his belt that featured exceptional, innovative playing, that cemented his status alongside Hendrix, a "what else might he have done" type of thing. Van Halen, of course, kept plugging away, and by 1985 was easily the most heralded player of his generation.
At the same time, the pedagogy changed dramatically, as tabulature became more standardized, and instructional magazines and books were everywhere. No longer did you have to sit around while your stoner cousin showed you the wrong chords to Stairway to Heaven, and tried to dope his way through a poor approximation of the solo. You could just read along and figure it out -- and after learning a couple dozen songs that way, would have enough ear training to do tabs on your own.
This quickly turned into some of the more adept students taking standard scales (major and harmonic minor, and their respective modes), graphing them in patterns across the fretboard and up and down the neck, and then "sequencing" them, much like you would find in the J.S. Bach violin partitas and sonatas, which he composed primarily as learning tools for his children.
I switched from bass to six-string in 1984, and by 1987 was neck-deep (pardon the bad pun) in these magazines and scale manuals. It was not unusual for me to call in sick to work, and spend the entire day with a stack of material, drilling and practicing relentlessly. The results paid off, and I was playing some pretty top-drawer stuff for the time. But more and more, it started to feel somewhat like a fourth-grader drilling on multiplication tables. You definitely learn the process and the theory, and can become wonderfully quick at it, but it doesn't take you very far in applying it.
So in 1989, King Crimson guitar wizard Robert Fripp comes along with a column in Guitar Player magazine, and it was notably without the requisite "here's how you play three-note-per-string Locrian mode patterns all the way up the neck" tabs. In fact, Fripp's first column culminated in the wonderfully gnomic advice to just sit there in a chair, without a guitar, and do nothing for thirty minutes or so, ignoring the involuntary thoughts and fidgets that will occur during that time.
Doing nothing, Fripp advised, can be very difficult. It's much harder than it seems.
Boy, was he ever right. Being a twenty-two-year-old galoot in a hick town with no concept of meditation or anything of that nature, this was beyond perplexing to me. And difficult. And it took a long time to get where I felt like I could see the benefit and the point of that advice.
But he was right.
At the same time, the pedagogy changed dramatically, as tabulature became more standardized, and instructional magazines and books were everywhere. No longer did you have to sit around while your stoner cousin showed you the wrong chords to Stairway to Heaven, and tried to dope his way through a poor approximation of the solo. You could just read along and figure it out -- and after learning a couple dozen songs that way, would have enough ear training to do tabs on your own.
This quickly turned into some of the more adept students taking standard scales (major and harmonic minor, and their respective modes), graphing them in patterns across the fretboard and up and down the neck, and then "sequencing" them, much like you would find in the J.S. Bach violin partitas and sonatas, which he composed primarily as learning tools for his children.
I switched from bass to six-string in 1984, and by 1987 was neck-deep (pardon the bad pun) in these magazines and scale manuals. It was not unusual for me to call in sick to work, and spend the entire day with a stack of material, drilling and practicing relentlessly. The results paid off, and I was playing some pretty top-drawer stuff for the time. But more and more, it started to feel somewhat like a fourth-grader drilling on multiplication tables. You definitely learn the process and the theory, and can become wonderfully quick at it, but it doesn't take you very far in applying it.
So in 1989, King Crimson guitar wizard Robert Fripp comes along with a column in Guitar Player magazine, and it was notably without the requisite "here's how you play three-note-per-string Locrian mode patterns all the way up the neck" tabs. In fact, Fripp's first column culminated in the wonderfully gnomic advice to just sit there in a chair, without a guitar, and do nothing for thirty minutes or so, ignoring the involuntary thoughts and fidgets that will occur during that time.
Doing nothing, Fripp advised, can be very difficult. It's much harder than it seems.
Boy, was he ever right. Being a twenty-two-year-old galoot in a hick town with no concept of meditation or anything of that nature, this was beyond perplexing to me. And difficult. And it took a long time to get where I felt like I could see the benefit and the point of that advice.
But he was right.
Sunday, July 14, 2019
The Ten-Percent Solution
Like many Americans, I suffer from the chronic problem of too much abundance -- that is, I could stand to lose a few pounds (not to mention some clutter). From what I see of people my own age or even five to ten years younger, I'm in comparatively good shape. But a few years before I hit that magic five-oh, I could feel the excess baggage taking a toll on my back and knees and joints. And it only gets worse.
The bright spot is that I've been able to stay in a pretty tight window for about ten to twelve years now, neither gaining nor losing more than five pounds. But I've been reading up a bit more here and there, trying to find relatively painless ways to take off that tonnage.
I am not a fan of fad or crash dieting, because you just end up gaining the weight back. It's about identifying the bad habits and routines in your day-to-day, and whittling away at them gradually, rather than trying and failing to dump them all whole hog overnight. One of the better books I've come across sums up its pitch in three simple words: Eat Move Sleep, as in eat less, move more, and sleep better. That's really all there is to it, and while it's simple, it's not easy.
People get distracted by the weird tax-exempt hypocrisies of, say, Catholicism or snake-handling evangelicals, but if 'murka has a state religion, it's the cult of self-help books. There are many pulpits and pastors and approaches, but all of them have the same basic angle: pull your shit together by identifying your bad habits, lining up some personal and/or professional goals, and start leveraging the latter to eliminate the former. That's really all most of these things boil down to.
People with bad habits know they have them, and want to quit them, but generally just don't know where to begin. All they see is an impossibly tall mountain, and that overwhelms the natural common-sense instinct to just take a first step, then another, and another, and so on. Again, we all know this, and it's all very life-hacky, but it's still true. Inertia is the real killer when it comes to bad habits. It's certainly possible to optimize your approach, but the bottom line is that doing anything is better than doing nothing.
Which brings me to David Wallace-Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth, which I recommend if you never want to sleep soundly again. I'm not going to bother to review it point-by-point; suffice to say that it is very well-written and solidly researched, and a relatively quick read. He paints a picture that is grim and unrelenting and, most crucially, is already in motion.
The bright spot is that I've been able to stay in a pretty tight window for about ten to twelve years now, neither gaining nor losing more than five pounds. But I've been reading up a bit more here and there, trying to find relatively painless ways to take off that tonnage.
I am not a fan of fad or crash dieting, because you just end up gaining the weight back. It's about identifying the bad habits and routines in your day-to-day, and whittling away at them gradually, rather than trying and failing to dump them all whole hog overnight. One of the better books I've come across sums up its pitch in three simple words: Eat Move Sleep, as in eat less, move more, and sleep better. That's really all there is to it, and while it's simple, it's not easy.
People get distracted by the weird tax-exempt hypocrisies of, say, Catholicism or snake-handling evangelicals, but if 'murka has a state religion, it's the cult of self-help books. There are many pulpits and pastors and approaches, but all of them have the same basic angle: pull your shit together by identifying your bad habits, lining up some personal and/or professional goals, and start leveraging the latter to eliminate the former. That's really all most of these things boil down to.
People with bad habits know they have them, and want to quit them, but generally just don't know where to begin. All they see is an impossibly tall mountain, and that overwhelms the natural common-sense instinct to just take a first step, then another, and another, and so on. Again, we all know this, and it's all very life-hacky, but it's still true. Inertia is the real killer when it comes to bad habits. It's certainly possible to optimize your approach, but the bottom line is that doing anything is better than doing nothing.
Which brings me to David Wallace-Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth, which I recommend if you never want to sleep soundly again. I'm not going to bother to review it point-by-point; suffice to say that it is very well-written and solidly researched, and a relatively quick read. He paints a picture that is grim and unrelenting and, most crucially, is already in motion.
Monday, July 08, 2019
Render Unto Caesar
I can buy that Peter Wehner is sincere in his concern about the future of what passes for Christianity in this country, and how it has been hopelessly compromised by evangelicals' overwhelming support of a completely godless piece of shit.
But just like the seemingly sudden transformation of the Republicon party into a rump bund pretending to stroke its collective chin while enabling and supporting an utterly vile set of policies, this was a long time coming, because the elements were already in place. Trump just figured out how to weaponize them.
The dilemma "sincere" Christians faced and ignored a long time ago was when they decided to let open hucksters like Marion "Pat" Robertson and Jerry Falwell squirm their way into the political arena. They let weasels like Ralph Reed and Tony Perkins become power-brokers between people of faith and politicians with pockets, curating the official dogma of what "Christian" voters and their elected representatives would "stand for."
Besides, of course, everyone in the food chain taking suitcases full of cash. You really want to solve this problem, make these fuckers pay their taxes. Religious exemptions should not extend to business and politics, period. And the fact is, they've made politics their business, and they're making taxpayers subsidize them and their fucking Gulfstreams and mansions.
So when Wehner and his associates of faith are concerned that this open-market sellout to the thieving, lying, conniving, soulless, godless whoremongers that infest this suppurating chancre of an administration, when they see that these compromises may cost them the next generation of believers, all I can say is good. Because the kids that haven't been dragged through the molesty Jesus camps and cult megachurch indoctrinations deserve better than to be bundled into political currency by these hopelessly cynical people.
The new breed of temple money-changers that have barnacled themselves to the hull of this ship of fools -- Paula White, Robert Jeffress, Kenneth Copeland, Mark Owens -- are right to align themselves with someone so utterly bereft of even the concept of faith, as Trump clearly is. Because they are every bit as transactional in everything they do as he has always been.
It's hard to imagine the sort of chump who would actually be fooled by any of the posturing these people have done, the megachurch hucksters and their fatted, bronzed steer. In their way, the cultists are pretending and winking their way through this as much as the rest of the bastards whose cues they follow. It is a pro-wrestling dynamic as much as anything else. Call it "kayfabe for Jesus" maybe.
Which leaves (giving Wehner and Karel Coppock and that cohort the small benefit of the doubt) the true believers, who believe in the divine word and in the messages of Saints Ambrose and Augustine, out in the cold with nothing but their sincere faith. The problem with that is that there's not much market for it; the performative garment-rending of the inimitable Rod Dreher seems to be about where it begins and ends.
Even there, Dreher spends most of his time lathering over his tedious "drag queens to the left of me, fascists to the right" vaudeville act, in which he inevitably -- albeit, one is meant to presume, oh-so-reluctantly -- holds a gun to his own head and forces himself to vote the same as the fascists, if not precisely with them, you see.
They are all more than welcome to explain these fine distinctions to the actual humans: asylum-seekers drinking from toilets while psychotic guards jeer at them; Yemeni villagers dying en masse from cholera after being carpet-bombed by our Saudi bankrollers, with planes and missiles we sold to them; journalists being strapped to tables and dismembered alive by aforementioned Saudis; soybean farmers in the Midwest losing their family's land and shooting themselves because they were dumb enough to trust a cheap fraud who cares more about cheating at golf every weekend than anything else -- people currently being harmed in real time by the policies enacted by these monsters.
If any of these people really believed in god, they'd stop wasting their time trying to explain their cheap hypocrisies to the rest of us, and concentrate on squaring things up with him. Or her, as the case may be.
But just like the seemingly sudden transformation of the Republicon party into a rump bund pretending to stroke its collective chin while enabling and supporting an utterly vile set of policies, this was a long time coming, because the elements were already in place. Trump just figured out how to weaponize them.
The dilemma "sincere" Christians faced and ignored a long time ago was when they decided to let open hucksters like Marion "Pat" Robertson and Jerry Falwell squirm their way into the political arena. They let weasels like Ralph Reed and Tony Perkins become power-brokers between people of faith and politicians with pockets, curating the official dogma of what "Christian" voters and their elected representatives would "stand for."
Besides, of course, everyone in the food chain taking suitcases full of cash. You really want to solve this problem, make these fuckers pay their taxes. Religious exemptions should not extend to business and politics, period. And the fact is, they've made politics their business, and they're making taxpayers subsidize them and their fucking Gulfstreams and mansions.
So when Wehner and his associates of faith are concerned that this open-market sellout to the thieving, lying, conniving, soulless, godless whoremongers that infest this suppurating chancre of an administration, when they see that these compromises may cost them the next generation of believers, all I can say is good. Because the kids that haven't been dragged through the molesty Jesus camps and cult megachurch indoctrinations deserve better than to be bundled into political currency by these hopelessly cynical people.
The new breed of temple money-changers that have barnacled themselves to the hull of this ship of fools -- Paula White, Robert Jeffress, Kenneth Copeland, Mark Owens -- are right to align themselves with someone so utterly bereft of even the concept of faith, as Trump clearly is. Because they are every bit as transactional in everything they do as he has always been.
It's hard to imagine the sort of chump who would actually be fooled by any of the posturing these people have done, the megachurch hucksters and their fatted, bronzed steer. In their way, the cultists are pretending and winking their way through this as much as the rest of the bastards whose cues they follow. It is a pro-wrestling dynamic as much as anything else. Call it "kayfabe for Jesus" maybe.
Which leaves (giving Wehner and Karel Coppock and that cohort the small benefit of the doubt) the true believers, who believe in the divine word and in the messages of Saints Ambrose and Augustine, out in the cold with nothing but their sincere faith. The problem with that is that there's not much market for it; the performative garment-rending of the inimitable Rod Dreher seems to be about where it begins and ends.
Even there, Dreher spends most of his time lathering over his tedious "drag queens to the left of me, fascists to the right" vaudeville act, in which he inevitably -- albeit, one is meant to presume, oh-so-reluctantly -- holds a gun to his own head and forces himself to vote the same as the fascists, if not precisely with them, you see.
They are all more than welcome to explain these fine distinctions to the actual humans: asylum-seekers drinking from toilets while psychotic guards jeer at them; Yemeni villagers dying en masse from cholera after being carpet-bombed by our Saudi bankrollers, with planes and missiles we sold to them; journalists being strapped to tables and dismembered alive by aforementioned Saudis; soybean farmers in the Midwest losing their family's land and shooting themselves because they were dumb enough to trust a cheap fraud who cares more about cheating at golf every weekend than anything else -- people currently being harmed in real time by the policies enacted by these monsters.
If any of these people really believed in god, they'd stop wasting their time trying to explain their cheap hypocrisies to the rest of us, and concentrate on squaring things up with him. Or her, as the case may be.
Sunday, July 07, 2019
Player's Club
Oh, dear, career pervert Jeffrey Epstein has been arrested again. Don't get your hopes up too much; the system is built for pelf-encumbered scumbags like Epstein to never be held accountable for what they do. He has too much money, and too many powerful friends -- and he probably has photos of all of them in action. But it would be nice to think of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew, and the rest of Uncle Jeff's Sex Island Club being brought down, once and for all.
It won't happen, of course. Maybe we need to revisit that pledge of allegiance thing, the semi-coerced fealty oath to the decorated cloth Trump enjoys spooning with. People get fixated on the "under god" part, but maybe they should pay more attention to the last four words: "....and justice for all." Really? Because it sure as fuck seems like Epstein gets to buy his way out of trouble every fucking time. A non-wealthy person would have been locked up for life a decade ago. So maybe "....and justice for people who can't afford to rent lawyers and politicians" might be a more accurate way to put it.
Another powerful friend Uncle Jeff apparently has is, get this, William Barr. You see, Bill's dad was the headmaster (giggity) of the Dalton School, and hired Uncle Jeff to teach physics and calculus -- and presumably how to swallow. From there, it's been the usual chef's-kiss of a charmed life for Uncle Jeff.
These people are such fucking scum. From time to time one hears calls from what passes for the left in this country, for things like a maximum income, or just no billionaires at all, just a straight-up redistribution to cap wealth and income at a paltry nine-zero ceiling. I have generally scoffed at such ideas, rightly thinking that in a true capitalist meritocracy, these sorts of moves would constrain -- even deter -- innovation and productivity. Why, it might disincentivize the next boiler-room operation out there, feverishly working on their IPO pump-and-dump scheme. And where would our would-be Caligulas put their giant cartoon bags with the dollar signs on them?
So take a look at some of the more well-known members of that club: not just do-nothing perverts like Epstein, but Jeff Bezos, whose big idea is to build space cities where the elites can escape the poorz. Or Elon Musk, who seems hellbent on burrowing personal transport tunnels under large cities, apparently oblivious to the idea that cities that have been around for hundreds of years frequently are built on top their earlier incarnations -- or, you know, that it's just a stupid fucking idea to begin with.
Or you have entitled turds like Betsy DeVos, whose life can essentially be summed up as the winning of two -- not one, but two -- one-in-a-billion lottery tickets. She and her brother were born into a billion-dollar fortune, and then she married into the Scamway billion-dollar fortune. Where a normal person might take a look at such incredible luck and help people and just enjoy life, DeVos has spent her adult life collecting ricockulous super-houses and yachts, and trying to turn Michigan's public education system into a christofascist indoctrination for-profit scheme.
(And of course her brother is Erik Prince, who became a Navy SEAL and since has spent the last twenty years building an international mercenary army, accountable to no laws or mores. There are humans who would literally be alive and/or leading better lives, if Erik and Betsy had been born destitute and never been allowed near real money. Think about that for a second.)
You could go on and on down the list, the Koch brothers buying the political system, etc., but you get the idea. Bezos and Musk actually have some ability and talent, and clearly a respectable amount of drive and persistence. They didn't inherit massive fortunes like DeVos or the Kochs. But even so, look what they've done with it. They could be helping people, they could be working to save the planet that their resource-extraction supply chains have severely damaged, and instead they're fucking around with space travel like a couple of moony-eyed fifth-graders reading Asimov for the first time.
That's a perfect model of what post-modern predatory capitalism really is: make ungodly amounts of money despoiling the planet and ruining competitors, then use that money to build an escape pod to get away from the consequences of everything you've ever done. Sounds about right.
Youth may be wasted on the young, but it seems more and more like wealth is wasted on the wealthy. It's times like these where you start to have a bit more respect for Paris Hilton, who at least just took her inherited pile and went away to party off-camera, instead of rubbing everyone's nose in it.
It won't happen, of course. Maybe we need to revisit that pledge of allegiance thing, the semi-coerced fealty oath to the decorated cloth Trump enjoys spooning with. People get fixated on the "under god" part, but maybe they should pay more attention to the last four words: "....and justice for all." Really? Because it sure as fuck seems like Epstein gets to buy his way out of trouble every fucking time. A non-wealthy person would have been locked up for life a decade ago. So maybe "....and justice for people who can't afford to rent lawyers and politicians" might be a more accurate way to put it.
Another powerful friend Uncle Jeff apparently has is, get this, William Barr. You see, Bill's dad was the headmaster (giggity) of the Dalton School, and hired Uncle Jeff to teach physics and calculus -- and presumably how to swallow. From there, it's been the usual chef's-kiss of a charmed life for Uncle Jeff.
These people are such fucking scum. From time to time one hears calls from what passes for the left in this country, for things like a maximum income, or just no billionaires at all, just a straight-up redistribution to cap wealth and income at a paltry nine-zero ceiling. I have generally scoffed at such ideas, rightly thinking that in a true capitalist meritocracy, these sorts of moves would constrain -- even deter -- innovation and productivity. Why, it might disincentivize the next boiler-room operation out there, feverishly working on their IPO pump-and-dump scheme. And where would our would-be Caligulas put their giant cartoon bags with the dollar signs on them?
So take a look at some of the more well-known members of that club: not just do-nothing perverts like Epstein, but Jeff Bezos, whose big idea is to build space cities where the elites can escape the poorz. Or Elon Musk, who seems hellbent on burrowing personal transport tunnels under large cities, apparently oblivious to the idea that cities that have been around for hundreds of years frequently are built on top their earlier incarnations -- or, you know, that it's just a stupid fucking idea to begin with.
Or you have entitled turds like Betsy DeVos, whose life can essentially be summed up as the winning of two -- not one, but two -- one-in-a-billion lottery tickets. She and her brother were born into a billion-dollar fortune, and then she married into the Scamway billion-dollar fortune. Where a normal person might take a look at such incredible luck and help people and just enjoy life, DeVos has spent her adult life collecting ricockulous super-houses and yachts, and trying to turn Michigan's public education system into a christofascist indoctrination for-profit scheme.
(And of course her brother is Erik Prince, who became a Navy SEAL and since has spent the last twenty years building an international mercenary army, accountable to no laws or mores. There are humans who would literally be alive and/or leading better lives, if Erik and Betsy had been born destitute and never been allowed near real money. Think about that for a second.)
You could go on and on down the list, the Koch brothers buying the political system, etc., but you get the idea. Bezos and Musk actually have some ability and talent, and clearly a respectable amount of drive and persistence. They didn't inherit massive fortunes like DeVos or the Kochs. But even so, look what they've done with it. They could be helping people, they could be working to save the planet that their resource-extraction supply chains have severely damaged, and instead they're fucking around with space travel like a couple of moony-eyed fifth-graders reading Asimov for the first time.
That's a perfect model of what post-modern predatory capitalism really is: make ungodly amounts of money despoiling the planet and ruining competitors, then use that money to build an escape pod to get away from the consequences of everything you've ever done. Sounds about right.
Youth may be wasted on the young, but it seems more and more like wealth is wasted on the wealthy. It's times like these where you start to have a bit more respect for Paris Hilton, who at least just took her inherited pile and went away to party off-camera, instead of rubbing everyone's nose in it.
Wednesday, July 03, 2019
Fiasco
You know, it's almost a shame that no one besides the kneepad hacks at Fox is bothering to broadcast His Travesty's celebratory dick-waving fundraiser. The weather's going to be horrible, no one's going to show except a handful of fat bikers and some Antifa types, they have two small tanks and two Bradley APCs parked, because they'll wreck the streets if they drive them. I mean, who's the entertainment, Tim Allen and Kid Rock, something like that? It would almost be worth checking out just for the hilarity.
This is par for the course, especially for someone who cheats at golf and drives a cart on the fucking fairway. This discount asshole fucks up everything he touches. Every. Fucking. Thing. Might as well fill up a dumpster, set it on fire, and roll it into the National Mall. Happy birthday, 'murka!
This is par for the course, especially for someone who cheats at golf and drives a cart on the fucking fairway. This discount asshole fucks up everything he touches. Every. Fucking. Thing. Might as well fill up a dumpster, set it on fire, and roll it into the National Mall. Happy birthday, 'murka!
An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi
Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. dO yOuR jOb. Do your JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB. DO YOUR JOB.
Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, I am sick of listening to these people whine and pule their way through this, over and over and over again. It has been established that this administration has done countless "unacceptable" things already. If only the American gubmint contained an entity that was constitutionally empowered and mandated to deal with such situations, rather than just bleating and complaining every day about it. Schumer's even worse. If this is the best the Democratic party can do, it's no wonder people say fuck it and vote Republican. At least they get shit done.
Do your job already, lady. You're the majority leader, so lead your majority. Herd your cats, twist the necessary arms, get them singing the song, start the investigations, flood the zone. Get off Twitter and away from the cameras, and punch some backroom kidneys and exercise some goddamned party discipline. We're tired of the excuses. Either do something, or step off and we'll vote someone in who will. Or we'll stay home, since there's no point.
The sentiment of the midterm election could not have been clearer. At some point, ineptitude becomes complicity. It seems that we have reached that point. You keep that in mind as we approach 2020, bokay? There are no good options anymore. There is only dying on your feet, or living on your knees.
This is not a purity-pony "not pergressive or woke enuff" litmus test here, this is just a basic "these people are breaking the law, and you are doing nothing about it" situation. Quit waiting for Mueller to hold your hands yet again, and take a look at your job descriptions.
Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, I am sick of listening to these people whine and pule their way through this, over and over and over again. It has been established that this administration has done countless "unacceptable" things already. If only the American gubmint contained an entity that was constitutionally empowered and mandated to deal with such situations, rather than just bleating and complaining every day about it. Schumer's even worse. If this is the best the Democratic party can do, it's no wonder people say fuck it and vote Republican. At least they get shit done.
Do your job already, lady. You're the majority leader, so lead your majority. Herd your cats, twist the necessary arms, get them singing the song, start the investigations, flood the zone. Get off Twitter and away from the cameras, and punch some backroom kidneys and exercise some goddamned party discipline. We're tired of the excuses. Either do something, or step off and we'll vote someone in who will. Or we'll stay home, since there's no point.
The sentiment of the midterm election could not have been clearer. At some point, ineptitude becomes complicity. It seems that we have reached that point. You keep that in mind as we approach 2020, bokay? There are no good options anymore. There is only dying on your feet, or living on your knees.
This is not a purity-pony "not pergressive or woke enuff" litmus test here, this is just a basic "these people are breaking the law, and you are doing nothing about it" situation. Quit waiting for Mueller to hold your hands yet again, and take a look at your job descriptions.
Tuesday, July 02, 2019
Blast from the Past
I posted this barely fictional short story a year ago yesterday. It may be even more relevant now than it was at the time.
Monday, July 01, 2019
Silence of the Lames
Been meaning to get to this one for a couple weeks, but too much going on IRL lately: Dave Cohen recently posted an interview with author Lionel Shriver, yet another ponderous screed about the supposed vicissitudes of "woke culture" which are apparently ushering our collective freeze-peach DOOM.
This seems to be a favorite axe to grind for many soi-disant civil libertarians of the internets, once again prioritizing their principled defense of mouthy assholes over, say, children being abused and dying in concentration camps, or a rapey slapdick desperately trying to derp his way into a war while he continues upending the nation's treasury into his own pockets. I guess we all have our pet peeves.
Rather than the "god-given right to monetize" trope that I've already taken apart multiple times, the problem here is more along the lines of vague over-exaggerations of the supposed effects of collective squelching of unorthodox opinions, as it were. Call it the "Tim Allen effect" -- the whiny plaints of "getting beaten up" and comparisons to Germany in the 1930s (the latter of which Tim Allen actually made on the Jimmy Kimmel Show a couple years back).
Not to be a pedantic literalist about things, but hopefully most of us can agree on the fundamental principle that especially when you're talking about free speech, words are important, the meanings that they convey are critical. So using phrases that imply threats or acts of actual violence to describe some random assholes complaining about you on social media are, let's say, incongruous.
This seems to be a favorite axe to grind for many soi-disant civil libertarians of the internets, once again prioritizing their principled defense of mouthy assholes over, say, children being abused and dying in concentration camps, or a rapey slapdick desperately trying to derp his way into a war while he continues upending the nation's treasury into his own pockets. I guess we all have our pet peeves.
Rather than the "god-given right to monetize" trope that I've already taken apart multiple times, the problem here is more along the lines of vague over-exaggerations of the supposed effects of collective squelching of unorthodox opinions, as it were. Call it the "Tim Allen effect" -- the whiny plaints of "getting beaten up" and comparisons to Germany in the 1930s (the latter of which Tim Allen actually made on the Jimmy Kimmel Show a couple years back).
Not to be a pedantic literalist about things, but hopefully most of us can agree on the fundamental principle that especially when you're talking about free speech, words are important, the meanings that they convey are critical. So using phrases that imply threats or acts of actual violence to describe some random assholes complaining about you on social media are, let's say, incongruous.