NFL Divisional Playoff Predictions

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

Prediction:  Seahawks 31, Saints 13.

---

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

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

Prediction:  Patriots 31, Colts 20.

---

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

Prediction:  Panthers 16, 49ers 13.

---

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

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

Prediction:  Chargers 31, Denver 30.


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


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

Bridge(t) to Nowhere

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also, too.

Diet of Worms

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

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

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

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

Heightening the Contradictions

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

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

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

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

Some Folks Is Even Whiter Than Me: The Romneying

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

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

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

Also, too. Holy shit.

NFL Wild Card Predictions

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

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

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

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

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

Prediction:  Colts 21, Chiefs 17.

---

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

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

Prediction:  Eagles 37, Saints 27.

---

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

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

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

Prediction:  Bengals 20, Chargers 6.

---

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

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

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

Prediction:  49ers 16, Packers 13.

---

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

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

Don't Really Give a Duck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stranger Than Fiction

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

Head Count and Upcoming Books

Couple of quick housekeeping things:

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

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

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

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

Get the Duck Out

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

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

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

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

Swamp Thing

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

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

The New Model

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

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

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

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

Tea and Simpering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Confessions of Commander Ga

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

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

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

Lots of Famous Songs Created in DPRK in 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you can really twerk to it.

The Golden Rule

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

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

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

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

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Not to read too much into a typical tearjerker type of "news" article, but as we head into the morass of health-care "solutions," you are going to be seeing more and more of these sorts of things, even though they have been there all along.

All the fear-mongering about "death panels" ignores the obvious situation, one that anyone who has had the misfortune of falling into the system knows all too well -- there are already death panels, insofar as there are individuals and groups of people, faceless, distanced from the emotional impact of the situation. They're called insurance companies, HMOs, or in this case, doctors who have to make difficult decisions with scarce resources, and may even be providing less-than-optimal palliative care.

The dirty little secret about health care costs is not really much of a secret at all -- nearly half of all costs are expended on about 5% of the overall population, while half the population use little or no resources of the system at all. (This in itself is something of a potential future problem, as the success or failure of (sigh) health care reform is predicated to a huge extent on what is euphemistically known as "prevention and wellness," part of which is the usual eat-less-exercise-more exhortations, but part of which is getting at least semi-regular checkups. The thing about doctors is that no one visits them until they're already ill.)

Even without knowing all the gnat's-eyebrow statistical specifics, most of us intuitively understand that this is very much an 80-20 deal, that most of the costs and expenditures are being directed at a very small portion of the population. What that hammers out to is that the public ends up subsidizing very expensive procedures for a variety of conditions, some of them catastrophic, some of them chronic, some of them by-products of lifetimes of poor impulse control and decision making.

That is part and parcel of risk-pooling, of the vaunted social compact; we take care of those who need it now, with the understanding that it will eventually be our turn. Of course, as with Social Security, there are groups of people who statistically pay into the system, yet never collect what they put into it -- smokers, drinkers, African-Americans, and other demographics with relatively less-than-average life expectancy. And yet, at some point, somebody -- or somebody else -- has to foot the bill for all these great machines and techniques and doodads and optimized revenue models. We could always look into more efficient systems, but what's the fun in that?

As a kid, I read tons of sci-fi, and watched more than my share of Twilight Zone and such. So I have, let's say, an enhanced appreciation for the somewhat ironic notion that humanity's capacity for technological innovation consistently surpasses its ability to adapt its social systems to accommodate those improvements. We saw this in the recent Iraq War -- wounded military personnel sustained catastrophic injuries that would have killed them instantly even ten years earlier, so they came back to a dead economy with no jobs in the first place, but with the added obstacles of frequently having to relearn how to walk, or use prosthetic limbs, or deal with the psychological trauma of disfigurement, or just being in combat at all.

The comments section in the CNN article is as interesting as it is predictable -- polarized, diametrically opposed camps of "so sorry, gotta let the cripples die" hard-nosed realists and "every life is precious and invaluable" super-idealists. Of course every life has value, of course you want to save everyone. Most importantly, of course we all want to believe that cost is not a consideration, or at best a tertiary consideration. But -- and this seems particularly to be an issue in the organ-transplant arena, where there simply aren't an abundance of suitable matches to be had, thus a scarcity in viable resources -- it is a consideration all the same. If the heart-transplant surgeon has one heart to work with, and two suitable recipients, chances are (all other factors being more or less equal) they'll go with the more viable recipient -- that is, the one that has the best shot at living a longer, more healthy and complete life.

It's easy to slam the "who made these people God" card when it suits them, but when they need someone to remove their kid's brain tumor, that's exactly the sort of person they want nosing around in the hippocampus. In the meantime, these issues of cost and allocation are only going to get more pronounced. Aside from "eat less, exercise more, relieve stress, take up yoga," it's difficult to impart any real advice on how to prepare for it. Don't get sick. Get a better job so you can afford the higher premiums.

If we're not going to address the elephant in the room -- that maybe hosing a captive market with $77 gauze pads and usurious geographically-based pricing models, so that insurance/pharma/HMO CEOs can get the eight-figure salaries they're entitled to, as enshrined in the Bible and ratified in the Constitution, isn't the most efficient way to run a system -- then this is what you get, forever and ever amen. Is anyone surprised by any of this?

Animal Planet

Oh, awesome, another unsuspecting participant in the Asians' never-ending quest to achieve a fucking hard-on.

Shit Happens

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Long Ride

For the half-century commemoration of the most recent presidential assassination, a dim memory even for those who were alive at the time, of course it's time to rehash all the wacky conspiracy theories, give the JFK truthers the ol' what-for. Fair enough.

Although the events of Dealey Plaza took place several years before I arrived on this crazy orb, with both parents being staunch Democrats, and one side of the family being Irish Catholic Texans, you can bet JFK was a huge deal in my family. As far as I ever heard in mealtime conversations over the years, the Warren Commission was more or less accepted as holy writ, done and done.

Although I certainly cop to looking for conspiracies and subterfuge in areas where perhaps none truly exist, I am somewhat more agnostic on JFK, in that while I don't believe we know the whole truth, I also don't subscribe to any pet theory. But I find the "authoritative" hand-patting and reassuring clucking at conspiracy theorists to be off-putting, and I think it has its roots in much the same mindset that my family's acceptance of the Warren Report had.

Typically, the would-be debunker "refutes" any and all theories by declaring that theorists suffer from some mysterious malaise that compels them to stitch together these silly, baroque counter-narratives, due to a basic inability to comprehend the randomness of the world and of catalyzing events. This is a trope of the debunker genre, to the extent that former Charles Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi took over 1600 pages to verbally pummel the theorists, remind them of their dopey bullshit. This is the calling card of the debunker -- not only that shit happens randomly sometimes, but the implicit assertion, that a conspiracy couldn't happen, because we're America, because we're free, whatever.

For the most part this principle is actually true. I could never buy into the 9/11 truther guff for precisely that reason -- because with the number of people required to pull off something of that scope and scale, someone would have to blab.

Nonetheless, I would flip the calling card of the debunkers on them, and point out that the central flaw in their attempts is that very implication, that a conspiracy couldn't happen. The debunkers insist that the theorists "need" a story that satisfies their craving for "order," but conversely, it seems that the debunkers also have a "need" -- the need to point out that that sort of thing doesn't happen here, that we're too advanced and have strong institutions.

And that's simply not true, based just on the history that we empirically, irrefutably know. Any number of earlier civilizations have had many political assassinations, most of them inside jobs. We know that Roman emperors were routinely murdered, by close friends, by their Praetorian Guard, by any number of different means.

American history, particularly in the 20th century, is littered with any number of violent, secret activities. We know that we overthrew foreign governments, assassinated foreign leaders, started bullshit wars on false pretexts. From Operation Paperclip to Operation Ajax to Operation Northwoods, Americans in the highest echelons of power have actively conspired on some nefarious shit, time and again. Or that Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of presidents, conspired as a sitting US Senator to plot a coup to overthrow FDR.

So it's ridiculous to contend that a conspiracy to murder JFK couldn't have happened. There's no explanation for why the CIA followed Oswald around for years, from the Soviet Union to Mexico City to Miami to Dallas, and yet had no clue that he was about to change the world. There's no explanation for why, fifty years after the fact, there are still thousands of classified documents pertaining to the crime. In other words, if it's so bloody obvious that there's nothing to hide, then why do they persist in hiding it? Why did the US government itself find the likelihood of a conspiracy, if the idea is so stoopid?

The point is that nobody knows for absolute certainty what happened that fateful day. But the attraction of the debate has always been the meta-discussion, the implicit understanding that what is more important than who or how many people were involved in the assassination, is what it did to the mindset of the nation at large.

Slumpbuster

So the smart set is still trying to figure out how to monetize an inert economy. Maybe it's the usual revolving door of Geithners, Rubins, and Summerses back-and-forthing between the Treasury Department sinecures and Wall Street sinecures, trading roles between thief and enabler as easily as most people draw breath or take a dump. Or maybe it's the new boutique proposal of "eliminating poverty" by giving everyone a monthly stipend.

Or -- and this is just a thought, mind you -- people could start keeping their eyes on the ball, and seeing how substantial sectors of the American economy are just rackets designed to fleece masses of sheep. Health care is just the most obvious of these rackets, and the way you know that the Obama administration and its supporters are in on (or at least complaisant to) it is that in all the drama about broken promises and higher premiums, at no point has either side talked about the usurious costs the racket soaks its market with.

Throw in other rackets such as finance, higher education, the way tax and corporate policies have allowed the creation and maintenance of massive individual sums of wealth, at the financial expense of millions of wage slaves, siphoning ever more money from bottom to top, getting rid of the haves and leaving a handful of have-mores in their gated communities and insulated lives, surrounded by seas of ungrateful have-nots. Maybe doing something, anything, about any of those situations might change the conversation.

When people are seriously proposing that we should just get used to a semi-permanent economic slowdown, and that we should go ahead and pay people to do nothing, it sounds like a doctor deciding to treat gunshot wounds with band-aids.

 I mean, it's not that I have a huge problem with bread and circuses per se, it's that it seems like there used to at least be more bread.

A History of Violence

Well, looks like 'murka's favorite vigilante is at it again. No doubt Zimmerman's supporters believe with all sincerity that trouble just keeps finding poor George, no matter how hard he tries to just live his life, that he is now unfairly and irretrievably tainted by the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

The thing is, this sort of stuff was finding Zimmerman long before the world had heard of him or Martin. It is therefore no surprise that he now finds more of it. Zimmerman and his supporters will no doubt insist that all these charges of violence over the years against women -- by today's girlfriend (who what, didn't know who she was hooking up with here?), by his ex-wife earlier this summer, by a former girlfriend back in 2005 -- are bullshit. Who knows, maybe they are all bullshit. But it's funny how most people are able to go through life without ever getting these sorts of accusations lobbed at them, and multiple times at that.

Consider another infamous case -- also in Florida, natch -- where someone got away with something egregious. Since her unbelievable acquittal for, at the very least, hiding the body of her young daughter, if not killing her outright, have you heard anything at all about mother-of-the-year Casey Anthony? Nope, not a peep, not so much as a speeding ticket (which Zimmerman has gotten two of as well, just in the last couple months).

A distinguishing characteristic of assholes and idiots is that nothing is ever their fault -- the shit that piles up on their doorsteps is always someone else's doing. The bitch ex-wife. The asshole cop. The crazy neighbor. Eventually though, all but the most hardcore supporters (and again, I have trouble with the word in this context -- how can anyone support a person or issue in which they have no real personal stake?) see these people for what they really are -- their own worst enemies.

Unaccountable

Ho-hum, just another day in the police state:

A New Mexico man is suing police for allegedly "subjecting him to multiple digital penetrations and three enemas," among other "shockingly invasive medical procedures" -- all on an invalid warrant, all without finding any drugs -- his lawyers claim.

The lawsuit states that David Eckert, 54, spent more than 12 hours in custody last January at a police station and local hospital after being pulled over for a traffic violation. Yet he was never charged, nor did authorities find illicit substances on him.

Eckert was told he could go home after a third officer issued him a traffic citation. But before he did, Eckert voluntarily consented to a search of him and his vehicle, the affidavit states. A K-9 dog subsequently hit on a spot in the Dodge's driver's seat, though no drugs were found.

....

According to a police affidavit accompanying the lawsuit, a detective asked a different officer to pull over Eckert's 1998 brown Dodge pickup truck for not properly stopping at a stop sign.

After Eckert was pulled over, a Deming police officer said that he saw Eckert "was avoiding eye contact with me," his "left hand began to shake," and he stood "erect (with) his legs together," the affidavit stated.

....

Eckert was then put in "investigative detention" and transported around 2 p.m. to the Deming Police Department.

Sometime after that, a judge signed off a search warrant "to include but not limited to his anal cavity."

The next stop was Gila Regional Medical Center, where the lawsuit states "no drugs were found" in "an x-ray and two digital searches of his rectum by two different doctors." One doctor at this time found nothing unusual in his stool.

Three enemas were conducted on Eckert after 10:20 p.m. A chest X-ray followed, succeeded by a colonoscopy around 1:25 a.m.

After all this, "no drugs were found in or on Plaintiff's person," according to the lawsuit.

Apparently the stormtroopers in this shithole have a hard-on for cornholing random passersby with their dumb dog:

A second lawsuit was filed Friday against southern New Mexico authorities accused of illegally subjecting drug suspects to invasive body cavity searches. And the attorney who filed the cases says she has been getting calls from others saying they were detained after the uncertified drug-sniffing dog at the heart of both cases raised suspicions.

....

The lawsuit says Leo is neither adequately trained nor properly certified for narcotics searches. It says there are no state records showing he's properly certified under New Mexico law.

....

In addition to the two cases filed by Kennedy, the American Civil Liberties Union says it is preparing to sue the U.S. Customs and Border Protection on behalf of a woman who was crossing into El Paso in December and subjected to invasive searches after a drug dog alerted agents.

Attorney Laura Schauer Ives says the woman was strip-searched at the crossing, then taken to the hospital for vaginal and anal probes, a forced bowel movement, X-rays and scans. No drugs were found, the ACLU said, and the hospital is charging her thousands of dollars. Schauer Ives said the woman's medical records refer to her being brought in both by Border Patrol and customs agents. The group has had a Freedom of Information Request pending since April to identify the officers and which departments of CBP were involved.

And let's not forget poor Anthony Mitchell of Henderson, Nevada, who had his door kicked by the local gendarmerie for refusing to let them use his home to spy on his neighbor (thus violating the Third Amendment, where the Deming thugs are violating the Fourth Amendment).

You know, it might be something if our current preznit, who reputedly has some knowledge of Constitutional law, might direct his attorney general to do something useful with his time, rather than griefing potheads and guitar manufacturers.

I don't mean to go all Alex Jones on you here, but there are instances where the man has a point, and such instances appear to be increasing in frequency and intensity. As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not really out to get you. A street cop in Santa Rosa perforates an eighth-grader -- firing eight times, hitting him seven -- for swinging a toy gun too quickly. Things of that sort. Urban and even smaller local police forces routinely inherit heavy-duty SWAT and paramilitary gear now, and they seem more prone to use them, rather than ask questions, or fire a warning or wounding shot.

Look, everyone gets that law enforcement is dirty, dangerous work. When the preponderance of people that you meet and deal with in a given day are assholes and/or idiots, or just generally awful people, it's easy to see how one can eventually come to view most people as inherently bad or dangerous. This can make someone cynical at best, prone to escalate as a first option at worst.

And to all that I say, tough shit, Hopalong. No one forces anyone to be a cop. When you've become an unreasonable person, with deadly weapons, overwhelming force, and an institutional lack of accountability, you are no longer a public servant -- you're a liability, you need to fucking go, and now. There's no excuse whatsoever for any of this shit. There are plenty of good, hard-working police officers out there, and I'm sure they must be disgusted that these animals wear the same uniform, and act with ultimate impunity.

The thing is, as we continue our descent into a volatile, bankrupt, violent, paramilitarized banana republic, there isn't a goddamned thing any of us can do about it. Pray to whatever unjust deity you believe in that you don't get pulled over, I guess.

Mad Cow Disease, Political Version

From the "who the hell asked you anyway" file:

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin sent out an apology for her criticism of Pope Francis, who she called “liberal” earlier this week.

“It was not my intention to be critical of Pope Francis,” Palin wrote on her Facebook page.  The former vice-presidential candidate said her comments were meant to remind “viewers that we need to do our own homework, and I hadn’t done mine yet on the Pope’s recent comments as reported by the media.”

She wrote that the media often mischaracterizes the comments of public figures and that she’d rather trust her “many Catholic friends and family” than reporters.

Again, who cares what she thinks about anything? Why is Jake Tapper, in letting her plug yet another unreadable book that she didn't really write, soliciting her opinion on the Pope if she's not Catholic (or hell, even if she was)?

I get the meta-implications of asking aloud why people keep asking about Palin, but really, why? To cater to the dwindling claque of teabag screamers? Because one of the multinational conglomerates that owns one of the broadcast networks also owns the company publishing Palin's tedious jabber, and they all have a handshake agreement to logroll each others' "books"?

Palin's comments, referencing herself and "viewers," regarding their need to do their own homework, are just too precious. Palin has yet to be true or correct about much of anything that she's ever said on any subject at all; worse yet, she and her followers have made a point of being completely unconcerned about that the entire time. Facts are and have always been orthogonal to their shamelessly emotional, rage-driven plaints. The idea that any of them are suddenly encumbered to actually know what the fuck they're talking about is just precious.

Back Spin

Newsmilf Lara Logan has had her journalistic moments in the past, for a corporate media implement. But she and her show screwed up royally in backing that crackpot's Benghazi yarn, which has had notable implications, The thing is, the political weasels who use tendentious reporting to bolster their biased claims don't care when said claims are proved empirically false. Their credibility is orthogonal to their veracity.

60 Minutes and Lara Logan, on the other hand, have nothing but their word on something. So when they broadcast as gospel the politically-charged jabber of a guy who admitted to falsifying his AAR (which I'm assuming is worthy of discharge or even court-martial for armed-forces personnel, and a firing offense for even half-assed PMC outfits -- if not, it should be), they're stupidly sticking their necks out for an unsubstantiated hunch.

Don't get me wrong -- I'd probably watch Logan read aloud from a phone book [slaps forehead; like typewriters and fax machines, phone books only exist on a technologically marginalized periphery anymore], while dry-humping the teevee. But my desire to make ferocious, sweaty monkey-sex with Lara Logan is an entirely separate matter from her role in propagating disinformation, intentionally or not. Hell, Dan Rather's career went knuckled straight into the crapper after the kerners went go on him questioning Fredo's stout defense of the Rio Grande back in the day.

It doesn't help matters that apparently this Davies character had a book deal going, since scuttled, with the same "publisher" that handles inbred hacks like Glenn Beck and Jerry Corsi. Gee, ulterior motive much, Chief? Thought so. Logan got played by this schmuck, badly. At least she's finally getting out in front of it and taking the hit.

The whole episode puts the bigger picture in the region in sharp relief, and may even provide some rationale for Logan's seeming willingness to be gulled by this guy, given her abuse by an Egyptian mob in the early days of the now-dormant "Arab Spring." It makes sense that these eructations of exceptional violence, spread to Libya, Syria, et al, would have additional import to Logan. She saw firsthand the simmering brutality of a mindless mob, and that same raw, chaotic power resonated in the events in Benghazi that fateful night.

Where have those heady days gone, that brash optimism of 2011, when these savages were supposed to finally get with the program and go with Democracy® and Freedom™ Incorporated? Gone in successive waves of longstanding internecine conflicts, accelerated by the (ahem) democratizing, in terms of more evenly distributing power and influence on micro-scales, technologies at hand. If not democratizing necessarily, then at least decentralizing, lessening the concentration of those things in the hands of very few. At this stage of the game, only force is concentrated. That is all that maintains the mechanical, operational aspects of the Westphalian nation-state construct.

What we've been observing this past decade, in the Maghreb, the Persian Gulf, in the Horn of Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, is not, in my humble opinion, past chaos allowed back out of their bottles, but the wave of the future in unstable areas. This is the coming anarchy Robert Kaplan presciently wrote about in the late '90s, before 9/11 Changed Everything, these are the global guerrillas John Robb has been warning about for years, disrupting and resecting massive, seething populations in Egypt, Nigeria, Congo, etc.

Advanced technologies have enabled disenfranchised peasants in third-world shitholes to seek something else, to disengage from their corrupt systems, from Qaddafi personality cults and American-propped kleptocracies alike. They all want something, whether money or raw power or a medievalist theocracy that treats women and children like farm animals. One thing they all have in common is that they want us the hell out of there.

Of course, we can't accommodate them on that; Africa is the last great outpost for a variety of rare-earth metals, vast oil deposits, and who knows what else. And the Chinese are beating us to it so far. And they're every bit as committed to hegemony as we are; indeed, the maintenance of political and economic empire, the ability to muster military force, is the central systemic feature at this point.

The real problem with Benghazi is not the tragic events of the embassy massacre, or the administration's inept response to it. There were plenty of embassy attacks and deaths around the world on Fredo's watch, and no one said shit. No, the problem with Benghazi is that no one seems to have a plan moving forward, no clear ideas for how a large, populous, strategically important but volatile nation -- which sits right next to another large, populous, strategically important but volatile nation -- can retain control of and capitalize on its natural assets for the good of its restive citizens.

When corporate media entities allow themselves to be utilized as patsies for an extremist faction of Congress to make mountains out of molehills, they play right into the hands of the people they should be most fearful and contemptuous of. But hey, whatever pays the bills.

Great White North

It's somehow a bit heartening to see that, while many 'murkins count on their cousins in America's Hat to be sensible and intelligent in their political choices, the fact of the matter is that they can screw the pooch just as thoroughly as your average southern state.

So their Chris Farley impersonator of a mayor is a drug-addled boozehound, literally caught on video smoking crack? Hey, didn't hurt Marion Barry much, did it? So all three of his older siblings have had some sort of ties to drug trafficking over the years? Um, well, he's a fiscal conservative, and, uh, weren't the Kennedys bootleggers? And on and on.

Obviously, politics is full of scumbags and soulless hypocrites. But the IOKIYAR seems to be in fuller effect than before; when the Democrats have a John Edwards or Anthony Weiner, no matter how principled the individual is, he's done. But Republicans and conservatives just don't give a shit about appearances -- they talk a great game about "values" and the scourge of hard drugs, but when there's a Dave Vitter (and that wife of his) or a Rob Ford, it's exposed as a stone crock of horseshit, without fail.

This is why I have zero respect for self-righteous "values voters":  they never -- and I mean fucking never -- walk the talk. They don't even deserve to be engaged in honest argument at this point, they should simply be ignored like door-knocking proselytizers on your front porch, something to be scraped off the bottom of one's shoe.

Plus Ça Change

Just what you needed -- yet another paean to small-town foke givin' Teh Man the ol' whut-fer. Christ on a stale cracker, like anyone should fucking care that some backwater latrine whose population dropped from 668 in 2010 to 654 in 2012 (presumably from some combination of old age and common sense) seriously thinks that pointlessly erecting a Ten Commandments "monument" (pictured below) is some sort of heroic act of defiance to a brutal dictator.



I wrote extensively about this particular phenomenon several years ago, in the context of a book review, and near as I can tell, only the specific locations have changed, the predictable useless yahooisms have remained intact. Yes, Obama has only visited the state twice, once to speak at a memorial for a mining disaster (but fuck the MSHA and EPA, amirite peoples?), and later that same year (2010) for Senator Pork Robert Byrd's funeral. So there is, as they say, some resentment building in West Virginia, as they perceive a lack of sufficient response to their plaints.

It doesn't seem like anyone wants to break the cold, hard truth to the ruggedly independent Mountaineer State, so let me take a humble stab at it -- you people need to pull your heads out of your fucking asses, m'kay? There's no way to put a cherry on this turd cupcake, folks. When you have a state full of goddamned moochers, who sponge from the system far more than they contribute, who produce a single commodity whose vocational utility is rapidly diminishing (for a variety of reasons -- diversification of energy sources; mechanization of coal extraction; diminishment of "easy" extraction sites), who have disproportionately large populations of medical and welfare benefit recipients, there's not much point in doing meet-and-greets in Cooter's Gulch.

Not to mention the fact that barely one-half of one percent of Americans live in West Virginia, and it becomes quite easy to see why no one wants to bother with it. Great, you produce coal. Awesome. But since many of us can simply run down to Harbor Freight and get of the grid for under a couple grand, and there are other exploitable energy sources as well, it is incumbent upon the self-styled individualists to explain -- in greater detail than some weird fuck-you Ten Commandments monument, mind you -- why precisely the other 99.5% of the world's largest economy is supposed to give more than three-quarters of a fuck about your failure to prepare, anticipate, or adapt to the tectonic change that the entire planet saw coming two decades ago.

It's not my intent to indulge in gratuitous hillbilly-bashing, I swear. I do have compassion for people who have spent their entire working lives performing difficult, extremely dangerous labor, and are either spent from decades underground breathing toxic dust, or have enough to get by but have watched their towns and communities collapse around them. West Virginia has probably had more news stories about its pervasive drug problems than anything else, which is a shame, since anyone who has read up on the state and its abundant natural resources knows that it's a lovely place full of beauty and wonder, comparable to just about any other place in the country. (Yes, even my beloved California.)

But caves and geographic quirks are not enough, unfortunately, to turn a generational economic tide. The state's geographic and cultural insularity, as with many southern (and WV does pride itself on being the "most southern of the northern states, and the most northern of the southern states," among other directional superlatives), has finally caught up with it in that regard.

One branch of my family is a boisterous, insanely fun group of Irish Catholic Texans, so I know firsthand a little somethin'-somethin' about the suhthuhn culcha I routinely deride. Anyhoo, one defining redneck characteristic is the display of the confederate flag in some form, whether an actual flag or merely a bumper sticker. The redneck proudly informs dismayed passersby that his is a symbol of "pride" and "independence," as if it were up to one random simpleton to repurpose a highly objectionable emblem of rape, terror, murder, systematic subjugation. In our family, this fucking thing was regarded as nothing short of an American swastika.

But the reality of such a symbol, when one comes across it --and I did, this very afternoon, here in sunny NorCal -- is that its bearer is someone whom, as my East Texan great-grandmother would have put it, "cain't tell 'em nuthin'." No, indeed -- and that, ladies, fish, and gentlemen, is what you are seeing with your southern states, most of them (Texas and Florida notwithstanding, but even then only by economy of scale) unproductive moochers, culturally regressive, uncomfortable with the fairly major societal changes taking place, and not knowing what to do about any of it.

I wish I knew what to tell them, I wish there were easy answers for them. It would be nice to just be able to tell them to suck it up, take a few Khan Academy classes to get their shit together, and grow superhot peppers. [Ed. Someone has to give those hot-pepper guys a reality show. If people can watch other people open a goddamned storage shed, they can watch heat-seeking trenchermen grow two million Scoville unit peppers.]  But just as one cannot serve two masters, one also cannot be utterly dependent on gubmint largesse, and simultaneously expend precious scarce energy and resources railing against said gubmint. That's not politics, it's math.

Deadeye Dick

Just for a hot second, let's set aside the serious impracticality of grotesquely disparate levels of governance; that is, the notion that an almost literally uninhabited state has equal representation in the nation's highest governing body as a state with forty times as many people (and at least four cities with larger populations -- hell, LA's metro area has close to 20 million people, versus the less than 600K in the entire state of Wyoming). The Constitution might be in need of an overhaul, or at least a review, if enough high-profilers with IQs above 80 can be located and dragooned into such a noble project. But that's a subject for another post, perhaps by a different observer.

Consider instead the reasons and ramifications for Shooter Cheney's carpetbagging (perhaps teabagging as well, jury's out so far) daughter trying to muscle Mike Enzi out of his Senate seat. Whatever your political bent, 2014 is shaping up to be fun times already, n'est-ce pas? As Shooter hails from reliably traditional neocon stock, it's difficult at first blush to presume that Liz Cheney would fall too far from that particular tree.

And yet, if one attempts to read the, erm, tea leaves (see what I did there?), the signs are unmistakable. The Cheneys are, and have always been, political opportunists, first and foremost. (That's not a disparagement, by the way; anyone wanting to be successful in such a high-stakes money game had best be an opportunist above all else. There is simply too much money, power, and influence abounding to be left to the merely principled.)

So the fact that Rand Paul has so far endorsed Enzi means little, perhaps nothing at all. Paul is almost certainly positioning himself for a presidential run in 2016 or 2020, and so he is in the early alliance-building phase. Enzi will probably win, and if so, as the senator from the least-inhabited state, he'll no doubt appreciate Paul's early backing. If Liz Cheney should win, Paul will simply reach out (in the spirit of collegiality and party comity, of course) and patch things up accordingly. No sweat either way.

The more interesting possibility here -- as well as in Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi, where amazingly, those states' senators are all being primaried by insurgent teabilly candidates -- is that either the vote gets split and redounds to the Democratic candidates in some or all of those states. The chances of that happening in all five of the above mentioned states is not a betting man's parlay, but it's not too much to hope that perhaps three or even four of those states could roll D and expose the soft white underbelly of teabilly moocher flesh.

We'll find out in one year. Much money will be spent, and regardless of the outcome, very little will be accomplished as a result.

Gratuitous Pet Break

Pets are the best. That is all.

American Grandstand

It's never been news that there is a practically infinite supply of people who are not only willing to cut their own throats, but to vote for other, far wealthier people to do it to them. So it's no surprise that, while a polled majority seems to understand that the shutdown sideshow was entirely engineered by the short-bus teabilly contingent in the Outhouse of Representatives, a substantial (and of course disproportionately vocal) minority blames Obama 100% for this mess.

Certainly Obama deserves some blame -- for persisting in the delusion that these maroons could be dealt with as if they were normal human beings, and not delusional would-be revolutionaries. There is no negotiating with fanatics, and that is all these people are. They are not seeking any sort of "grand bargain," they are seeking only capitulation. There is no compromising with them.

Obama has failed to understand this, over and over again. If he is not urging the DCCC and DNC and anyone else who will listen to pour as much filthy money into unseating these psychopaths, then he is just continuing to fail, simple as that.

At the very least, this should be one of those episodes that highlights the remaining actual differences between the parties, that while -- since they both represent the "donor" class -- both are red in tooth and claw, the Democrats at least usually make a token effort to clean up some of the blood, pick out some of the chewed meat, before uttering whatever feckless burble they think the proles need to hear this week, before muttering "whatever" and turning on the teevee to watch nincompoops sort their sock drawers.

So when you have apologists for bullshit and psychobabble gleefully willing to wreck the world economy just to stand on their imaginary principles, you then have to focus on the fools who keep supporting them -- even though statistically, it's those very same fools who will bear the brunt of the proposals and policies of their fearless leaders.

The only reason we don't let them get exactly what they think they want, and good and hard, is that they'll drag most of the rest of us down with them. At this rate, they might anyway.

Assassination Nation

As entertaining as it is, Public Shaming can only post so many twitards on any given issue, an infinitesimally small sample size in a nation of 320 million. But when I see unrepentant fucktardery such as this, it's hard not to at least briefly wish for a hot second that this was the dictatorship these idiots so feverishly believe that it is. Because in such circumstances, the internal security forces would already have knocked down their doors, dragged them to some secret location, pulled out their fingernails and raped their closest relatives in front of them, and then put a fucking bullet in their miserable heads. I'm only half-joking here, maybe not even that much.

In complete seriousness, one assumes that at the very least, the Secret Service has contacted these brain-dead shitbirds and explained to them that they have committed a crime, and could (and should) be prosecuted for it. Venting is one thing; these motherless fucks are openly begging for some random lunatic to step up and murder the President. So they need to be put on notice, no questions asked.

In the meantime, it continues to be a thoroughly nauseating prospect to know there are people like this, people who drive, work, vote, have children and/or parents, etc. They're a fucking embarrassment to humanity, and a complete waste of oxygen, and further proof that karma doesn't exist.

Breaking Bad: Meta-Criticism, Binge-Watching, and O.G. Fans

[*here there be spoilers*]

As Breaking Bad, almost indisputably one of the best teevee shows ever, winds up as strongly as any series could hope for, it behooves us to do what everyone else is currently doing, and provide some deeper insight to the ongoing proceedings.

Having watched the show first-run from the very start, but not having Netflixed in between seasons, it's actually somewhat difficult to draw from memory specific threads from early episodes to these amazingly intense homestretch episodes. But catching a few episodes from the first two seasons in last week's marathon brought back many fine details and nuances -- the unrelenting madness of Tuco and the consequences of dealing with it; the gamesmanship between Walt and Fring; the professional (professorial?) distance Jesse always kept between Walt and himself; the way Hank seamlessly morphed from blustery jock-cop to determined bloodhound. You could go on and on and on.

But really, both eight-episode "halves" of the final season were constructed and paced nearly to perfection, culminating in the now-infamous third-to-last episode, whose title said it all, the same way its Sopranos episodic counterpart used a related poetic reference as an anticipatory framing device.

Feel free to correct my dumb ass, but I think the trend to instant meta-criticism came to fruition with The Sopranos. By the time that series neared its close, technology had enabled anyone with a connection to inform the rabble of their deeper insights of each episode. This persisted not only to the more obvious, narrative-driven salient points of the scene or episode, but to the apparent visual cues and MacGuffins contained therein.

With high-stakes series such as The Sopranos, The Wire, or (in this case) Breaking Bad, this makes sense, and it has only accelerated with the vaunted advent of social media. But it has also cemented the observer effect on such shows, as they navigate through their respective narratives, and ultimately determine the "right" way to eventually come to a satisfying conclusion.

The ability and popularity of binge-watching (and I've done that as well, especially with Showtime series such as Dexter, Homeland, and The Borgias) has a similar effect, I think, in that you no longer spend a week or even a day digesting the layers of the episode you just viewed; you move on to the next one, right away or tomorrow. You don't have to wait anymore. This too will affect the production and writing of future series, guaranteed. Another trend with these critically acclaimed series is the decisions by their creators to end strong, after five or seven seasons, resisting the urge to milk a premise to death, to a limp-dick end watched only by die-hards who sat it out for a sense of completion.

A big part of the magic of BB, the show and its finale, was that so many threads were pulled, and while so many were left to be resolved, the major threads were resolved, and in a way that didn't leave people on a ledge the way the Sopranos finale did. As with Sopranos or The Wire, there have always been clues in the episode titles, and Felina did not disappoint on that account. From the Marty Robbins reference to the blood (Fe), meth (Li), and tears (Na) chemical breakdown to the playing out of all the elements, the episode rang true to Walt's statement in the pilot about chemistry being the science of transformation. I defy you to find any dramatic work -- including Shakespeare -- where every single character transformed so tremendously, so catastrophically.

I'll probably Netflix the entire series over the winter, and I have no doubt that I'll catch any number of catalyzing scenes and events that more fully inform the final half-season. In the meantime, what transpired was nothing short of rare, true greatness, the kind of "dramatic Halley's comet" folks were lucky to catch once or twice in a lifetime.

Like the aforementioned shows as well as Game of Thrones and past treasures such as The Shield, these shows are obviously rare confluences of spectacular writing and strong ensembles, catalyzed by one or two "force of nature" type performers who are enabled by the overall strength of the cast. In an endless ocean of dross, these are things that give you a sliver of hope, and maybe even a reason to watch.