TBGO: Premium; Bad Meme; Pablum From Perfesser Reich

Weapons of Missing Destruction?

Premiums!: Every "sustaining" membership in the "Lie-bury" is rewarded by a signed ("X") and hand-crayoned edition of "My Little Goat."

Bad Meme A'Risin':

Caveat Lector: (Posting this "meme" for illustrative purposes only, because it demonstrates the slipperiness of the form.)
I was with 'em right up to the last minute, the last item, where it all falls apart on the assertion that "Ron Paul" represents the acme, the apogee of the propriety of such sentiments.
Fuck Ron Paul--and Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan, and Ayn Rand--and the whole lot of authoritarian Liberturds.
Ron Paul and that ilk are "selective" Constitutionalist, at best. Like Xian Fundies finding sin in their Bible, these faux-Libertarians pick and choose the parts of the Constitution they revere and support.
If one believes that corpoRats can and will effectively self-regulate to preserve the public interest, health, and welfare without governmental oversight; or if one believes the "several States" will reliably protect the rights of the least powerful and most despised of their citizens, then it would be natural to support Ron Paul or his ilk.
Neither of which can be demonstrated with evidence on THIS planet.
Hence, I believe that professing such sentiments should automatically disqualify anyone from either parenthood or operating dangerous mechanical devices such as automobiles, power tools, or firearms.

The Reich Stuff: More think-positive pablum from the perfesser:

Pro-Puppy!: Almost any day, former Clinton Labor Secretary, Lil Bobbie Reich can be relied upon to produce an hortatory tome imploring the "people" to "resist" the corp[oRat evils which befall them like bums in a rain-gutter. His recommendations are ALWAYS sensible--getting big money out of politics, etc.--and include fearless excursions into the painfully obvious. 
But they always leave a taste of gall.
Please, exalted and honorable Sir?
Can you tell us HOW this is supposed to happen? HOW are "we" gonna get the Big Money away from our politics?
In simple terms, so even someone like me can understand, please?
You KNOW "we" cannot do it legislatively, because the legislatures and legislators--all of them--are bought-and-paid-for, wholly-owned properties of the people who profit ENORMOUSLY from the current arrangements and will move heaven and earth to prevent any reforms--and have the money, influence, and power to do it.
So, if you have even the teeniest, slightes idea, would you please share it with the proles?
 Equal rights for gays, etc, doesn't actually CHANGE anything.
It's "safe" reform, since it doesn't alter any power arrangements, or upset any economic balances. Marriage, one way or the other, isn't gonna influence carbon use or production, the wars, the job picture, or anything else of real significance...
Voting is lovely, but it's mostly a pro-forma exercise preserved by the bosses and oligarchs to lend the patina of legitimacy to their anti-democratic coup d'etat.

TBGO: Compulsion;

Woody sez: No "revolution" ever succeeded which demanded that their opponents step aside, without the wherewithal to compel them if they refused.
Jist sayin...

Statistics: Todd Snider's Statistician's Blues...

TBGO: Free Willing; Spying; Torture; Booming Business

They tell you: "You HAD 'Choices.' You just made the WRONG ones," the plutocrats proclaim!
Such bullshit! But we "buy" it. We accept their clap-trap and codswallop. We AGREE, forgetting all the while that:
"Free will" is an ancient, cleverly designed plutocratic trap intended to make the poor take all responsibility for their benighted state, for being poor, for not being able to overcome the barriers the plutocrats themselves create and set out to stymie and thwart their social mobility. 

They're BAAAACK: Things like this CISPA clusterfuck NEVER completely go away. They may be rejected for a while, but there are always new reasons to revivify them, bring them back, and pass them when nobody's looking.
They're just too useful for surveillance, and that's the national Security buzzword foa ALL TIMES.
The CorpoRats will NEVER stop trying to eliminate ALL your privacy. It's dangerous to 'em, cuz you might be speaking truth about 'em, and that they cannot tolerate.

Learned Helplessness


"We" shouldn't blame ourselves too much.
Look up "learned helplessness."
Learned helplessness has been the operational template of the US national political system for close to 50 years. The 'people" have been subjects of the largest, most thorough, most extensive, most expansive, most inclusive, most expensive, most relentless, most scrupulously camouflaged mass psychology experiment since the invention of the art. "Learned helplessness" is to behaviorism what predatory shock is to capitalism.

"Learned helplessness occurs when an animal is repeatedly subjected to an aversive stimulus that it cannot escape. Eventually, the animal will stop trying to avoid the stimulus and behave as if it is utterly helpless to change the situation. Even when opportunities to escape are presented, this learned helplessness will prevent any action."
http://psychology.about.com/od/lindex/f/earned-helplessness.htm

Sound familiar?
We experience it all the time, i n every facet of our lives.
It's non-violently induced PTSD...
The whole fucking culture has been shaped to inflict endless, arbitrary kicks to the njutz.
You're gonna get kicked in the nutz, no matter what you do. Even if you do NOTHING, yer gonna get kicked in the nutz.

Woody figgerz: Probably the only significant difference between a fertilizer plant and a bomb factory is the amount of shrapnel around...

Anhydrous ammonia.
The stuff McVeigh and the fanatics in Elohim City used to bring down the federal building in OKC.
Little town, West, Texas, pretty much isn't, anymore. Casualties inside and outside the plant. Just about nothing good goes on underneath and inside such a cloud.

TBGO: Bombed in Boston

Words of Encouragement: 

Okay...That's cool...The victims of the Boston Bombing should be in our thoughts!

But what about those town in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere where folks were murdered and/mutilated by USer Hellfire missiles fired by drones operated by homicidal nerds and geeks in USer AF and Army uniforms an ocean and a half away? There were 30 more, in a wedding party, just Sunday...

Gonna put up a poster for them. too? Hang on Khandahar!
Jus' axin'...

The whole affair sounds like amateur, right-wing, wannabe terrorists to me; though if it is, it will be REPORTED as the work of a lone lunatic ACTING ALONE with NO connections to ANY other white people.

But consider: April 15, Tax day; it's state holiday ("Patriot Day," honoring the first Rebels, at Lexington & Concord, an iconic kinda "don't tread on me" sorta day ), so the GUMMINT offices will be closed and (black) people will be in the street, as easy targets.

And don't forget what the "TEA" in Tea-bagger means: "Taxed Enough Already." 

Now add echoes of gun-goonery to the frothy mix, as the 26 victims of the Newtown massacre were honored and their survivors seated at the finish of the 26-mile race, where at least one of the bombs exploded.

And on top that, there's the month of APRIL! Not only the Amreican Revolution begun, but also Columbine and VA Tech mass slayings, the bombing in Oklahoma City,  the shootr-out at Waco. Wait: There's more. The American Revolution began this week, so did the American Civil War, and the Bosnian War. Still think this is coincidence? Add the Rwandan Genocide and the Armenian Genocide to the list. Also, Abraham Lincoln was shot this week.Think about it...


(Thinking Disclaimer: Woody reckonz, you prolly don't wanna get me thinking, but once it happens, I am not responsible for what ensues:)

Well, I started wondering, in the shadow of the (actually a really small amount of) blood and death and and destruction in Boston, yesterday, about the folks arguing for "revolution" to overthrow the GUMMINT!

As terror strikes and revolutionary gestures go, the Boston Bombing was small potatoes: Only two, small, apparently quite amateurish, bombs randomly and (for terror purposes) ineffectively detonated in only one city?

Multiply it; exponentialize it; think Syria or Libya. Hell, there were more than 10 car-bomb explosions around Iraq yesterday, and 55 dead, with hundreds more injured.

Are you willing to go THERE? You wanna go that far?

Cuz THAT's probably what it would take to dislodge the Plutocrats; and then you'd only be replacing them.

Are ya up for that? Really?

Cuz even if the rebels may be "peaceful," those whom the revolution will displace almost NEVER are.

Me: I'd really rather NOT have to awaken to charred bodies in the streets, smoldering wrecks of burned-out cars, razed buildings, and the stench of death in the air.

It was suggested that my attitude betrayed a subtle indifference to suffering. But I disagree. 

My ONLY reservation about the public replies to the events is that the INEVITABLE, vengeful, breast-beating and remorse will morph into more jingoistic exceptionalism conducted by, and be accompanied by absolutely NO--zero, nada, zilch--public discussion over the fact that which was so tragic in Boston is no less so in fly-specked, adobe village in Central Asia. 

I don't dismiss the tragedy/ies in Boston, but only seek to contextualize them. Prez LowBar C. Shamwow, when he addresses these needless deaths, will NOT also mention the (at minimum) several thousand Central Asians who have suffered the ignominy of collateral damage. I don't think bereavement entitles anybody to such a free pass.
 
Your mileage may vary...

The Bleat: Down, Why?,

Fallen, and Can't Get Back Up

Woody waz there:
Early in the Raygooner's regime, Treas Sec. Don Regan colluded with the NAM. the USCoC, and the rest of the binness lobby to decouple wages from increased productivity, redierect the 'extra' into stock prioces and execs' salaries, and fuck the little people.
As the graph shows, it worked extraordinarily well.
The ONLY  teenie, little problem with the approach was that it would decrease personal, discretionary spending and possibly threaten the "consumer economy."
To address this minor flaw, they radically reduced the restrictions on lending/credit, which in time inevitably led to the spate of bubble bursts, and bankruptcies, and finally the Great Recession of '07-present.
NOBODY EVER anticipated that; but NOBODY ever expects the Spanish Inquisition...

Why, Baby, Why?

Really wanna know?
Probably because most Americans do NOT KNOW that it doesn't contribute to the deficit/debt. That minor factoid is not a common utterance in the public discourse of "Entitlement Reform."
Hell, most Americans still, actually think the debt/deficit IS a "real" crisis (Hint: It's NOT!)
Nobody, as HL Mencken sagely noted, 80 or 90 years ago, ever LOST money by underestimating the taste of the average American...
To be fair, average Ummrrkins have been submerged in an unending, ceaseless, perpetual, all-encompassing, cradle-to-grave, swamp of pro-corpoRat propaganda, mis- and mal-information, and out-right falsehood for so long they've lost any referent to truth.


The Beeb: A Memoir

TBGO: Blame; Searchin'; Precipitate

Blame Gamer

Puppetry: Ummurkuh's favorite house Negro demonstrates why the White folks admire him so much:
Blaming the victims sounds SO much better when it's one of the presumptive "victims" doing the blaming.


Searching

For his principles? Nah...

Part of the Problem?

Well, DUH!
Woody wonders where the fuck ya been, Skippy?
Oh, yeah: in gummint, or on its fringes, helping to engineer it. I fergot...
Some folks--my cohort, mainly; "them dirty fucking hippies"--have been warning of this for 40+, almost 50 years.
It's a "de facto" conspiracy, an inevitable alignment of interests among people with simolar resources and similar concerns to employ them to FIRST promote their hegemonic, plutocratic agenda, and second, to undermine the "public's faith" in self-government and alienate them from "popular sovereignty."
And yhu played right the fuck along, Billy, with your cautious, gentle, feeble criticisms and weak-wristed rebukes.
Thanks for playing...

TBGO: Air-time; Ding-Dong, A Point Taken

This Got A Lotta Play Today:

Woody reckonz: Even IF Prez. LowBar's trying to play 9-dimension checkers with the GOPhux, offering something in the hopes they refuse, the fact that he offered it (howsoever cynically) suggest to me the willingness to do it, anyway.


Ding Dong!

The Dickens: When true villains expire, the victims are entitled to vent their rage, fury, and frustration. I don't bvelieve in ANY of this "Do not speak ill oif the dead," if the dead were public figures who fucked with other people's lives.
Thatcher wasn't merely "on the wrong side of a lot of nastiness."
She was the fucking SOURCE of most of it; the author of more misery in Britain (and elsewhere) than anyone since the bad old days of Dickensian fiction; but the bitch wasn't satisfied with fiction, she made that shit REAL!

A Small Point:

The flaw in the ointment here should be obvious: Prez LowBar will never face the electorate again. Two and done. That's how we do it these days. So there is no effective sanction on his behavior, no matter how destructive it turns out to be. All that matters now is "The LEGACY!"

TBGO: Jason Is Dead!

Placement is EVERYTHING

These two images/stories were juxtaposed on the Facebook Newsfeed this afternoon.

TBGO: Leakages;

A Difference That Makes A Difference:

CRUCIAL!: This seems to me to be a crucial distinction which is all too often completely lost on our "religious" fellow country-persons.
You are perfectly welcome and FREE!!!! to worship exactly as YOU please, in your own home or church. But WE, your fellow country-folk, are under absolutely NO obligation--moral, social, or ethical--either to agree with you, or to enshrine you idiosyncratic superstitions into our laws.
Got that?

Save the USPS!

Raygunomics: The all-out, decades-long, yet subtle, and silently and slowly debilitating attack on the workers at the USPS was Don Regan's doing, begun during the Reagan "counter-reformation."

TBGO: Squares; Breezes; Possibility; Austerity;

The Meaning of Is:
SQUARES: How Many Squares are there?

96% Failed this test. Can you answer it? How many squares are there???

It depends.
Nine inside the one larger, surrounding figure. If "Square = a two-dimensional shape of four, equilateral, connected sides." If not, then the sky's the limit...
Oh, well, then, if we're supposed to take the question literally, in fact there are none in the match-stick image, because none of the match-stick corners are joined.
But if we're supposed to count "square-suggestive" absences, there are six more, composed where four matchsticks don't touch.
Or, only one, if you count the square which contains the whole image, which is the only one all of whose sides are connected, in the original puzzle on Fbook.But you COULD go "super-literal," and only count the word "squares," in which case there'd be three.
Depends on what the meaning of is is, as Prez. Clenis so adroitly testified during his impeachment hearings.

Breezy:

Mainly, but usually only from March through May.

It's Possible!

But un-fucking likely.
Woody strongly agrees: Yes. You certainly COULD do. From a technological POV, yep. Indubitably!
If the infrastructure were there to support it...Or if it were being built even as we speak. Or if there were investments in place to propel the changes. 
Ah, if only...But it's not, and there's not, and there's not.. 
And the folks who own the EXISTING shit are NOT just gonna walk away from it, and leave all those dollars and tax breaks on the table. 
Talk to me about getting around THAT hurdle. THAT's the killer "app."


A Pay Cut?

Bawk-b-b-b-GAWK!
Prez. LowBar announce he'd be returning FIVE percent of his salary.
I'll be accused (though not for the first time) of being ungenerous, if I noted, for example, thatr it's not like he actually NEEDS the money.
His net worth is greater than $10 MILLION. So he's not exactly imposing a hardship on Michelle and the girls. They ALL got nice, new Easter outfits, I'm sure. His salary is $400K/yr; he also gets a $50k/yr "expense account," $100k/yr (non-taxable) travel allowance, and $19k/yr for "entertainment." He's returning FIVE percent of the first $400k? That's $20 Thousand.
Bawk-b'gawk: Chickenfeed!
He COULD refuse his WHOLE presidential salary, and not feel particularly pinched, given 10 MILLIONS in the bank.
Some might object, as one correspondent did, that "For the job he does, 400,000 isn't that much. And he is worth 10 million because of his book sales. Back in 2004 they didn't make all that much. The head CEO of Walmart makes 16,000 an hour and they pay their workers below poverty wages. But people are still shopping at Walmart. This is our President. While I don't agree with all of his policies, he has a hell of a job and I don't see his salary as being that much. Plus he has had more death threats than any President in our history."
I say: So? So fucking WHAT?
He WANTED the fucking job. If he DIDN'T know how hard it was gonna be, how did he convince ANYBODY he was smart enough for it?
He's wealthy enough to make a larger, grander gesture. This one causes him no discomfort, unlike the changes he's gonna shove up OUR asses.
It's kabuki: The Tale of the CHICKENSHIT CHICKENFEED!

TBGO: "Ah Yip-yip-yip-yip, booom-boom-boom-bom-NAH!"

Getta JOB (Na-na-na-na):

Woody sez: Yup. The 'jobs' will come back, but not until American wages/expectations have been driven DOWN far enough, and conditions for workers overseas have RISEN enough, that it is 'economically feasible' to bring them back.
Keeping the minimum wage LOW will be an important factor, as will the continued destruction of organized labor.
But they're definitely WORKING on it.

Round Trippers:

Before she was appointed to head the SEC, Mary Jo White was a Wall Street defense attorney who worked for JP Morgan: http://bit.ly/16eABmy

Betcha: The odds are 99.99999 percent, against, that this amiable and chipper-looking, financial "fireball femme, will ever SERIOUSLY regulate the industry back to which she will be returning in a couple of years--if she doesn't check out, first. The only way she will NOT return to the 'industry' would be death or major disability.
Revolving door, see?
Hot-shot corpoRat litigator takes a semi-sabbatical in Gummint to brush up on the regs and reacquaint with the ways to get around them, thence BACK to the Industry; in effect, industrial espionage agents.
I've said before: People who are in leadership/directorial positions in Gummint bureaucracy should be prohibited, by law, on penalty of imprisonment (and literal pillorying), from advising the industry they formerly regulated, for at LEAST 10 years.
Use the carrot, too: A big severance bonus when they leave an agency or a department. Offer to 'retrain' 'em, give 'em new skills. That's what THEY do to us peons.,
But all largess extended SOLELY on the proviso that, should the recipient violate the terms of separation, the entire amount would be recoverable, from the estate if need be.
I know it is impracticable. But it is the only cure for and/or prophylactic against the otherwise inevitable (already fait accomplis, probably, anyway...) wholesale capture of the regulatory bureaucracy by Industry. 


 WIDE Spectrum Disorder:
One thing important is to distinguish between 'prevention' and 'cure.'
I am sympathetic with the plights of people diagnosed as autistic. I'm 99% sure it would have been said about me in my youth.
Autism is a fantastically wide-spectrum diagnosis. Therefore, there is no more a "cure" for autism than there is a 'cure for cancer, another 'wide spectrum' disorder (e.g.: the "cancer' which attacks a woman's breasts is NOT the same bug as that which attacks a man's prostate; kidney and lung cancer are not the same thing, etc.).
So, logically, there is no single factor which could be isolated and "cured." Especially since BOTH have environmental components, including nearly 100 THOUSAND "artificial" chemical compounds released into out lives since around 1940.
Someone accused me of "giving up."  Which is a common dodge when one approaches an emotional topic logically.
I'm saying the "search for a cure" is basically a fund-raising maneuver.
Treat specific instances as well as possible.
But don't use the "promise" of a cure to gin up money bureaucratic bullshit!
These foundations, like all foundations, only pursue 'real medicine' unitl they generate an executrive director.
Then they cease being causes and begin to be 'programs," the sole purpose of which is survival  of the executive director's job.
Treat specific instances as well as possible. Search for the chemical or biological or genetic triggers, and perhaps reduce or eliminate some of them.
But don't use the "promise" of a cure to gin up money which will mostly go to bureaucratic bullshit!
There's a name for the "search for a cure" fund-raising scam. It's called,the March of Dimes syndrome. 
 Remember how the March of Dimes was founded to "cure" polio? Then Drs. Salk and Sabin developed their vaccines and poliomyelitis, or infantile paralysis, was for all practical purposes extinct on planet Earth. The March of Dimes had done its job and should have been shut down.
But, No-oh! 
It is too easy and too lucrative a gig just to walk away from, so the con-artists running the "charity" re-tooled, refocused and rebranded the March of Dimes on a "disease" that will never be "cured," OR p[revented: Birth Defects! 
And the Dimes March On!
P.S.:  In my day, "autism" was unknown, but thje symptoms were also regarded as contributrory to "delinquency," which was "cured" (or "treated") by threats of reform school.

Lazy-bones:

Woody regards "Busy" is one of those 'protestant' virtues associated with the 'puritan ethic.' Without a single iota of which I was born.
 People in the professioriate, my terminal "career," tend to stay pretty "busy," which was probably one reason why I was expelled, because I don't.
I'm fundamentally lazy. I view inertia as a survival trait; my ph.d. is in Indolence. My favorite state is Entropy (then a tie betwen NM and CA).
 I'm not "busy." Just go away, alright? Thanks...

TBGO--"Baaaah-Di-BAAAAAH...": Honest, Not Abe; Just Deserts

Abe's Words of Wisdom?
Sorry. You're gonna have to mine for those sturdy tropes of Ayn Rand-y/Liberturdian political economy somewhere else but NOT from the spirit or the ethos of poor, dead, martyred Abe Lincoln.
This is actually the creation of an arch-conservative,  pro-corpoRat, protestant sky-pilot named W. John Henry Boetker, who penned the list as "An American Decalogue," the "Ten Commandments" of "Industry."

This is quite typical of the propaganda widely spread about, starting in this period, extolling the virtues of "self-reliance," "rugged individualism," and the sins of 'communitarianism" or "collectivism," which foreshadow the now nearly universal fractionalizations and atomizations designed to promote and facilitate hegemonic control of 'the mass mind.' It is STILL a major, if not DOMINANT part  of the "mythos" of Americanism.

Not coincidentally, this corpoRat boilerplate was FIRST circulated during a period of extreme labor conflict, high levels of labor organizing, and the re-efflorescence of the Red Scares of a generation earlier.

Forecast of Woe:
Uninhabitable. The American Southwest in 75-100 years, if things go as they seem to be headed.
Whether we do anything or not.
This graphic maps the extent and range of the evolving, forthcoming "American Sahara" (circa 2075) is in DARK BROWN. Sunny weather...

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center released its Spring Outlook on March 21. The big story for the upcoming spring? Relief for many drought-stricken areas of the United States is not likely. More info: http://1.usa.gov/127FRry