Friday, June 28, 2013

TBGO: "IANAL, B..."

Reliable Witnesses?
 
Zimmerman trial witness Rachel Jeantel (Fox News /screen grab)


Woody'z not a lawyer, but:

From the opening knock-knock joke, to the fantastical suggestion that Martin "armed" himself with the sidewalk and went hunting trouble (long with skittles and a bottle/can of soda), to the treatment and questioning of this witness, Zimmerman's atty, Don West (a high-profile defense guy with a long record of successful defenses of vicious killers) is working an intentional strategy.


He's trivializing the prosecution's case and thereby trying to pull off a difficult maneuver, the "reverse OJ," named in honor of the late Johnnie Cochran's defense strategy which skillfully manipulated circumstances so that the man Cochran knew was a vicious , cold-blooded killer would walk.


Cochran's success w/OJ depended on three factors: 1) Convincing the jury that OJ was the victim; 2) recognizing that OJ had plenty of public sympathy and 3) creating a circus in the courtroom. Amanda Marcotte writes:

If you ever want to get a full eyeball of how little value is put on the life of a young black man by white nitwits, just watch all the digressions and whining and mockery inspired by the George Zimmerman trial. Like Hamilton Nolan said, “The tragic shooting death of Trayvon Martin continues to be one of America’s richest sources of tangentially-related arguments.” It would be funny, except it’s awful, because someone was murdered and it turns out that you can basically get away with murder in Florida if you create even the barest bones plausibility for self-defense, up to and including chasing someone down until they, fearing they have no other choice, take a swing at you in hopes to escape your scary ass. If I understand correctly, that’s Zimmerman’s defense and how fucking crazy is that if it works?! You can legally murder someone so long as you scared them enough they acted in self-defense first? (As long as they’re black, of course, but that’s not explicitly stated.) That needs to be the only thing being discussed right now.

There is no doubt that West is absolutely CERTAIN of Zimmerman's guilt--as would anyone be who viewed the evidence objectively. So he's making it difficult to consider the evidence objectively, by conducting a legal dog-and-pony show for the jury, turning it into a circus...Therewith is his 'treatment' of the prosecution witness explicable.

The strategy is to make prosecution witnesses--such as the "glowerting"
Rachel Jeantel , pictured above--appear to be "alien," and "uncivilized," "primitive ," "uncultured," and therefore "unreliable."

Various observers have suggested that West's shenanigans are preparation for a mis-trial, and it's possible, though I don't think that is the strategy.
 

He's been successful enough, and he is smart enough, that no one should underestimate the "power of the glove," though that piece --I don't know what it is, but West does--isn't in evidence yet. 

But it will be...
 


TBGO: Bend Over And Spread 'em, Fellas

Just Desserts! This is clearly and overwhelmingly the favorite story of the day, so far:
Women legislators are writing and introducing legislation that forces men to endure the same kinds of humiliating objectification which they enforce on women in the name of 'preventing abortions," etc, so that they can get their stiffy pills--is just SO totally just!
 
Legislation could require men to undergo a complete reproductive examination every time ANY man wanna renew your 'scrip' for Viagra or any Erectile Dysfunction drug.
Much entertainment would definitely ensue...A monthly, digital, prostate exam with every prescription! Just to make sure you're healthy enough for sex.

Bend over and smile!
From the story: "

"According to the Dayton Daily News, State Senator Nina Turner introduced SB 307, which requires men to visit a sex therapist, undergo a cardiac stress test, and get their sexual partner to sign a notarized affidavit confirming impotency in order to get a prescription for Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs. The bill also requires men who take the drugs to be continually “tested for heart problems, receive counseling about possible side effects and receive information about “pursuing celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice.”
Pursuing celibacy as a life-style option! Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

TBGO: Dept of Gross Offenses



Woody admires Rep. Grayson. The man knows his schtick, and he's good at it. Gotta way with a quip. Gotta admire that. Zingers.

Moi? (In the LONGEST sentence you are likely to read today):

As "grossly" as I am offended by the Gummint acting as though it MUST sureveil me and all my fellow citizens to preserve our security, it offends me even MORE that the surveillance, analysis and dissemination of the information thereby gathered is being done by private "contractors" who owe not even a scintilla of nominal, perfunctory allegiance to the People they are allegedly "serving," but instead who are doing it as well-paid flunkies to enrich the former military Brass (not all of whom are USers) who retired with bloated pensions and set up these cash cows on the bases of their familiarity--even intimacy--with the nearly autonomous system itself and their former positions in it.

"Security clearances"? Apparently about a dime a dozen...


That fucking offends the living FUCK out of me.

But we've known about that for almost a fucking DECADE now.  Remember Mark Klein and Room 641A, in the AT&T building in San Francisco in 2005-o6?

So why only NOW is the outrage so furious? What's changed?

Some things HAVEN'T changed.

Grayson's fault izzat he STILL ignores the private MONEY slime trail all throughout the Gummint.


Yer not s[pozed to talk about that.

It's okay for gummint folks to talk about money in politics as long as it is restricted to influencing the franchise, and the electoral process. That's an acceptable part of the discourse.


BUT: It is STILL forbidden to openly discuss how much money (YOUR tax money) the State expends on the private projects it sponsors and the connections, relationships and dependencies it thereby fosters.

Booz-Allen (one of 2,000 private firms included in the official "US Intelligence Community") grossed around 6 BILLION dollars last year, 95% from Gummint surveillance contracts. Booz-Allen is owned in large part by the Carlyle Group. You may have heard that name, the Carlyle Group, before:  in association with the Bush family, which owns a biggish chunk of the action there. And they're just one among 2000?

Feelin' any safer? Yeah, me, too...

Saturday, June 8, 2013

TBGO: Nine little Words

Alien-Nation

 

In case you haven't noticed, since Raygun at least, the dominant political discourse has been predominantly aimed at (further) undermining, disabling, and destroying any residual faith and/or belief of Murkin people in their institutions.

Nine little words: you know the ones: Of the people, by the people, for the people. The press, the Congress, the Courts, all those things supposed to harness the deadly energies of capital and commerce and regulate them for our common benefit, and provide redress from violations? 



Remember Raygun's quip about the "Nine deadliest words"?
"I'm from the Gummint and I'm here to help?"
Who trusts the Congress? The bureaucracy? the President? The Courts?
Nobody, that's who.


And that's not an accident. It has been virtually EXPLICIT policy of the Grasping Oligarchs and Plutocrats to DESTROY those sentiments since the 1960s. Read the Powell memo, of 1971. Every word Raygun ever uttered. Everything the Chimperor EVER did. It has ALL had the final aim of driving the people away from "popular sovereignty."
And guess what?
It WORKED.


What's the biggest objection to national health care? That we can't trust the government to do it. Despite the fact that Medicare is more efficient, less expensive and even more popular than private insurance. Despite the fact that we actually have a say in what the government does and who works there, unlike private insurance companies. Why is this? Because we've been conditioned, and separated from the whole concept of self rule.


Look around you: You--The "people"--are almost totally, wholly and permanently ALIENATED from the means of their own self-government. It's dirty, nasty, corrupt, venal, base, vile. Yuck. Don't touch!
Next step: to turn all the dirty, dirty business over to our own 'butcher' caste, the "untouchables" of the business/boardrooms.
Mission: Accomplished




Friday, June 7, 2013

TBGO: The Bicycle Thief, Revived

Right Before Your Very Eyes



In Woody'z aho (always humble opinion): Being a "racist" is part of the social genetic heritage of White people in Ummurka. It is SOOO much a SOOO significant part of EVERYTHING which has manufactured the "American Way" that it is metaphorically almost
identical with the consequences of original sin, to those who believe that. No one born in the White majority in the USA has completely escaped its brush. Some have been more aware of it sooner, and have striven to reverse and repair such damages as they can. Not all, certainly not a majority, or even a plurality. Only some.
There's a reason that "racial' superiority is still a vital component of the social identities of 'lower-class' White folks. White folks still comprise about 66%/pop, and poor white folks are the most numerous consumers of the largest amount of "unearned" Federal benefits, from food assistance to school vouchers. Yet they're acolytes of an ideology which casts that sort of behavior as dependence and assigns it to their "inferiors." The dissonance they can dispel, exhaust, inside the systems of racism which survive and even flourish, some places.
The Greeks had a word for it: Hamartanein, the fatal flaw; three-fifths the size of Achilles' heel.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

TBGO: Assess My Ass!

Torque-time! This is one of Yer Ol' Perfesser's pet hobby horses:

The poster gets the proportions all wrong. You could argue that legislators indeed should be held accountable for the economic conditions which their legislations create. "Job growth," and "Economic activity" are splendid criteria, relevant criteria, germane criteria by which to evaluate the effectiveness of politicians today. More should be.

But they are of a diametrically different order than using students' test scores to assess teachers.

To accurately match the incongruity of assessing teachers' effectiveness by students' test scores, legislators should be evaluated for their effectiveness by the numbers of bushels of wheat that were grown in their tenure, or the number of clogged drains their constituents experienced, or the number of auto accidents occurring, or arrests made in their districts. Stuff over which they have NO control, influence or impact. 

The SINGLE largest factor influencing the performance of students on standardized tests is the relative wealth of poverty of the students. Kids from wealthier homes perform better than kids from poorer ones. A kid's ZIP-code is a better, more accurate predictor of school success than grades.

Let's do this.

TBGO: Lo and Fucking Behold!


Woody'z all, like: "WutthefukEVAR, man! Jeezus!
Right-on!! AhEEEEYIT, as they say in the ghetttttto!
Just gimme a minute to get it straight in my mind, whutchew mean, brother President LowBar?


You mean the 90 percent who wanted background checks for gun buyers?
Or the 70 percent which wanted single payer health care and NOT insurance?
Or the 60 percent who want the PATRIOT Act removed or reduced?
Or the 68 percent who want the Central Asian wars ended?
And the 70 percent who want GMOs labeled?
Or the 70 percent who want cannabis legalized?
Or the 65 percent who want marriage equality?


I guess they weren't LOUD enough fer ya, shit-stick? Who needs to FURTHER raise their voices, eh, cully?

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

TBGO: Apostolicism

"Missionary Position"

A chap on facebook posted this, and then took it down. I'd already written a rejoinder, which I like, so :

Chap: I'd like to hear more peoples' takes on Baptist and other fundamentalist Christian ideologies...and their relationship to missionary work in foreign (non-white) lands (such as Congo).

Example: GRACE CHURCH OF THE VALLEY (http://www.gcotv.net/index.html)
Theologically, GCOTV is a reformed church holding to the Five Solas of the reformation: Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), Sola Fide (Faith alone), Sola Gratia (Grace alone), Solus Christus (Christ alone), Soli Deo Gloria (to the Glory of God alone). Our primary confession of faith is the London Baptist Confession of 1689.

I'd like to hear more peoples' takes on Baptist and other fundamentalist Christian ideologies...and their relationship to missionary work in foreign (non-white) lands (such as Congo).  

Example:  GRACE CHURCH OF THE VALLEY (http://www.gcotv.net/index.html)

Theologically, GCOTV is a reformed church holding to the Five Solas of the reformation: Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), Sola Fide (Faith alone), Sola Gratia (Grace alone), Solus Christus (Christ alone), Soli Deo Gloria (to the Glory of God alone). Our primary confession of faith is the London Baptist Confession of 1689.

Yrs Truly replied: From the 15th Century onward, weren't missionaries almost always emissaries of Imperial/colonial powers? Surely, it was true of the Roman church's apostolic branch. The Jesuits, the Franciscans, the Dominicans. They were relentless proselytizers not only of the Gospel, but of European hegemony. They would have to be regarded as at LEAST incipient colonizers, even if their explicit (or implicit) mission were to secure the loyalties of the natives to the "new" religion...and tribute to that religion's temporal authority.

TBGO: In Plain Sight

The "Conditioning" Has Become The Norm!




Panties and pearls all over were being indiscriminately twisted into uncomfortable knots today when Faux Nooz ran the following story:

Is Obama waging psychological warfare on Americans?

According to Faux commentator, the infelicitously monikered "Dr. Keith Ablow":
 I believe that the Obama administration is conducting psychological warfare on conservative Americans. Not only that but it is also waging this war on all Americans who previously viewed themselves, their country, their Constitution and their overwhelming belief in God as a force for good in the world.

Ironically, Woody thinkz, Faux Nooz is not altogether wrong; this is one of those "conspiracies" that actually is one. 

Beginning in earnest in the '80s, with the success of media consolidation, the entire USofA has been turned into a gigantic Skinner box, the walls of which are the ethereal, flickering screens which define us and our aspirations.

We are ALL subjects of a huge, generations'-long experiment in whether as whole population can be trained to what's called "learned helplessness."

It is NOT the sole responsibility of any regime. All have been equally complicit. This has been the CoproRat agenda since the '70s. The purpose of the experiment is to render the whole populace inert under the threat that ANYTHING one does will result in a 'punishment' or some other kind of "disincentive," which in the end, after endlessly repeated, albeit often random, stimuli, results in as kind of conscious, but helpless paralysis.


The psychologist who developed the technique, Martin Seligman, late of the US military psy-ops where he specialized in "breaking" prisoners, and former head of the American Psychological Association, perfected it on dogs. Upon completion, they dogs had to be destroyed--euthanized--because they were completely ruined. They simply could NOT move.


This experiment is being and has been, and will continue for the foreseeable future to be conducted completely in public, unafraid of exposure, because the conditioning has become the NORM. The irony--if such is the proper word--izzat Faux Nooz is itself one of the primary instruments by which the psychological shocks which constitute the "treatment" are administered.

TBGO: This Week In Science & God

This week in science.

Curiosity streambed: http://1.usa.gov/11tuQ13
Frozen plant regeneration: http://bit.ly/13gZVrV
Molecules: http://bit.ly/10UxKNA
Oldest bird discovered: http://bit.ly/17U5fHY
Synthetic blood: http://bbc.in/136tMEA
Mammoth blood: http://bit.ly/10MNtS5


Meanwhile, this week in God:
Pilgrims: Pilgrims walk across the Quema river

< br />Spanish pilgrims in costumes ford a river on their annual pilgrimage to some shrine to the Virgin Mary, and...


..."The Pew Research Center released a report this week that found women are now the sole or primary source of family income in 40% of U.S. households with children. These findings led to a bizarre Fox segment, featuring Lou Dobbs and his panel of all-male guests, who condemned the cultural/socioeconomic shift, The American Family Association's Bryan Fischer raised some related concerns...Fischer cited his vision of a "biblical" family model, citing men's "physical strength" and "brain power," and the need for women for "to focus her energies ... on making a home for her children and for her husband." Fischer then argued: "I don't think it's a healthy dynamic to have a wife out-earn her husband, because so much of his sense of worth as a male is tied up in what he does vocationally and providing for his family. That's his calling. It's not his wife's job to provide for his family; he knows that it's his job. And if he has a wife who out-earns him, I think that's going to put some stress on his psyche. It's going to put some stress on that marriage." In other words, according to this prominent leader in the religious right movement, women shouldn't earn more money than men, because men's feelings might be hurt -- and the male "psyche" can't handle it.

Monday, June 3, 2013

TBGO: Left Unsaid...

A Chart of Emotions that Have No Names in the English Language

 HERE'S THE LINK!  English seems to have a corner on anger, rage, and surprise...
If you're ever beset by a strange and distinct feeling that you can't quite name, you're not alone. Just as the English language has pulled in loanwords like "schadenfreude" to name emotions with no English equivalent, there are a number of words other languages use to describe emotions still unnamed in English. Designer Pei-Ying Lin has charted a handful of these emotions, which are ready for your linguistic consideration.
After receiving her undergraduate degree in life science, Lin received her masters in design interactions from London's Royal College of Art, and much of her work deals with the intersection between art, science, and communication. One of her Unspeakableness, an exploration of trans-language communication and emotional language. For one portion of the project, "The Untranslatable Words," Lin asked colleagues for emotional words from various languages that have no English equivalent. Then, using W. Gerrod Parrott's classification of human emotions as a starting point, Lin attempted to chart these complex emotions, giving English speakers a sense of where they fit with more familiar emotional words, using named emotions to explain unnamed ones.
In addition to this chart, Lin has also created a somewhat funnier "New emotions invented by the Internet" chart using a similar approach. These emotions may not have names in any language just yet, but they're all too familiar all the same.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

TBGO: Too Harsh

Buzz-Off: Woody's often regarded as a buzz-harsher, but there it is...

I am a little skeptical of economics discussions such as this in which little attention seems to have been paid to what to do about the present, existing, living and, presumably, resisting capitalists who, along with their minions and satraps, may not want very much to be 'remade.' What is their fate to be?

If legislation is required, who will "pass" it?

I mean, the transition may not be "peaceful,' ya know? Then what?

Just askin...

Woody apologizes for harshing yet another buzz, but there it is...

Just one question:
What if the billionaires do not want to relinquish control over the media?

After all, it's taken them close to 100 years and some trillions of dollars to gain control.

They may be reluctant to simply shrug and walk away.

Where would the money come from to BUY them out?

If you don't plan to buy them out, then what is the plan?

Just askin?