Fuck "God/gods."

Yer ol' perfesser's gottsa warnya: Fuckabee's got the vapors again about "nasty" atheists.

But this god-blighted bible-babbler's ire is just as specious as his logic.

"Non-believers" such as I don't give a rotten, runny shit about your silly little god-delusions. No "god" ever did anything real.

What we atheists and others of a free-thinking disposition object to is the claim by/of "Believers" that their "Beliefs" are somehow endowed with PARTICULAR authority and are therefore ESPECIALLY deserving of particular attention in the public sphere. They base this claim on the basis of alleged, unprovable, specious, spurious relation TO such invisible, made-up "beings."

Theism-inspired 'beliefs' hold LESS water in the public sphere than those derived from science BECAUSE, by definition, 'faith-based' policies have no evidence to support their claims, other than their opinions, which have no substance at ALL in the 'real' world.

For the record: I FIRMLY believe ALL and ANY references to ANY and ALL 'deities' should be removed from ANY and ALL public observances of a civic nature. This would include the 'Pledge,' any sworn oaths, the currency, etc...

BUT I SWEAR: On my honor, I swear that from this day forth I shall never again speak another derogatory sentiment about God, the Church, the Bible, Preachers, Sin, Heaven, Hell, Angels, Satan or ANY of the rest of that happy horseshit...

On the sole proviso that I never have to HEAR or listen to another word about that crap.

Keep it home or in church. I don't care what you do there. Eat your babies for all of me.

Just don't bring it to the PUBLIC FORA as though it were somehow cosmically, or socially, or politically privileged, meaningful or significant.

The GOPhux/Righturds LOVE them some LowBarry!

Woody thinks you might get the impression from the Nooz, feeds, and the Netz that the GOP "hates" PrezLowbar. You MIGHT have noticed that NONE of what the GOPhux did since 2010 (see illustration) made a shittin' bit of difference in the elections? Hate him? Nothing could be further from the truth. They LOVE him! Prez. Shamwow F. Lowbar's the best thing to happen to the GOPhux since LBJ signed the Civil Right Act. Was there even ONE GOPhukkker defeated incumbent who was NOT beaten by ANOTHER, even bat-shit CRAZIER, GOPhux opponent?

Certainly there are no small number of GOPhux individuals/Saltine Americans who "hate" him, as you'd expect. Racism is one of the perpetual blights on GOPhux politix.

But the Party, as a whole, as an entity, love him, for the simple reason that he provides absolutely PERFECT cover for their REAL purpose, their long-term agenda, of undoing and eliminating popular sovereignty/democratic self-rule...

As the designated Party of the owners, oligarchs, elites, and aristos, the GOPhux are in fact dedicated to ending "democracy." LowBarry gives 'em the pretext and the target, and they can STILL deny their true intents.

It's gotten too expensive to maintain the pretense of 'democracy.'.

Everything the GOPhukkks have done since 2009 (well, since 1968, really; since 2009 they've just fast-tracked) has been bent to THAT end.

PrezLowbar gives them a way to disguise their efforts, because the GOPhux' constituents will forgive them almost ANYTHING as long as it makes that uppity NEGRO look bad, up to AND INCLUDING if that is the destruction of the whole idea of a "democratic polis."

A Face to Make an Orc Puke!

If for no other reason than to further highlight the nightmarish aspects of this fucker's desires and demeanors, this needs to be repeated... 

Yer ol' perfesser sternly admonishes you: These people--the Cruzes, the Gohmerts, the Inhofes, the Rubios, et al--are NOT as stupid as they sound (that should be obvious: NO ONE could be that stupid and still drive a car). They all know exactly what they are saying, every word. It's all part of the script of the National Kabuki Theatre on the Potomac. Every word, gesture, and event is blocked and scheduled like a theatrical premier.. 

What is more, they KNOW they are spewing arrant bullshit. And they do it HAPPILY, with no regard for the chaos and confusion they spread... 

But since there is no forum--and probably no vocabulary, either, given the constraints of "civility,"--for directly calling them on their professional bullshit, they keep ON saying spewing it for the "folks back home," wherever 'home' is, and the craven, lap-dog/courtier/CorpoRat press "reports" it, faithfully and accurately. Because, of course, that is their JOB, as ensured by the great corporate gobble-up of the media in the 80s and 90s--remember media consolidation? Ratified by CLENIS Clinton's Comm Act of '96. Not going back! Coup plotters ALWAYS take over the media, first. 

It would be useful if there were some way to confront them on such matters. Maybe an actual adversarial press? That was the kind of press that was deemed worthy of Constitutional protection by the founders, such that its preservation is enshrined in our founding document. 

But you won't see another one of those anytime soon...not in the USofA, ever again, probably.

Up-Date at BERNIE'S!

A Rhetorical Question?
Woody'll answer Bernie's (rhetorical) question with some rhetorical facts:
Because, with money and/or power, there is no such thing as "enough."
The wealthy have the means to ensure that their will to acquire more is in no way impeded by the likes of US (proles, like you and me). If you had a lot of money, it would be working FINE for you and you'd be delighted about it.
People say, well, go ahead, let 'em screw shit up more. They'll be screwed at NEXT election time.
Ummmmm, DERP!
What part of "We Just Had A Big-ass Election That The Fucktards WON, Overwhelmingly!" don't they understand?
They--the bosses, oligarchs, owners, elites, et al--ARE NOT, WERE NOT and DID NOT GET SCREWED. Maybe you noticed?
If they were gonna be "screwed," if the screwing of the totalitarian clones were gonna happen, they would have been 'screwed' by an outraged electoirate for their activities in the last 2, 4, and 6 years.
Wouldn't they? Attacks on women, infrastructure, safety nets, health care. SOME of that woulda/-SHOULDA-- stuck, innit?
But, they're NOT 'screwed.' They're fucking UNTOUCHED!
If anything, they're STRONGER for it.
So, let's get SOMETHING straight, folks:
The GOPhux can do ANYTHING, say anything, attack anything, destroy anything, AS LONG AS they sell it to the country as "fucking with the Negro": Making the NEGRO look bad, undermining the NEGRO's authority, wreaking havoc with the NEGRO's policies. ANYTHING is permissible if PrezLowbar can be made responsible.
They are NOT gonna be screwed by or for ANYTHING they do that they can lay at the feet of "fucking the uppity Nigra."
That's an electoral free pass, one that they'll cash in on for the next 15-20 years.

What's Next? Beer and Circuses

In yer ol' perfesser's oft-stated, yet still humble opinion, it was already too late when Prez Lowbar didn't push back against the (minority) GOPhux' framing and issues in 2009 in his first six months in office.
He gave ground WAAAAAY too readily, too easily, on Gitmo, public option, tax breaks, too much.
It is WAAAAAY tooo late for him to push back now.

He's weak. That's all there is to it. His own party fled from him (and lost, whether by doing so or not is moot)...

The GOPhux smell blood, and are just gonna send shovelsful of bills to him--nasty, mean-spirited, damaging, injurious, disabling bills--daring him to veto them. One pundit put it this way:

"Republican lawmakers will be eager to pass bills, but their efforts won't be aimed at forging compromises with the president. Their legislation will likely target Obamacare and slash spending for social programs. They can be expected to fiercely block presidential appointments, especially judges. They might try to enact restrictions on abortion, and they will certainly seek to gut environmental regulations and climate change policies. Oh yes, and they will push tax cuts for the well-to-do. Such an agenda will be predicated on more confrontation and obstruction."

Oh, and they're gonna impeach him, too. Did I mention that?

The only out is if the Dims in the Senate become as obstructionist as the GOPhux have been. Unfortunately, as I've stressed elsewhere, they do not have the 'status' to do it, being the "junior" (inferior) partners in the firm.
Besides, the Dims in the Senate don't have the cohesiveness, the party-line loyalty, of the GOPhux. A lot of Dims in the Senate STILL gotta/gonna be wary of being too close to "that damn Negro"...They'll break ranks, as the behavior of so many candidates this year showed.

So that's out.

Iow: He's fucked. As are we all...

Thump-Quack: It's Over

You see the problem, doncha?
Katerina VanDen Huevel, at the Nation, thinks that Prez Shamow. F. Lowbar NOW has to double down.
That's what she said: "Double Down!"
And THAT'S the problem.
He's not a "doublin' down" kinda guy. He's hardly a BETTING kinda guy, unless it's blowing up brown people on the other side of the world (then he's okay widdit, betting it's far enough away not to pose any immediate problem at home).
He NEEDS to be willing--even EAGER--to start to wield the VETO-PEN.
But he's not.
That's cuz PrezLowbar, who starts ALL sensitive negotiations by giving away his strongest points--remember "health insurance?"--is gonna feel called upon to 'deal responsibly" with these skeevy, reeking, racist motherfuckers in the GOPhux' Congress. Rather than mount a last-ditch defense of the remains of the FDR/LBJ 'great society,' he'll cave. It won't look like it, at first, but that will be the net effect.
Oh, he'll have the most logical and rational reasons for caving, but count on it: He'll collapse like a pup-tent in a tornado.
The ONLY hope for "liberal/progressive" policies is that PrezLowbar show some spine and wield a sharp and aggressive VETO pen. But he has NOT shown he's eager--ore even much willing--to risk his "reputation" as a conciliator, to save those programs or defend those policies. The "Legacy" of America's First Black president will require him to 'compromise' (really, to give away the progressive store)--but he wouldn't have been installed if that was NOT something he could/would do.
ThePrez's only vetoed two bills in almost six years, the least of ANY President pretty much ever. Gerry Ford, whose tenure was the shortest since Garfield, issued more vetoes (66) than any Chief Exec since Ike (66, including "pocket vetoes"). No one should plausibly expect Prez Shamwow to better, or even to approach, it.
And LowBarry's a gutless conciliator who is afraid of being labeled an "angry Black man," which he would be if he stood up for liberal/progressive principles. So he won't...The LEGACY is all important, now, and that does NOT include a chapter on LowBarry standing up to the GOPhux. The "legacy" does NOT include an "Angry Black Man" standing up to the racist Whites.
SO: We, dear friends, are truly and grossly FUCKED!

And let me add how MUCH I hope I am wrong, and that ThePrez will find some inner resources to defend the principles the people they thought he was already a defender of when they elected him....

TO Vote, or NOT To Vote?

Knowing this will not find anything like unanimous approval, still:
Yer ol' perfesser'z outlined this before, but on 'election eve,' it is even more important: 
For an "ethical person' confronted with choices for action which include ONLY different levels of vileness and evil, there is, arguendo, an ethical duty to support the choice that portends the LEAST harm to the GREATEST number. This is the "MiniMax" position familiar rto game therorists and advocated by America's best renowned ethicist, (the late) John Rawls, in his landmark treatise: "A Theory of Justice."
If we cannot prevent evil (and we cannot), we have the responsibility to diminish it to the extent possible for the greatest number of people.
I could see boycotting the vote only on the proviso that that were unambiguously understood to be an act of protest and resistance. 
But since already (approximately) 50% or more of the electorate will probably abstain for their own reasons, my (and YOUR) abstention would not create any greater effect than voting would; so I shall cast my ballot--tomorrow, in person... It impresses NO ONE to march into the polling place and declare: "Fuck you! I'm not VOTING!~"
John Oliver's correct, too, in stressing that the closer to 'your' home the person lives for whom you will vote, the more important it is that you cast your vote, because the smaller the pool of voters, the more likely a vote is to have an impact.
That is just me, prolly; YMMV.

Not MY First Choice

It is natural for desperate folks  to look backwards to deceased executives for models and/or inspirations of democratic behavior. In yer ol' perfesser'z judgment, hagiographizing not withstanding, Truman's not one to emulate.

Harry pretended to be a friend of the workingman. An he did initiate the great work of integrating USer military forces, which arguably led withing a decade to the Black civil rights movement.

But HST also BEGAN the chore--which Raygoon and the Raygunsels completed to thoroughly 30 years later--of rolling back, undermining, dismantling and eventually all-but eliminating the gains USer labor had made in the previous 30 years. He vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act, which eviscerated Union activities, and then enforced it 12 times in the next four years after his veto was--as he knew from the start it would be--overturned.

HST also unleashed the National Security State, via the National Security Act of 1947.

It effectively truncated the authority of the Constitution to EXCLUDE "security" and established MOST of the most troublesome institutions in the toils of which we now try to salvage a bare modicum of privacy in our own lives."

It was these facts which Eisenhower's eulogy in his farewell address, the "militaryu-industrial complex" speech mourned and bemoaned.

Test-R-Us, Inc.

Testing has driven the curriculum ever since the Raygoons came to power. It has only grown in impact and influence since then.

"Accountability," it was called, back then. It was already a disputatious topic, even then (early-mid 80s, when I was in Grad School, working on a PhD in Ed). The first book on it that I read was this:

Accountability in American education: A critique (January 1, 1976), by Martin, Overholt and Urban.

Though nearly 40 years old, it could be well revived, inasmuch as it answers almost ALL of the red herrings, straw men and other fallacies which the proponents extol still today.

So-called 'accountability' was "demanded" by "reformers" who piled it atop the mythology that teachers have/had soft jobs, short hours, and "3-months-vacation a year!"

And the growing realization, even then, that there was a whole fcking PILE of money to be plundered.

Oh, and union busting.

Which is the Murkin way. And the Raygoons were on it like stink on shit: Bill Bennett, Chester "Chukker" Finn, Lamar Alexander, Chris Whittle, E.D. Hirsch, all the usual grifters, all rode that wave. Remember "A Nation At Risk?"

Testing today has become an end in itself. Tests today mainly exist to provide psychomeretricians with fresh data with which to construct newer, more revealing tests. The only interest that Bill Gates has in education at all is to corner the market in educational software and to own the licenses to all the IT curricular applications.

But the "accountabalists" STILL want teachers' performances assessed and judged by how well their students perform on essentially meaningless instruments designed mainly to elicit information to write more tests.

We're not "poor," we're temproarily embarrassed millionaires, as Steinbeck put it.

And this attitude is the product of the longest, continuous, uninterrupted stimulus-response experiment in history. We live in a gigantic Skinner-box--and the myriad others which we mistake for 'individuality'--the walls of which are comprised of the flickering blue screens with which we surround ourselves, and from which we are never far.

Divisa et impera.

The Ipod, and it's ilk, has very nearly completed the task, creating the millions and billions of "niche" markets which are the definitions of our shopping desires: The apotheosis of atomization--which is the mist, as dispersed and divided one CAN be.

Mutually Assured Dishonesty

Yer ol Perfesser's gotten really weary of this meme:
The "deficit" is only reduced two ways:
1) Increase revenues.
2) Decrease expenditures.
Clinton raised some taxes, but he also cut services; he had a regime change in Yugoslavia to finance. 
Lowbar hasn't raised taxes (GOPhux obstructionism)...and the wars just keep adding up.
Ergo, to reduce the 'deficit,' they HAD to reduce expenditures.
Clinton nominally raised taxes, but slick accountants (Arthur Anderson, anyone) and tax attorneys had work-arounds in place before the ink was dry. Services were cut, though rhetorically disguised in several ways, like 'ending welfare as we know it.'
Lowbar went full-on austerity, freezing gummint salaries and hiring, cutting programs, reducing services.
For whom?
I'll give ya a hint: It WASN'T the military, the banks, the corporats, or wealthy white people.

Correlation =/= Causation, Revisited: Education & "Success"

Yer ol' perfesser (amply supplied with degrees (three and a half of 'em), all of which were paid for by the State, one way or another, what with the GI Bill, scholarships and assistantships) hopes everybody already knows that correlation does not imply causation?

Right?

Yes, the 'level' of one's formal education is to some (greater or lesser) extent correlated with income: a "higher level" of (formal) education is often part of the resume of wealthier, more 'successful' people.

But industry, gummint, and the Owners have constructed a mythology and an 'industry' (for-profit "colleges") around that correlation and have marketed it as if the relation were causal, when it is NOT.
Getting a "degree" will NOT lead to financial/economic/career "success."

It NEVER DID.

The myth constructs/portrays the phenomenon exactly bass-ackwards.

The relation upon which the myth is premised goes back to a period when only those who were of the 'upper-middle class' and 'higher' were ABLE (or permitted) to attend institutions of higher learning. The wealthy GOT degrees, but the degrees did not confer wealth or even the opportunity to gather it. Rather, a degree was often the signature of inherited status and the wealth that that implied.

But, to gin up revenues (and, not incidentally, to supply 'industry' with another tool by which to discriminate in hiring without appearing to do so), they owners and the institutions began to portray it the OTHER way, and so it has become, in the mythology of getting ahead.

Meanwhile, as the costs of 'higher education' escalate at rates far in excess of the rates of other, recently commodified social 'goods,' those aspiring to improve their chances in the rigged "game of Life" have been convinced that it is worth it, somehow, to mortgage their futures and voluntarily indenture themselves--and their families--with loans they 1) cannot hope to repay and 2) cannot escape through bankruptcy, the revenues of which enrich shysters and grifters in an "industry" created from the fabrics of hope and despair.

The Bleat Resumes: Bloody Palestine

Yer ol' Perfesser, though NOT an expert on Arab/Israeli relations, would make this obvious assertion: "Israel" qua 'state,' will not EVER tolerate a fully sovereign Palestinian State, on the West Bank, or Gaza, or ANYWHERE.

It simply CANNOT.

This seems incredibly obvious to yer ol' Perfesser, for reasons tied to Real-Politik, odious as it is:

1) Palestinian statehood would mean all those Palestinian whom the Israelis have wronged--if not since 1947, then at least since 1990--would immediately have a legal forum in which to seek justice. As "stateless" people, they have no such status, now. 

2) Palestinian statehood would mean the Israelis would have to actually negotiate in good faith on matters like water rights, territory, and shyared resources, including the oil/nat-gas reserves which are among the things that Israel hopes to secure by making Gaza uninhabitable.

3) Palestinian statehood would mean the Israeli "settlers" would be constrained by international law from occupying new settlements, destroying Arab orchards, confiscating property, etc. Settlements might have to be abandoned or restored to the original Arab owners.

4) Palestinian statehood would carry with it the 'Right of Return." All the hundreds of thousands of Arabs displaced since 1947 would theoretically have the right to return to their 'homeland,' on and by the same logic which permits Jews that right; and if THAT weren't enough to put the chgingies to any deal....

5)Palestinian statehood would mean the Palestinians would be entitled to have a military for "defensive" purposes: army, navy & air force, with bases, armories, and weapons all INSIDE Israel.. 

For those and a score of other reasons, Israel, qua State, CANNOT and WILL NOT accept or tolerate an autonomous, sovereign, Palestinian state, and why the "two-state solution" will forever remain part of the "peace process," since it is impossible and therefore guarantees the peace process will never end, and nothing will upset the current arrangements.

The Bleat Returns: Nuff Said...

The Bleat Returns: Don't Look Back!

Woody'd like to reiterate:
There are, I believe, probably at least four "good"--sensible, practical, and legal--reasons why the Busheviks won't ever face prosecution for their crimes. In no particular order:
---No Precedent. Precedent matters in such things as laws and prosecutions. Never in the history of the country has a successor regime tried to punish the executives of the prior regime. That's one of the reasons that power passes so seamlessly, so peacefully. Our "continuity" has largely depended on the tacit agreement that we "Don't Look Back."
---The Defense--"National Security"--would be irrebuttable to any jury. The answer to any question: Why? Because: Terrorists! Protecting the American people! Mooslims!  UmmmmBooogerty!!!
---The Jury. The Busheviks still enjoy the support of about 30% of the populace. So, chances are that three or four members of any jury selected would be (at least, silent) Busheviks themselves and would not convict even on damning evidence.
---The Future. If Prez Lowbar WERE to have the temerity to bring the Chimpertor/Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice to 'justice,' he would not be five steps outside the WhiteHouse, in Jan, 2017, before the slammer'd be closing on his black ass.
There may be others, though  I haven't thought of any more. However, I am not a Lawyer; but those are enough, I think.
There does still seem a very real possibility, however, that even NOT trying to bring the Bushevik war criminals to court probably won't help Prez. LowBar, after he's no longer in Office. I think it's entirely possible that, especially when/if theGOPhukkks take the WhiteHouse in '16, the Teahadists will try to lynch him, figuratively at least.

The GOPhukkkz vs. The Three Stooges...

BENGHAZI? BENGHAZI??? BENGHAZI!!!!!!

Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch...

The GOphukkks are growing more and more to resemble a Three Stooges vaudeville routine with every passing moment... !

It is, however far more than that. The House Select Committee on Benghazi is the first step in preparing a brief for impeachment which, though doomed to fail for lack of enough support, will gather a shit-pile of attention, and give the GOPhukkks something to do, other than the business of the Nation. It's raw meat for the Base.

This is also the NEXT step in the project of 1) making Murka, qua state, regret they/we ever had the temerity to install "thet Nigra" in the White House in the first place, 2) raising the rhetorical bar so that there won't be any further such lapses of civic judgment, and 3) vilifying Prez LowBar and, by extension, his whole "party" and making them anathema to the voters. The GOPhukkkx will still be running against Pres Lowbar when the rising waters swallows Florida and the rest of the USer coastline..

The plan is (and has been all along) to cast Prez Lowbar as such a villain that by the end of his tenure, he is the most detested, reviled, maligned political figure in the country; and this, despite the fact his failings are pretty much the same as every previous occupant of the WhiteHouse since 1960...

 I gotta say, I don't think the GOPhukkks are stupid, or ignorant or a combination of those ingredients, in pursuing this strategy.

They know EXACTLY what they're doing and what they think they'll accomplish by it.

They are intentionally distorting facts and stories to further increase the polarity of their supporters viz the "enemy.". It's worked FLAWLESSLY since 1980...

FTSOA: Fuck Balzac

Recently I had a long, and not too acrimonious dispute on Facebook over some of the assumptions undergirding a Chris Hedges rant, here. In it Hedges thoughtfully invokes as analagous to our present predicament the calamities which befell the men of Melville's fate-smitten whaling vessel, the Pequod, when they failed to stop Ahab, by mutiny, and in fact permitted themselves to be bought off. Hedges sees our fate in the whale's innards, as (literary) precedent and analog for our own politically catastrophic times.

Hedges is right, of course: We're fucked. Duh

And probably the fact of the failure of the mutiny aboard the Pequod dooms the ship and crew to destruction.

Likewise, it is self-evidently necessary to change the system. Like them, Hedges sez: We're doomed.

What nobody, not Hedges, nor anybody else, has so far been able to show me is how to replace that whole system without destroying everything it supports...

I have a personal stake in the matter. I am elderly, now, growing weaker, more dependent upon a functioning pharmaceutical distribution network, for example. It's kinda a matter of life/death. I need the drugs if wanna outlive my meager resources...and I do.

So I believe it is impingent upon those whose solutions to our present vicissitudes include overturning the "system" to address whether or not they are willing to kill me in the process.

Where do I stand on the list of expendables. I'm not complaining. Just so I know where we stand.

And if not by catastrophic revolt, then how they plan to dispossess the wealthy of the riches and privileges they will almost certainly choose to die for rather than to relinquish.

I was informed that a variety of writers--Chomsky, Vedanta Shiva, Arundati Roy, among others--had written about it. I'm not unfamiliar with them. I cannot recall how they answered the question, if they did.

And if it involves "educating the people," and/or "changing the structures of society," and/or "instituting justice," then the details of "HOW" are MORE crucial, NOT trivial, NOT dismissible by a shruggingly saying "Go look it up, if you care so much."

Cuz if there's a plan, it's gonna hafta be clear and easy enough that even simple minds like my own can understand it.

FTSOA: Potpourri, 4/24/14

Woody assurez you: Here's a cast-iron, dead cert to win yer Xmas money.
Find a bookie. The deal is done. They wouldn't even BE hearing the case unless the fuckkkerz meant to overturn it.
The ONLY hope for the "Republic" is that, within the next 24 months, one or more of the following occurs:
1) Chief Roberts experiences another bout of that curious falling malaise, stumbles off a boat dock and is ground to chum by a passing speed-boat; and/or
2) Assoc. Scalia goes duck-hunting again with Dick Cheney and gets mortally shot in the face; and/or
3) Assoc. Thomas chokes on a pubic hair in a can of Coke.
The Opus Deist/GOPhux rule is SUPREME on the SCROTUS.
http://bit.ly/FalseStatements


How Woody Seezit:
Prez Lowbar was 'selected' to take the heat off the GOPhukkks, to give 'em time to clean up the brand, after the 8 disastrous years of Bushevism. In 2008, NO GOPhukkk was gonna convincingly 'win.' The well was poisoned. The Oligarchs needed somebody NEW to hate more than Bush. Who better then a 'black man?' (Well, a white woman, but that would wait for the NEXT (this) time, when the 'legacy' of the First Black President and the prospect of the First Female President will drive the electorate BACK to the GOPhukkks in droves)...
By the time the election in '16 rolls around, if everything goes to plan, Prez LowBar will be the most reviled, most castigated, most condemned man in Murka, and the Dims--as his Party--will suffer the same ignominy, in preparation for the Great Bush Restoration.



Ms. Warren's a nice lady and she's smart, so she has to know, down deep, that "Big Government" is not the source of society's toughest problems. It is the 'regulatory capture' of the entire edifice and structure of the national government by private, for-profit, corporat interests which is the SOURCE of all our problems: The ol' revolving door, whereby private industry seeds the bureaucracy with its own satraps and salary-men, through political appointments to key supervisory or regulatory positions, and then rewards them with key positions and bigger salaries when they return to advise their firms how to fuck the govt they spend the previous three or fours years learning. Nobody who was EVER an (e.g.) FCC commissioner died poor.

Affirmative Action Ruling Will Further Racial Inequality

Bruce Dixon: The Supreme Court decision furthers institutional advantages of whites under the guise of colorblindness -   April 24, 14
Woody reckonz: 
That's the point, innit? 
The Court is under no obligation to hear any or every case referred to it. The Court selects the cases, itself. This is an inevitably, and consciously political act, no matter how the participants want to try to portray it otherwise. Four Justices must vote to "grant cert"--short for 'certiorari'--to bring a case before the whole Court.
It would not be in the apparent or presumptive interest of the "Liberal" (choke) wing--the Kagan, Santa Sonja, Ginsberg, and Souter (sometimes)--to hear a challenge to a lower Court with which they agreed. So it is unlikely that they would grant cert to a caase that would overturn such a decision.
Therefore, it seems to me, it has to have been four of the five OpusDeist cabal--the Roberts majority, 5/9ths--which granted cert.
And if that is true, they granted cert only to overturn a lower Court decision with which they DISAGREED. I'd make book on the outcome of any SCROTE decision if I knew who voted for cert.

FTSOA: A Democratic "Manifesto?"

Today, on Facebook, somebody posted the following "Democratic Manifesto." Of course, I couldn't leave THAT alone:

We are not against capitalism. We are aqainst its abusive exploitation of workers.
We’re not against religion, we’re against its misuse as a political tool. We’re not against democracy, we’re against the manipulation of the democratic process by corporate forces.
We’re not against the American Dream, we’re against its unattainability by anyone but the outrageously wealthy.
We’re not against defending the nation, we’re against putting corporate interests above those of education, infrastructure, and the improvement of American Life.
We’re not against America, we’re against the abandonment of its values in the name of economic and political security.
We’re not against profits. we’re against profiting at the expense of, and detriment to, the health and well-being of American families
We’re not traitors. We’re not unpatriotic. We’re not elitist.
We are Democrats. This is our America, too.
by Max Jukes

Just a coupla things, here, Max:
1) Capitalism is, by nature and definition, "abusive." It is a system which requires inequality to function properly. See, eg, The Communist manifesto.
2) Religion is ALWAYS used as a political tool. Everywhere there is political strife in the world, there is a religious undercurrent stoking the blazes.
3) Political democracy is impossible, or worse, meaningless, in a totalitarian  economic/business climate. You cannot have political 'freedom" when oligarchs command your every move for half or more of your waking day.
4) No soldier, sailor, airman or marine has died protecting the nation since 1945, at least. The wars of our lives have all been fought to advance the interests of corpoRat hegemony.
5) Re: Profits. See #1, above.
6) Re: Values. Murka's "values" have always been honored more in the breach than in the maintenance --Liberty and justice for all? Really? Ask our non-White citizens about their experiences, and those of their ancestor.
Just sayin...

FTSOA: Won/Lost Record?

However, colon:
Liberals supported single payer health-care; and then the 'public option.'
Conservatives won.
Liberals supported extending unemployment benefits.
Conservatives won.
Liberals supported equal pay for equal work
Conservatives won.
Liberals supported closing Gitmo.
Conservatives won.
Liberals supported regulations on campaign spending.
Conservatives won.
Liberals supported immigration reform.
Conservatives won.
Liberals opposed reducing SNAP in the Farm Bill.
Conservatives won.
Liberals supported VW unionization in Tennessee.
Conservatives won.
Liberals opposed reducing EPA funding.
Conservatives won.
Liberals opposed gutting the Voting Rights Act.
Conservatives won.
Liberals opposed MORE restrictions on women's choice.
Conservatives won.
Liberals opposed privatizing public services, including schools.
Conservatives are winning.
Liberals oppose private prisons.
Conservatives won.
Liberals supported taxing the wealthy.
Conservatives win.
Liberals supported prosecuting banksters for the 2008 "crash."
Conservatives won.
Liberals oppose corporate personhood.
Conservatives won.
Liberals oppose GMO farming, oppose GMO labeling.
Conservatives won.
Shall I go on?

FTSOA: What ERA?

ERA: "Still not ratified."
That's an understatement!
Woody'z once again in the unfortunate position of appearing to rain on the parade.
Never to be ratified! is more like it.
The ERA which once passed BOTH houses cannot now be ratified because Congress put an expiration limit on it. Congress extended the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982, but that time has long since past.
The foremost opponent of the measure in public was/is SyPhyllis Schlafly. Through her efforts, only 35 States ratified, and several of them withdrew ratification, somehow. Don't ask: it was a Raygoon thang...
Now, to become law, it will have to go through the WHOLE ratification process again: 67 Senators and 293 Housemembers must vote, again, to approve it, and 38 States must ratify.
As things stand now, and for the foreseeable future, there aren't enough votes in EITHER House to get the fucking thing onto the docket, and out of committee...

FTSOA: No Novelties Next Time

Woody'z heard lots of rumbling about how the GOPhukkks chances in '14 and '16 are diminsihed by their record of arrant asswholery.
I think the "left" is delusional to think that Murka's lumpen-proles and yokels won't eagerly and vigorously support a "return to normalcy" after the ("failed") experiment with the sochulist/muslim/kenyan/anti-christ.
"Way trodd thet, an' see whar it got us?"
Prez Lowbar, by 2016, very likely will have become the most reviled man in Murka, just because it makes such good press. But it will also be central to the GOPhukkks 'electoral/propaganda" strategy. For the NEXT 20 years!
The same energy that elected PrezLowbar over Bombin' Johnny McCain--visceral disgust with his predecessor--will obtain in the selection of the NEXT guy, too.
Bush V. Clinton is just tooooo perfect an elaborate, oligarchic, practical joke on the country, the people, and the State. I do NOT think the Owners will be able to resist rubbing ALL our prolish, yokelish noses in THEIR shit...
Yer ol' perfesser is pretty sure that:
By the time Prez Lowbar's tenure is run, the temperature and temper of the "people" will be so "juiced" by all the coded insinuation and innuendo and racial propaganda, that the electorate will GLADLY, and HAPPILY, and JOYOUSLY install whatsoever conservative, Christian, right-wing Republican, straight, white American male that the Owners name.
It could be a Bush, or a Nixon; it wouldn't matter.
Just like Obama v. the Bushevik legacy, the good folks of Middull Murka will flock to the "other guy," "Not-Barry," in 2016, whosoever that may be, and whether or not he's a "real fascist."

FTSOA: No Messiahs Here

For almost six years now, it seems to me, folks have been bemoaning the apparent fact that Prez. Lowbar is NOT the "liberal" messiah the moaners had hoped he'd be: someone with 'the ballz' to stand up to the Owners and Oligarchs, face down the Corporatz, and beard 'em in their own boardrooms: Somebody who would, in the words of one disappointed commentator, "kick ass.

The rampant disappointment among former advocates and acolytes betokens what I think is an error in understanding, both of Prez Lowbar and of the conditions under which he was selected.

In the first place, it is totally and completely LUDICROUS in the extreme to believe the Nation's actual Owners would permit anyone to exert even largely _managerial_ control over their "properties" who wasn't vetted completely reliable in his loyalty to the established order and his fealty to the Corporatz State...

if Prez LowBar had been the kind of guy who'd 'kick ass,' name names and make the Oligarchs quail--and if THAT meant upsetting ANY oligarchic applecarts--or if he had even been thought remotely to BE such a person--he'd never have gotten to where he is.

He himself sees himself as a deal-maker, a broker, a "unifier," a "negotiator" (we could argue that one). With his "Cabinet of Rivals," from BOTH 'parties," he wanted (apparently) to portray himself as a conciliator, a healer of the nation's divisions.

No. really.

That's the "legacy" that America's First Black President was supposed--by Lowbar himself, his retinue, and the "community" he "represents"--to leave: One of unity and healing, and of binding the wounds of 4 Centuries of racism; all that "long arc of justice" stuff they're always quoting.

Which has always seemed kinda, oh, I dunno, "naive" to me; as if they somehow expected (or at least hoped for) some kind of divine intervention to smooth away the resentment and even down-right fear and loathing that his ascent to that position (properly) spawned in the hearts of his opponents, enemies, and detractors.

THEY knew that Lowbar's ascendancy, itself, was both his singular accomplishment, and the most obvious signal of the approaching end of "white supremacy," and of "white privilege," and that no matter how much they objected, with their petty petulance, that ship had, finally, sailed: The South was NOT gonna rise again.

Play "Dixie" like a dirge.

FTSOA: Job Insecurity Is Job One...

This extravagantly lugubriously visaged, perverted old sad-sack is Allen Greenspan, former, long-time chief of the Fed, from 1987 into 2006, under four at least nominally different presidents: Raygoon (appointed him), then Poppi Bush, next the Clenis and finally the Chimperor. It's strong, circumstantial evidence that those who struggle to discern meaningful differences between the GOPhukkks and the Dims may be on to something...but I digress...

Before coming to gummint, Greenspan was Aynal Rand's spiritual and intellectual towel-boy, before he latched onto Andrea Mitchell. (They're into BDSM, I'm sure of it.)

The logic of insecurity represented in the poster is exactly the logic undergirding much so-called 'industrial relations' theory, including what is called "structural unemployment." It is a constant rate of unemployment. The economic analysts and planners build in an unemployment rate into their calculations. A certain level is given.

The problem, for the Bosses, izzat in the event of "full employment," workers could and would move with their skills to other jobs if their current employers were to disappoint them. This is bad for business.

Monetary fluidity is good; labor fluidity--workers being able to up and move--is bad.
So, through various expedients--including recessions, depressions, and the like--capitalism builds a pool of "structurally unemployed" workers with whom to (implicitly and/or explicitly) threaten workers with the loss of their jobs--and concomitant benefits--to keep them in line and compliant, if not docile.

Structural Unemployment used to be about 2%, in the boom times after WW II; then it was about 4%, in the 70s and 80s. Since the Collapse of '08, they're readjusting upwards again to between 6 and 8%.
Interesting to note how the number of "structurally unemployed" has risen as union membership in the private sector has fallen.

Meme Banditry: "Get The MONEY Out!"

Meme Banditry:
 
It's true, enough. Unarguable. Self-evidently TRUE!

The FIRST problem: Removing priovate money fom public poilitical action. Some say: "Power has to be taken away from Wall Street."

In the 30-plus years since the ascent of the bankers to their unchallenged hegemony, w/Raygoon, I have YET to see, read, or hear any practical suggestion as to HOW that is gonna happen?

Realistically, there is ZERO probability that any of the current corpoRatz in Congress will vote to do anything of the sort. It'w what they get the BIG MONEY to prevent.

Realistically, also, there is ZERO probability of displacing enough of them to change the balance in the Congress, since 90-95% of incumbents are re-elected.

All the rest depends on that first point, and that seems to be a will-o-the-wisp, at BEST.

But somebody, somewhere, sometime, is gonna hafta come up with a way to achieve that most desirable goal.

Yes, guillotines and firing squads would be the MOST effective.

But I'm thinking that that day, if it is EVER to come, is still many, many moons--not to say years--in the offing.

In the interim, the rate at which sitting Congress critters are replaced is glacial, with a re-election rate approaching 95%, which precludes the "idea" of voting the bastards out--besides guillotines, the only practicable plan.


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=813212912027682&set=a.176326335716346.47428.125842260764754&type=1

As The Cookie Crumbles: "Binness" as Usual.

Woody'z alwayz been one of Forp Yksmohc' s biggest admirers. In a recent article on F-book he poses the following puzzler: "

“Let’s pose that for some perverse reason that we were interested in ruining an economy and a society.” Now, who would want to go and do a thing like that?... The current economic system in America, he says, is so dysfunctional “that it cannot put eager hands to needed work using the resources that would be readily available if the economy were designed to serve human needs rather than wealth beyond the dreams of avarice for a privileged few.”

I think that while it may be perverse, it is NOT an "imaginary situation. We're living it.
The entire telos of the Right--all its components--since at least 1980 has been to destroy the confidence of the "people" in their own political sovereignty. One of the largest contributing factors to this exercise has been to impoverish workers by driving wages down, reducing the Govt's ability to extend services to the neediest victims, and to undermine popular confidence in the economy.

The growing spread between the wealth of the "haves" and the burgeoning poverty of the growing population of "have-nots" is not an accidental artefact of unforeseen and unmanageable series of acts of "God." It began in earnest in 1981, with the ascent of the Raygoons to power. That's when the (extremist, right-wing) Gummint and the national 'binness' lobby, and the Congress colluded to uncouple wages from productivity, and appropriate any and all "surplusses" into executive perqs and generous campaign donations.

To keep the "Consumer" economy alive, even while damming its lifeblood by NOT increasing wages as productivity grew, they hit upon the expedient of easing the requirement for credit. Thi served two purposes: 1) it kept the consumer economy afloat (at least temporarily) and 2) it made permanently indentured servants of the workers, who more and more were entrapped into debtorhood to the Company Store. The official measure of domestic quality of life is the amount of debt any given person carries, and the higher the amount, the "higher" the quality of life.

First, by using tax incentives to encourage the "binness" gunsels and greed-sacks to export American workers' JOBS, and even whole INDUSTRIES, and then by conducting extravagant attacks on organized labor, and later by virtually abandoning the manufacturing base of the USer economy to exploit cheap labor in "emerging" economies, the GOPhukkkers in Raygoons crew ensured that USer workers would be chastened and disciplined and docile. A frightened, nervous, deeply indebted, disorganized worker is--as far as the Bosses care, the PERFECT employee, because they are not likely to complain if they're being exploited and abused, for fear of losing their jobs.

Mission: Accomplished!

Aynal Retentives

A pal from the 'old' days, asked me why I thought the fans of Ayn Rand/Atlas Shrugged --I've started calling 'em "Aynal Retentives"--are so thoughtlessly rabid in their devotion to the writer and the book?

(Aynal Retentives. Ya like that? I do...)

Rand, A sociopathic Soviet emigre in the '40s, penned SEVERAL turgid, tedious, inexpert, mundane, pedantic, sloppy novels, a (ahem) "philosophy" book (so-called), and a handful of sophomoric, splenetic, panegyric essays, all of which celebrated the wonders of selfishness, and spawned LEGIONS of childish, intolerant, narrow-minded, intellectual and emotional delinquents and moral cripples.

What's the charm?

I replied: Remember/consider Galbraith: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

That's the precise description of the "Randoids" and the "Shruggers," which have included--along with the last three or four generations of pre-and intra-adolescent males--such luminaries as the Koch Bros*, former, long-term Fed Chief Allen (Mrs Andrea Mitchell) Greenspan and the late, unlamented Milton Friedman. Friedman, as a minion of the Real Estate industry, in the 40s, invented "Libertarianism" from scraps of  Rand's cockamamie codswallop and a dose of Viennese ideology, to give the vultures and reptiles of that industry some spurious claim to "intellectual rigor."

They are megalo-maniacally devoted to that justification of selfishness, and this has led them to ennoble Rand's risible "philosophical" system --"Objectivism," which is based on the total rejection of altruism and hypostatizing of the "proudly selfish individual."

It's the "moral philosophy" of a pubescent, 14-year-old boy in a position of unexamined social privilege.

I've said before: Ayn Rand contributes to anything with which she is (mistakenly) associated--philosophy, literature, politics: anything--the same ineffable 'quality' which coprophagy--a fancy word for eating feces--brings to cuisine.

For the Sake of Argument, this is the Doc...Now back to Winstone, in the studio...

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I read the Rand canon in my youth, pretty much all of it. And, whilst still commanded by my own adolescent understandings of moral philosophy, I found it quite compelling. I 'believed" it. It made sense. But I was, of course, almost the quintessential example of a callow, privileged youth, OF the dominant majority, observing the world from the position of unexamined social privilege. I got better...

Paraphrasing--Foucault said: We think we know what we're doing. Sometimes, even, why we're doing it. We don't ask what what we're doing actually DOES. Once you make it to that third step, there's no going back.

*The Koch Bros, as a condition of their funding a chair at George Mason "University" (imho, less than half a step above "Liberty U", Bob Jones "U", or Oral Roberts "U", but with a better hoops team), demanded that "Atlas Shrugged" be required reading in the Econ Dept/Business School.

FTSOA: Pipelines Are "Safer"

Woody'z in that uncomfortable position of being, once again, the bearer of bad tidings, this time regarding the tar-sands pipelines--yeah, plural.
The pipelines--yes, that's plural--are a done deal. Their final selling point will be (believe it or not) "Safety."

In the wake of recent train-wrecks in the US and Canada, we'll all be told that 1) continuing to ship this toxic, explosive sludge by rail tank-car is too dangerous; 2) the tank-car owners don't wanna double-hull 'em like ocean-going petro-haulers cuz it's too expensive, and 3) since we're not gonna NOT exploit the tar-sands, 4) the pipelines are the "safest" way to do it.
What pipelines are, of course, is less photogenic.
A pipeline leak just looks like an oil spill. No biggee.

But a rail-car derailment can feature columns of billowing, black, toxic smoke, pillars oif fire, and massive destruction to all around it. It's GREAT fuuking video, but it makes the industry look bad, mush worse than a spill you can cover over and/or deny.

So, the pipelines will be approved an built, not LEAST because Prez Lowbar would rather sell his darling baby girls into a life-time of sexuyal bondage than disappoint even one Oilgarch.
The decision, though already made, will not be announced until AFTER the Nov. 'elections," probably during the 'lame-duck' session before the new Members are seated.

FTSOA: "Pot Warz"

Even WOODY'Z sprized with the alacrity at which spam and slanders arise.
This took three days to appear.
Snopes won't permit us to c&p.
Here's the link...Conclusion: False http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/potfoodstamps.asp
http://nationalreport.net/colorado-pot-shop-accept-food-stamps-taxpayer-funded-marijuana/
This will have ALREADY become an unchallenged fact on Faux Nooz and the RWEcho Chamber.
The story being circulated is NOT satire. It IS political propaganda, though, designed to demonize campaigns to legalize recreational cannabis use, by locating it in the discourse of poverty/minority bashing.
With this story and probably others, now "out there," every and any time the fuckheads wanna disrupt a serious discussion on the merits, all they gotta do is throw this "story" into the heap, and the discussion has to cease. Many who hear such a tale will WANT to believe it. It's called 'confirmation bias..' It confirms their already deeply held predispositions about cannabis users, poverty, and social class. So the conversation HAS to cease.
Because you cannot debunk that kind of misinformation with truth. It is immune to such appeals, because its appeals are to prejudice and "moral" superiority.

For The Sake Of Argument: Holy Claptrap!

Thanks Mr. Smith:
In Albuquerque, I'm Dr. John Konopak, and this is "For the Sake of Argument:
Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson appeared on Bill Moyers' PBS program last week, and as usual, was a rational, erudite advocate for science. This year he will appear in the 're-boot' of the most successful science show in history, Carl Sagan's "Cosmos."

Prof Tyson is a shining light of reason and rationality in a "discussion" which is mostly full of obscurantism, denial, fabulism, and really muddy thought.
(Actually, "arguing" with fundies about ANYTHING is almost exactly the equivalent activity to playing Scrabble with baboons: Pointless, fruitless, useless, and annoying, because they have no IDEA of what is going on.)
Of COURSE "creationism" doesn't "belong" in a science classroom. OBVIOUSLY!~
As Tyson says, they're in two different universes of discourse.
And equally obviously, though Tyson (strategically) refrains from saying so, baldly, the 'discourse of faith in the reputed sayings of imaginary beings and invisible friends" is equally incompatible with issues of law and justice. Neither Christians, nor Jews, Jains, or Jehova's Witnessed have "standing" to impose their 'spiritual' fantasies upon the secular 'body politic.'
Unfortunately, I fear, no one with the reputation, or credentials of a Professor Tyson who can claim the lectern in the social sphere the way Tyson does for the 'scientific' one.
Usurping the mantle of "the Bible," or "God's word" to impose sectarian superstitions on the Civis, the polis, is every bit as specious and spurious as doing so in the classrooms of a public school, but there seem to be no figures of Tyson's repute in the sciences to intervene in the broader arena, and expel the drooling, fabulist fantasists and their Holy claptrap from the positions of influence they increasingly, and destructively occupy in our public, policy debates. And it's a telling absence.--For the Sake of Argument, I'm Dr. John Konopak...Now back to Winstone Smith in the Studio...

FTSOA: No Help!

Thank you, Winstone...In Albuquerque, this IS John Konopak, aka Dr. Woody, and this is "For the Sake of Argument."

As the term of "America's First Black President" winds down, there are some who point with what I judge to be an unseemly degree of relish to the fact that he hasn't managed to do very much for his "natural" constituency--the poor, minorities, marginalized, elderly, etc--who haven't fared particularly better under the Lowbar regime than they had done under previous regimes.

In reality, Prez Lowbar is and has always been hamstrung in the matter of visibly assisting minorities and the poor, because any effort which does do so would be criticised by the Righturd echo chamber as pandering to "his people." So the people who had the most invested in him--poor, black, marginalized--were ALWAYS destined to be the most disappointed. And of course, the bulk of whatever was his "promise" was to the people of color was redeemed merely by his being elected. That, in itself, was WAY more than they'd ever expected.

Both Prez Lowbar and his handlers are now wholly consumed with the 'business' of his "Legacy." It is IMPERATIVE from the POV of the "narrative-of-freedom" and "the long arc of history"  that he be remembered as a "unifier," a 'bargainer," a "negotiator," because the opposite qualities, were they to attach to him, would validate the righturds' counter-narrative: that he's a divisive, angry, Black, Muslim, Kenyan, Socialist, un/anti-American Anti-Christ...

Lowbar's "usefulness" to the poor is and was a public relations/perception problem: If he (Lowbar) had made any REAL efforts to assist the down-trodden, it would be 'sold' in the SCUM/MSM as being divisive, as "income redistribution," as a threat to whites, and as a betrayal of "ALL" Americans for the interests of the 'few'--funny how that's okay when the "few" are white and rich, innit?

I think these critics are accusing him of being someone he never was, and then of BETRAYING "who he never was" by being, in fact, what most of his "leftish" critics knew him to have been from the start: an opportunistic, unprincipled, "pragmatic" corpoRat hack on the make...For the sake of argument, I'm Dr. John Konopak,...
And now back to my man, Winstone, in the studio!!!


Even in the extremely unlikely event that Lowbar HAD really BEEN a Nation of Islam mole and an under-cover bomb-thrower who had skillfully maneuvered his way into the very innards of the white power elite, and was now biding his time, waiting to use the power of the Presidency to attack 300+ years of inequity and iniquity, there was the whole 233 or so years of institutional inertia and 43 previous, weighty precedents to overcome. And he would have faced them alone, because the DLC Dims would surely have joined the rabid Righturds in resisting, instead of the mere passivity they've offered so far.

WWH/CHE Soapbox: On the "JOB."

Hola Hippies, from high (yeah) atop the World Wide Hippies/Citizen Journalists' Exchange, massive, globe-spanning digital Soap-Box, this is yer ol' hippie pal, "Dr. Woody," Dr. John Konopak in Albuquerque:

One of the most heart-wrenching and terrifying videos on the Netz lately features two Orange County cops beating a homeless, mentally handicapped man named Kelly Thomas to death in the streets of Fullerton, Ca. last year. They got the whole thing on video...Which is terrible, and heart-breaking, and pitiful, and infuriating, and depressing all at the same time. It'll break your heart.
The Fullerton, CA, cops just plainly beat the shit out of the guy, and bragged about it.
Yet they got away with it: Acquitted on all counts.
How, the horrified observers want to know, could a jury look at that video and NOT convict the killer cops?
It's not easy, but here's how I think it went own:
The cops who beat Kelly Thomas to death were, in their own eyes, just "doin' The Job."
It's dirty, they'll tell ya, but SOMEBODY'S gotta do it. Besides they're just following orders, even if the orders are mainly implicit and tacit. They believe themselves to be doing only what the people who pay their salaries want and demand of them.
And what the people there in Orange Country, but anywhere where poor and homeless congregate, want is to have the cops keep the rabble moving.
Cops in such circumstances are under instructions to make it "unpleasant" for "undesirables." You got a NICE little town and nobody wants "THEM" hanging around; it spoils the ambience. They're bad for business, they beg, they stink, and piss in the street. The good burghers, their wives and children, and their patrons, don't want to be made uncomfortable by the piteous plight of the poor; don't want to SEE 'em... So the cops roust 'em, don't let 'em get too comfortable, keep 'em moving, give 'em reasons NOT to stop in Fullerton, or Orange or Garden Grove or Westminster...
I expect it's working.
Especially now, in Fullerton...The poor, the homeless, the beggars and street people avoid Fullerton, like the plague, these days, just keep stumbling down the tracks.
Cops KNOW they have support in their community and at least tacit aspproval of their harrassing tactics. It's rciprocal: The same community also supplied the jury that, later, acquitted the killer cops. That's like the ultimate in "home field advantage."
Now, the process is not over; the FBI has already said it would launch an investigation based on the video of the incident.
But local juries almost ALWAYS excuse local cops for excesses like this...
Anything for "Safe Streets," you know?
Keep yer heads down, hippies, and I'll see ya at the beach...
From Albuquerque, this is Dr Woody, John Konopak. Paz, chers...

As the Cookie Crumbles: From Barney Fife to Urban Storm-Troopers

There's a meme circulating on F-Book in which the smiling visages of Martin Milner and Kent McCord in their "period," '60s LAPD gear are juxtaposed with a foto of a pair menacing, anonymous, black-clad, masked, helmeted SWAT deputies with automatic weapons in combat-ready position. Beneath is the legend asks, basically,
"When did the smiling faces morph into these masked warriors?"


Here's my timeline:

The transformation of the police from Barney Fife to Urban Storm-troopers started with SWAT teams, which came into being in the late '60s and '70s, primarily as a response to urban and campus, racial and student demonstrations and strife. The media jumped all OVER it, hysterically. Soon every town wanted a SWAT Team.

Then in the 80s, under deputy Raygoon Ed Meese, DoJ started "saving the Pentagon money" by acquiring 'surplus' DoD equipment--Armored Personnel Carriers, mainly--and spreading it around around to counties and municipalities, free to all takers, under the rubric of the War on Drugs, a very popular item in DC and on the hustings. Every 'Burg and 'Ville lined up excitedly. Politicians LOVE to be pictured with the latest LawnOrder gear...

Both police tactics and philosophy of policing soon adapted to the exciting, dynamic, really cool war toys in the department, and it wasn't long before the standard motto, "Serve & Protect," had become "Search & Destroy," as cops came to view themselves not as members of the community, but as "peace-keepers" in a no-man's land of insurgency. Insulated in heavily armed and armored cruisers, they patrol a sector, not a neighborhood.

This was exacerbated since 2002-03, by the placement of many returning Iraq and Afghanistan war vets in local cop-shops around the country on federally approved programs.

Ya gotta LOVE the logic: Let's don't wait for cops to develop PTSD in the line of duty. Let's hire people to BE who already HAVE it.

Gotta admire bureaucracies: Always trying to save money somewhere, innit, hippiez?

Soapbox: Fold it six ways...

Hola, Hippies! From HIGH atop the WWH/CJE Great American broadcast Soapbox, this is Dr. Woody, John Konopak, on the stump from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Recently, in the wake of the poisonous chemical spill into the drinking water of 300,000 West by-gawd Virginians, Rep. John "Too Much Tan Time" Baner, the "Congressional boner in chief," declared that West by gawd Virginia probably already had enough regulations, and by gawd, I agree.
I too, am sure that 'west-by-gawd' Virginia has enough regulations to have prevented the spill.
Unfortunately, that's not the issue.
The problem izzat: Regulations, all by themselves can't prevent spills, even if you wad them up and shove into the cracks in the infrastructure. That needs inspectors and regulators.
But West BY GAWD VIRGINIA had no where enough REGULATORS with powers to enforce those regulations--and NEITHER does anybody ELSE.
The tanks where the spill occurred hadn't been inspected in 23 fucking YEARS.
NOT cuz they didn't need it.
It's because there weren't and aren't and never are enough people to inspect all the facilities where shit like this might be going on.
Remember West, Texas? Literally...Nobody'd inspected that fertilizer plant/bomb factory for a dozen YEARS or more. One night: Boom.
And that's because those regulatory agencies which SHOULD have been catching dangerous violations have been systematically and chronically underfunded by legislative bodies for DECADES, at the behest of the industries to be regulated, to keep them from interfering with "commerce."
Or they've been colonized by CorpoRatz' influence through "regulatory capture" through revolving doors and other stratagems by the industries themselves they're supposed to be overseeing.
In any case, it's not a shortage of regulations which is at fault, of that you can be assured...It is with the will and the ability to enforce them where the most significant failings occur.
In West By-Gawd Virginia, by the way, in the last three elections, voters have chosen to reduce regulatory oversight.
Correlation isn't causation, but it's close enough for schadenfreude.
From the WWH/CJE Soapbox, this is yer pal, Dr. Woody...See ya at the beach shars...Paz!

FTSOA: Spy vs Spy

I'm Dr. John Konopak, and this is: For The Sake Of Argument...
As reported by The Washington Post last week, the NSA is apparently advancing towards a quantum computer that could crack almost any conventional existing encryption algorithm.
I garondamTEE you, shars., you definitely NEED to be worried!
Because technology is fungible:  if it can be build, and NSA doesn't build that sucker, SOMEBODY else will.

To me, that's the elephant in the room of this whole surveillance/intelligence debate: the most vocal critics seem to treat the issue (in my opinion, incredibly naively) as if the process goes on ONLY within a national vacuum, ending at water's edge.

But: Mais Non! No, Nyet, Nichts, and Ne. Ei (Estonian)...etc. It's not only about "us." It's more complicated than that.

Remember: Knowledge REALLY IS "power", not only in the abstract. The more you know, the more power you can exert. And information is the raw material of knowledge. And data is key constituent of information.
And an edge is an edge...

In case you missed it (the last 3/4 Century): In this modern world, full of jihadis, fundies, Mossad, the Russkis, and Kim Jung Un, you do NOT want NOT to have an edge, ANY edge.
An edge like that quantum computer, fer instance...It's gonna get built, if it can be. That's in tha bank.
If NSA doesn't build it, one of those other guys will, guaran-fucking-TEED, sha!

For the sake of argument, this is Dr.John Konopak, in Albuquerque, New Mexico...
Now back to the studio and Winston Smith...

For The Sake Of Argument: Quim Pro Quo

For the Sake of Argument: This is Dr. John Konopak, in Albuquerque, NM:

As the country struggles, still, more than FIVE years later, to climb out of the latest financial pit dug by unregulated, predatory, crony Capitalism, it's worth remembering that the roots of the recent "Great Recession"
go back to the late '90s, when the Clenis WhiteHouse/regime and the Congress agreed to repeal the Depression-era law, known as "Glass-Steagall Act."
Which was KINDA strange, cuz there really was NOTHING "wrong" with Glass-Steagall, of course.
Unless you were a banker, financier, or globalist...Because it prohibited the kinds of financial manipulations, scams and tricksy deals that got the banksters terribly wealthy, and brought on and ushered in the Great Recession of 'ought EIGHT."
The Clenis' penis was just a pretext under which the Righturds could undermine the LEGITIMACY of any opposition to their rule, AS WELL AS the actual foundations of the people's sovereignty which is their long-term goal.
L'affaire Lewinsky was a SIGNIFICANT part of that project. Distracted by the scent of that skanky pussy, "the Press" followed the obvious, poontang "trail," and ignored what ELSE was going on simultaneously and far more importantly in Congress...
I sometimes wonder if Clenis didn't sign the Gramm-Leach-Blilely bill in a some kinda deal with the GOPhux, a sort of "quim-pro-quo," so they'd lighten up on him in his last year.
That's what it looked like in retrospect.
For the sake of argument, this is Dr. John Konopak. Now to the studio, Winston. Paz!

For The Sake Of Argument (FTSOA): Job-smacked

Hola hippies!
"For the Sake of Argument," I'm Dr. John Konopak--in Albuquerque, NM
A piteous refrain resounds, like a dirge, through an embattled populace: "What happened to the middle class? Where are the JOBS? Where did they GO? When will they come BACK?"
Bear with me, I'll postulate some answers.
As for the middle class, Raygoon's gunsels, the Corporat/righturds in Congress, and the USChamber of Commerce and the rest of the corporatz' lobbies agreed that the US middle class had just about outlived its usefulness. It was TOO wealthy.  So they all colluded to decouple wages from productivity. That's where the decline and fall of the USer "middle class" began.
They replaced higher wages with easy credit With appropriate collateral)...and it worked, for a while... until the time came to call in the markers. That was 2008.
Where the jobs are?
Ever hear of "Elsewheristan?" That's where.
The corporat, globo-oligarchs began, and the Congress and the Raygoons facilitated, the rapid, almost frantic, export of USer jobs and industries to the third world, where those jobs and industries created consumers who are now replacing the USer market, but without all those meddling unions and regulations.
"Everybody" (the MSM/SCUM/Corporat press in the lead) applauded these "inefficiencies" and the growth of "world trade."
But USer workers were left sucking an empty tit. Still are.
And when will the jobs return:
In all honesty, maybe never.
And if they DO come back, it will be when USer workers are sufficiently "disciplined" to accept 3rd-world wages and working conditions.
Not before...And maybe not even then...
For the Sake of Argument, I'm Dr. John Konopak. Paz, hippies...

For the Sake of Argument: Weed DOESN'T "Make You Dumb"

Woody envy's the lucky ducks in Colorado who are ushering in a new experiment in tolerance with the legalization of recreational cannabis use.

The move is and will be criticized as facilitating 'dumb' behavior because cannabis use allegedly induces such behavior, at leasat in the popular, ant-cannabis canon.

But weed doesn't make anybody "dumb."  Unless you're already pretty far along that road to begin with, before your first toke.

I've been a daily cannabis user since the '60s, during which time I've garnered 4 degrees, three of them post-grad, several professional certificates and awards, written scores of articles and hundreds of news stories, taught high school and university, and gotten certified and earned a living as a journeyman carpenter. 

Oh, did I mention I learned also to surf?

On the other hand, I'll admit, I have known a fair number of dazed, flaky lay-abouts, toasted on weed, too stoned to move very far, or with much facility.

My own case is anecdotal, I realize. There are literally hundreds more like me, and there is a large number of very accomplished "stoners." 

Which seems to me to lead to the conclusion that recreational use of cannabis operates merely and mainly to accentuate traits one already possesses.

That is: If yer a dumb-ass, it ain't gonna help you NOT look like a dumb-ass.

But if you're moderately smart, skilled, or talented, it can help sharpen those faculties.

One thing for certain: What mass cannabis use will reveal izzat there really ARE a lot more dumb-asses than smart, talented people.