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...

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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.