The Bleat Goes In, # 3: Some Semiotics

Criminally Cold?

The early, influential French semiotics guy, Roland Barthes, made something of a career of apprehending fleeting cultural phenomena and interrogating them to attempt to reveal the deeper systems of signification they both convey and constitute. 

That the police in the metropolis of Harlan, Kentucky, had issued an arrest warrant for Elsa, the cartoon character from the Disney hit Frozen, in connection with the unprecedented, freezing, snowy winter weather in the region is such a phenomenon, I think. Barthes might have been intrigued. In his vocabulary, the arrest warrant is a symbol of the present wish to dispel winter, but of a deeper awareness and denial of complicity in the complaint..

First, probably,  he'd have noted the ubiquity of Disney imagery in the landscape of our general popular imagination, it's given-ness, and perhaps speculated upon the corpoRat colonization of the mind's collective eye. Eco, too, has commented on the implications of such immersion; he called it "Disneyfication" in Travels in Hyper--Reality.

And then he might have turned to the 'joke': the deliberately comic conceit that 'the weather' might be capable of being arrested. it being a subtle allusion to the charge that is is ONLY weather that is changing, and the extension of the false equivalence, frequently indulged in by the deniers, that climate and weather are the same.

Which, our deceased semiotician might have postulated, could be seen as a trivialization of the severity of the changes that impending, and apparently faster approaching catastrophic climate change than had previously been indicated, would certainly include. 

He might then have digressed: We never tire of naming the elements; to name them, we think, is to exert some control. We call the wind Mariah; now the cold is called Elsa. 

And then he might have concluded by suggesting that--if not the--at least some of the real culprits for the recent climactic plagues to befall the region--Harlan County, KY--could be traced directly to the coal that provided the livelihoods (and identities) to so many of those whom the cold now so sore afflicted.

I know some folks'd say that reminds 'em a little of Karma...We can chat about it when i see ya at the beach. Paz, hippies.

The Bleat Goes On, #2: The Dis-Education President

On the whole, yer ol perfesser detests the current incumbent SLIGHTLY less than his predecessor, on a number of grounds. There is ample reason for fierce criticism of ThePrez.
But, if there is one thing for which I shall bear Prez. Shamwow F. Lowbar an eternal and undying enmity, it will be his treatment of the nation's schools and students. 
It is also that area, schooling, in which he most clearly betrays his servile,corpoRat bona fides.
Obama may have had generous intentions, but he if so, they were still-born when he installed and has KEPT that flaming, cortpRat douchebag, Arne Duncan, as SecEd...
Duncan has been the leader of the swarming hordes of corpoRats, privatizers, real estate tycoon, testing grifters high techers, and other smarmy opportunists looking to extract as much of the public treasure as they can from the country's public schools, to get it while the getting is good.
Under the Lowbarry/Duncan regime, it's gotten better and better.,..
Duncan, a corpoRat lawyer with only distant relations to the nitty gritty of schooling, has been a leader of the pack of jackals snapping at teachers' heels, accusing and abusing them for the systematic---and systematically engineered--failures within the institution. Teachers can no more be blamed for their students' successes or failures, measured by occasional tests, no matter the stakes, than can dentists be blamed for their patients' personal hygene between visits..
For 30 years, schools and teachers (unions) have been targets of legislative and corpoRat efforts to provide the impetus for the wholesale privatization of schooling, and Lowbar and his ass-hole hoops-playing buddy have opened the door and unlocked the safe.
Teachers are NOT responsible for the conditions that produce bad educational outcomes, when the single variable most correlated with school success is the child's residential Zip code. But, by his silence towards Duncan's calumnies, the cowardly President encourages the kinds of arrant nonsense spouted by the 'reformers.' 

The Last Stand of the Po' White Trash: "FUCK NO!" To A Con Con

Sarah Palin and her slattern/round-heeled, drunk daughter, Bristol, are in the forefront of a movement to call a Constitutional Convention to reverse 'liberal' successes in race relations, etc, and roll back Government regulation.
And it's what yer ol' perfesser's scared the shit outta by, if you get my meaning. It is really scary, because it is VERY possible they might succeed.
No, really!
Forget that the she-bear and her twunt daughter are involved. That's just window dressing, to bring in the yokels, proles, and drones. There is a very REAL danger that the Righturds can garner enough support in State legislatures to force a ConCon.
Which would be the worst KIND of a disaster from the perspective of a democratic citizenry.
http://www.alan.com/…/sarah-and-bristol-palin-want-to-rewr…/

Don't dismiss this just because Caribou Barbie and her teen twunt are at the point. They're very attractive to a certain segment of the populace. What you have to remember is that the essential feature of this appeal is the embedded, racial message.

This is the :Last Stand" of White People--people who's first source of identity is their whiteness.
They are going to try to use their (declining, but still substantial) status as the racial majority to preserve their fading privileges by rewriting the Constitution to if not expressly favor their interests, at least to prevent their 'enemies' from using it to project MORE threats to 'em.

See: It's not a "crazy" strategy.  The States can demand a constitutional convention if 3/4 agree.  They need 38 States to convene a ConCon. They have 30, with at least three more teetering toward the Darkness. 
This is exactly why the Kochs and the rest are spending so much money in the states on 'local' elections. Wackloon/cristoid/fundie/teahadists (i.e., the GOPhux) now are in the majority in a MAJORITY (at least 30) States' legislatures. They could take NM; they almost did, last time. Time and Citizens United are on their side. It's even MORE insidious on the state level than in Federal elections, and it's easier to corrupt the locals.

You might think a convention to rewrite the Constitution would be a good idea. And I would wonder at your sanity.  Who does anyone imagine would direct the institution, organization, management, and outcome of such an undertaking if NOT the very oligarchs who have worked and spent mightily for the past 60 years to accomplish what they now enjoy?

I cannot think of a single way to have a ConCon and prevent it from becoming the ratification of the Corporate State.

They need only capture EIGHT more states.

http://www.statescape.com/.../partysplits/partysplits.aspx

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.