Jun 17, 2013
Show Of Hands, Please
Katrina; Rita; Sandy.
Tornado season starts in March now and Wild Fire season starts in May.
Floods aren't just about heavy rain in the spring any more.
The Maldives and some of the best farm land in India and Bangladesh are disappearing.
Some significant portion of the sidewalks in Venice are now always under water...
and
and
and
OK, real quick - everybody who kinda figured we should be kinda expecting the kinda weird weather-related shit we've been seeing over the last 8 or 10 years, raise your hands.
Pretty good - now - everybody's who's been pretending Lord Monkton and Sarah Palin had something real to say (about anything really - but about Climate Science in particular); and anybody who claimed to have "looked at the Vostok Ice Core samples myself"...and/or stated straight up "y'know, computer modeling isn't really all that accurate - you can make those things tell you anything you wanna hear"... All those who think it's just another game the politicians play because they're all alike, and they just wanna scare us, and those Librul Scientist fellers are all a buncha freeloadin'-looter redistributin'-Commie-Nazi-Muslim faggots who just wanna force us all to have buttsex with Al Gore... all you serious adult smart guys who are now revealed to have had your heads up your asses, raise your hands for me one time.
Thought so.
And do we wanna talk about the role of The Press Poodles for a minute?
Tornado season starts in March now and Wild Fire season starts in May.
Floods aren't just about heavy rain in the spring any more.
The Maldives and some of the best farm land in India and Bangladesh are disappearing.
Some significant portion of the sidewalks in Venice are now always under water...
and
and
and
OK, real quick - everybody who kinda figured we should be kinda expecting the kinda weird weather-related shit we've been seeing over the last 8 or 10 years, raise your hands.
Pretty good - now - everybody's who's been pretending Lord Monkton and Sarah Palin had something real to say (about anything really - but about Climate Science in particular); and anybody who claimed to have "looked at the Vostok Ice Core samples myself"...and/or stated straight up "y'know, computer modeling isn't really all that accurate - you can make those things tell you anything you wanna hear"... All those who think it's just another game the politicians play because they're all alike, and they just wanna scare us, and those Librul Scientist fellers are all a buncha freeloadin'-looter redistributin'-Commie-Nazi-Muslim faggots who just wanna force us all to have buttsex with Al Gore... all you serious adult smart guys who are now revealed to have had your heads up your asses, raise your hands for me one time.
Thought so.
And do we wanna talk about the role of The Press Poodles for a minute?
Jun 16, 2013
Homemade Music
A little kid and his brother(?) just tearin' it up for Fathers' Day.
Back when I was a child
Before life removed all the innocence
My father would lift me high
And dance with my mother and me and then
Spin me around til' I fell asleep
Then up the stairs he would carry me
And I knew for sure I was loved
If I could get another chance
Another walk, another dance with him
I'd play a song that would never ever end
How I'd love, love, love to dance with my father again
When I and my mother would disagree
To get my way I would run from her to him
He'd make me laugh just to comfort me
Then finally make me do just what my momma said
Later that night when I was asleep
He left a dollar under my sheet
Never dreamed that he would be gone from me
If I could steal one final glance, one final step
One final dance with himI'd play a song that would never ever end
'Cause I'd love, love, love to dance with my father again
Sometimes I'd listen outside her door
And I'd hear how my mother cried for him
I pray for her even more than meI pray for her even more than me
I know I'm praying for much too much
But could you send back the only man she loved?
I know you don't do it usually
But dear Lord she's dying to dance with my father again
Every night I fall asleep and this is all I ever dream
Back when I was a child
Before life removed all the innocence
My father would lift me high
And dance with my mother and me and then
Spin me around til' I fell asleep
Then up the stairs he would carry me
And I knew for sure I was loved
If I could get another chance
Another walk, another dance with him
I'd play a song that would never ever end
How I'd love, love, love to dance with my father again
When I and my mother would disagree
To get my way I would run from her to him
He'd make me laugh just to comfort me
Then finally make me do just what my momma said
Later that night when I was asleep
He left a dollar under my sheet
Never dreamed that he would be gone from me
If I could steal one final glance, one final step
One final dance with himI'd play a song that would never ever end
'Cause I'd love, love, love to dance with my father again
Sometimes I'd listen outside her door
And I'd hear how my mother cried for him
I pray for her even more than meI pray for her even more than me
I know I'm praying for much too much
But could you send back the only man she loved?
I know you don't do it usually
But dear Lord she's dying to dance with my father again
Every night I fall asleep and this is all I ever dream
Jun 15, 2013
Dear Mr Clinton
Yo, Bill - shut the fuck up already. You can't get me to vote for Hillary no matter how big you want me to believe her balls are.
I dunno what we're supposed to do about Syria. I'm not convinced we're "supposed" to do anything at all. My default position is that we mind our own damned business, until or unless their shit starts to spill out over into our shit.
So there's the determinative question: Who's shit is where right now, and where is that shit likely to be later on?
Another default position for me is that when it comes to the Middle East, nobody knows more about it (or about how weirdly fucked up it is) than Juan Cole - so it's always a good idea to listen to somebody who actually knows his shit.
I dunno what we're supposed to do about Syria. I'm not convinced we're "supposed" to do anything at all. My default position is that we mind our own damned business, until or unless their shit starts to spill out over into our shit.
So there's the determinative question: Who's shit is where right now, and where is that shit likely to be later on?
Another default position for me is that when it comes to the Middle East, nobody knows more about it (or about how weirdly fucked up it is) than Juan Cole - so it's always a good idea to listen to somebody who actually knows his shit.
Obama seems to be attempting to find a face-saving way of getting a little involved but not too much, by sending light weaponry (which of course is not what the rebels need).My other (and over-arching) default position is that I'm real tired of having to babysit these fuckwads all the time.
Clinton compared what the US could do in Syria to Ronald Reagan’s effort against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. But that covert operation of giving billions of dollars and high-tech weaponry to Afghan jihadis was a huge catastrophe, contributing to the creation and rise of al-Qaeda and setting the background for the emergence of the Taliban. It surely would have been far preferable to let the Soviets try to build a socialist state in Afghanistan, as they tried in Uzbekistan. The whole thing would have fallen apart in 1991 anyway. (There is no truth to the notion that the Afghanistan war bled the Soviet Union or contributed to its collapse. Soviet military spending was flat in the 1980s). The Reagan jihad destabilized both Afghanistan and Pakistan and left us with a long term terrorism problem. We let the Soviets alone in Kazakhstan, and we never worry about today’s Kazakhstan.
You never, ever want to encourage the rise of private militias and flood a country with high- powered weaponry.
Confidence
Gallop put out another popularity poll - trying to discern the level of 'confidence' Americans have in various institutions (eg: SCOTUS, Congress, Military etc).
And guess what? It shouldn't come as any kinda news to anybody that we love the US Military and we hate Congress - even though we continue to re-elect the people who make up the institution that gets a whopping 10% confidence rating.
90% of us say we don't have confidence in our #1 governing body, and yet the incumbents get re-elected 96% of the time.
Here's the thing: We do what we're told to do.
Every time we turn around, there's somebody somewhere telling us every jarhead, zoomie, dog-face and squid is so Star-Spangled Awesome that God his-own-self steps aside whenever one of 'em walks into a room.
We are also constantly badgered to the point of befuddlement about how fucked up every little thing is when it comes to Government - except of course in those state and local rural centers where the good Christian small-government conservative dirt-huggin' gun-totin' real people hold power like an abused and frightened 4-year-old clutches a suffocating duckling on Easter Sunday.
We don't need to be brain-washed. And we don't need to be turned into programmable automatons. All anybody really has to do is keep us a little off-balance; getting us to consider just for a moment that (eg) Niall Ferguson's opinion that "hey, fracking isn't all that bad" is just as valid as the actual research that's been done proving there's at least real cause for concern, and that maybe we shouldn't be turning everything over to The Suits at giant corporations who feel nothing for anybody or anything that doesn't pump an extra 2¢ per share into their quarterly reports.
The enormity of the bamboozle is practically never revealed until well after the enormity of the crash caused by the bamboozle starts to sink in. And if you wanna know what that's like, ask a Russian some time - or any of a rapidly-growing number of Greeks or Irish or Americans or or or.
And guess what? It shouldn't come as any kinda news to anybody that we love the US Military and we hate Congress - even though we continue to re-elect the people who make up the institution that gets a whopping 10% confidence rating.
90% of us say we don't have confidence in our #1 governing body, and yet the incumbents get re-elected 96% of the time.
Here's the thing: We do what we're told to do.
Every time we turn around, there's somebody somewhere telling us every jarhead, zoomie, dog-face and squid is so Star-Spangled Awesome that God his-own-self steps aside whenever one of 'em walks into a room.
We are also constantly badgered to the point of befuddlement about how fucked up every little thing is when it comes to Government - except of course in those state and local rural centers where the good Christian small-government conservative dirt-huggin' gun-totin' real people hold power like an abused and frightened 4-year-old clutches a suffocating duckling on Easter Sunday.
We don't need to be brain-washed. And we don't need to be turned into programmable automatons. All anybody really has to do is keep us a little off-balance; getting us to consider just for a moment that (eg) Niall Ferguson's opinion that "hey, fracking isn't all that bad" is just as valid as the actual research that's been done proving there's at least real cause for concern, and that maybe we shouldn't be turning everything over to The Suits at giant corporations who feel nothing for anybody or anything that doesn't pump an extra 2¢ per share into their quarterly reports.
The enormity of the bamboozle is practically never revealed until well after the enormity of the crash caused by the bamboozle starts to sink in. And if you wanna know what that's like, ask a Russian some time - or any of a rapidly-growing number of Greeks or Irish or Americans or or or.
Jun 14, 2013
Our Mr Brooks
I list a blogger on my Blog Role who values anonymity above notoriety (I know, weird ain't it?) and so he writes under the moniker "driftglass".
He's been watching out for us by keeping a sharp eye on David Brooks. Most of it's pretty good; all of it's readable; and sometimes he straight up blams it into the bleachers.
He's been watching out for us by keeping a sharp eye on David Brooks. Most of it's pretty good; all of it's readable; and sometimes he straight up blams it into the bleachers.
Full of that Yankee Doodle Dumb.
In that dim and distant Whig utopia of Long Ago we celebrated stick-to-itiveness, Jesus, the Torah, lunch-pail heroes, and people who got rich by gumption and grit.
Now everybody grubs for money, people wipes their heinies with the Book of Corinthians, the rich behave like assholes and nobody cares.
Nobody except David Brooks.He's also something of a PhotoShop genius.
Congratulations, you have now read today's contribution to American journalism by David Brooks in its entirety.
And he's half of the The Professional Left podcast crew - sharing the mic with the lovely and talented BlueGal.
Today's Best Blog Line
From Charlie Pierce at Esquire, talking about the new scam going on in Big Insurance:
So, while we're conveniently distracted - Eddie Snowden, George Zimmerman, Darrel Issa's Clown Parade et al - we're not paying attention to another potentially massive collapse.
No soul and no honor.
"Give them a suit with rubber pockets and they'd steal soup."Here's the article Charlie's referring to, at NYT DealBook:
These complex private deals allow the companies to describe themselves as richer and stronger than they otherwise could in their communications with regulators, stockholders, the ratings agencies and customers, who often rely on ratings to buy insurance.What gripes my ass the most is that these boneheads are busy all the time coming up with new ways to game the system, which fucks everybody over, which tends to make normal people more than a little reluctant to be willing participants in being fucked over - these are the same guys who show up on CNBC and DumFux News to piss and moan about how there's way too much "uncertainty in the market place", and gee, if only Obama would just get outa the way blah blah blah.
So, while we're conveniently distracted - Eddie Snowden, George Zimmerman, Darrel Issa's Clown Parade et al - we're not paying attention to another potentially massive collapse.
No soul and no honor.
Jun 12, 2013
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