Today's Quote

"America is a complicated, conflicted country founded by Puritans, constituted by libertarians and built by salesmen."

– Mark Simpson

Today's Tweet

.@HasanMinhaj @alikrieger @beckysauerbrunn @hopesolo on soccer's pay gap https://t.co/Z6prgL1KVd #EqualPlayEqualPayhttps://t.co/klQk75dkK8

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) May 7, 2016

Coupla Toons

Quietly Friday

Pavane, Op 50 --Gariel Fauré

Pavane For A Dead Princess --Maurice Ravel

(see if you can hear The Beatles in this one - hint: And I Love Her)

Marriage D'Amour --Richard Clayderman

Adagio in G Minor --Tomaso Albinoni

Nocturne in E Flat Major --Frederic Chopin

Romance for Piano and Violin --Anton Dvorak

Solace --Scott Joplin

Today's GIF

Today's Nostalgia

The more things change, the more they stay the same?

It shouldn't come as a big surprise that people start thinking in terms of "vast conspiracies" when the things most of us want to see change don't change.

Today's Tweet

The moon, saving our asses. Never Forget. pic.twitter.com/5FEQA6wEEX

— Learn Everyday (@CoolestLifeHack) April 24, 2016

Sometimes, it's easier to feel a little more charitable towards people who need to see "the hand of god at work".

But ya gotta confine your desire to apply that shit to the stuff you choose to know nothing about, and stop trying to shoe-horn god into the things that the nerds have already figured out.

Nerds rock, baby.  Love the nerds.

Today's Pix

Keep It In Mind

At this point, Hillary looks a lot like a shoe-in.  And that's bad news if she doesn't make a solid case for moving people out to the polls anyway in order to boost the down-ballot support that she has to have if she's gonna get anything done.

Hillary in the White House without significant gains in Congress means more of the same - and here's why:

Sam Geduldig, a former senior aide to John Boehner, is now a lobbyist, and argues that a Clinton victory is not necessarily a worst-case scenario for Republicans. “An independent conservative running could actually help the House and Senate,” he said in an email. “It means Clinton definitely wins, so it could depress Democratic turnout in places like Illinois. So the Trump people help Mark Kirk, the [placeholder] people help Kirk, Democrats might not turn out because Clinton wins (Illinois) easily and we hold the Senate. Then in 2018 there’ll likely be a wave of anti-Hillary energy and we’ll run up huge majorities in her first midterm. Leading to a favorable redistricting process in 2020.”

The Yearnin' For The Bern ain't dead - keep pushing, guys - but remember that you don't always get everything you want, and that you don't stop supporting what Bernie stands for just because Bernie's not the candidate anymore.  Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.

If we want Hillary to move on any of Bernie's ideas, we'd best be hammerin' on her from the start.  We get her attention by making it known that we're working to support her because we have a reasonable expectation of getting more than the occasional bone tossed our way once we put her ass in the Oval Office.

Read that Geduldig quote again - the long game is the only one that works here, kids. Get in it and stay in it.  

Stop thinking you can hire a President and go back to sleep for another four years.  This is supposed to be a democracy, which requires direct participation - it's not some shit you just watch on TV.

Stay together. Work together. Get shit done.

A Day Late

I spent so much time yesterday casting about for something to post, that I plumb forgot it was National Teacher Appreciation Day.

Here's a bit from Tim Wise (fast becoming my favorite social critic) from earlier this year. He's trying to throw some light on the facts of "education" here in USAmerica Inc these days.

My main takeaway is that we have to stop thinking the people in charge are stoopid and that they're making stoopid decisions.  The decisions are made and policies are put in place for specific reasons - and those policies are working almost exactly as intended.

And BTW - here's the Jefferson quote:

This bill proposes to lay off every county into small districts of five or six miles square, called hundreds, and in each of them to establish a school for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. The tutor to be supported by the hundred, and every person in it entitled to send their children three years gratis, and as much longer as they please, paying for it. These schools to be under a visitor [i.e., superintendent], who is annually to choose the boy of best genius in the school, of those whose parents are too poor to give them further education, and to send him forward to one of the grammar schools [high schools, in effect] of which twenty are proposed to be erected in different parts of [Virginia], for teaching Greek, Latin, geography, and the higher branches of numerical arithmetic. Of the boys thus sent in any one year, trial is to be made at the grammar schools one or two years, and the best genius of the whole selected, and continued six years, and the residue dismissed. By this means twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually, and be instructed, at the public expence, so far as the grammar schools go.

Tommy Jeff was cool enough, but I have no doubt he was a man of his times; an elitist with a bit of a conscience, but an elitist nonetheless.