eVille Times

Nov 9, 2019

What's The Goal Here?

The point is to feed yourself. You need a good meal.

But if you're thinking you'll have to fuck somebody over so you can grab a bite - when there's actually enough for both of you - then you're raising the probability that you both go hungry instead.

I want my favorite (right now that's Elizabeth Warren) to get the Democratic nomination, and I'm going to talk her up when I get the chance. But I'm not gonna shit on any other Democrat in the process.

The GOP jumped off the cliff and mashed itself into this weird amalgam of TheoCons and Radical Libertarians and Mindless Robotic Cheerleader Rubes - right 'round the fuckin' bend.

And for the last 25 or 30 years it's meant the Dems have had to do the work for both major parties. "Progressives" vs "Lefties" vs "ConservaDems" vs "Limousine Liberals" etc etc etc.

If we get hung up on any kind of purity tests or we shit on each other for backing "the wrong Democrat", then sure as fuck, we're going to be standing there with our dicks in our hands watching the impala run away. Again. Don't bring the DINO shit in here.

There are plenty of factions that make up the Democratic Voter Cohort. Every one of those factions is important if not absolutely vital in every election. But not one of them is more vital than all the others.

What I'm thoroughly sick of hearing is the contest between factions to lay claim to the title of "Single Most Important blah blah blah".

Yes, your issues are important, because your votes are important, and everybody - EVERY-FUCKING-BODY - gets that. Congratulations. Whoopty-fuckin'-doo for you.

Now chop the wood and carry the water. Cuz y'know what? If the Dem doesn't win, then your issues don't mean shit. Your chances of even getting a hearing on your issues are less than shit.

And can you guess why? Because you wouldn't work together last time, and they're at it again.

So even when you know Putin and the Mercers and Steve Bannon (et al) are still doing everything they can do to get us to fight with each other, you can't figure out how to ignore all that divisive shit and do what it takes to send the Republicans straight to political hell?

C'mon.

GET TOGETHER

GET TO WORK

GET SHIT DONE

Nov 8, 2019

Gee

...it's almost like we've been here before.

Robert F. Kennedy
Cleveland City Club
April 5, 1968

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by his assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies - to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear - only a common desire to retreat from each other - only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

Today's Tweet

Yeah - it's all fun and games now, but just wait til they've got real weapons and it suddenly becomes apparent there's a bad glitch in the firmware.

Here's more footage of MIT's Mini Cheetahs cavorting, frolicking, back-flipping, playing soccer and generally acting fun and cute, courtesy of the Biomimetic Robotics Lab @MITMechE #robots #robotics pic.twitter.com/8ZQzDvCDVW
— Robot&AIWorld (@RobotAndAIWorld) November 7, 2019

Attempted Normalcy

I'm looking forward to returning to something more or less resembling a normal existence - when not every day is fraught with the bullshit drama coming from Washington and Cult45.

Here's a taste of what normal is supposed to be.

Remember though - "normal" will still be a long way off even after we get Trump out of the White House and a few more Republicans out of Congress.

We have to commit to the same kind of rebuilding process that's necessary after every war.

And war is what this is.

Of all Trump's failings, one of the big ones is the simple fact that his understanding of war is strictly in terms of MeatSpace (tanks and planes and missiles and explode-y things), while the adversary is engaged in prosecuting this war in CyberSpace. Which is of course, typical - the side that's losing is almost always trying to fight the war according to the doctrines they developed in some previous war.

We ain't done yet - we ain't won yet - but at least we're starting to get a handle on it.

And Now This

That idiot's gonna get us all killed

Just in case you were thinking it's all just SNAFU and there's nothing new and exciting.

WaPo:

Senior aides at the Commerce Department forced the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to publicly rebuke its weather forecasters in Birmingham, Ala., for contradicting President Trump’s comments about the threat Hurricane Dorian posed to that state, even after NOAA informed them that the agency’s meteorologists were not aware at the time they were contradicting the president, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The NOAA officials spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity surrounding ongoing investigations into the agency’s actions regarding Hurricane Dorian. NOAA and its National Weather Service are part of the Commerce Department.

According to emails released via a Freedom of Information Act request from The Post and other news organizations, Julie Kay Roberts, NOAA’s deputy chief of staff and communications director, was told on Sept. 2 about the motivation behind a tweet that the National Weather Service office in Birmingham had sent at 11:11 a.m. the day before. When forecasters there tweeted that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian,” they were responding to an influx of calls from worried residents and not to an earlier tweet from Trump.
It never fucking ends. The fire hose of shit is on full force all day every day.

Nov 7, 2019

Today's Tweet

The look on the guy's face - his whole demeanor - tells the story. He's shocked and his feelings are hurt.

I think this guy believes sincerely that he's the one being threatened. He hears the nativist rhetoric coming from Cult45, and he's convinced "the leftists" are trying to destroy everything he holds dear (ie: everything he's told he holds dear). So he assumes he's only acting in self-defense, and he feels even more aggrieved when law enforcement sides with the people he's sure are the bad guys.

And it just continues to snowball from there.

😤

MAGA hat wearing idiot sprayed protesters with bear repellant after a pro-impeachment march in Santa Monica pic.twitter.com/6IwBKzMoxD
— 💙 Koko ✊🏻✊🏽✊🏿💙 (@Kokomothegreat) November 4, 2019