Connecting Dots

When we stop caring for each other, it's not long before we stop caring about each other.

From truthout:

There is more at stake here than manufactured ignorance and an unconscionable flight from the truth. There is also a dangerous escape from justice, morality and the most basic principles central to a democratic society. The celebration of brutality, spectacles of violence and the affirmation of torture suggests that in a market-driven society with its unchecked individualism, sheer Darwinism and refusal to think about social costs or, for that matter, any notion of the public good, the addiction to cruelty, violence and torture becomes less difficult and almost too easy. In the age of disposability and despicable gaps in wealth, income and power, modern terror becomes normalized and points to the onslaught of a mode of totalitarianism that is more than an ephemeral moment in history. Violence is no longer marginal to American life; it is the foundation that now drives it.

Winter Song

Winter Song / White Winter Hymnal --Sil'Hooettes and The Virginia Gentlemen (UVa)

Today's Tune

My Traveling Star --James Taylor

Today's Pix

Part And Parcel

You're a woman who did a coupla shots with me at the bar, and you flirted with me and you  were dressed in a sexy-time way - which forced me to rape you.

You're a random brown person who committed a minor civil offense and then you disrespected my authority as a police officer - which forced me to kill you.

You're a herdsman living in Afghanistan; you're a Muslim, and you got sold to the CIA in 2002 for about $1000 because your goats got into your neighbor's garden one day in 1995 and you never really fessed up, and he'd held a grudge against you that whole time; but we'll disregard everything after the part about you being an Afghani Muslim - which forced me to torture you.

You're just a regular somebody who can't see his way clear to buy into a religion that requires blind unreasoning obedience to a lord - which forces that lord to condemn you to torment and suffering for a thousand eternities.

You've got nobody to blame but yourself.  You had it comin'.  You shouldn't have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.  You sent yourself to hell.

It's more than a little weird that the people who're constantly demanding that everybody take personal responsibility for everything that goes on in own their lives are the same people who can't quite think their way thru to the point where they have to own their responsibility for having raped or murdered or tortured somebody.

If I can get you to believe absurdities, I can get you to commit atrocities.

The Lites (fixed)

Where's The Plan, Stan?

The More Things Change

I was all for NAFTA back in the day because I was all for Bill Clinton, because Clinton was my kinda Republican, and he was doin' it right for the right reasons, and blah bah blah.

I was a fuckin' idiot for it.



(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

Ya think Crime-nibus was bad?  Ya think Defense Authorization was bad?  Ya think any of it was good?  Hold on to your hats.

Now maybe I'm just being paranoid (I hope so, actually), but because we've heard for the last few years about how the number of American manufacturing jobs has been going up (aka: Happy Talk; aka: Smoke Up Yer Skirt; aka: Bullshit), plus the fact that we're gearing up for this Trans-Pacific Partnership thingie; I think there's room to speculate on some possible connections.

Obama can strong-arm Wall Street a little by telling them he'll stop defending them against the obvious fact popular sentiment that they're all crooks, ie: "you guys have to make a good show of it by putting up some jobs in key places and key sectors; then we can invite the inference that NAFTA wasn't all that bad, and we can link the not-so-bad canard to TPP; we can leave certain sections of the tax codes unenforced; and then once TPP is approved, you can hit the tax-goodies-buffet again by writing off all the costs of those USA jobs, and get another break when you outsource those jobs to Vietnam.  It's a pretty good deal, and all you need to do is funnel enough Campaign 'Donations' in to the right races so we can make it look close and interesting so the Press Poodles can keep talking about it in breathless tones of anticipation and drama, which makes for some very good Advertising Revenue, which makes for a nice kickback scheme for more nice fat campaign contributions; all of which we must perpetuate so we can go on pretending we live in a democracy".  And that ain't all - not by half.

BTW - the Bureau of Labor Statistics (beginning Feb 2015) will start parsing out Jobs-For-Asians numbers and Jobs-For-Latinos numbers in its monthly report.  I wonder if there's any potential for shenanigans in that(?)

I really do hope I'm wrong here, but I'll be adding a goodly amount of Olestra to my diet just so I'm greased up and ready for the reaming we're about to get.

Like the man said - Pessimism is the best default position because you're always either proved right or pleasantly surprised.

Skeptical Poe

Guns Kill People

Saying otherwise is just dishonest - or straight up deliberately ignorant.



Two things really got to me:  First was Gus's mom being totally unable to reconcile her thoughts to the title of my post.  She insists on carrying the guilt with her forever because (imo) she can't help but blame herself for "improper handling of a firearm".  If only she had pointed the muzzle to the ground; if only she'd made sure Gus had stayed on the horse; if only etc etc etc

Second is Gus's dad saying he's fearful of government involvement in product liability issues because (paraphrasing) "they'll make the gun so safe it won't work".

A string of cynical calculations plus the fear and the careerism on the parts of company employees made it inevitable for these "accidents" to happen, and certainly Mrs Barber shoulda been more careful, but it was a gun that killed Gus.

Un-Togetherness

Yanking the enforcement teeth out of Dodd-Frank: "...Prohibition Against Federal Government Bailouts of Swap Entities..."  That's part of what the Crime-nibus bill is about.

Senator Warren:



Another part?  It allows rich people (and don't forget corporations are people, my friend) to buy even bigger pieces of Coin-Operated Politicians. 

And all of that shit happening in the Wall-Street-n-Washington-Circle-Jerk is very much part and parcel with this:

...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government ... Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Riots, uprisings, revolts and full-blown revolutions happen when it becomes clear that in spite of hearing the voice of the populace, a government chooses to ignore it.

It seems just too weird (even for me) to think about it, but we may actually be a lot closer than we think we are to the point where The Dirty Fucking Hippies and the Knuckle-Dragging TeaBaggers have to stop just flapping their gums about bi-partisanship and start figuring out how to make common cause.

I wonder what happens next, cuz I get one of my truly lousy feelings that there are some very powerful forces working very hard to keep us separated from one another, and I'm not convinced that a Gandhi or a Mandela is even possible now.

Today's Winner

This one (Democratic Underground) wins the intertoobz for today:

Bitch In Charge

Pardons

I spent a lot of time in the 70s feeling more than a little worried and frustrated because  Ford issued a blanket pardon for Tricky Dick Nixon.

And now that Obama might be doing the same for The Shrubster and his VP (Snidely Whips-n-Chainsey) et al, it struck me as an ah-fuck-not-this-shit-again kinda moment.

But Ol' Doc Maddow has some purty decent 'splainin' goin' on.  This is the only good clip I can find that's also easy to embed here in my little blog:



Find more at Rachel's show archives at MSNBC.com.

Charlie Gets It

It starts with what seems like an unrelated event in Georgia, but Charlie knows there's no such thing as unrelated event.

Mr Charles Pierce at Esquire:

Somewhere in itself, and not very far from the surface, either, this country has gone mad with fear and rage. As a result, it is finding sustenance in the acts of official violence, and doing so in more different ways than the republic has seen since we had lynching, union busting, and Red Scares at the same time, back when the 19th century was turning into the 20th. Anyone who can't see the political and sociological tissue connecting the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the revelations of a decade's worth of CIA brutality, and the execution of Robert Holsey isn't looking hard enough. In the country's untrammelled fear and rage, it is exercising the only function of self-government it can recall as its mad brain turns to red fire -- to encourage the exercise of the state's power to wound and kill all the right people. In this madness, race and class are mere diagnostic categories. In this madness, the politics of right and left, of Republicans and Democrats, of conservatives and liberals, of red and blue, are pathetically inadequate to assess the situation. In this madness, the choices are not made within the easy and obvious contexts . This is a choice between barbarism and not, between savagery and not. This is a choice between the national soul and the national Id. This is a choice of whether to take inchoate and weaponized vengeance against the living representations of the monsters in our paranoid dreams. That's the last vestige of self-government that we have allowed ourselves. The right to demand that the institutions of government kill what we fear. By any means necessary, as someone once said.