Rockin' The Amplitude

Today's Molly

“Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for.”  --Molly Ivins

Larry Wilmore

Keith Last Nite

Coupla Things

I've got just 2 (main) points about the aftermath of the Freddie Gray thing in Baltimore.

First - when did we become so totally averse to and repulsed by violence in response to being pushed around - whether it's a real thing or only perception?  And in particular, what's with all the pearl-clutching and concern trolling coming in waves from "conservatives"?  When did the Right Radicals start being shocked by violence in response to any-fucking-thing at all?  Last I checked, most of the people who're all so utterly aghast at the prospect of protests turning to violent confrontation are the same bunch who cheered as a whole army of nutballs stormed into Nevada last year on the off chance they might get to shoot it out with the Federalés.  Selective Values Judgement much?

And that kinda leads to my second point, which is:  C'mon now, guys - this country was founded on armed rebellion in response to an uncaring, disinterested power structure that dealt with common folk in thoroughly hostile and brutalizing ways.  We've all been taught that good Americans stand up and fight for what they believe is right; and that there's nothing more noble that standing up to fight against the forces of oppression etc etc etc.  Why are we expecting anybody to not behave exactly the way they've been taught to behave from the time they were in 3rd or 4th grade?

And BTW: Looting? You fight your revolution and I'll fight mine. Comme ci, comme ça muthuhfuckuh.

So anyway, there's only one more question left to ask and it's about something we all know perfectly well (even tho' way too many of us are still too afraid to let the notion filter into our upper cortex), so I'll just say that there're some very real and very obvious differences between Baltimore and the Bundy ranch (eg) but they all boil down to one very real and very obvious aspect.  Simply stated, Freddie Gray can expect to be treated very differently by law enforcement than the way Cliven Bundy can expect to be treated by law enforcement, and it's really not so much that I think we're afraid to ask why - I'm pretty sure we know why; at least we can think we know when we contemplate it as an external thing - something to do with bad cops and the dumb way other people think blah blah blah.

But I'm afraid the real problem is that we're terrified something really bad will happen to us inside if we hear our own inner voice tell us the answer, because it just might be that we expect Freddie should be treated differently than Bundy.

And that grates on our soul.

Don't Look Now

First of all, Keith is again dancing perilously close to the edge of the abyss.  Implicit in the piece is a criticism of ESPN.  Big rich companies don't like it when you let "outsiders" peek behind the furniture.  And your colleagues don't like being called out for their willingness to devote way more time to their hair and their investment portfolios than they spend on actually doing their jobs as reporters.

Second - substitute "government agency" every time Keith refers to a sports figure or a team or a league.  And now we've got the typical (ie: huge fucking) problem of "reporters" acting in the capacity of PR flacks instead of telling us everything we need to know to make well-informed decisions on just about anything.

Wanna know what's killing off our little experiment in self-government?  Well, there aren't any simple answers to that, but we could start with this: Press Poodles.

My Guy

This is from a few weeks ago on one of the Security State Advertising Platforms the networks run on "our public airwaves" every Sunday morning (ie: the shit that nobody with any real sense watches for any reason other than giggles and /or a morbid curiosity about what the death of democracy actually looks like).

So anyway, there's some obviously clunky scripted prattle in what O'Malley has to say, but once he gets past the obligatory pablum that helps the Press Poodles pay for their groomers, the guy gets more real more often than anybody I've seen in a while.

Not disappointed yet - which is high praise from me right now.

A More Powerful Vocabulary

hat tip = FB buddy BD

Today's Wingnut

This guy is a perfect example of why you should always carry at least one extra large condom - when you feel like launching into this kinda tantrum, pull that rubber over your head cuz you're being a huge dick, and ya need to take precautions for your own safety's sake.

Some interesting things going on here.  First, the firefighters seem to be very well-trained in the Customer Relations aspect of their profession.  Good on 'em for that.  I wonder if certain select police departments might take a cue from this - yeah, that may be too much to hope for.

Anyway, second is that this jackwad seems to think everybody thinks exactly the way he thinks.  He says as much - although he pulls up a little short of "everybody" when he says something like "90% of the people in this county would agree with me...".  

And it's really interesting; when the bystander starts taking the video, the ranter first assumes he's in the right and that his exultant righteousness is being perfectly preserved, but then he realizes the witness isn't on his side and he looks a bit surprised because he's been getting constant reassurances that of course everybody feels this way and if everybody would just behave like complete assholes we'd soon be living in the Utopian America of our Beloved Koch Brothers' Founders' Dreams - so instead of stopping to consider the possibility that he might be wrong about something (which is simply never allowed) he flips over and assumes the role of persecuted underdog; and besides, he's in too deep now, so he's gotta double down.

The guy has totally internalized the lessons of DumFux News and Breitbart and WND etc to near-perfection.  It's as though he just can't help himself - the triggering stimulus has been received and if he doesn't respond according to the conditioning, the negative pressure of the resultant cognitive dissonance would cause his brain to implode.

So let's allow it to percolate for a minute - this douchenozzle is loudly bitching about the cost of feeding firefighters; the guys who will drop everything, come to his house, run into a fire, and pull his dumb ass out of a FUCKING FIRE.  But none of that matters because it's way more important to complain about 6 bucks worth of diesel fuel(?)

It's called "Punching Down", and it's the logical extreme of the bullshit policies of Trickle Down Economics.  "The Nobles" have been pissin' on this guy's head; they've got him convinced it's rain; and now they're telling him to make the local fire department buy an umbrella for him.

I guess I can keep hoping guys like this Ranter Guy will eventually figure out he's mad at the wrong people, but...

I've got my own shit to deal with.

Luther The Anger Translator

BTW - that's Keegan Michael Key, and you should be watching Key & Peele every chance you get on Comedy Central.

Today's Tweet

how to sneak chocolate undetected into a US cinema pic.twitter.com/GkBNQFAUV8
— inexorable pride (@eggsandbread) April 19, 2015

It's A Global Thing

hat tip = FB buddy VWE

Some Tunes

If You Want Me To Stay --Sly And The Family Stone

I Want You To Want Me --Cheap Trick

Fix You --Cold Play

I Don't Wanna Talk About It --Rod Stewart

Keep Me In Mind --Loggins & Messina

Rosanna --Toto

I'll Take You There --The Staple Singers

A Family Affair --Sly And The Family Stone

Don't Need No Reason --Jack Mack And The Heart Attack

Let It Roll --Little Feat

Today's Pix

Euphemisms

hat tip = Facebook buddy DR

It Don't Come Easy

Hillary has some 'splainin' to do.

Alternet:

There are likely a number of factors for why Clinton went from a critic of these corporate-written trade agreements to a supporter while in the Obama administration to more or less neutral today. But one very important factor for voters to know about is the role her own personal wealth might have played in the matter.

Because spousal income is shared, cabinet officials are required to report not only their own personal financial data but also incoming income their spouse receives. While Clinton was Secretary of State, her husband continued his lucrative corporate speaking tour, receiving millions of dollars from both foreign and domestic corporations.

I'd like to hold out just a tiny glimmer of hope that this one thing would spark an open and honest discussion about what these trade deals are all about, but I think we all know by now that it's much more likely to be politics-as-usual, and we'll have to hack our way thru all the media/consultancy/advocacy bullshit first, which means we'll run outa time way before we get to learn anything of substance, which means 100 million Americans will vote for somebody whose position on this fairly important policy will be almost complete unknown.

And that's not to mention the shitty little feeling everybody has that there's a buncha stuff in TPP that has nothing to do with trade.

We might get a good look at how adept Hillary has become.  I'm not giving her a lotta props yet because she still sounds pretty clunky to me, but if she can manage a turn-around on this one and make something good for herself out of it, I'm willing to lay off a little.

God Love Charlie Pierce

From his weekly piece on what's happenin' out there in the several states:

Kansas, the national biohazard lab for infectious stupidity

Dismantling

NOLA.com:

LSU and many other public colleges in Louisiana might be forced to file for financial exigency, essentially academic bankruptcy, if state higher education funding doesn't soon take a turn for the better.

Louisiana's flagship university began putting together the paperwork for declaring financial exigency this week when the Legislature appeared to make little progress on finding a state budget solution, according to F. King Alexander, president and chancellor of LSU.

"We don't say that to scare people," he said. "Basically, it is how we are going to survive."

Moody's Investors Service also announced this month that it was lowering LSU's credit outlook from positive to stable based on concerns about the university's overall financial support. The lowering of LSU's credit rating makes it more likely the university will have to pay more for its building projects in the future.

This kinda crap doesn't happen by accident, kids.  Try to resist thinking Jindal and his Client Cronies aren't doing this on purpose. LSU is a prestigious joint, which makes it a valuable property, which means it should be awarded to a Corporate Friend who'll take it under his benevolent wing and blah blah blah.

And in case anybody needed the reminder, LSU was very much up front about calling out BP for the Deep Water Horizon fuck up - along with any number of other monumentally shitty things that go on in Louisiana in the name of freedom and Unfettered Market Economics.

So let's see if we can identify the basics here - your Environmental Science guys get all uppity about how Big Petro-Chem is making it next to impossible for actual human-type people to live anywhere near The Gulf, so what we'll do is buy lotsa face-time with a yokel governor who wants to run for president, and trade him a pile of campaign cash for looking the other way while we also pour money into the pockets of state legislators (not to mention  US Senators & Representatives) so we can cut the school's budget to the point of no return - and then use that little bit of convenient leverage to get our buddies at Moody's to put the squeeze on their credit - all of which drives the price down to where we can swoop in and "rescue" the failing failure from the failures of the failing eggheads who've failed utterly in their failed efforts to make all of God's America fail.  And before ya know it, our schools will be turning out good wholesome young academics who know the real value of a dollar and who won't be having their minds poisoned with all that boring science-y stuff, which everybody knows is the devil's propaganda anyway.

We are so fucked.

Big Gulp

Marco "Big Gulp" Rubio (see tengrain at MockPaperScissors) gives us the standard smarmy dodges when asked about Climate Change ("hey, the climate's always changing - what's the big deal?").  That one's bad enough, but the real fun starts when he kicks in on Marriage Equality (at about :45).

And here's the smarminess revealed thru translation:  Marriage (ie; Civil Rights) can be regulated (ie: Denied) by the states.  

For just a moment, let's disregard Big Gulp's total abandonment of a GOP Article of Faith - Thou shalt not regulate - and focus on the fact that he bails on the question with the  typical States' Rights bullshit.  He's saying the individual states have the authority to deny equal protection under the law.  Of course, that's not really news because it's also a GOP Article of Faith that they get to fuck people over at the state and local levels, which they've been doing (whenever they're in power) for a very long time.  And they get to do that again now because they own most of the governments at the lower levels, so they're right back to playing the Nullification card, saying the Federal Gov't ain't the boss of me; you're not my real gubmint - I can do what I want.

But then again, he's not abandoning anything - nobody in the GOP has any more distaste for Regulation than any other Ruler Wanna-Be; they're perfectly down with regulating, but they lie about it by calling it exactly the opposite.  Anyway, he's just turning it inside out, and then he's giving the rubes a little language massage that helps ease the pain of all that Cognitive Dissonance.

Repubs fully intend to regulate the fuck out of like-gender marriage while pretending that that kind of regulation doesn't actually reinforce the Wingnut Notion that a government has the power to restrict everybody's rights for any reason the government pulls out of its ass at any given moment.  So they hafta disguise it.  They Orwellian-ize it - The Freedom To Buy Puppies For Your Grandkids Act.  That should do it - let's see those stupid libtards vote against that one.

In the end tho', it's just distraction.  We need to be given something to argue about so we won't be paying attention to how all this connects up with why it seems we can't figure out some way to deal with the world that doesn't involve bombing every fucking thing in sight.  And why every police and sheriff's department here at home looks and acts exactly like the US military looks and acts everywhere else in the world.

This is what creeping authoritarianism looks like once it gets up on its hind legs.  This is the transition from Nanny State to Daddy State to Bully State.

hat tip = LK

Happy Earth Day

It ain't easy - nothing really worth doing is ever particularly easy.  First, you pick a day; you commit to it; and then you get yourself off of that stoopid fucking merry-go-round.

It can majorly suck at first, but almost before you know it, lotsa things have gotten better, you're saving money, and c'mon - there really isn't anything more important for us to be doing, is there?

Be nice to your mom - she's the only one ya got.