Saturday, December 31, 2016

bye 2016- pre/post Trump

America don’t need no stinking badge, or is it that Bonus Soldiers WWI killing machine, that blacklisting and drug warring machine, that ignorance is more than bliss joint, all those gun shops and cigarette stores America, all those high fructose corn syrup children running for their Ritalin, all those big ass student loan interest rates to the tune of 1 point five trillion dollars, or that America of the mortgage-killing bank of USA loving kind, all of it, and more, America, WAY before the shit-storm of Trump.
-- Paul Haeder
trump-mocks

Sunday, December 25, 2016

12/26/2016 wilderness

Responding to the Trump triumph with insult and denigration, no matter how valid, is worse than a waste of time. It is an exercise in denial. The Democrats lost this election in just about every substantial and meaningful way, not only by running a corrupt primary process, not only by expecting fealty to a hollow candidate, but by decades of withdrawal from meaningful engagement with too many deserving Americans. Any idiot knew, in 2008, that the country was in ferment and that that ferment needed to be addressed honestly and substantively. The scale of Democrats’ failure to do that is measured by the rise of the Tea Party in 2010. The country has been hurting for a long, long time, like the tail gunner in Catch-22, and Democrats have treated only scratches when the body politic has its guts spilling out.


why no one won this election..... There was no one to vote for. We’ve been in the wilderness much longer than we generally acknowledge. Bigots didn’t put us there. Misogynists didn’t put us there. White nationalists didn’t put us there. They all may contribute to keeping us there, but capitalists puts us there, and capitalists will keep us there until we develop more effective wilderness survival skills.
-- William M. Boardman  
so-this-is-what-a-national-nervous-breakdown-looks-like

7 days of Christmas- DAY SEVEN

GeezerNation has no bad news today.
Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays!

Saturday, December 24, 2016

7 days of Christmas- DAY SIX

Well, this is Christmas Eve day, and I haven't done anything remotely 'Christmassy'. We watched Deliverance last nite, and I don't believe there was any Christmas theme in that film unless you can count the really cold, rushing water. ok, I guess the boys having fun in the woods was in the spirit of giving and receiving. Myrna says it best......



21st century post modern fascism style

The thing that will become the signature of Trumps first 100 days is going to happen at the nuts and bolts level. I suspect things, daily bureaucratic things are going to grind to a halt. This is the 100 days of incompetence in the most basic operations of government. Trump will escalate his twitter output, though, and perhaps the eventual Trump library will all be tweets. And built in Vegas.
What comes from all this depends on people deciding to emulate the small symbolic victory of Standing Rock. It does not come from an entitled elite petulantly demanding their war loving sociopath replace the other parties vulgarian and authoritarian clown. This is 21st century post modern fascism. Its only which style code you feel best with. Reject this binary world view. Reject any candidate who endorses U.S. Imperialism and 800 plus military bases throughout the world. Stop all U.S. intervention and stop believing the manufactured narratives on Syria, about Russia, about Castro, and about China. Most everything MSNBC tells you can be turned on its head…and it will be closer to the actual truth. The U.S. is far more guilty of everything it charges other countries with doing. As such Samantha Power deserves a special seat in hell. The U.S. commits more war crimes, more human rights violations, more interference in the affairs and elections of other countries, than anyone else. And we prosecute dissent more ruthlessly, and are the least transparent of any country in the world save maybe Uzbekistan. We have intelligence agencies fighting proxy wars with other of our intelligence agencies. The U.S. is now a massive societal dinosaur. To go the way of the Great Auk or Woolly Mammoth might not be such a bad thing for the planet.

to-go-the-way-of-the-great-auk-the-clintons-and-the-media

Friday, December 23, 2016

7 days of Christmas- DAY FIVE

There was a line for Santa and a line for the women's bathroom. And one woman, after asking me 1,000 questions already, asked, which is the line for the women's bathroom? And I shouted that I thought it was the line with all the women in it. And she said, I'm going to have you fired.
I had two people say that to me today. I'm going to have you fired. Go ahead. Be my guest. I'm wearing a green velvet costume. It doesn't get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? I'm going to have you fired. And I want to lean over and say, I'm going to have you killed.

Yo, Earthlings

Yo, earthlings. Just got in. How is it hanging? I see the dog and pony show is over. And it was Trump by a nose. So I guess it’s oh my God the sky is falling from here on in. Please, stop. If I laugh any more I will bust a gut. Fools! You are going extinct and you fuss over trivia. But after all isn’t that so appropriate. A whole species rushing around in busy confusion like an anthill some boy kicked over. Busy, busy and pointless. What better prelude to extinction? Can you not hear the laughter of the Gods?
    -- Michael Doliner
yo-earthlings

Thursday, December 22, 2016

frizzle fry

a small window into our Orwellian world

Western mainstream media’s coverage of the Syrian war is “compromised” as their local sources are “not credible” and, in the case of Aleppo, not even there, a Canadian journalist said in an emotional speech at the UN.


Tuesday, December 20, 2016

the goodness of our greatness

“'So what are we supposed to do then?' comes the angry cry. Well, one thing we could do to begin breaking this deadly cycle is to quit living in a dreamworld and recognize what the actual policies of our governments are, what our governments are actually doing, and the actual consequences of these actual events. We have to be done with the childish notion that our greatness and goodness is forever being assaulted out of the blue by motiveless monsters who don’t appreciate how greatly good we really are."    --Chris Floyd
eyes-wide-shut-flying-blind-in-an-age-of-atrocity

7 days of Christmas- DAY THREE






7 days of Christmas- DAY TWO-AND-A-HALF

I’d been wandering through an emotional desert for forty years, alone with no one to care for me, and I’d even gone so far as to purchase the gun I was going to commit suicide with. Had it sitting right there on the seat next to me in fact. But when I saw the sign that said “Season’s Greetings,” a flood of warmth, kindness, and Holiday Good Cheer filled my aching heart, and I suddenly realized I was dearly loved, and that I could save the pistol for shooting somebody else instead of myself.

How very fucking heartwarming.


Season's Greetings

Monday, December 19, 2016

our violence

In foreign policy, the myth of religious violence serves to cast nonsecular social orders … in the role of villain. They  have not yet learned to remove the dangerous influence of religion from political life. Their violence is therefore irrational and fanatical. Our violence, being secular, is rational, peace making, and sometimes regrettably necessary to contain their violence. We find ourselves obliged to bomb them into liberal democracy…
     -- William Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict



Sunday, December 18, 2016

7 days of Christmas- DAY ONE

For your Holiday Enjoyment, GeezerNation offers "7 Days of Christmas"

Santa-
he’s in the walkways of all the malls, inside the stores inside all the malls, and at office Christmas parties, on postcards, lawn displays, billboards, digital ads, Youtube videos and rent-a Santa’s. Let that sink in a minute. You. Can. Fucking. Rent. One. You can’t get away from him unless you plan to spend the rest of the Christmas season in an ironclad, shrink-wrapped and airtight deprivation chamber submerged in 100 feet of water off the coast of nowhere in particular. If you’re above ground and breathing you will have to deal with Santa Claus, and he most certainly will deal with you.

death-to-santa

Friday, December 16, 2016

the Truth is everywhere

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.
    -- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
"As it goes, the future as it currently happens is immensely, greatly in harmony with Huxley’s boldest dreams with so little pushback or objection that Richard Nixon must be turning over in his grave. But, why Nixon and why final defeat?"

nixons-final-defeat 

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Truth is an 'opinion'

“Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world — and never will,"
    -- Mark Twain
While the coverage of war in the past has given rise to many daring journalists – Seymour Hersh in Vietnam, Tariq Ayyoub in Iraq, photo-journalist Zoriah Miller, and hundreds more – the war in Syria is destroying journalistic integrity and, with it, our readers’ ability to decipher one of the most convoluted conflicts of the modern era.

In Syria, as in Iraq and other warring regions in the Middle East, the ‘truth’ is not shaped by facts, but opinions, themselves fashioned by blind allegiances, not truly humanistic principles or even simple common sense.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

the 3 S's

Our duty as radicals is weaken capitalism and build organizations that will pass our knowledge and experience on to future generations. If we do that well enough, our grandchildren (not really so far away) can lead a revolution. If we don’t do it, our descendants will remain corporate chattel. Our generational assignment — should we decide to accept it — is sedition, subversion, sabotage: a program on which socialists and anarchists can work together.
    -- William T. Hathaway

carlin life is worth losing



Tuesday, December 13, 2016

foreign affairs

29

I resolved today I would not look at the slimey underbelly of life in USArya, and instead look at the silver lining in the clouds, ...and indeed, a gorgeous sunrise rose over freshly fallen snow, the air was crisp and alive, the sun was brilliantly blinding. Had a great cup of espresso from a perky girl in a bikini, danced around at the gas station washing my windows, sang through the grocery store buying hamburger and bread, ... then came home to the news that Tillerson was SecState and Bolton is Asst SecState. Congratulations to Mr. Trump and Mr. Tillerson,... however, did you not see the footnote on that announcement?

That rabbinally-crazed NeoCon and former UN Third UnderSecretary John Bolton 'will be in charge of day-to-day operations' at State. That means Bolton will run State exactly like Clinton ran State, tied at the hip to the CIA Black Ops in Libya and Syria and God knows where else Crusader warplan, and that bodes great NeoCon evil for USArya.

Bolton will massage and manipulate every communication that Tillerson receives, spinning it with a CIA/MIC war theme, so that Tillerson will be reduced to the facile spox role of a Kerry, reading from a Bolton script, like WTF am I doing in Beijing threatening 1.3 billion people? Bolton has neither the experience nor the contacts, neither the wisdom nor the equanimity, to be in-charge of the CIAs country club caddie shack, much less in defacto control over State.

Where yesterday I was pulling my savings out of broker-banks over the Goldman Mob's now total control of finance; today, I'm pulling my savings out of the US entirely, selling my house, moving to a rental by the airport light-rail, selling my vehicle for a leave-behind bicycle, with a full-fare open ticket in hand to anywhere, beside my bug-out bag, my passport, my credit cards, my laptop, my inoculations records and my TWIC.

Oh, and a comfortable pair of walking shoes. You can never have too many shoes, lol.

MIC IS NOW IN CONTROL OF DEFENSE, NSA, CIA AND STATE, AND GOLDMAN IS IN CONTROL OF TREASURY, COMMERCE, OMB, NEC AND FED. THIS IS THE NEO-CON END-GAME: THE 1998-2001 SOFT COUP-HARD COUP, THAT TOOK AMERICA DOWN.

Posted by: chipnik | Dec 10, 2016 3:59:06 PM | 39

need an ambulance

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Burn the Flag Day

Burning the flag is the legal way to dispose of worn or dirtied flags. Flags are the way politicians wrap their butts to appear patriotic. Flags should be burnt, preferably with the politicians and their butts within.
-- Formerly T-Bear
Let’s welcome our new Commander in Chief by demonstrating how little he knows about the Constitution of the United States. Each incoming president is required on inauguration day to take the oath of office, affirming to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” But Trump proved his ignorance of this document when he recently wrote, “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag — if they do, there must be consequences — perhaps loss of citizenship or a year in jail!” The Supreme Court, however, thinks otherwise. It has twice ruled that burning the national flag is not a crime but a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment, a legal way to protest government policies.

burn-the-flag-on-inauguration-day

Friday, December 9, 2016

democracy is for losers

Trump won the election because he didn’t try to sell the Gettysburg Address. Upfront and fascist in his scorn for the democratic idea, he declared his candidacy on June 16, 2015, a deus ex machina descending by escalator into the atrium of Trump Tower on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, there to say, and say it plainly, democracy is for losers. Money, ladies and gentlemen, is power, and power, my friends, is not self-sacrificing or democratic. Never was and never will be; law unto itself, and the only one that counts. Name of the game, nature of the beast.

hostile-takeover

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

if you missed it; an Orwellian moment

The Washington Post last week published a front-page blockbuster that quickly went viral: Russia-promoted “fake news” had infiltrated the newsfeeds of 213 million Americans during the election, muddying the waters in a disinformation scheme to benefit Donald Trump. Craig Timberg’s story was based on a “report” from an anonymous group calling itself PropOrNot that blacklisted over 200 websites as agents or assets of the Russian state.


Almost everyone outside of the Washington Post who critically examined the list concluded it was at best shoddy and ill-considered, and at worst a deliberate attempt to encourage a chilling effect on Russia-related reporting.
The vast majority of reporters would have needed to see something a lot more concrete than a half-assed theoretical paper from such a dicey source before denouncing 200 news organizations as traitors.
     -- Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
USA Today, Gizmodo, PBSThe Daily BeastSlateAP,  The Verge and NPR all uncritically wrote up the Post’s most incendiary claims with little or minimal pushback. Gizmodo was so giddy its original headline had to be changed from “Research Confirms That Russia Played a Major Role in Spreading Fake News” to “Research Suggests That Russia Played a Major Role in Spreading Fake News,” presumably after some polite commenters pointed out that the research “confirmed” nothing of the sort.

why-are-media-outlets-still-citing-discredited-fake-news-blacklist

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

You have been Faked Out- 3

This neoliberal simulation of democracy, and normality, and reality, is what the corporate media, and the entire neoliberal intelligentsia, is desperately working to shore up at the moment, as they took quite a hit with this election mess. Trump was not supposed to win. He was supposed to be another Hitlerian bogeyman that the neoliberals could save us all from, but then, well, look what happened. The problem for the neoliberal ruling classes, and the mainstream media, and liberals generally, having gone balls out on the Hitler schtick, is that they pretty much have to keep it up now, which is going to get increasingly weird as Trump turns out to not be Hitler, but, rather, just another Republican plutocrat, albeit one with zero government experience and some certified bull goose loonies on his staff. I’m sure Trump will want to help them out, though (i.e., his neoliberal “enemies”), with the occasional racist or misogynist tweet, as he will need to maintain his “white working class” creds, at least until the “War on Islam” gets going.
    -- CJ Hopkins
manufacturing-normality

only love can save us now

truth

What is truth?  Can truth appear in the midst of everything that is set against it?  Can we still recognize truth if it emerges.
Can we be awoken from our postmodern dogmatic slumbers by a stark opposition between true politics and anti-politics? With Standing Rock, we have in front of us a real point of contact with this question, and the proof of this is that what happens at Standing Rock will matter in a very large way, I would even say a “world-historic” way.
-- Bill Martin 


Monday, December 5, 2016

End Game of Corporatist Globalization


“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?"
-- George Orwell, ‘1984’
The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.
-- Frank Zappa
The Western World has now reached the point where the illusion is becoming too expensive to maintain. Alternative media represents an intolerable diversity of opinion and often exposes the lies found so necessary by Corporatist Orthodoxy. Alternative media is, so seen, an undesirable remnant of the halcyon days of Democracy, when questions were permitted, and authorities could be held to account.  Having destroyed sovereignty by way of Globalist incorporation it is now found to be time to further incorporate and consolidate austerity by destroying ‘alternative media’.
-- Stephen Martin 
     

Sunday, December 4, 2016

the Iron Heel

"Make no mistake: armed force state repression is alive and well in the United States. The Iron Heel lives, updated and refined for the current age. It did not simply pass into the dustbin of history with the Ludlow Massacre, the Palmer Raids, Kent State, COINTELPRO, the murder of Fred Hampton, or Wounded Knee II. It has hardly been rendered obsolete by the soft power of the mass media and other modes of propaganda and thought and feeling control, including carefully staged quadrennial electoral extravaganzas that tell people that democracy consists of getting to mark a ballot for five minutes or less once every four years and then going home to let rich people run the world (into the ground)."
-- Paul Street

the-iron-heel-at-home-force-matters

Saturday, December 3, 2016

fly the flag

The national religion of the United States of America is nationalism. Its god is the flag. Its prayer is the pledge of allegiance.
The flag’s powers include those of life and death, powers formerly possessed by traditional religions. Its myths are built around the sacrifice of lives to protect against the evils outside the nation. Its heroes are soldiers who make such sacrifices based on unquestioning faith. A “Dream Act” that would give citizenship to those immigrants who kill or die for the flag embodies the deepest dreams of flag worship. Its high priest is the Commander in Chief. Its slaughter of infidels is not protection of a nation otherwise engaged, but an act that in itself completely constitutes the nation as it is understood by its devotees. If the nation stopped killing it would cease to be.

watchtower