Tuesday, January 31, 2017

citizens.....

"....we have entered a new era. It was one thing when alternative facts were being peddled by neo-Nazis, creation-museum keepers and the sort of people now able to “prove,” within a day or two of each new school shooting, that the shooting was a hoax.
It is quite another when the president of the United States and his representatives lie without blinking, then admit they are lying and then coin phrases that mock the very concept of truth."
   -- Ed Kemmick, Last Best News

Maximum Leader

"....I am waiting for the crackdown, which, judging from the present pace of events, is not far behind." 
    -- Norman Pollack
reichstag-1938-washington-2017 

Saturday, January 28, 2017

everything you know really is wrong

I’m so tired of being righteous all the time. I’m so sick of being so so so so so so so serious about everything. So screw it. Let’s all be wrong together for a while whilst basking in the sublime absurdity of perfect sovereignty. Welcome to Anarchy 101. Coming soon to a consciousness near you.....
-- Scott Thomas Outlar
a-break-in-the-action

Thursday, January 26, 2017

post-Orwellian

“Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You’re saying it’s a falsehood and they’re giving -- Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.”
-- Kellyanne ConwayDonald Trump’s counselor
This is not then the Orwellian manipulation of language; it is simply dishonesty, lies and bullshit that is a wider foundational attack on the very nature of Truth itself. Truth matters in an Orwellian view of the world, which is why the powers that be work, through linguistic contortions to limit the ability of that truth to be spoken. Here, truth does not matter at all. The administration is questioning the basis and necessity of Truth in and of itself. Under this view, it does not matter that you are wrong or lying because the alternative (accuracy and honesty) don’t matter anyways. The worldview of this administration is one of a swirling maelstrom of views, some truthful, other untruthful, but where ontological proof is derived from power rather than from the accuracy of claims. Orwell would be horrified, for here is a new formulation of politics where the contents of language no longer matter along with the political content. We stumble blindly forwards into a world that is loutish, thuggish, post-rhetorical, post-truthful and thus post-Orwellian.


alternative-facts-and-a-post-orwellian-world

pink perspective

The timing is what’s bothering me.  Something is wrong.  There’s nothing spontaneous about this demonstration.  The timing is, is . . .too perfect.

Look, at least a half a million children die under a terrestrial partition and no-fly zone in Iraq under President Bill Clinton.  He oversaw the strafing of Iraq with so much depleted uranium munitions that Iraqi women to this day are giving birth to genetic monsters, babies so hideously misshapen you’d turn your head away in horror and revulsion to go throw up on your knees.  Of all this carnage, Secretary of State Madeline Albright infamously said the price was worth it.  Where was the groundswell of women’s indignation about that?  Nowhere. 
   -- Anthony Tarrant
pink

I Have a Scream

If you want to engage in “resistance,” resist your own hatred.  Your beloved Democrat Party won’t help you do that. Its leaders won’t admit they lost the election because of their party’s embrace of capital and abandonment of labor. Democrat leaders want you to keep hating and screaming at Trump to “delegitimize” him, to usher themselves (not you) back into power.
   -- Brian Foley

scream

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

the 800,000

The first mass protests of President Donald Trump represent a historic moment – one worth reflecting on so we can understand where we are and where we’re going as a nation.......to dismiss the protesters as unwitting pawns of the Democratic-Wall Street establishment is silly. The messages sent to the incoming Trump administration and Congressional Republicans are substantive, and need to be taken seriously by the American people. Sexism, racism, xenophobia, fascism, climate catastrophe, and the assault on the social welfare safety net are real problems, and those protesting them are voicing legitimate grievances. They cannot be simply swept under the rug in favor of an exclusive focus on anti-imperialism and opposition to neoliberal economics. Rather, all these issues need to be brought together in future rallies and demonstrations. It is certainly fair to criticize many protesters for a naïve romanticization of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s politics. There were, after all, a significant contingent of protesters who visibly articulated a pro-Democratic establishment message that is increasingly tone deaf to recognizing the ways in which the party contributes to economic inequality and corporate power, and resists dismantling the American plutocracy. 
-- Anthony DiMaggio

promises-and-pitfalls-in-the-anti-trump-uprising

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

a Trump dump

If ever there was a day to shit on the side of the road, this is it. Let me tell you a little something about myself. I have never been one to shit in the woods, yet alone on an open highway. But on January 21, 2017, while millions of people marched across the globe, I was squatting at the side of Arizona Highway 186 shitting out over a year of political poison. We live in dire times which require extreme acts. I found myself in an unstoppable situation performing an act of rebellion by exorcising the demons which have possessed my body through my bowels. I shit you not. 
--  Kim Nicolini
personal-shit-as-political

Monday, January 23, 2017

It is only us, citizens

While the majority of Americans are hypnotized by our criminal duopoly, and continue to place faith in the spectacle of mass-media driven elections, the rest of us must begin to organize horizontal, parallel political structures. In doing so, more and more will abandon the illusion that our government is benevolent. This will forge new bonds between neighbors, friends, and communities: it is these new relationships and bridges we must build to weather us through the storms of the collapse of neoliberal capitalism and the ravages of global warming and ecosystem degradation.
--  William Hawes
we-are-on-our-own-now

Raconteurs



Sunday, January 22, 2017

Hail Caesar (the Big Orange Toad God Emperor of Man*)

*thanks to Scott Thomas Outlar for that great title


Salute your solution, now, salute your solution
And I got what I got all despite you
And I get what I get just to spite you


How far will the American Republic allow a Trump presidency to go? As with Rome, that question is for the mob to answer. Even in the 21st century, where travel is now a quick affair and technology has made anything possible, we still glorify masculinity and revere the might of our legions in their worship of Mars. Donald Trump in hindsight is the president the immense breadth of American power was always setting the stage for. A figure who embodies power for its own sake. Ruling over a population always chasing “the dream,” he will offer promises dipped in the gold-colored rivers of our richest fantasies.

ancient-romes-shadow-over-the-oval-office

DC

Lis Be reporting from the Capitol......









Saturday, January 21, 2017

American angst

nobody is smiling. nobody



trump-inauguration-gigapixel

superlative wealth

“This year we find that the wealth of the bottom 50% of the global population was lower than previously estimated, and it takes just eight individuals to equal their total wealth holdings......"
--Oxfam, “An Economy for the 99%
eight-own-half-the-world

Thursday, January 19, 2017

26,172

in 2016 the United States dropped 26,172 bombs in seven countries. 
bombs-dropped-in-2016

system change

"The capitalist workplace is one of the most profoundly undemocratic institutions on the face of the Earth. Workers have no say over decisions affecting them. If workers sat on the board of directors of democratically operated self-managed enterprises, they wouldn't vote for the wildly unequal distribution of profits to benefit a few and for cutbacks for the many."

--Richard Wolff

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

neil

thanx to Tom Beach........

John Steppling

“But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence… illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness. “
---Ludwig Feuerbach
How is it possible to become so alarmed by Trump, while supporting Democrats? Those millions on the street protesting the looming invasion of Iraq must have noticed that every single Democrat in government voted FOR the invasion (save for the honorable Barbara Lee). And yet here they all are wringing their hands in dismay that Hillary lost. Here they are constantly repeating the litanies of Trump evil and never noticing the crimes of earlier democratic presidents and administrations.

trouble every day




Monday, January 16, 2017

hey joe

How Pure is Your Hate?

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see.”
-- Barack Obama, 2003
Obama would quickly drop those sentiments in the interest of getting campaign backing from the nation’s giant insurance and drug companies and their Wall Street investors on his path to the U.S. Senate and the presidency.

how-pure-is-your-hate?

Saturday, January 14, 2017

the Maserati store

Late on a ‪Thursday night in Woodland Hills, California, the recessed lights of the Maserati Auto Gallery spotlight a gaggle of sleek, luxury automobiles; like carbon fiber and plexiglass statues standing in relief, their muscled torsos gleaming, they show off their voluptuous curves, bold coloring, and clean, sharp lines. Masterpieces of human ingenuity these works of art demand to be ogled, to be gazed at, and above all else, to be seen.

In the foreground like in a soothing mural of a city at sleep there’s a man, but he’s not made of paint. Seemingly oblivious to the world — just as the world is to him — the man is sprawled on a bus stop bench. He lies so close to the Maseratis that their cool light refracts off of the storefront glass, illuminating the remaining white of his soiled, tattered shoes. 



Friday, January 13, 2017

Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear

The fact that many of the techniques used in the [DNC] hack resembled, in varying degrees, past attacks attributed to Russia may not necessarily carry as much significance as we are led to believe. Once malware is deployed, it tends to be picked up by cybercriminals and offered for sale or trade on Deep Web black markets, where anyone can purchase it. Exploit kits are especially popular sellers. Quite often, the code is modified for specific uses. Security specialist Josh Pitts demonstrated how easy that process can be, downloading and modifying nine samples of the OnionDuke malware, which is thought to have first originated with the Russian government. Pitts reports that this exercise demonstrates “how easy it is to repurpose nation-state code/malware.” 
did-the-russians-really-hack-the-dnc?

the tarbaby

In reality, Obamacare threatens to become a deadly serious tar baby for Republicans: the more they mess with it, the more it’s going to entangle them in sticky wickets (and forced metaphors). The sensible thing for others is to stand back and watch the spectacle. It can’t end well for Republicans, because they have no connection to the supposed purpose of Obamacare: providing health insurance that makes health care more possible for more people. Obamacare isn’t just an ordinary tar baby, it’s a tar baby designed by Rube Goldberg, managing to provide an unnecessarily complex solution to the wrong question that is only tangentially related to the right question (How do we provide health care for everybody?). 

the-trumpocalypse-is-near-repent-and-repeal-obamacare

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Ministry of Entertainment

There is good reason for Meryl Streep to use her public platform to lament the incoming sociopath-in-chief and to encourage resistance to the upcoming fascism. There is good reason to be fearful of the future. But while Meryl and her peers have been blissfully unaware of the destination toward which humanity has been heading for at least four decades now – with every single Democrat and Republican at the helm – others of us have been watching each presidential administration lead us closer to the proverbial cliff. Actually, far too many citizens have already fallen to their deaths. For the rest of us, the only difference now is that the velocity at which we approach the precipice is merely accelerating. 

meryl-have-we-been-living-in-the-same-america-all-this-time

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

steve earle

Russophobia- danger signs

Anyone too young to remember the House Un-American Activities Committee and Red Channels and all the destruction they wrought ought to study up: We are a few short steps away from both. Russia is not destroying (what remains of) American democracy. “Patriotic Americans” are.
Think it through: This is the imperative of our moment—a significant moment, because the American propaganda machine is now unusually challenged. Its efficacy is no longer the certainty it was during the Cold War decades. My own view, to be clear straightaway, is without ambivalence. It is our minds that are the objects of this onslaught: They are finally what is at issue. Surrender yours to this most flagrant case of scapegoating—hatred and anxiety conjured from thin air—and your place in the history books will be with the ghosts of all the shrill Cold Warriors and cowering chumps of decades past.  
    -- Patrick Lawrence
the-perils-of-russophobia 


foundation, and empire

With the left’s attention fixed on Trump and its fear of the “new” authoritarianism that he is supposed to introduce, it has failed to confront or even be aware of the fact that the foundation for any kind of “neo-fascism” that might emerge in the U.S. was constructed over the last 15 years of the combined Bush and Obama administrations. 

neo-fascism

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

the bunker state

I got through my tour in Iraq one day at a time, meditating each morning on my inevitable end. When I left Iraq and came back stateside, I thought I’d left that future behind. But then I saw it come home in the chaos that was unleashed after Katrina hit New Orleans. And then I saw it again when Sandy battered New York and New Jersey: Government agencies failed to move quickly enough, and volunteer groups like Tekam Rubicon had to step in to manage disaster relief. Now, when I look into our future – into the Anthropocene – I see water rising up to wash out lower Manhattan. I see food riots, hurricanes, and climate refugees. I see 82nd Airborne soldiers shooting looters. I see grid failure, wrecked harbors, Fukushima waste, and plagues. I see Baghdad. I see the Rockaways. I see a strange, precarious world. Our new home.
-- Roy Scranton, New York Times


Despite the coming of this strange, precarious world, the coming infrastructure of the bunker state rejects publicly (though almost certainly not privately) the very mechanics of anthropocenic climate change. So a disavowal paves the way for the reconfiguration of US domestic government into the central committee of the deep petrostate: the institutionalized political expression of the ‘dark money’ networks that have been combating climate science for well over a decade now. The irony, of course, is that the pursuit of the petrostate, smuggled in under the patriotic sloganeering of “drill, baby, drill” and “American energy independence” will only serve to exacerbate, in the long run, the very forces that are being disavowed. In their will to power, the detached doyens of the bunker state play the role of diggers of mass graves.


Take it to the beach!

If you foolishly whack a geezer in Florida, not only do you suffer the pain and embarrassment from the beatdown inflicted upon you by that geezer you whacked (especially if that geezer is a surfer and you are a stupid teenager), you also run afoul of Florida State Statute 784.08, whereas "anyone who is convicted of aggravated assault or aggravated battery upon a person 65 years of age or older shall be sentenced to minimum of 3 years in prison and will be forced to pay fines of up to $10,000.00. Moreover, said individual will also be ordered, by the sentencing judge, to make restitution to the victim of the offense (the elderly individual) and to perform up to 500 hours of community service work."

Millennials and whipper-snappers, you have been warned.


Monday, January 9, 2017

zombie apocalypse

American culture in its current form destines our spirits to a disconnection from the Earth. Nature has become something we work to own a piece of in the middle class suburbs, or enjoy on our vacations. Many of us, possibly even most of us, feel helpless pangs when we see evidence of the ecological devastation our ravenous culture is wreaking, but even at our most pained we don’t feel wounds inflicted on the Earth as the Indigenous peoples do. During the three presidential debates no question was asked the candidates about environmental issues, and we Americans accepted that as okay. We have become deadened, zombie-fied. Now, as a country, we have chosen to elect a president pledged to perpetrate a conspiracy theory, a grand delusion reality show denying that any environmental crisis even exists. Whisked from their busy human bodies, more spirits will go missing, “lost.” The zombie apocalypse will spread. 

Louisiana- “Thank God for Mississippi!”

Across the country, red states are poorer and have more teen mothers, more divorce, worse health, more obesity, more trauma-related deaths, more low-birth-weight babies, and lower school enrollment. On average, people in red states die five years earlier than people in blue states. Indeed, the gap in life expectancy between Louisiana (75.7) and Connecticut (80.8) is the same as that between the United States and Nicaragua. 
The more conservative you are, the worse off you are likely to be and the sooner you are likely to die. This holds even on the county level, Hochschild finds, after an analysis of EPA data shows a correlation between political views and exposure to pollution. Yet the very people most damaged by conservative policies are most likely to vote for them.
Nowhere is the abuse as frightening as in Louisiana—with the exception, perhaps, of its neighbor to the east (“Thank God for Mississippi!” is the unofficial state motto). Louisiana is the second-poorest state and second-to-last in human development, which is a measure of individual freedom. The state’s rate of fatal cancers is about 30 percent higher than the national average. For all its antifederalism, Louisiana is fourth in accepting government welfare, with 44 percent of its budget coming from Washington. (Many of Hochschild’s Tea Party friends are beneficiaries of federal welfare programs.) Louisiana has the highest rate of death by gunfire (nearly double the national average), the highest rate of incarceration, and is the fifth-least-educated, reflecting the fact that it spends the fifth-least on education. It is sixth in the nation in generating hazardous waste, and third in importing it, since it makes a side business out of storing other states’ trash.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

tom morello

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Greetings to my followers in France.
GeezerNation will continue to be an equal opportunity, global disseminator of the American delusion.
“[deconstruction and other French theories] was the gift of the French. They gave Americans a language they did not need. It was like the Statue of Liberty. Nobody needs French theory.” 
― Jean Baudrillard

Saturday, January 7, 2017

endless war

your daily porn- 2

Instead of doing the real job of investigative journalism and holding power accountable, the Western media is by far the most sophisticated purveyor of state-sponsored bullshit on the planet. 
-- Jason Hirthler
black-and-white

Friday, January 6, 2017

your daily porn

The purpose of our press corps was and is to serve as part of the combined weapons deployed against the civilian population, especially those in the “homeland” who have to be persuaded daily of the morality violated every day. On the one hand the population must be constantly reassured that that old disgusting Puritan morality remains the foundation of US society. On the other hand the prurient interest in breaches of that morality must be satisfied. Hence US Americans relish the hymns of praise for their Press that come from invidious comparisons with the media in the rest of the world (especially the Soviet Union/Russia). They need the titillation that comes from being told occasionally that elected officials patronise brothels, judges receive bribes and non-whites in foreign lands are tortured and assassinated. Even the most obscene acts perpetrated by CIA officers or their comrades in other branches of the State apparatus become delectable if served by those whose reporting respects the aesthetic dogma. 
-- T.P. Wilkinson
journalism-and-pornography

Thursday, January 5, 2017

looking homeward

‘Why are we over there?’ is the question asked around the dinner tables of working-class and rural families — the Deplorables whose sons (and now daughters) are vastly overrepresented in the US armed forces. No one at elite levels bothers answering them: the exigencies of empire are not fit subjects for the hoi polloi. Go back to your lottery tickets and stock-car races!
    -- Bill Kauffman
isolationism-is-a-noble-american-tradition

everything you know is wrong

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

clampdown

The judge said five to ten, but I say double that again
I'm not working for the clampdown
No man born with a living soul
Can be working for the clampdown
Kick over the wall 'cause government's to fall
How can you refuse it?
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D'you know that you can use it?
--the Clash




SSNot

Geezers. make sure the pitchfork and the torch are within reach

Last week Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, chairman of the subcommittee on Social Security of the House Ways and Means Committee, unveiled a new bill that would, as he described it, “permanently save” the social insurance program. The key to “saving” Social Security, it turns out, is to slash benefits for pretty much everyone, thus undermining the purpose of the program.


Monday, January 2, 2017

the Phoenix template

"So, Colby introduced Safer to all the top CIA officers in Vietnam. He introduced him to the guys who ran the interrogation/torture centers and the counterterrorism teams. Safer got to see how the CIA crime syndicate was organized and operated. And like Don Corleone dispensing favors in The Godfather, Colby knew that one day Safer would be obligated to return it. Colby, of course, hated me more than Safer did. That is how the CIA, as the organized crime branch of the US government, functions like the Mafia through its old boy network of complicit media hacks."
-- Doug Valentine
how-i-came-to-understand-the-cia


“If we were allowed to understand the CIA, we’d realize it’s a criminal organization that is corrupting governments and societies around the world. It’s murdering civilians who haven’t done anything wrong. The military does the same thing in a more violent way."
-- Doug Valentine 
There was a program known as the Phoenix Program that was established by the CIA during the Vietnam War. The point of this program was to eliminate popular support for the revolutionary forces in Vietnam. The means utilized by those running the program included bribery, torture, murder of suspected revolutionaries, their supporters and their families. Despite the pervasiveness of the program it failed. Nonetheless, many of its architects have lived to fight another day, using it as a model for US imperial adventures subsequent to Vietnam in Central America, Asia and even in the United States.

democracy-is-gone-in-the-usa

buckethead

watchtower