Tuesday, February 28, 2017

take that, dipshit moron nation!

.....it was all a coastal hoax designed to mock and humiliate Middle America, make a hideous caricature out of the seedy family values underbelly, and erode dipshit moron voting power for good.
Godbotherers and gunlovers never saw it coming. The accused rapist’s trainwreck campaign and unexpected presidency had all just been footage for his latest blockbuster reality show. Ultimately weaponizing the crudest stereotypes of dispirited yokels’ primitive faith and ideology back against them.
Trojan Trump: Candid Candidate. The first and worst of its kind: surreality TV.
   -- Abel Cohen

america-never-saw-it-coming

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Church of America the Redeemer

"[David Brooks] true allegiance is not to conservatism as such, but to the Church of America the Redeemer.  This is a virtual congregation, albeit one possessing many of the attributes of a more traditional religion.  The Church has its own Holy Scripture, authenticated on July 4, 1776, at a gathering of 56 prophets.  And it has its own saints, prominent among them the Good Thomas Jefferson, chief author of the sacred text (not the Bad Thomas Jefferson who owned and impregnated slaves); Abraham Lincoln, who freed said slaves and thereby suffered martyrdom (on Good Friday no less); and, of course, the duly canonized figures most credited with saving the world itself from evil: Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, their status akin to that of saints Peter and Paul in Christianity.  The Church of America the Redeemer even has its own Jerusalem, located on the banks of the Potomac, and its own hierarchy, its members situated nearby in High Temples of varying architectural distinction."
    -- Andrew Bacevich
altar-of-american-greatness

the Realist

the complete archive:


realist

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Friday, February 24, 2017

"seriously, global warming is a hoax"

Temperatures soared past the 100 degree mark at several stations in southern Texas on Thursday, flirting with the all-time U.S. temperature record for February. 

Here are the 100°F readings in Texas from from February 23 as recorded in the NOAA Weather and Hazards Viewer

107°F at Falcon Lake RAWS
105°F at Falcon Lake COOP (APRSWXNET/CWOP)
102°F in Atlee
102°F in Dilley
101°F at Zapata
100°F at Faith Ranch Airport
100°F at Cotulla
100°F - 101°F at three stations in McAllen
101°F at Laredo

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

cj hopkins

All joking aside, the prevailing mindset of the ruling classes, and those aspiring thereto, is more frightening than at any time I can remember. “The Resistance” is exhibiting precisely the type of mindlessly fascistic, herd-like behavior it purports to be trying to save us from. Yes, the mood in Resistance quarters has turned quite openly authoritarian. 
[there are more] sickening examples. The point is, millions of American citizens (as well as citizens of other countries) are prepared to support a deep state coup to remove the elected president from office … and it doesn’t get much more fascistic than that.

Monday, February 20, 2017

Jack White is insane

Flynn- the summary

We find ourselves in the midst of a “newsgasm,” a kind of press orgy where the media spends 23 hours and 45 minutes a day obsessing on Flynn, while giving 2 minutes, maybe, to mass deportation raids or the fact that a chunk of ice the size of Manhattan just broke away from Antarctica. Yet even with all of that wall-to-wall coverage the meaning of the scandal remains elusive.
Let’s summarize the story to date, with a cautionary note that almost all of the incriminating information comes from anonymous leaks by US intelligence sources hostile to both Trump and Flynn that were leaked to reporters who are slavishly tracking Trump’s trail of scandal, the surest path to career advancement. 
   --- Jeffrey St. Clair
tinker-tailor-soldier-flynn

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Left Coast Dating

Check the boxes below and find your agave:


Politics:
___Trump — I’d rather put a gun barrel in my mouth.
___Trump — I’d rather put a gun barrel in — “US Secret Service, may we speak with you?”


Age:
___I’m 8 in dog years though, strangely, my dog is still more mature.
___My chronological age is 52 but my chakra vibrates at a jailbait-y 16.
___It’s just a number — a number you’re not going to like.


Diet:
___Rooted in the dirt
___Dangling from a tree
___Anything that moves


Exercise:
___I sat on my ass for the last eight years, maybe it’s time to do something.
___Does throwing Molotov cocktails burn many calories?
___I like to hike to the top of the mountain and take selfies while looking into the deplorable abyss between NYC and LA.


the DeepShit

I know no reason to trust the CIA and other intelligence agencies any more than we trust Trump
   -- David Price
rogue-elephant-cia-as-kingslayer

Friday, February 17, 2017

a not so slow apocalypse

This is the dreaded scenario: 
Fed up with Pakistan’s persistent meddling and incursions into Kashmir, and ignoring the pleas of the U.S. and the rest of the world, India unleashes its long awaited invasion of Pakistan. The mighty Indian army crosses the border in Punjab and proceeds to wipe the floor with outmanned and outgunned Pakistani soldiers.
To the horror of everyone, we find out that the rumors were true, that Pakistani field officers with the rank of full colonel or general have been given the authority to use tactical nukes at their own discretion—to use them in the face of “overwhelming and superior forces.” And use them they do. 
is-this-how-the-world-ends?

a slow apocalypse

Continuous, intense radiation, at 530 sieverts an hour (4 sieverts is a lethal level), was widely reported in early February 2017 – as if this were a new phenomenon. It’s not. Three reactors at Fukushima melted down during the earthquake-tsunami disaster on March 3, 2011, and the meltdowns never stopped. Radiation levels have been out of control ever since. 
fukushima-still-getting-worse

deception

“Through their control of the media, political and bureaucratic systems, America’s secret rulers engage in terrorism abroad and at home for economic purposes. . . . The objective is to maximize profits and concentrate wealth and political power in fewer and fewer hands. The global War on Terror and its domestic homeland security counterpart are flip sides of the same coin. They are the capitalist ideology applied to foreign and domestic security policy. And like the capitalist system it serves, an unstated national security policy is consolidated in fewer and fewer ideologically correct hands as the empire expands and its contradictions become more apparent."
-- Douglas Valentine
So here’s my “conspiracy theory” du jour, with a shout-out to the CIA for the invention of that demeaning, self-deprecating phrase:  Donald Trump was the chosen one. Hillary’s fall was carefully and thoughtfully orchestrated. The U.S.A. is screwed, without so much as a kiss.
-- John Rohn Hall 
trumped-by-the-cia

Thursday, February 16, 2017

"global warming is a hoax"

One especially strong pulse of warm air jet pushed across the Southern Rockies and into the South from Friday into Sunday (Feb 10/11). As the already-mild air descended the Rockies, it warmed further due to downslope compression, leading to some eye-popping readings. Several stations in southwest Oklahoma soared into the upper 90s on Saturday. The town of Magnum hit an astounding-for-February 99°F, which tied the state record for any winter month (Dec/Jan/Feb).

this-is-february-99-in-oklahoma

Albion NY, 1966

Yep. The good ol' days........the Humans formed in the summer of 1964 in Albion, New York, twenty miles north of Batavia and not far from Rochester.
The Humans


thanx to r. beatty, b. kauffman

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

spectator democracy

.....let’s face it: Trump is a dangerously narcissistic and sociopathic individual, wildly unsuited to be running a country that has the capability to destroy the earth many times over, whether militarily or by rampaging climate change. And Gen. Flynn was a nut job who was pushing for a US confrontation with Iran. How could the downfall of such whackos, and hopefully chief political advisor Steve Bannon, be a bad thing?
Well, if the manner in which they’re brought to heel is by having secret government forces such as the intelligence services, which are unanswerable to anyone and which, clearly, have dirt on everyone, making them effectively immune from criticism and democratic control, handle the job, that means that we no longer live in anything approaching a democracy. It’s all just secret power games among elites in Washington, with the American people as simply spectators.

a belated happy St. Valentine's

Dirty Love
Frank Zappa


Give me
Your dirty love
Like you might surrender
To some dragon in your dreams
Give me
Your dirty love
Like a pink donation
To the dragon in your dreams

I don't need your sweet devotion
I don't want your cheap emotion
Just whip me up some dragon lotion
For your dirty love

Give me
Your dirty love
Like some tacky little pamphlet
In your daddy's bottom drawer
Give me
Your dirty love
I don't believe you have ever seen
That book before

I don't need no consolation
I don't want your reservation
I only got one destination
An' that's your dirty love

Give me
Your dirty love
Just like your mama
Make her fuzzy poodle do
Give me
Your dirty love
The way your mama
Make that nasty poodle chew

I'll ignore your cheap aroma
And your little-bo-peep diploma
I'll just put you in a coma
With some dirty love

THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Snap it!)
THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Snap it!)





Tuesday, February 14, 2017

gun stocks soar!

Florida’s current Stand Your Ground Law, initially enacted in 2005, permits individuals to utilize deadly force in self-defense, without any obligation to retreat. Under the current law, individuals who use deadly force must defend their use of it under the law before trial.

On February 7, a bill proposed by NRA backed Florida State Senator Rob Bradley (R-Fleming) that would expand the Stand Your Ground law passed the Judiciary Committee by a 5-4 vote along party lines. The bill would shift the responsibility to the prosecution for why an individual “beyond a reasonable doubt” are not eligible to claim immunity under the law.

church lady

Monday, February 13, 2017

fuck work

Work means everything to us Americans. For centuries – since, say, 1650 – we’ve believed that it builds character (punctuality, initiative, honesty, self-discipline, and so forth). We’ve also believed that the market in labour, where we go to find work, has been relatively efficient in allocating opportunities and incomes. And we’ve believed that, even if it sucks, a job gives meaning, purpose and structure to our everyday lives – at any rate, we’re pretty sure that it gets us out of bed, pays the bills, makes us feel responsible, and keeps us away from daytime TV.
These beliefs are no longer plausible. In fact, they’ve become ridiculous, because there’s not enough work to go around, and what there is of it won’t pay the bills – unless of course you’ve landed a job as a drug dealer or a Wall Street banker, becoming a gangster either way.
enough already. Fuck work.
-- James Livingston
what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but-the-problem?

state of the Nation

....many have lashed out against the system, and our more vulnerable members of society, in anger, defiance, out of sheer ignorance. Could it be because, deep down, we know how helpless, sheltered, and out-of-touch our society is, compared to the rest of the world? What are the root causes of this disintegration of public discourse?
One cause is our utter dependency on the capitalist system to clothe, feed, and shelter us. What we used to inherit from our mothers and fathers, important agricultural knowledge, artisanal and cultural wisdom, a sense of place and belonging, have all been traded in for money, the privilege to be exploited by capitalism, toiling in jobs that alienate us from ourselves, families, the Earth. Paper bills and electronic bank accounts are a pitiful substitute for self-reliance. This loss, this grief, isn’t allowed to be expressed in public. Logical positivism tells us that progress will prevail, the future will be better than the past, and anyone who thinks otherwise must be some sort of Luddite.

    -- William Hawes
something-is-happening 

Sunday, February 12, 2017

GY!BE gathering storm

PTSD

For almost two decades, I worked as a journalist in Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba and the West Bank. I conducted most of my work in Colombia where I spent 13 years investigating the US war on drugs and the armed conflict. My primary motivation, as a US citizen, was a desire to make the US public aware of the foreign policies of its government. To that end, I would spend a couple of months each year in Colombia’s rural conflict zones where I encountered many facets of the war. And it was during those years that much of the trauma that resulted in my PTSD occurred. But while I was working in Colombia the thought of being affected by PTSD never entered my mind. I certainly was not aware of the fact that 29 percent of journalists working in war zones become afflicted with the disorder
    -- Garry Leech
the-ghosts-within

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Mandolin Orange

thanx to R. Beatty



the way of all flesh

ed. note:  the following is rather harsh, but is also right on.....

 Meat eaters, humane slaughter only exists in your weak-ass immature revolting cowardly minds. Life on earth isn’t compatible with your insatiable hunger for the flesh of the 100 billion land animals that are raised and killed worldwide each year, to say nothing of your voracious strip-mining of the seas. All you left wing meat eating poseur “environmentalists” are just like the right wing barbarians that you hate and think you’re superior to. You can go straight to the fucking hell that you’re making of the world: the waste of resources to feed, water, heat, cool, transport and “process” your victims, the desertification caused by overgrazing, the wearing out of the soil with chemical fertilizers and pesticides because most of the crops grown aren’t eaten by people, the rivers and streams polluted by the waste of veritable animal cities, the 136 million acres of rainforest cleared for cattle grazing and cattle feed, the release of more greenhouse gases than all transportation, the cancer, the heart disease, the strokes, the creation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria through the routine feeding of antibiotics, the whole monstrous evil, complete poison and enemy of the earth known as “animal agriculture.” You fucks are eating the world to death.   
-- Randy Shields
you-gotta-serve-somebody-not-some-body 

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Man of 'Merica

Let’s face it: this man is Merica. All of his most famous, offensive zingers are lines that could just as easily be delivered by embarrassing childhood friends in sleeveless NRA shirts, Carhartt jackets, and Fox Racing mesh caps. The ones avoided on holiday parachutings into the flyover country from whence many of us sprang.
It’s infuriating. A smirking sybarite laughingly repurposes the crudest stereotypes of primitive conservatives and christians to his own selfish ends, and the clueless yokels don’t get it at all.
Times used to be a high-falutin’ city boy like him would get one right in the kisser for taking advantage of wholesome country folk with condescending jokes like that. Times sure have changed.
-- Abel Cohen
the-president-america-deserves

Monday, February 6, 2017

Social Workers, hmm, Unite!

The goal is improving client care, because in the end, that’s what we are too, people going into the profession because we ourselves have faced trauma, PTSD, drug use, homelessness, mental health challenges, and the like. The idea is we are all peers, and the work we do is to triage the broken system and fabric of American democracy (sic), one where conspicuous consumption and consumerism is on display 24/7, and where that shitty hierarchy and class warfare have created a massive battlefield of mental health carnage. People now, under the thumb of this out-and-out fascist billionaire boy-bully, are railing, are in a system of righteous indignation, are willing to launch something new in a world where they – us all – have been told to “keep your head down and shut up and be grateful you have an effing job . . . because you might turn out on the streets like your clients, buddy boy, buddy girl.”

-- Paul Haeder
organize 

Sunday, February 5, 2017

A is for Anarchy

Even highly educated people, who really should know better, routinely misuse the word “anarchy” to mean chaos and disorder. It is, of course, nothing of the kind. Derived from the Greek word anarkhos, meaning “without chiefs”, anarchism could reasonably be defined as meaning a society without leaders. It does not deny the need for society, it denies the need for leaders. 
No doubt every real anarchist has their own personalised concept of anarchism. Most of my clothing is black or black and red – the widely-used colours of anarchism – and much of it has a circled “A”, anarchism’s unofficial logo.....
-- John Andrews
no-gods-no-masters-live-the-golden-rule

Saturday, February 4, 2017

2026

By definition, an article dealing with human extinction is highly provocative and touchy and generally dismissed as balderdash. After all, it sounds kinda crazy. Still, the named article: “Will Humans Be Extinct By 2026?” warrants serious consideration. Here’s why: The Arctic News blog is an amalgam of serious research by topnotch scientists that “speak to truth.” They endorse the distinct possibility of an extinction event that will catch humanity flat-footed. They really believe it is a serious risk. These scientists go against the grain, telling it as they see it, not pulling any punches. 
-- Robert Hunziger
extinction

Friday, February 3, 2017

Otis

Frederick Douglass

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
    --Frederick Douglass, Rochester, New York (5 July 1852)

Thursday, February 2, 2017

some of these sound sorta familiar...


“Psychopathy Checklist-Revised” (PCL-R)

  1. pathological lying
  2. glib and superficial charm
  3. grandiose self-worth
  4. need for stimulation or proneness to boredom
  5. conning and manipulativeness
  6. lack of remorse or guilt
  7. shallow affect
  8. callousness and lack of empathy
  9. parasitic lifestyle
  10. poor behavioral controls
  11. promiscuous sexual behavior
  12. early behavior problems
  13. lack of realistic long-term goals
  14. impulsivity
  15. irresponsibility
  16. failure to accept responsibility for own actions
  17. many short-term marital relationships
  18. juvenile delinquency
  19. revocation of condition release
  20. criminal versatility

The Trump Show

This is the wildest and most successful television-variety show to hit the airwaves, period. Running 24/7, this one has it all: money, beauty, power, sex, espionage, torture, misogyny, racism, vulgarity, stupidity and the possibility of thermonuclear war -all in HD and broadcast live. This show is much better than that hippy dippy “West Wing.”
-- Kim Codella
the-trump-show 


Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Plastic, Man

Based on externalizing costs and privatizing profits, 21st-century capitalism is turning our seas into a plastic blob.
According to a recent Ellen MacArthur Foundation study, the world’s oceans are set to have more plastic than fish by 2050. At the current rate of production and disposal the net weight of plastic in the oceans will be greater than that of fish in a little over three decades.
plastic-and-capitalism-are-killing-ocean-life

the torture never stops

“The usual purpose of torture by state actors has not been the extraction of intentionally withheld information in the long-term memory systems of the noncompliant and unwilling. Instead, its purposes have been manifold: the extraction of confessions under duress, the subsequent validation of a suborned legal process by the predeterminedly guilty (‘they confessed!’), the spreading of terror, the acquisition and maintenance of power, the denial of epistemic beliefs.”
-- Shane O’Mara, Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation  
torture-its-never-gone-away 

watchtower