heroes

oh wait! back to Papa Joe

register this:  The principal immediate goal of the Democratic Party in this primary (and when I say “Democratic Party” I always include “its allied media”), in the midst of a pandemic, was to kill single-payer healthcare, the most basically humanistic and politically advantageous social policy—indeed, as the present pandemic makes clear, the most obvious social necessity—one can imagine. The Party strangled it, and smothered any other such initiative, by coalescing around Joe Biden, who has vowed to veto Medicare-for-All even if it passes congress, has long sought to cut Social Security, and promises his billionaire donors that, if he’s elected, “nothing will fundamentally change.” No Republicans necessary.
    -- Jim Kavanagh, The Polemicist 

joe-or-no

the Proud Bozos

"....this is a lot cooler than it was when I was a kid with a lousy BB gun."

gone wrong

decemberists

We're Thick as a Brick

david ker thomson

Far from being a nexus of innovation and risk-taking, capitalism is atrophy and decay. It only ever appeared to work because of the power of oil, a liquid dense with life and death and the power that is unbound in fire. Any fool can make a spark and claim that the power of oil is his own entrepreneurial cleverness or “efficiency.” Fancy business schools at elite universities sit atop such gushers and it gives them a few generations of loft from which they can display themselves and their superiority more fully. The funny thing is that the era of capital is itself a stratum of a few inches charred and crushed and registered in a future geological archive. Its only real power can be prophesied as a quantity of a particular viscosity and compression, available in a distant worldtime as a renewed fire. As Bender the robot puts it, “we’re boned.”

why-do-we-write?

made in America

~re-posted:  ideological content~

So how about you get with the fucking program.
This country is in a state of war. War. To defend your way of life. 
So you can go home to your little townhouse on Garfield fucking Place or wherever
So that you can hop on a fucking airplane and go shopping with your fucking wife in Paris
So your daughter can get high with her Black Bloc friends
Who do you think you are dealing with? Do we look like airport rent-a-cops to you? 
We are the fucking United States of fucking America you fucking idiots! 
Do you like your lives? Your comfortable lives? Well, guess what, folks. We make them possible. We keep the goddamn economy from collapsing. We keep you safe from the criminals and terrorists. 
Do you know how we do it? We do it with guns. And bombs. And missiles. And knives. And sticks. We fucking kill people. 
We kill them for you. 
Is it convenient for you to believe otherwise? Well, guess what? Fuck what's convenient for you. Fifty goddamn years you were to free to believe any fucking thing you wanted. We didn't care. It didn't bother us. We didn't care if you believed in Martians. 
But you know what, folks? Now we care. It matters to us now, what you believe. The United States of America is at war. It is World War fucking Four, people. And World War Four is for all the marbles. 
It's one big world now, in case you missed that. One big system. And we fucking run it. And guess what? We intend to continue running it. 
Now is that is alright with you, if we do that? 

most of the time

the mask

The long delay in the U.S. reaction has led to a urgent need for personal protection equipment. The result is a new 'wild west' where stealing and cheating to get PPE is the new norm:

• German army loses 6 million face masks in Kenya - Nation.ke
• Trump Administration Uses Wartime Powers To Be First In Line On Medical Supplies - KHN
• Coronavirus: US 'wants 3M to end mask exports to Canada and Latin America' - BBC
• Trudeau threatens retaliation after Trump keeps shipment of masks intended for Canadian doctors - Independent
• Coronavirus: Turkey seizes hundreds of ventilators paid for by Spain in move ‘bordering on criminality’ - Independent
• US Leads Global Wave of Nations Stealing, Seizing and Diverting Coronavirus Equipment - Orinoco Tribune
• US accused of seizing face mask shipments bound for Europe, Canada - DW
• Million $ checks exchanged on a McDonald's parking lot to get masks:
  Illinois adjusts on the fly to meet medical supply needs in a coronavirus ‘Wild West’ - Sun Times
• The Feds impounded the masks Massachusets had ordered. Twice. So MA they had to use alternative ways to get them:
  A Patriots plane full of 1 million N95 masks from China arrived Thursday. Here’s how the plan came together - Boston Globe

munchkin

I hate him.....

"...the fellow running Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, has been implicated in so many scandals. I wouldn’t want him in the same room with my kid’s piggy bank.....This is the man President Trump wants to hand out billions of dollars to corporations and to Wall Street, a guy up to his neck in various conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and ethics lapses."
    -- Bill Moyers

not happening so far

Beyond defeating the disease, the great test all countries will soon face is whether current feelings of common purpose will shape society after the crisis. As western leaders learnt in the Great Depression, and after the second world war, to demand collective sacrifice you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone. 
    -- the Financial Times editorial