Well, I hear it’s fine if you got the time, and the ten to get yourself in. A hmm-hmm.
Three-wheeled touring motorcycle ad, set to ZZ Top’s La Grange, a song about whores in a shack in Texas. Taken from Tres Hombres, one of the ultimate blue collar classic rock albums, songs entirely devoted to the underclass — Master of Sparks (being thrown off the back of a pickuup tack in a ball made out of bailing wire and rebar), Beerdrinkers and Hellraisers (having your “can of dinner” — cheap beer as the evening’s repast) and Precious & Grace (picking up two dangerous-looking prostitutes who might have just gotten out of prison, on a lonely back road).
Of course, it’s a two-way street. ZZ Top consented for the money.
And what did they consent to — ad music for an expensive motorized conveyance aimed at the plutocracy, those people who can wear five hundred dollars or more worth of custom leather. And who are afraid of wiping out with all their stuff in the baggage pods when they ride.
Ludicrous. Not exactly the stuff of rattlesnakes in cages onstage and young guys passed out and stacked up in the lavatories at the Philly Spectrum.
It took fifteen minutes over the weekend to demonstrate one of the most important reasons for Bombing Moe. The photos of Tomahawk missile launches and the pics of Libyan tracked artillery pieces with their turrets upside down blew everything else off the news. One can always count on one thing: The western media loves the entertainment value of watching the US military and all its great machines beating up pathetic opposition.
In obvious respects it’s a repeat performance. Not a squeak of political opposition and immediate talk on the nobility of it and the alliance — “a Coalition” — forged to carry it out. Sunday morning, we even through in the tidbit that mighty Qatar would be taking part, presumably with a a couple armed yachts or French Mirages to sail and fly around the periphery of the action for show.
There’s the usual pack of misdirection, this time from the Obama administration on how the US wouldn’t be taking the lead. The pictures from Saturday night and Sunday morning immediately put the claim in the trash. Odyssey Dawn is our property. A hundredweight of Tomahawks, B-2’s, F-15’s and F-16’s, among other things, ruined the cover.
Really, think about that one. B-2’s. Is that enough firepower reserved for Moe?
“Operation Odyssey Dawn” would not be complete without the combined power of war wankers. The wanker army, consisting of retired generals, TV reporters, administration fuglemen, and national pundits, stroke and soothe the polity with … war glee.
The operation is conducted by suppressing pictures of horror — mass blood and guts — or delivering only the most fleeting images of it. Into this void it jams stock US war tale-telling, the imagery of missile launches and bombs going off.
The stock tales:
• Odyssey Dawn will establish a ‘no-fly’ zone. Yeah right, nice try. It’s the standard Pentagon method of overpowering a 98-pound weakling, including bombing his armor and transport as the opportunities present.
• U.S. forces are better equipped and trained than their adversaries.
Stupidly obvious. The U.S. faces an enemy that couldn’t be more outmatched.
The war wanker dwells lovingly on wonder weapons from the land of the brave, prattling on from sanitized news production studios. Sunday morning, some retired Navy man — now in investments — went on about the Tomahawk missile.
The Tomahawk was “neat”, he said. It could attack from any direction and hardly ever missed. Fabulous.
Another, Barry McCaffrey on MSNBC, said “We’re off to a good start.”
“The B-2 has a huge shock value,” he added.
“This has been fascinating,” contributed Jonathan Alter. “It is fascinating that Qatar has signed up … This could be really helpful in the long term.”
The best thing about the war wankers, however, are that they come cheap. Their salaries are less than the cost of machinery of destruction. However, they’re still more than what the middle class, noticeably absent, earns.
Nb: For a bit of humor, you need to click the link to Jonathan Alter. Check the picture of, I think, Sheryl Crow. Coincidence?
Another bit of accidental humor, from the GlobalSecurity mirror of this post. A pic of the “explore content” world cloud spun out by Asterpix Searchlight.
Postscript: The President poked his head in from Brazil where he was pumping the value of free trade and ‘jobs’ for Americans, meaning those ‘jobs’ that are involved in making weapons for sale to … Brazil.
“[Brazil’s military] modernization plan includes holding a bidding for the purchase of 36 modern fighter-bombers in which the French firm Dassault Aviation’s Rafale aircraft is in the running, along with the Gripen built by Sweden’s Saab and the F-18 Super Hornet manufactured by the U.S. firm Boeing,” reads a newspaper story here.
$500,000 – current production Unit Cost
$1,400,000 – average unit cost (TY$)
Low ball: 110 x $500,000 = $55, 000, 000
High ball: 110 x $1,400,000 = $154, 000, 000
Figure bandied around most often by Scott Walker to ‘prove’ Wisconsin’s ‘broke’ and public sector workers have to give up their rights: $137, 000, 000.
And earlier this week, the White House budget director declared: “There is an agreement that we should be reducing spending,??? suggesting that his only quarrel with Republicans is over whether we should be cutting taxes, too.
Reason Number One for Bombing Moe, given Friday:
Whatever it costs in cash for another war, budget cutting for domestic programs that benefit working Americans. That’s because bombing Moe comes out of the special overflowing cash sack for war. It’s the right set of priorities and how we win the future.
Good news, lads! Good news! It’s the familiar face of US freedom riding to the rescue, 110 guided missiles launched at night.
2,161 people liked the above LATimes story on Facebook. However, last time Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t yet delivered the precious gift of being able to watch a flash crowd getting hard over a cruise missile launch.
To recap, various reasons for Bombing Moe.
From earlier today:
… It gives birth to new noble operation naming conventions, like perhaps, Libyan Freedom or Benghazi Shield or [fill in the blank with two words, one geographical, one upliftingOdyssey Dawn].
Odyssey: epic poem by Homer, an intellectual or spiritual wandering or quest, a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune.
Two from Friday:
Weapons manufacturers will get new order for cruise missiles and JDAMs used up on Moe.
Plus bombing in a foreign country is a lot more watchable on television than the broken lives of unemployed Americans.
“This is the greatest opportunity to realign our interests and our values,” a senior administration official said at the meeting, telling the experts this sentence came from Obama himself. The president was referring to the broader change going on in the Middle East and the need to rebalance U.S. foreign policy toward a greater focus on democracy and human rights.
Five more reasons the President decided to Bomb Moe:
1. The Republicans won’t know what to say. They like bombing Muslims in a foreign country but hate the President. They like war to defend oil but hate the President.
2. Bombing Moe is another opportunity to gin up the importance and cooperation between nations in something with a name like “the Allies” or “the Coalition Forces.”
3. Bombing Moe presents another opportunity for the mainstream media to send its reporters to the battlefield, either somewhere in Benghazi or on the aircraft carrier Billy Ray Culpepper CVN [Fill in the blank or sub with Charles de Gaulle]. Or maybe on the islands of Malta or Cyprus. If they’re there they won’t be in Wisconsin or Michigan or any other state where the middle class is protesting.
4. Bombing Moe gives the cheerleaders for the last war — the old media and think tank “experts” to repeat all the same mind-numbing rubbish, statistics and weapon of the week stories on the state of the enemy and balance of forces. Like this:
What worries NATO planners, however, are Libya’s plentiful antiaircraft guns and light, short-range shoulder-launched missiles — systems which proved very effective against NATO aircraft during the Kosovo war, said a diplomat who asked not to be identified.
These include about 500 cannons of various calibers, which could prevent allied aircraft from descending lower than 15,000 feet, said the diplomat who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. In Kosovo, a majority of bombing missions had to be carried out from higher altitudes beyond the reach of the Serbian guns.
Other problems may come from Khadafy’s several dozen Mil Mi-17 helicopters and Mi-24 gunships. As experiences in Bosnia have shown it’s very difficult for fast and high flying jets to intercept ground-hugging helicopters.
Analysts have cautioned, however, that it is difficult to give an exact assessment of the African nation’s military abilities, particularly after the defections that saw some troops taking not just aircraft but also weapons with them.
In contrast, NATO planners say the international community has 200 to 300 modern jets that could be quickly deployed to Libya from bases stretching from Gibraltar to Greece, and from US and French carriers in the Mediterranean Sea.
These would include top-of-the-line Eurofighter Typhoons, used by British, Italian, and Spanish air forces. Also available are the formidable French Dassault Rafale fighters and the F-18 Super Hornet, the backbone of US naval air power.
Backbone of US naval air power. Sounds impressive.
5. Bombing Moe gives the powers that be the opportunity to claim arrant nonsense like “we’re rebalancing U.S. foreign policy toward a greater focus on democracy and human rights.” It gives birth to new noble operation naming conventions, like perhaps, Libyan Freedom or Benghazi Shield or [fill in the blank with two words, one geographical, one uplifting].
1. Bombs for Moe, austerity for the US middle class. Whatever it costs in cash for another war, budget cutting for domestic programs that benefit working Americans. That’s because bombing Moe comes out of the special overflowing cash sack for war. It’s the right set of priorities and how we win the future.
2. Uncle Sam prepares for war on Moe and and clears the banksters to start paying dividends again. That’s great for the stock market even though maybe not for you. And that’s what’s important. It’s morning in America.
3. Weapons manufacturers will get new order for cruise missiles and JDAMs used up on Moe. It might mean a few bonuses for arms-making CEO’s.
4. The mainstream media will be able to debate whether or not the military is overstretched or tired when going into action against Moe, erasing any stupid ideas about cutting its budget.
5. Bombing Moe provides a distraction from the idea that if we’re going to do it to him maybe we ought to be doing it to the rotten people running Bahrain and Yemen, too.
6. Moe is conveniently murderous, mean, crazy and really not very photogenic. But unlike other really murderous, mean, crazy and not very photogenic despots in other countries, he’s on television all the time right now.
7. Bombing Moe affords an opportunity for all the retired military men involved in the arms manufacturing industry to get back on television as talking head experts. They can talk about all the great gear we’re going to use on Moe. And all the feeble stuff he has on defense.
8. Bombing Moe makes it easier for the President to ignore Ed on MSNBC’s Ed Show asking why our leader isn’t in Wisconsin or Michigan with his base. “I have to bomb Moe, first,” thinks the President. “That takes time.”
9. Bombing Moe is a heckuva lot easier than doing something about the one in six working Americans who are unemployed or underemployed. Plus bombing in a foreign country is a lot more watchable on television than the broken lives of unemployed Americans.
10. All the serious people in DC and northern Virginia, plus the oil companies, are for bombing Moe.
Bonus reason:
11. It is important for every President to show he has balls by starting his own unique war. Bombing Moe does that for Mr. Obama.
On a suggestion from a friend, if I’m to have Google AdSense for Chinese sex slaves on GlobalSecurity territory, than maybe I ought to have some suggestive images of them, real or not, here.
Plus, now that everything has turned to crap and the President is starting another war, the better to distract from the impression that he’d rather not doing anything here, hey!
You can look at naughty Internet pictures until the money runs out and the high speed line is discontinued.
More than three years after we entered the worst economic slump since the 1930s, a strange and disturbing thing has happened to our political discourse: Washington has lost interest in the unemployed …
So one-sixth of America’s workers — all those who can’t find any job or are stuck with part-time work when they want a full-time job — have, in effect, been abandoned.
It might not be so bad if the jobless could expect to find new employment fairly soon. But unemployment has become a trap, one that’s very difficult to escape. There are almost five times as many unemployed workers as there are job openings; the average unemployed worker has been jobless for 37 weeks, a post-World War II record …
“[The] next time you hear Mr. Obama talk about winning the future …” he continues. “It’s bullshit,” he politely adds, not in those precise words.
It was about this time last year that the 2010 Decennial Census was warming a temporary jobs surge that would last into the beginning of summer.
Google AdSense is the low level nuclear waste of the Internet.
Today, spun out on DD blog reprints at GlobalSecurity.Org, some more really special stuff, including:
1. What looks like an ad for Chinese prostitutes and sex slaves aimed at old white American pervs. It reads: “Feel alone? Meet sweet chinese girl & find your companion in China. Join!”
2. An ad for on-line degrees from here. That’s impressive, particularly the pitch aimed at suckering US military men. (Actually, Google AdSense spins out a lot of on-line degree ‘opportunities.’ One has quite the pick of diploma millinery.)
3. Explosion proof ammo boxes, presumably aimed at the crypto neo-Nazi extreme right survivalist kook who’s hoarding weapons, explosives and gold for the time when the US collapses. Or for crashing the next MLK Day parade.
Google AdSense: Making money off promotion of tearing the middle class down, extremism, what looks like criminal activity and vulture economics, one micropayment at a time.
Not worth clicking the link explaining only once again why I have only minimal use for Twitter and vice versa. I remain surprised I even have one follower.
This is worth a listen, though. Good version of a good tune.
Facebook = functionally similar. Forced jollity, optimism and glad-handing or you’ve no ‘friends’ and no one to ‘like’ your posts.
Related:
Norman Vincent Peale-ism by way of Colin Powell:
Don’t follow anyone who’s not going anywhere.
With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it.
Be careful where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life.
Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships.
If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights.
From a bit review of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sidedhere.
On the most recent Pisa [test], the top-scoring countries were Finland and Singapore in science, Korea and Finland in reading and Singapore and Korea in math. On average, American teenagers came in 15th in reading and 19th in science. American students placed 27th in math. Only 2 percent of American students scored at the highest proficiency level, compared with 8 percent in Korea and 5 percent in Finland.
And what science is Singapore or Finland or South Korea, even in 2011, known for?
[Sound of crickets]
So, yeah, they do their fractions great in Singapore, as Tom Friedman has told us. And their beggars and homeless are less obvious, maybe, then in LA.
But even Pasadena kills it as world class city. Really. There’s no Huntington or Route 66 or Rose Bowl and parade in Singapore. And there’s no view of the mountains.
And we don’t need the US to sell us a multi-billion dollar air force of McDonnell Douglas F-15’s to make the dicks in a token military of no consequence hard.
Your host is getting a serious hate on for Singapore in the news as a meaningful measure of anything other than how to run a place only for the wealthy and vain in a high button zip code, except on an island. And we have orders of magnitude more of that here.
I was raised in a community of teachers at Pine Grove Area High School in the Sixties and Seventies in woodsy Pennsylvania. We didn’t have an F-15 air force.
I’m betting schools in Singapore now aren’t really much better than it was. And I’ll wait for someone to prove me wrong.
F— Singapore and the very very small number of Americans obsessed with it.
If I were President I’d send classified diplomatic memos to all the Singapore chambers of whatever saying this: “Whenever you show up in some news story in the New York Times for any reason, I’m clawing back five F-15’s or refusing the sale of parts to service all of your fleet until you have none or just airframes that won’t fly.”
