Ask George Smith e-mail: webmaster at dick destiny
“My kid beat up your honor student.” — seen on a bumper sticker.
An old field recording from the archives. Perfect for any device in the culture of lickspittle as well as fostering more social division and unrest.
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From the Guardian today, two of the six-figure swells go full Hitler: “Accusations of betrayal. Demagoguery and hatred. The bunker in Berlin. Comparisons with Adolf Hitler have been tempting throughout Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency – never more so than at its mad, destructive climax.
“The Republican’s presidential bid appears to have become the campaign equivalent of the last days of the reich, when Germany’s leadership raged at bearers of bad news from the battlefield, ordered non-existent divisions to launch counteroffensives, and embraced a nihilistic plan to burn it all down and take everyone along.”
Real close to our predicament, huh?
Berlin was in ruins, encircled by three or four tank armies, not Americans, but the Red Army which had been left to take down the Fuhrer for obvious reasons. It had born the vast weight of casualties inflicted by the Fuhrer’s armies in the war.
And Germany’s leadership, plural, was not involved. It was the Fuhrer and only the Fuhrer who moved “non-existent” units, OKW — the supreme command of the Wehrmacht, and OKH, the general staff of the German army, had given up. There’s was to stand idly by and send out the Fuhrer’s senseless commands.
In the US, the capital is not rubble. And young school boys are not everywhere, manning 88’s at street corners and jumping out of hiding places to fire Panzerfaust’s (rocket propelled grenades) at the Red Army. The GOP higher ups are not going to be captured and tried as war criminals. And the entire country is not in ruins.
There are no real similarities between the last days of the Third Reich and election 2016. C’mon. Tthe digital flights of fancy are just a matter of the pampered taking the time to make themselves the center of attention, in comparing the catastrophe of the election to what was the climax of the inferno of World War II.
No, collectively, we’re just not that important.
This is going to pass and after November and when Barack Obama finally leaves the scene, the United States will still have no effective government. And there will be no fighting of global warming because the global chemistry is in, we’re way too late. Wall Street will go on as usual because the new President appreciates that they live successful, sophisticated and complicated lives there.
But our lives will continue to be boiled down by tech in synergy with corporate America. The police will continue to kill African Americans at will and acquire armored fighting vehicles.
Eighty percent of evangelicals will have voted for the man, in spite of everything. The majority of the US military will have voted for him, in spite of everything. Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Arizona, Indiana and quite a few more states will have voted for him, in spite of everything. The six figure swells will be stunned, just stunned by the number of people who, even in losing, voted for Trump. And there will be no more mood to join together and accept things, even if only for a little while, than there is now. There will be less, much less.
The most expensive global military in history will keep behaving as if nothing is going on at home and continue to bomb the poorest places. That is, until maybe we stumble into a war with Russia, that country that took down the Fuhrer. And then we’ll have a great new series of events to write stupid similes and metaphors about, up until rubble-ization comes home.
They’re never going to get it until things begin to get torn down right around them.
From Taibbi, at Rolling Stone:
Trump’s shocking rise and spectacular fall have been a singular disaster for U.S. politics. Built up in the press as the American Hitler, he was unmasked in the end as a pathetic little prankster who ruined himself, his family and half of America’s two-party political system …
That such a small man would have such an awesome impact on our nation’s history is terrible, but it makes sense if you believe in the essential ridiculousness of the human experience. Trump picked exactly the wrong time to launch his mirror-gazing rampage to nowhere. He ran at a time when Americans on both sides of the aisle were experiencing a deep sense of betrayal by the political class, anger that was finally ready to express itself at the ballot box.
The only thing that could get in the way of real change – if not now, then surely very soon – was a rebellion so maladroit, ill-conceived and irresponsible that even the severest critics of the system would become zealots for the status quo.In the absolute best-case scenario, the one in which he loses, this is what Trump’s run accomplished. He ran as an outsider antidote to a corrupt two-party system, and instead will leave that system more entrenched than ever.
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Today: “TREATING THE WHOLE voting thing as a formality, serious political players are now pondering how exactly President Hillary Clinton can pass what Sen. Elizabeth Warren has called ‘a giant wet kiss for tax dodgers’ … So even as regular Democratic voters are concentrating on beating Donald Trump, the serious people of Washington are quietly putting the wheels in motion for what those same voters will find to be a highly unpleasant 2017 surprise.”
— from The Intercept, D.C. Hivemind Mulls How Clinton Can Pass Huge Corporate Tax Cut
None of this surprises even the slightest. Expect the worst, then go out out and embrace it with open arms.
But you can have a free download for the offshore corporate tax holiday, coming soon, courtesy of the “Old White Coot” soundtrack!
And remember, this is my retraining program!
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Lunch from The Slaw Dogs on N. Lake in Pasadena.
“The Traditional,” a quarter-pound chili dog with cheese and onions. Filling, one was all I needed. The dog has a good snap to it, too. The chili is also just the right consistency. You can eat the dog by hand without the topping glopping all over.
I love chili dogs and I’m not fussy. The Slaw Dogs’ passes muster — A.
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As the demand for high-skilled workers continues to grow, American voters express relatively little confidence in either major party presidential candidate when it comes to their ability to help American workers prepare to compete in today’s economy …
When asked what kind of job Donald Trump would do when it comes to helping Americans get the skills and training they need to get a well-paying job, roughly three-in-ten voters say he would do an excellent (15%) or good job (16%). A solid majority say Trump would do only a fair (18%) or poor (47%) job.
Hillary Clinton’s ratings are similar.
The titling for this post is a little off. And that’s due to the questions posed by Pew.
What I’d like to see are answers to whether or not voters have taken to retraining over the past couple of decades and whether or not it has worked for them. My suspicions are that many have re-trained. And they’ve either gotten nowhere, been ripped off or had to settle for positions of much lower pay than before they were persuaded to participate in new training for great jobs of the future.
You know what I think. Do you know why I post the tuneage? Reprogramming. And it’s the only retraining I can afford.
Right to left: Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi, HRC, Paul McCartney. Not undergoing training for jobs of the future.
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Laugh at all the special bootlicks and shoeshiners, n.B., the New Yorker and music journalists.
The gold cup winners:
The writings and posts on Bob Dylan winning a Nobel by people who’d have a hard time naming even one of the many scientists in the last 70 years or so who won Nobels for work that pushed civilization much farther ahead than lyrics from classic rock and pop.
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Bits from the Hollywood Reporter:
“Tickets for the event started at $33,400 and went as high as $100,000 …
“The dinner marked yet another campaign stop by the Clintons in the area. Former President Bill Clinton was the last to circle through town when he hosted a $100,000-per-couple event at the home of Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg on Sept. 13 …
“Clinton has received much more public support in Hollywood throughout the election than rival Trump, who found himself defending yet another round of sexual assault claims on Thursday.”
Stronger together. And “I’m with her.” But only in a very specific way with regards to California. The state where I live is not in play. But it is very useful for tons of cash money because, obviously, it’s where so many of the swells of the meritocracy are.
Elton John performed and furnished a ringing endorsement. In the Hamptons a month or two ago it was Jon Bon Jovi, Paul McCartney and Jimmy Buffett.
Brought to you by the best of the culture of lickspittle.
To refresh your memory, the Vermont senator is an independent who likes to call himself a “democratic socialist.??? He ran for the nomination on a platform of New Deal–style economic interventions such as single-payer health insurance, a regulatory war on big banks, and free tuition at public universities. Sanders was well to the left of where modern Democratic presidential candidates ordinarily stand, and in most elections, he would have been dismissed as a marginal figure, more petrified wood than presidential timber. But 2016 was different. It was a volcanic year, with the middle class erupting over a recovery that didn’t include them and the obvious indifference of Washington, D.C., toward the economic suffering in vast reaches of the country.
For once, a politician like Sanders seemed to have a chance with the public. He won a stunning victory over Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary, and despite his advanced age and avuncular finger-wagging, he was wildly popular among young voters. Eventually he was flattened by the Clinton juggernaut, of course, but Sanders managed to stay competitive almost all the way to the California primary in June.
Now, consider the recent history of the Democratic Party. Beginning in the 1970s, it has increasingly become an organ of this [Washington Post professional] class. Affluent white-collar professionals are today the voting bloc that Democrats represent most faithfully, and they are the people whom Democrats see as the rightful winners in our economic order. Hillary Clinton, with her fantastic résumé and her life of striving and her much-commented-on qualifications, represents the aspirations of this class almost perfectly. An accomplished lawyer, she is also in with the foreign-policy in crowd; she has the respect of leading economists; she is a familiar face to sophisticated financiers. She knows how things work in the capital. To Washington Democrats, and possibly to many Republicans, she is not just a candidate but a colleague, the living embodiment of their professional worldview.
In Bernie Sanders and his “political revolution,??? on the other hand, I believe these same people saw something kind of horrifying: a throwback to the low-rent Democratic politics of many decades ago. Sanders may refer to himself as a progressive, but to the affluent white-collar class, what he represented was atavism, a regression to a time when demagogues in rumpled jackets pandered to vulgar public prejudices against banks and capitalists and foreign factory owners. Ugh.
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Dept. of Just Sayin’:
Overheard at the dollar store an hour ago.
Volunteer for a registration effort: “Are you registered to vote?”
Woman: “No one to vote for.”
Featuring harmonica player Blind Poison Castorseed.
‘
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I was house-sitting a couple days ago and one of the books on hand was a copy of Roger Ebert’s movie reviews. (Rates are pretty cheap if you’re in Pasadena. I’ll go for some cheap cava, a steak, charcoal to grill it, a few books and unlimited access to whatever’s on your tv while sitting. I take care of all security and your pets’ needs.)
On Roger & Me, Michael Moore’s breakout work, his documentary to still lead all others:
“Roger & Me” does have a message to deliver– a message about Corporate Newspeak and the ways in which profits really are more important to big American corporations than the lives of their workers. The movie is a counterattack against the amoral pragmatism of modern management theory, against the sickness of the “In Search of Excellence” mentality.
Moore has struck a nerve with this movie. There are many Americans, I think, who have not lost the ability to think and speak in plain English– to say what they mean. These people were driven mad by the 1980s, in which a new kind of bureaucratese was spawned by Ronald Reagan and his soulmates– a new manner of speech by which it became possible to “address the problem” while saying nothing and yet somehow conveying optimism.
Hillary Clinton, who barring the end of the world, I’m assuming will be the next president of the United States is just the person described in the above cut-out.
You can read her election book, “co-authored” with Tim Kaine, or sift through the e-mails dumped by Wikileaks and others and it’s all the same. Someone who never met a situation or position that couldn’t be finessed with language, someone saying she’s a centrist, a pragmatist, or constructing a private position that has to differ from a public position because “Abraham Lincoln,” the movie.
It is part of what I call the Thomas Frank blues, the recognition that the Democratic Party, as it’s running in this election cycle, stands only for the status quo of money and so-called meritocracy. And that four years from now it will be the same, the national rage worse, inequality greater, more war and social unrest, no progress on anything, but with the wealthy and the president still proclaiming the country to be stronger than ever, first in everything, the indispensible nation.
Said another way, from the Conversation:
The Democratic Party in America bears a significant share of the blame for the rise of Donald Trump. As Thomas Frank describes in his book, “Listen, Liberal: Whatever Happened to the Party of the People???? It has become too much the party of the “Professional Class???- those with graduate degrees – and has all but abandoned its historical role as the party of labor and the little guy.
History suggests that the inchoate rage Trump is tapping into may solidify into something far more ominous than a wall on our southern border. Hillary Clinton seems constitutionally incapable of addressing that rage constructively; I have my doubts that she is even capable of understanding or empathizing with it. That means it is up to those who do understand it to make our voices heard in a way that can’t be ignored.
It was now Clinton’s turn to show her stuff. If Trump had responded to Holt like a voluble golf caddy being asked to discuss the finer points of ice hockey, Hillary Clinton chose a different course: she changed the subject. She would moderate her own debate. Perhaps Trump thought Holt was in charge of the proceedings; Clinton knew better.
What followed was vintage Clinton: vapid sentiments, smoothly delivered in the knowing tone of a seasoned Washington operative. During her two minutes, she never came within a country mile of discussing the question …
In contrast to Trump, however, Clinton did speak in complete sentences, which followed one another in an orderly fashion. She thereby came across as at least nominally qualified to govern the country, much like, say, Warren G. Harding nearly a century ago. And what worked for Harding in 1920 may well work for Clinton in 2016.
Of Harding’s speechifying, H.L. Mencken wrote at the time, “It reminds me of a string of wet sponges.??? Mencken characterized Harding’s rhetoric as “so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.??? So, too, with Hillary Clinton. She is our Warren G. Harding. In her oratory, flapdoodle and balderdash live on.
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Hillary Clinton Said She Made The Argument For Openness In Trade Since American And Foreign Manufacturers Wanted Access To Markets Oversees. “I thought I was doing pretty well. I’m making the case, making the argument for openness, fairness, transparency, claiming, look, Malaysia manufacturers want access to markets overseas as much as American manufacturers, Indian firms want fair treatment when they invest abroad, just as we do, Chinese artists want to protect their creations from piracy, every society seeking to develop a strong research and technology sector needs intellectual property protection to make trade fair as well as freer. Developing countries have to do a better job of improving productivity, raising labor conditions, and protecting the environment, on and on.??? [06262014 HWA Remarks for GTCR (Chicago, IL).docx, p. 5]
Clinton Said That The United States Saw Fewer Jobs With Greater Competition With Free Trade But Thoughtful Policies In The 1990s Saw An Economic Boom. “But certainly increasing productivity, fewer jobs is the simplest, greater competition from abroad as the world began to really open up and I think there was a reversal to some extent fueled by technology but also fueled by thoughtful policies in the 90’s where there was this, you know, economic boom that created 22 million new jobs and lots of people, you know, took advantage of that.??? [05162013 Remarks to Banco Itau.doc, p. 44-45]
Hillary Clinton Said Her Dream Is A Hemispheric Common Market, With Open Trade And Open Markets. “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.??? [05162013 Remarks to Banco Itau.doc, p. 28]
Hillary Clinton Praised TPP. “Greater connections in our own hemisphere hold such promise. The United States and Canada are working together with a group of open market democracies along the Pacific Rim, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, to expand responsible trade and economic cooperation.??? [Canada 2020 Speech, 10/6/14]
Clinton: “People At The Heart Of The Private Sector Need To Keep Making The Argument That A More Open, Resilient Economic System Will Create More Broadly Shared Prosperity.??? “I think we all, not just public officials or outside analysts, but people at the heart of the private sector need to keep making the argument that a more open, resilient economic system will create more broadly shared prosperity than state capitalism, petro-capitalism or crony capitalism ever will.??? [Clinton Remarks to Deutsche Bank, 10/7/14]
Hillary Clinton Said Scrap Recycling Demand From Asia Was Helping Improve Our Trade Balance And Fuel Our Economic Recovery. “I’m also delighted to learn that scrap products are a key export for the United States. By helping meet the demands for raw materials from emerging economies in Asia and elsewhere, you’re improving our trade balance and fueling our economic recovery. We’re talking about 20 to 30 billion in exports every year. And I looked at the program for this conference and was fascinated by all of the different issues that that leads you to study and learn about.??? [Hillary Clinton Remarks at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Convention, 4/10/14]
Clinton: “When My Husband Was Elected In His First Two Years He Made A Lot Of Changes. […] He Passed NAFTA, Alienating A Lot Of The Democratic Base.??? “But, I think it’s important to go back just for another historic minute. When my husband was elected in his first two years he made a lot of changes. And he passed a tax program to try to get us out of the deficit and debt situation that we were mired in after 12 years of quadrupling the debt. He passed really strong gun control laws, taking on the NRA, no easy matter to do in American politics. He passed NAFTA, alienating a lot of the Democratic base. We fought for healthcare reform unsuccessfully.??? [Remarks for CIBC, 1/22/15]
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