09.19.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 1:49 pm by George Smith
I exploded this morning after reading Los Angeles Times reporter Ricardo Lopez news piece on the American Community Survey conducted by the Census.
Entitled “Amid bad census data news on income, poverty, some bright spots,” it is the kind of reporting that reveals only the tip of the iceberg in why nothing can be done in the US.
“New census data released Thursday painted a grim picture of the economic recovery in the United States,” read the lede. “Still there were bright spots in California.”
When confronted with the volume of data on misery in the census report, a thinking person doesn’t interpret minor statistical up-ticks as “bright spots.” More likely they’re anomalies, noise, or meaningless when viewed with the whole.
I got angry and wrote him a short e-mail. I don’t expect an answer, you never do from the swells. But this puts it in a nutshell:
Me: You had to look pretty hard to find anything good in those census statistics. And that may increasingly be part of the problem. You and your peers are not really in touch with it. If more writing these small bits of news, trying to pan gold from the sluices of horrendous crap, had to pick up bread from the pantry once a week or be faced with the job opportunities in the new economy, perhaps like spending the day on Amazon Mechanical Turk getting 50 cents or less for various “tasks” in hopes that you’ll be able to move eight dollars into your account after a week of it, you’d write it a little differently.
But then you would have to be unemployed and in poverty and you wouldn’t be getting it published.
Lopez is not the only reporter to cover the matter at the Times. Gale Holland, a more senior member of the staff, and a colleague, also looked at the statistics.
There wasn’t anything good in what they wrote:
Poverty continued creeping upward in the Los Angeles area last year, long after the declared end of the recession, new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show.
The numbers are another sign of continued suffering after the economic downturn: More than 17% of people in the Los Angeles, Long Beach and Santa Ana metropolitan area lived below the poverty line last year. That number rose year by year since 2007, when roughly 13% lived in poverty …
“What is significant and new is that poverty is not rising and falling with the rest of the economy, it is just continuing to rise,??? wrote Bill Parent, associate dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “This is a terrible ‘new normal.’”
This blog used to be a lot about national security issues. I find it very difficult to write about them now. They’re trivial in comparison to what is reality in the country, on the ground.
And so you’re not going to see much of the national security thing.
By example, anyone who thinks cyberwar is a significant problem compared to what afflicts a very visible portion of American lives daily is a fool worth only your contempt.
If you’re still sane it’s impossible to take someone like NSA director Keith Alexander at all seriously, for patently obvious reasons.
Anyway, why would I call this country a failed state?
Well, the problem in with traditional thinking is that the concept of a failed state adheres to a professional definition. That doesn’t take into account countries that devolve in a way that stems from their unique nature.
The United States, being the wealthiest country in the world with the most powerful military on the planet, would not be expected to be a failed state in any sense of a state department or CIA geo-political fact book definition. It would not be expected to fail on a trajectory comparable to historic examples of empire from the past.
Instead, it’s making its own special way, or case: A country that can’t be governed, with no way to see progress, capable of swinging a mighty stick at designated enemies, yet with a growing population in poverty, an ocean of misery that’s over 50 percent the population of Germany, a bit over two-thirds that of citizenries of Britain and France.
The tragedy of it, and this is known to people who study poverty and who are in it, is that everyone not afflicted turns away. You lose everything, you get uncoupled from society and you can’t get back.
And a big society where millions and millions of people are left to rot is certainly one where many of the disenfranchised can angrily view having work and economic viability as a privilege for those who are the most fortunate.
Today words are of little value. Five years ago I had a readership and could get published. In the intervening span that was annihilated.
For someone who, over the major part of a lifetime, has come to define himself by the word, by the ability to speak clearly, being involuntarily separated from what one is good at is a heavy blow.
So, you know, art, music, busking.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, WhiteManistan at 8:59 am by George Smith
We have met the enemy and it’s our so-called best. Corporate America and the most wealthy have destroyed everything, with no end in sight.
Smartphones and iJunk have not saved the day. You can use them to notify your family you’re going to the food pantry.
Excerpts from the news on the today’s Census report on the state of America:
“The number of Americans in poverty remained largely unchanged at a record 46.5 million. By race, a growing proportion of poor children are Hispanic, a record 37 percent of the total. Whites make up 30 percent, blacks 26 percent. The new census data show that lower-income households are a steadily increasing share of the population, while middle- to higher-income groups shrank or were flat. Roughly 13.6 percent of U.S. households, received food stamps, the highest level on record. Just over half of these households, or 52 percent, were -below poverty.”
Corporate profits soared, noted the New York Times, “but [according to Census data] the median earnings of men working full time have not increased in real terms since the early 1970s.”
“Economists believe that the [Census] report understates the degree of income inequality in the United States, by not including, among other things, earnings from capital gains made on rising stock prices.”
Could we hope for the Republican Party to make things worse in two weeks?
Isn’t it time to send everyone to the glue factory?
Comparisons: 46.5 million Americans live in poverty. Population of France — 65.7 million, Britain — 62.2 million.
Art predicts life:
We lock up the poor for all the rich
And we do it right without no hitch
Welcome to the United States of Greed
It’s the only country you’ll ever need …
Now we think freedom’s lame
Because what you need is a life of pain.
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09.18.13
Posted in Crazy Weapons, WhiteManistan at 1:58 pm by George Smith
The damaged tribesmen of WhiteManistan are incapable of seeing their mental trouble.
They can be counted on to do the wrong thing, always.
Open carry of guns to Starbucks in Newtown, Connecticut, was an idea and action by people who need to be ostracized from society.
And the “I Love Guns and Coffee (at Starbucks)” campaign to take your guns to the franchise has just been … killed.
From Starbucks, today:
Few topics in America generate a more polarized and emotional debate than guns. In recent months, Starbucks stores and our partners (employees) who work in our stores have been thrust unwillingly into the middle of this debate. That’s why I am writing today with a respectful request that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores or outdoor seating areas …
Our company’s longstanding approach to “open carry??? has been to follow local laws: we permit it in states where allowed and we prohibit it in states where these laws don’t exist. We have chosen this approach because we believe our store partners should not be put in the uncomfortable position of requiring customers to disarm or leave our stores. We believe that gun policy should be addressed by government and law enforcement—not by Starbucks and our store partners.
Recently, however, we’ve seen the “open carry??? debate become increasingly uncivil and, in some cases, even threatening. Pro-gun activists have used our stores as a political stage for media events misleadingly called “Starbucks Appreciation Days??? that disingenuously portray Starbucks as a champion of “open carry.??? To be clear: we do not want these events in our stores. Some anti-gun activists have also played a role in ratcheting up the rhetoric and friction, including soliciting and confronting our customers and partners …
I would like to clarify two points. First, this is a request and not an outright ban. Why? Because we want to give responsible gun owners the chance to respect our request—and also because enforcing a ban would potentially require our partners to confront armed customers, and that is not a role I am comfortable asking Starbucks partners to take on…
Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, told newspapers: “The presence of a weapon in our stores is unsettling and upsetting for many of our customers.”
And this points again to the dark heart of the gun-crazy in America. They have made a big thing out of open carry in restaurants, shopping centers, snack shops and on the streets of cities because it is about intimidation, a form of low level mental terrorism.
Their’s is a dark joy in unsettling those they see as enemies all around.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, WhiteManistan at 12:33 pm by George Smith
A decade ago, in the introduction to my collection The Great Unraveling, I argued that the modern Republican party was a “revolutionary power??? in the sense once defined by, of all people, Henry Kissinger — a power that no longer accepted any of the norms of politics as usual, that was willing not just to take radical positions but to act in ways that undermined the whole system of governance people thought they understood …
So, now we face the imminent threat of a government shutdown and/or a U.S. government default because Republicans refuse to accept the notion that duly enacted legislation should be allowed to go into effect, and repealed only through constitutional means. Oh, and the cause for which most of the GOP is willing to threaten chaos is the noble endeavor of ensuring that tens of millions of Americans continue to lack essential health care. —Krugman
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Posted in Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle, WhiteManistan at 10:27 am by George Smith
Taken by the New York Times a week ago in Missouri and used as the leading photo for a post-Navy Yard massacre piece on gun control, it’s a photo that, coincidentally, powerfully illustrates a central social problem in this country. And so it requires emphasis and republication.
The photo is WhiteManistan and the need to escape it, perfectly captured.
With hands over hearts the people are not heart-warming. Quite the opposite. In their desire for an unbridled gun culture, they provoke fear and loathing, having brought on the convincing reality that when they get any of their way worse inevitably follows. Nothing can be done and nothing will be done about gun violence because more guns must be bought, they save lives. Everyone is made prisoner to gun hoarding manias, paranoia and regular gun bloodbaths as normal in American civilization.
Mind-numbing, it’s a tableau of the old, irrational and anti-civilization, a collection of my mentally troubled tribe in Jefferson City, Missouri, hoping — of all things to hope for — legislation to nullify federal gun control.
It’s a damaged group, perhaps successful in their lives with grown children, loving pets and all the possessions of American middle class life. But there is something very wrong inside and it can’t be fixed by reason, only endured. Worse, these broken people cannot recognize their mental trouble.
When I see these pictures, now commonplace, I see people the same color, who look the same as my parents, who looked like the people with which I grew up. But we share nothing.
Massacres will continue until morale improves.
From Der Spiegel: America’s unhindered gun mania.
Hat tip to Frank at Pine View Farm.
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09.17.13
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle, WhiteManistan at 11:02 am by George Smith
Most impressive, at the top of the Google winner-takes-all list, WaPost blog wisdom on gun control, furnished by “charticle.”
And what is it, precisely, that anyone wouldn’t get about this?
Fuck you, idiot! We’re gonna keep buying guns and ammo! Yeah!
It’s straightforward enough.
A comment on Aaron Alexis and the faux controversy over his clearances and medals.
The war on terror national security boom guaranteed it.
The explosive growth in national security clearances has never been a secret, nor the employment of thousands of individuals who, statistically, would expected to be unfit. The great sucking in by the business of the war on terror would have, by definition, been expected to bring fallout.
And when one individual blows up and produces a massacre, it is not surprising to anyone who has followed along. The vetting process was never going to be what people thought it was.
And as the BBC noted yesterday, among the shooter’s commendations: “Global War on Terrorism Service medal.”
Such medals were given out like candy. The only qualification was you had to serve in support of Iraqi Freedom or be military personnel involved in homeland security operations. It’s a meaningless citation with no more real importance than a pin for perfect attendance.
It would be a paradox only if it weren’t so ludicrous and sickening.
Unintentional black humor
One day before the Navy Yard massacre, ThinkProgress ran a note on two boobs, just like those in WhiteManistan Vacation, detained by police for carrying their assault rifles to a farmer’s market in Wisconsin.
Why, in Heaven’s name, would people get nervous about that?
It’s just patriotism!
Actually, it’s about bullying and intimidation. They wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t think it would put the fear into their neighbors.
Their are laws prohibiting masturbating in public and other free-will anti-social antics that generally stand to unreasonably upset your neighbors, a point I and many others have made.
On the necessity of escape from the clutches of WhiteManistan
After Newtown, I thought there might be some change. What wasn’t quite expected was an historic explosion in gun buys and then almost total inaction except at some state levels.
Now I’ve come to see the error in my thinking. Gun control isn’t possible in the US, which is currently an ungovernable country.
More bloodbaths will occur. The question is how many can be stomached before igniting real social unrest?
WhiteManistan in Jefferson City, Missouri, last week — hoping for legislation that would nullify federal gun law in the state. It didn’t happen, falling short by just one vote.
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09.16.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism at 1:41 pm by George Smith
From the New York Times, astounding news that a Beltway insider has written a book about catastrophic cyberattack on the electrical grid!
Boy, nobody’s ever done that.
From the New York Times:
WASHINGTON — It’s electrifying.
Iran and Venezuela want to destroy the United States, so they conspire with a rogue Russian spy to launch a cyberattack on the North American power grid, beginning by electrocuting a lineman in North Dakota. Their main obstacle is a small-town sheriff in the state’s badlands, Nate Osborne, a former Marine Corps lieutenant in Afghanistan whose titanium leg ultimately saves the day.
That is more or less the plot of Gridlock, co-written by former Senator Byron L. Dorgan, the latest offering in a peculiar Washington genre.
“That’s my little niche, North Dakota energy thriller,??? said Mr. Dorgan, a Democrat who represented North Dakota in the Senate and House for more than three decades.
But life is increasingly imitating Mr. Dorgan’s potboiler. More than 200 utilities and government agencies across the country, from Consolidated Edison to the Department of Homeland Security to Verizon, are now expected to sign up for the largest emergency drill to test the electricity sector’s preparation for cyberattack. The drill, scheduled for November, will simulate an attack by an adversary that takes down large sections of the power grid and knocks out vast areas of the continent for weeks.
But life has definitely not been imitating Dorgan’s “potboiler.”
The electrical grid has never failed due to cyberattack.
However, there has never been a shortage of fiction, non-fiction, movies and tv shows on catastrophic cyberwar attacks on various pieces of US infrastructure.
In terms of reality, besides being an unimaginative wealthy ex-politician, Dorgan is just another data point for DD’s Law, recently coined, which states:
The probability that any predicted national security catastrophe, or doomsday scenario, will occur is inversely proportional to its appearance in entertainments, movies, television dramas and series, novels, non-fiction books, magazines and news.
Or, put another way, the probability that something bad will happen, as described or predicted by experts or any government, intelligence or quasi-corporate/government assessment agency, asymptotically approaches zero as it attains widespread use in popular entertainments. (And that’s usually very early in the development cycle.)
Dogshite books like Dorgan’s have been a dime-a-dozen over the course of the war on terror years. No one who isn’t paid to do so buys or reads them.
The Times reporter, Matthew L. Wald, is definitely paid to do it.
This is not Dorgan’s first novel. Previously, he wrote “Blowout, in which Iran and Venezuela link up with shady hedge-fund types to destroy a supersecret project that uses microbes to turn North Dakota coal into limitless, low-pollution electricity.”
The mad mullahs of Iran and [now inconveniently dead Hugo Chavez of] Venezuela, aiming daggers at the heart of America, North Dakota!
As evidence of contrived stupidity in plotting, it is something of a chart-topper, having probably taken every bit of fifteen minutes to brainstorm.
(It probably went down like this: “North Dakota! I’ll write it as a global terrorist plot against the state because that’s where I’m from and it will guarantee it’s reviewed in every newspaper and on every local tv news show.”)
Larger still, Byron Dorgan is another perfect example from the Culture of Lickspittle, someone who gets shit simply because of who he is. With no obvious talent, he has an agent and offers for dumbly repetitive white man’s techno-thriller romance fiction no one wants.
“Mr. Dorgan said he started his first book, Take This Job and Ship It, on a cruise with his extended family, using a 24-page guide to writing a book proposal that he found on the Internet,” adds Wald.
New York Times exposure, another type of reward for those at the top in the Culture of Lickspittle, gave Dorgan’s book a momentary ratings bump.
“[Last] Tuesday Gridlock was No. 94,180 on Amazon,” writes Wald. Today it’s at 17,355, with fifteen five and four star reviews, most of them smelling strongly of astro-turf.
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Posted in WhiteManistan at 12:37 pm by George Smith
Illustrating the pressing need to, ahem, escape from WhiteManistan, this from the Dallas newspaper, publication of the opinions of some “reviewers” of science books for students in the Texas public school system:
“I understand the National Academy of Science’s strong support of the theory of evolution,??? said Texas A&M University nutritionist Karen Beathard, one of the biology textbook reviewers. “At the same time, this is a theory. As an educator, parent and grandparent, I feel very firmly that creation science based on biblical principles should be incorporated into every biology book that is up for adoption.???
Other reviewers objected to the books’ acceptance of key evolutionary principles. Among them is the fossil evidence for the evolution of humans and other life species.
Publishers must consider [their evaluations], along with testimony,” reads the newspaper. “[Several of the reviewing panel members are creationists and] they urge the State Board of Education to reject the books unless publishers include more disclaimers on key concepts of evolution.”
Related: Creationism/intelligent design and science denial.
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09.15.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism at 2:14 pm by George Smith
Private-sectored, and off-shored to foreign workers, the advancing innovation of global networked services, case GEO Listening, hired by Glendale School District to snoop on students on social media.
Most relevant, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
“This is the government essentially hiring a contractor to stalk the social media of the kids,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that defends privacy, free speech and consumer rights.
“When the government — and public schools are part of the government — engages in any kind of line-crossing and to actually go and gather information about people away from school, that crosses a line,” Tien said …
“People say that’s not private: It’s public on Facebook. I say that’s just semantics. The question is what is the school doing? It’s not stumbling into students — like a teacher running across a student on the street. This is the school sending someone to watch them,” Tien said.
Sending someone to watch them, also in their off time.
“To do the work, [GEO Listening] employs no more than 10 full-time staffers — as well as ‘a larger portion’ of contract workers across the globe who labor a maximum of four hours a day because ‘the content they read is so dark and heavy,'” the company’s CEO told CNN.
One is sure that in the sharing economy, the larger portion of contract workers is due to the fact they’re so much cheaper to use than full-time Americans. Digital snitching, like everything else you can do via remote, cheaper with offshore labor and no payroll taxes, benefits, minimum wage, or anything.
The high end American spying companies choose to fill National Security Agency contracts, you see. National secrets need protecting. Kid’s stuff, well, not so much, apparently.
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09.13.13
Posted in WhiteManistan at 2:08 pm by George Smith
Today the LA Times editorial page took special notice of Missouri’s attempts at secession.
The Missouri state legislature, mentioned a few weeks ago for the attempt to nullify federal gun law and criminalize federal agents enforcing it as part of their job in the state, had entered into extremist radical government.
The legislation, initially vetoed by the state’s Democratic governor, was brought back for an override vote, one it was thought would be won. It failed — but by only one vote.
“It’s shocking to think that Missouri came so close to enacting a blatantly unconstitutional law,” wrote the LAT today.
It continued:
Missouri isn’t the only state where pro-gun politicians have sought to nullify federal gun laws; similar proposals have been advanced in Ohio, Minnesota and Texas. The burgeoning nullification movement also has attracted opponents of the Affordable Care Act, who have called for states to declare Obamacare unconstitutional within their borders. And while federal courts can be trusted to strike down such bills if they become law, their approval by legislators endows them with an undeserved legitimacy.
Like judges, legislators take an oath to uphold the Constitution. They violate that oath when they attempt to nullify duly enacted federal laws.
Remarkably, the Los Angeles Times makes not one mention of the Republican Party and its extremist policies. The newspaper’s editorial writers, on the other hand, are very much aware that the GOP and its Tea Party base are the sole proprietors of the “burgeoning nullification movement.”
WhiteManistan doesn’t go gently into the night. There will be long-time need to push it steadily and always firmly out the door.
On the adjacent letters page, a reader from Alhambra, south of Pasadena, writes in a closely related matter: “We have strong Latino, black, Asian, educational and union groups in this country that should be organizing economic boycotts of those states that seek to deprive their minority residents of their rightful place in society.”
It is a hard-to-enforce-and-enact retaliation I recommended in June.
Seen today, in Pasadena: White man driving a Jeep “Patriot” with a Papas and Beer sticker and a license plate frame emblazoned, “Godspeed.”
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