09.18.13
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because Republicans refuse to accept the notion that duly enacted legislation should be allowed to go into effect, and repealed only through constitutional means.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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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Rock 'n' Roll at 9:14 am by George Smith
Should’ve been a folk hit. But we’re not really into even letting a few eke out a few pebbles on social music, are we?
Friday music loud electric folk rock for modern raging inequality:
“Blessed are the job creators, ’cause they can always hire way more waiters.”
Which, as it turns out, is exactly what has happened.
Krugman, from today in the NYT, ‘Rich Man’s Recovery:’
“Basically, while the great majority of Americans are still living in a depressed economy, the rich have recovered just about all their losses and are powering ahead.”
Just published Piketty/Saez (UC Berkeley) data on inequality and the recovery of the super-wealthy after the Great Recession.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror at 8:45 am by George Smith
From a Clueless Old Fool Who Time Has Passed By, a LOL moment as he sends advice to “jihadis” he no longer has:
(Reuters) In an audio speech released online a day after the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 strikes, Ayman Zawahri said attacks ‘by one brother or a few of the brothers’ would weaken the U.S. economy by triggering big spending on security … ‘We should bleed America economically by provoking it to continue in its massive expenditure on its security, for the weak point of America is its economy, which has already begun to stagger due to the military and security expenditure …”
You’d laugh harder if work force participation weren’t the lowest since, well — ever, and there weren’t already 48 million Americans on food stamps due to our corporate Zawahiris.
No link.
Next week, a new issue of al Qaeda’s Inspire magazine, with another special on how to set fires in national parks, urinate in ice machines at motels, yell “fire” in crowded theaters, and sneeze in salad bars when you have the flu this winter.
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09.11.13
Posted in Cancer at 1:29 pm by George Smith
It was two years ago — on 9/11 — that my friend Don was given a bad diagnosis.
Together with a friend we met at the Huntington Gardens to walk and talk and try to divine the future. This time of year brings fine weather to Pasadena. Today is just like then, exceptional, and it is a wonderful place to gather. And I will be outside this afternoon, looking at nature’s beauty.
We sat and talked about what was coming, having soft drinks, making contingency plans, imagining that at some point we’d get back to the gardens under better circumstances. But four months later he was dead.
We couldn’t tell there were no more chips to cash in, that time was almost gone. Hope was entertained and it was a good if very bittersweet day. We didn’t know it would never be the same again.
That’s my 9/11 anniversary memory. It has replaced the other one. It has more meaning.
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