Progressive Bookshelf? -OR- Myths and Their Meanings

As I surveyed my bunker thinking that I really should do a bit of serious community organizing, it struck me. My "office" truly reflects me and what I do. Hitchcock frighteningly so.

It is a shrine to the futility of organization. From the "Save the Spindle" bumper sticker to the spindles of CDs awaiting sorting to the retained checkstub from my last service on jury duty, to the small ceramic ice cream bar I've glued back together, to the current stack of printed materials for ingestion/digestion, to the half-full tub of broken/disfunctional/needing adjustment stuff from various sources, to the office calendar that didn't transit from Aug/Sept, but will now turn to October...

And then there is the "bookshelf", Strunk & White, Robert's RoO, Volkswagen Transporters 1961-1979, Subaru 1600 & 1800, 838 Ways to Amuse a Child, various quotations volumes, Webster's, The Walls Around Us... my quick compendium of thinking/thinkers Parkinson's Law, Grieder, Ringer,Goodman,Brains Benton...
Yertle the Turtle and of course, my 50 year old copy of "Myths and Their Meanings".

There are a few other ersatz tomes, volumes read that serve no function anymore but to lend symmetry. Inquiry and Essays, English Grammar and Composition, Dr. Rutger's 1940 edition "How to Attain and Practice the Ideal Sex Life", Kahlil Gibran, Joyce: Selected Letters, Joy of Lex. Makes some sort of statement eh?

It's a mess. I confess.

Then I look up and see the plaque-ish array. The "Different Drummer" Thoreau quote my mother lovingly decoupaged for me, the Subaru BRAT sign my son carved for me and my framed "Driftglass" autograph, bookended by the angelic pastel of me back in 1967
from the pier at OOB, ME and the Whit's End sign from Kalamazoo.

No fewer than a dozen purposeful "organizers". Cubbies, nooks, crannies, files, sorters and drawers. Evolved over time, assimilated, adapted and incorporated.

Oh yeah, and then there is "the desk". Somewhere beneath visible sits a 1960's optician's dispensing station that has taken on a life of its own. A mish-mash of barnacles, adaptations, add-ons and adornments.

After 20+ years of tweakings, it stands as my statement of function over form. My space has grown and evolved all around me. Everywhere I look it says, "And he's not done yet!".

Tea With Taib -OR- Move Bitches, Get Out The Way!

I must say I'm torn. With all of the things in desperate need of attention, having to deal with another scam is not helping.

Tea Crackers

"At root, the Tea Party is nothing more than a them-versus-us thing. They know who they are, and they know who we are ("radical leftists" is the term they prefer), and they're coming for us on Election Day, no matter what we do — and, it would seem, no matter what their own leaders like Rand Paul do."

Facts are just so inconvenient and largely irrelevant to this manufactured movement. So the revelations and insights laid out in Matt Taibbi's vivisection are unlikely to do more, within the movement, than convince them of their need to double down on the crazy.

They belong to something that is bigger than anything. ever. Foisted upon such a select throng of unthinking boobs. So fear-filled, so distrustful, so gullible.
They believe every word, and why shouldn't they? The evidence is everywhere.

Since they've apparently only recently awakened from their 30-year nap, it is their patriotic duty to ring the alarm bell. Exercising the constitutional rights as explained to them by Faux Noise shilling for Dick Armey who's in the fleece business (or is that fleecing?). Mining righteous indignation for fun and profit.

In a nutshell Taibbi explains: "My head is starting to hurt. Arguments with Tea Partiers always end up like football games in the year 1900 — everything on the ground, one yard at a time."

They don't know what they're doing, they don't know who they're doing it for, they don't grasp how we got to this point, but now they're demanding that it be fixed. IMMEDIATELY! without bothering them or theirs...

Oy!

Day Late 2-4 FLUSHING THE TUBES

Signs, Signs Everywhere A Sign -OR- Opposite World Recruits a Ringer

Nope, not from the Onion.

Chicago News
Chicago - Rod Blagojevich is apparently an authority on trust.

The former governor will be appearing on a so-called trust forum in New York City Tuesday during advertising week.

He'll be sitting on a panel with representatives from Google, Microsoft, and the Harvard Business School.

Organizers say the say the former governor will be discussing his "unique take on trust."

Evidently the trust reps from AIG, Lehmann BP and WalMart had scheduling conflicts?
That's a pretty impressive line-up for the ANTI-trust side.

Do you think they even thought about having an actual debate, but could not find takers for the Pro-trust side?

National A.D.D. Velocitization -OR-Politcal Football Season Begins

Waiting For Superman? NBC launches Education week (an in-depth look). Zuckerberg gives $100 Million to New Jersey schools. President Obama says "Money alone can't help.". Yada yada yada.

The focus is clear. The message is still subliminal. Your schools suck! Run away!
Millions "educated" in the failure that is our public education system bleat, nod and change the channel. Suspicions confirmed.

Empowering charter schools, emboldening voucher advocates, scaring the parents/ guardians, and causing venture speculators to salivate all over their Forbes magazines as once again, it's time to kick the education football around! Let the great election year tradition distraction begin.


And they're OFF! Have your scorecards and crib sheets ready. Pay close attention and cheer for your favorite. But whatever you do, don't think! WE got you covered!

Eighty percent, of those over age 30, in this country are products of public education. That was the national average when the war on education moved to the fore, so it's interesting and telling, that our national debate on the subject has
been steadily steered away from that norm. If you remember when the advisers arrived, with the formation and release of the blue-ribbon committee report "A Nation At Risk", we were told just how stupid we were. How hopelessly behind we had fallen. How vitally important it was that we abandon, dismantle and rethink the WHOLE system. This came as no huge shock to anyone who could see the chaos, violence, lawlessness and stupidity on the evening news.

Let the shifting, shafting and blaming begin! Remember, you have to start with the children. Get them at an early age so they can be taught what they need to know. For thirty long years we've been teaching their parents that in order to love your kids, you have to get them out of the public education system.

American life is all about options. You need options in order to make choices.
You make choices to show that you're a good consumer. American life is all about labels. Driving the right car, wearing the right clothes, drinking the right light beer, having the right address in the right zip code, the right schools, the right teachers...

American life is all about price tags. If it costs more it's inherently better.
The right products from the right store to bring home to your right address in your right zip code. It's better, right?

Any doubters? Look at the Jumbotron. Everything you need to know is right up there.
The score stands at Ten Trillion to NONE. Which side do you want to be on? Which side do you NEED to be on? That's RIGHT!

That's been the RIGHT'S formula. PASS? FAIL!

Despite their efforts, our public schools are still producing the majority of our second-to-none college students. The most glaring declines in elementary and high schools have occurred where the "options" option has been promoted and exercised.
The drain hasn't "creamed" the top. The best and brightest succeed regardless. The
drain was designed and installed to remove the MIDDLE. The Average. The ballast of the system in order to destabilize it and fulfill prophecy. It is still a work in progress. Schools that were weakened from previous campaigns and abandonment are still around. A few have scratched their way back, others have cribbed the tests, but most are still treading water; waiting for Superman.

The median age stands at 36.7 . Critical mass has not yet been reached.
That event horizon is still distant enough to frustrate the right, but they do have
the "system" on its heels and playing pure defense. The war of siege and attrition chugs along providing very lucrative "opportunities" to all manner of snake-oil pitchmen.

Locally, voters are still putting their money where their self-interests are; supporting their local public schools. To the extent that their schools have countered the attacks, defended their "turf" and delivered for their students they have been rewarded, locally, through support and understanding. By opening their doors to their community, they've kept it real.

Sad and funny that you won't see their side of the story in "Waiting for Superman".

I'll Say Anything -OR- Even NOT Cute When Young

What would make someone who knows so little about so much:
A) Not realize that Bill Maher was USING her cluelessness, not elevating her stature among thinking people?
B) Go back for 21 more humiliations?
C) Think this is resume' building for a United States Senate Seat?


The landscape of coldly calculated resumes surfacing in the various races are
frightening. The ultimate triumph of symbolism over substance? Like an optimized formula for political ascendancy? Whose standards are these anyway? Have we yet reached the point at which this superficiality is grounds enough for voters to reject a candidate? When two equally unsuitable candidates square off, why are we surprised when a waste of space is elected?

Who wins/Who loses when allegedly important positions in our society are filled with clueless, but wholly narcissistic, meat sacks constituting a majority of both political factions? Followup: Who is primarily funding this insanity? Why are they so intent on raising the level of incompetency in politics?

Yep, you know it.

The Petty Stuff -OR- Is That All There Is?

"Since that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing? Let's break out the booze and have a ball"?


(No that is NOT Mika Brzezinski it's the Divine Miss M.)

Existentialist irony brought to you by the usual suspects? As a card carrying
DFH, I am usually very supportive of recycling efforts that offer
a viable alternative to depleting the planet's resources.

The story you are about to hear is true. The names haven't changed significantly, if at all. Once upon a time in the land of US...

(Truth be told, I had sketched out a post regarding the newly unveiled Reproblican recycling, Pledge To America, project... it was immediately shitcanned when The Daily Show and others said/did it so much better and faster than I ever could. If you missed it, I don't know where you can possibly find it, or the riffs on it now. Except
maybe
EVERYWHERE
on the interwebs)

Just one Fezzini Inconceivable
fucktard denial after another and another and another?
Short attention span is one thing; Deja Vu is another, but Batfuck STOOPID shallow and crazy is just too fucking dangerous these days. So what's it really all about?

Thou shalt not remember; except in gauzy reverie. And, of course, blame the hippies.

In truth, all this low-hanging fruit is perhaps the most devious aspect of their turd-polished scheme. They know that their gullible pawns will lap it up and regurgitate it incessantly to anyone and everyone. They know that Congressional "gridlock" is a misnomer since nothing stops except solutions. So 83 cents out of every dollar still goes to "costs" other than the stated objective and their peeps (and successors) are still on the teat. And even while they say nothing's moving, the flow is steady making the right people wealthy and keeping the wrong people so fearful of EVERYTHING or dumfounded at the stoopid that their pleas barely register.

Congresscritters can just round up more buckets instead of fixing the leaks. Follow the money and there you'll find a fat and happy political donor.

The scheme will likely work again. Perhaps not as successfully as it did previously, but for enough, for long enough to prevent the escape velocity needed to get out of this nightmare.

Now I am guilty too. I've stoopped to pick up ANOTHER one of their recycled turds. They distracts me so. In spittle foamed incredulity I've expended time and energy reacting to their empty shill. Just can't seem to lay off that high stinky cheeze!
(Do you think it's rolling that cheese up that's turned the minority's head oompa loompa ORANGE?)

Shorter Version: If the Repiglicans are the answer, it's a really stoopid question.

The Words Sound Queer and Funny to the Ear -OR- On Our Discordance

I'm a big fan of Peace and Prosperity. As words, and as guiding principles, they are powerful. Expanding them in manageable ways, seems to me, a goal worthy of widespread support. Are they being wielded at all by anyone with a platform?

Dennis Kuchinich? He's standing on a thimble, speaking to an empty auditorium.
Go where the crowds are and what will you hear? "Grab your gun! Hoard, hoard hoard.
Disaster's here and it's only going to get worse." It is a war on freedom and liberty waged with ginned up fear and baldfaced lies in pursuit of power and control.

Relative peace and relative prosperity? Peace by proxy war and isolated prosperity? Limited peace and scattered prosperity?

I'm OK, you're on your own? Yeah, that's a plan.

I think what bothers me most about our national dialogues, presently, is the unspoken aloud, but overtly implied, desire for hegemony of, by and for only the deemed worthy. Piqued intolerance toward all else, put forth as righteous, or somehow, a religiously demanded duty of its adherents, without an inkling of understanding the "my god is better than your god" pissing match for which they're enlisting.

Good luck with that. When this is the unfortunate choice being proffered, joining isn't an option. Effort has to be redoubled to quarantine this virulent infectious disease.

Don't Take My Kodachrome Away -OR- Nuts In Ruts

In which we first ask the question: Which is the greater danger, our political Luddites, our political grifters or our congenial, sociopathic, congenital liars?

The follow-up, of course, is how we arrived at the above as our Catch-22, false dilemma choices.

Then there are sideshow geeks of this carnival. The "once upon a timers", the pretenders, the pundits, the schills, who blot out the sky. Circling, wheeling, diving and SWAGging (def #3 Amber[g]) in a fantasticular frenzy of fawning falsehoods from a festooned facade of cocksure fabrication.

Got no solutions and frankly, I have lost my admiration for the problem.
But I'm with her.



"It was easy. I just done did a bad job." just ain't cutting it anymore.
It wasn't done correctly, only from and for the Right? DO IT OVER!

2-4 2sDay Wither Wither Gnaw Gnaw

Where Is The PONY? -OR- Our Highway To Nowhere Inparticular

You've been driving for what feels like forever, on a road unfamiliar, yet properly lit and seeming to be going in the same direction you're supposed to go... ever onward the miles click away. Reassuring signs keep telling you that this is the right road. Other signage warns you of dire consequence should you try to exit. Still, the nagging uncertainty remains, so you decide to stop and ask for directions. You pull into a truck stop. After getting an earful of cryptic information, you decide to buy a map.

It unfolds before you revealing that you are indeed off-course, but according to the map, if you just keep going they way you have been, you'll get there; eventually.
The alternative is to reverse your course, return home and begin again.
Fuck that! You've come too far to even consider turning back. Some of your map seems off somehow, it's a little disconcerting, but the map makers must know what they're doing, right?

Your decision is sealed as you are leaving the truck stop. There is a brightly lit truck just ahead. The back of the truck reads: Follow ME to your destination. I know all the best routes!

WOW, you think, how did he know? It must be a sign. It occurs to you that none of this can be real. But what choice do you have? An endless trip back or keep going, follow the signs? Besides which, you now have your MAP.

You've driven so far, so fast, for so long that you're not really sure where you came from to begin. You didn't like it there either anyway, so it follows naturally that getting where you were going is the way to go. Where were you going? Anyway?
What happens to your trip when you find out the map you're using is printed upside down? The turn you missed is now on another plane of existence? The maze is in flux and the world's just making shit up as it clods along.

This Country Can't Deal With Reality Anymore

History will not be kind to us. At every fork in the road, we've followed the Big Truck with the misleading signage.

Both Sides Do It? -OR- I Really Don't Need This Shit

Mayor Daley's calculated, purposeful announcement, that he will not run for another term, amounts to another mission accomplished for his reign. Not one word about the much anticipated budget battle and structural deficit has seeped through the deluge of stupid-wild-ass-guessing and soothsaying about life after Richie. Chicagoans are nothing if not distract-able. The entire 5 county Metro area resides beneath the canopy and influence of Chicago Politics.

I don't live in Delaware or Alaska or Arizona or in the United States of America for that matter. I am, more or less, fully expatriated @ home. Keep in mind that, by choice, I live in a small, inner-ring suburb, due west of Chicago, Crook County, Proviso Township, Illinois. Doing so comes at a price that for me, for now, is worth paying. Overall, the screwing I'm getting is worth the screwing I'm getting.

What it means, politically, is that locally, regionally and nationally, I am subject to public institutions that exist, in perpetuity, without recourse, for the purpose and convenience of various political organizations who have secured their niche, entrenched, locked and loaded. Elections, such as they are conducted here, NEVER approach anything resembling a real choice or decision. Occasionally an upstart will defy the machine's number crunchers, but in the aftermath, they will either be assimilated or isolated. This is the "Chicago Way" and, as such, it has worked well spanning generations. What it would take to "fix" the system amounts to a Hiroshima level event. Actually, the power unleashed by a significant shift in the established power structure would likely dwarf that of an A-Bomb. For all of its superficial warts, boils, unsightly abscesses, open sores and negligence, it is a study in cost-effectiveness and economy of scale.

It is a system held together by control, corruption and self-interest. When any of these elements are threatened, the system does an amazingly good job of correcting itself. Its efficiency in cleansing, if only symbolically, is assured by knowing exactly how to take down its rogues, enemies and scapegoats. If they want or need you gone, they can and do, throw you under the bus with impunity.

What this means, pragmatically, is stability, predictability and some semblance of ORDER. As long as I can operate freely within this environment, the politics don't really affect me. I am not saying that it is Utopia, or at any juncture, optimal, but
its alleged excesses and corruption are WELL within tolerance for the "benefits" derived. The numbers and dollar signs may appear dizzying to outsiders, but as a percentage of the totals? Well within acceptable and far more attractive than ANY of the Pollyanna alternatives suggested by the regions "Reformers" whose only real interest is in acquiring and harnessing the power for themselves and their own.
One need only look to neighboring DuPage county to see that it is merely a choice between cronies, not efficiencies.

There are affordable, world class benefits, attractions and amenities all within easy reach. Somebody's taxes pay for ALL of these, so the pragmatic me chooses to assign my contributions as earmarked solely to these purposes. Somebody else's taxes can pay for the slimy crap and sleaze. Complete rationalization fantasy, but, hey, it works for me.

Of all of the asshats and annoying stuff that come with where I live, who's minding the Big Store in Chicago has never been on the list. Chicago was, is, and with any luck, will continue to be "the city what woiks". It exerts substantial influence over the regional fortunes of a multitude of tiny to burgeoning suburbs and exurbs who owe its pragmatic stability a debt of gratitude.

It's an odd-lot package deal. No substitutions. The odds of improvement through a carpet-bombing sea change are just too impractical to be considered, whereas tactical applications of its influence portends something worth increasing my contributions for the promise of stability and incrementally better, wider amenities.

Update: Even his long-time critics sort of get the premise and want their picture mementos.
Ben Joravsky/Chicago Reader

Get Back To Where We Once Belonged -OR- Handbasket Weaving

If you born after Nixon you might be excused from having a well-grounded perspective on how the present became this messed up. If you've accepted the generally agreed upon lies, it's pointless to claim any level of authority on a wide variety of subjects. Unless you've had a "hold on just a damn minute, something's wrong with the timeline" epiphany and delved into the unvarnished past, you can only perpetuate the false assertions and altered facts.

If you're older and you stopped paying attention to the details at some point, it's silly to replace the cobwebs in your perceptions with whatever is handy and easy. That kind of simplistic rationalization fails us all.

We can't get there from here. We've lost too much common ground to simply accept the questionably redrawn boundaries. There has to be a critical forensic accounting with required concessions and penalties for the unwise and unbridled incursions, lootings and abandonment of principles that have marked time for the last decades. Those who would say there is no time for that and we must just plod ever onward are just shilling for dollars.

It is only on the fringe, to where true American ideas were banished, that any kind helpful perspective still remains. Where a future can be charted.

How did I miss it? -OR- What the Deux

h/t Bluegal!

There's something very wrong with the narrative voice in the United States of America. It seems no matter what's done or happens, it spells doom, gloom and defeat for Barrack Obama. Extricating the country out of two legacy FUBAR'd military engagements with some level of professionalism and dignity on a TIMETABLE, on schedule, might be considered a pretty slick trick unless you're the first Black President. Absorbing volley after volley after volley of catastroclusterfucks brought on by REPUBLICAN policies, in stride, while disarming potentially world alteringly the backasswards policies into something closer to a reality base makes
this President worse than the plague? Facing down an obstructionist, idealess MINORITY party whose errors and omissions brought us to the very edge of an abyss, just to pass minor legislation and correct the errors is a bad thing. Taking to the bully pulpit to point out the asshats and hypocrites is a bad thing too.

When tea partiers knock off REPUBLICAN candidates, it's Bad News For the Democrats?
The narrative is that Dems are going to be steamrolled in November. I'm pretty sure there's a Rickroll in that linkage somewhere. But it IS what one might reasonably expect from Opposite World, where despite some near-Herculean efforts, we still reside. Up is down, war is peace, stupid is smart and wrong is right. Pearl necklaces and a gaping piehole is the image of chaste piety.

RIGHT?

2-4 2sDay The Great Shel Game

Bonus: Another Cub season of futility is nearing its end...

Rust Never Sleeps -OR- Crap ALWAYS Seeps

You can, absolutely, polish a turd. There are even a few brave sculptors who work in the media. Shed of its liquid, aged and dried, there is left, a somewhat workable substance to be had. As a novelty, there may even be a niche market for shit, but it would take a sizable genius to elevate the form into something acceptably submitted for display in a recognized gallery or auction house. It will always. only. be ART from and within a creative community or one that has jumped the shark. It might be safe to say that unless turds were the ONLY material available for artists, there would still be a natural revulsion to the idea that its production is suitable for consumption. Regardless of the beauty outwardly portrayed, beneath the inventiveness and shine, there lays a turd.

This underlying truth is what astounds me about what, but more importantly, WHO, is passing as authority in our public galleries. Whether it's on the 24/7/365 cable news outlets, or plopped, ubiquitously, amid the network fare and particularly its Sunday morning rat circuit, all you see are turd polishers. Some working with, and off, the excrement of others; whipping and fluffing it into billowy clouds of stank. While others gleefully play in, and with, their own extruded shit.

Even when the rare DaVinci cracks the inbred lineup, they are interacting with hosts and panels armed with and enthralled with its own crap. I don't know the exact date at which it became pointlessly cringe-worthy, painful and patently unwatchable, but I do remember Tim Russert's orgasmic glee when his guests began flinging their feces on the set of Press the Meat. The point when unscripted left the building. Regardless of how the herd of turds were wrangled, they had their scripts and were going to show off their wares irregardless of its context or merit.

The low-hanging fruit examples comprise the ensemble casts. The David Fucking Brooks', the George Wills if you will, the Peggy Nooners, the MoDoH!s, the Friedmans, hawking their still oozing steamy piles of one-size fits none punditry.

But like guest stars on Opposite World's version of the Love Boat, the line-up of gainsayers, flakes and nuts lines up weakly to chew some scenery. Whenever I think that intellectual dishonesty has reached its nadir and foolishly tune in to hear the kind of clarion calls that are direly needed, I get assaulted by the depths to which we've been dragged. There are only the bereft recyclers of repackaged failure trying to sell their latest buffing as truth, justice and the American Way.

Fucking Masterpieces of shit. On pedestals of crap. Leaving us, monumentally phugged.

Time for Phun -OR- End Run

To drown out Chicago's massive structural deficit disclosure via the budget hearing process, Da Mare chose hearing eve to drop his "I ain't runnin' no more" bombshell.
The fudge-it budget didn't dent the din. I know! You're as shocked as I am.

Meanwhile, the public outpouring of understanding Daley's decision and hasty pols scrambling to test the waters are the dominating "news". In the alleys, on the `L' platforms and along the trendy streetscape garden oases, a low strum and chords underlies the announcement, Chicagoans are collectively thinking:



Cuz if'n you go we have to suffer Council Wars again. Great theater, bad government. Chicagoans are practical and see that having a Daley cutting deals on the 5th floor of city hall is better than 50 scheming idiots cutting deals, slicing and dicing the city while lesser ward committeemen leverage their own portfolios for a payday while everybody's still a little groggy.

Also, to distract from my inability to cogently articulate any of half a dozen draft works that still need flesh, I've been spittle spewing random thoughts, loosely tied, lightly breaded and fried. Not that anyone might notice.

Saving Up To Give A Shit -OR- Where's the KA-Boom?

Being a reality-based cynical DFH, it's not surprising to me when a little truth manages to leak out of the Playdoh FunFactory extruders masquerading as media. Where there used to be several to a dozen strident voices around a conference table debating and deciding the content, we now have, at most, two people and the intertubes select-o-matic determining what passes for news. And yes, they still have the chutzpah to call themselves an editorial board.

I suspect that ADA compliance necessitates the zero-depth construction. After all, they could explain it, from all of the necessary angles, but there'd still be the same level of understanding at the spigot end. For a daily, weekly or 24/7 operation,
a widget is a widget. Do they underestimate their audience? Overestimate their influence? Consider either at all? By all available evidence, the churn is the only thing that matters.

So when one or several of the major outlets drops a nugget of truth into the information slurry, they can be confident it will not make much of a ripple.
They can return to churning out zero-depth drivel without a second-thought. If what is churned from one edition to the next negates one from the other, the total lack of follow-up will make it appear intended and seamless.

Where does that leave the occasional to industrious market share of read> think> reason> process> accept/reject thinkers? It doesn't matter because another load is on the way. Then another and another and another.

Media has joined the car alarm in the barely registered spectrum of human awareness.

That leaves the productive/creative side with a serious quandary. Their food/shelter/survival depends on extracting a paycheck from an industry that no longer values knowledge, insight, talent and skill.

At our present speed and course, backround, history and context are bothersome to churn production. The only facts that matter are those woven into the widget. They will not be checked, and if they are, there's no time to revisit.

The inevitable outcome of this hyperspeed output and ingestion is lethal malnutrition. The manifestations of which dominate today's churn and will continue to do so until the wheels fall the fuck off.

Thank you for playing our game.

Dueling Douchebags? -OR- Stupid on Display

What will it take? At what point does the blatant and obvious bullshit no longer suck up all the oxygen and airtime? Why, oh why, is it even necessary to hear this crap at all?

It must be true, I hear it on teevee all the time! In the great tradition of Ronald Wilson Reagan, a warehouse full of horseshit obviously equates to ponies and unicorns for everyone. It is the whopperest fish story of all time. I sure can't argue its success, can you? The track record displays the winning formula. Fool enough of the people enough of the time to have things their way, EVEN when exposed as assholes and voted OUT of power. Kick back, scream and shout, obstruct, then point fingers at the other guys trying to undo the damage, then repeat the cycle. Benefits and consequences being all in arrears, there's always room for jello and money tricks.

We're told all of that is ancient history with no present context. No cause and effect at all? It was the democrats' fault. Enough people believe it to perpetuate the influence, but let's look at the construct. Track it back. Connect the dots. For going on 50 years we've been told that LBJ and the Great Society are to blame for everything that is wrong with gummint. (For 30+ years before that it was the FDR and New Deal.) Have there been two more greater evils perpetrated against America?

Demoncrats and LIBURALS; synonymous with Fascists, Communists, Socialists and domestic terrorists has been the right's mantra since FDR without any factual data to support the indictment. In reality, LBJ didn't implement the Great Society programs, Richard Nixon directed and cast the majority of its elements. So in addition to his "Law and Order" mandate to deal with protesters, he was handed the keys to the biggest progressive victory since the New Deal. The newly created government bureaus were headed by Nixon's Republican Party faithful whose directive was to make sure the programs produced nothing the Democrats would want to claim as their own. As a bonus, the failures could be recycled for each election and blamed on LBJ and those dirty fucking hippies. More pointed fingers to distract from the massive takings and give-aways.

Mid-wiving the birth of opposite world where reality lies 180° from the rhetoric. Nixon first appointed a "Heckuva Job Brownie" Guy and key cog in his campaign, Robert Finch, to head H.E.W.. When it became clear that HEW was the lynchpin to control, overseer power then passed to Eliot Richardson , then to Casper Weinberger. By the time "Cap the knife" took the helm, the die was cast. Policy was established and inertia took over.

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes in modern history was the media acceptance of the Nixon Plumbers. Yes, there was a covert group, but the overt plumbers were installing the piping that would carry all of the Great Society funding. Their work made and still makes the well-connected rich while eliminating any opportunity of benefit from all that money for its stated goals.

So was it built, so does it still operate. This model is replicated throughout our federal bureaucracy. Put in a dollar, get out a dime.(If you're lucky). We've been had and had and had. It worked so well that its successors are at first confused, then reluctant to change it. How do you admit such a hideous scam? So they attempt to control it until it controls them.

2-4 2sDay Late Break Update

Richard M. Daley has announced that he will not run for Mayor.

What this means to Chicago? Whodafuckknows.

As a cat herder, Daley the younger was refreshingly competent.

2-4 2sDay Used and Abused

Step Right Up, Have Your Boarding Pass Ready -OR- An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Each day that I spend interacting with busy important people doing busy important things convinces me that the Golgafrinchans had the right idea. We need a `B' Ark!
There is mounting evidence that our world is doomed. Climate change, extremists, war lords, imminent nuclear proliferation in questionable hands, unhinged wingnuttery and a near complete re-defining of worth in a civilized society...

Just think of the potential here. You too can be one of the few, the ELITE advance team who will set up and organize the next new world! You go ahead. Get it all set up, JUST THE WAY YOU LIKE IT, and we'll be right behind you. We promise!

If you have not read HHGTTG, or if you only saw the interesting but incomplete 2005 version, you really owe it to yourself to check it out. The BBC TV version is out there and is fine viewing, but reading the words as Douglas Adams intended before seeing it translated is the best approach. It will make you appreciate both forms.

The B Ark concept is fucking brilliant, but I fear we'd need more than one just to accommodate our bureaucrats. Adams' `B' Ark only held 15 million. Two would be adequate, but three would provide the kind of cleansing enema that is needed.

"What," he said, "is a 'B' Ark?"

"This is," said the Captain, and swished the foamy water around joyfully with the duck.

"Yes," said Ford, "but ..."

"Well what happened you see was," said the Captain, "our planet, the world from which we have come, was, so to speak, doomed."

"Doomed?"

"Oh yes. So what everyone thought was, let's pack the whole population into some giant spaceships and go and settle on another planet."

Having told this much of his story, he settled back with a satisfied grunt.

"You mean a less doomed one?" prompted Arthur.

"What did you say dear fellow?"

"A less doomed planet. You were going to settle on."

"Are going to settle on, yes. So it was decided to build three ships, you see, three Arks in Space, and ... I'm not boring you am I?"

"No, no," said Ford firmly, "it's fascinating."

Number Two's eyes darted feverishly about the room again and then settled back on the mirror, like a pair of flies briefly distracted from their favourite prey of months old meat.

"Yes, so anyway," he resumed, "the idea was that into the first ship, the 'A' ship, would go all the brilliant leaders, the scientists, the great artists, you know, all the achievers; and into the third, or 'C' ship, would go all the people who did the actual work, who made things and did things, and then into the `B' ship - that's us - would go everyone else, the middlemen you see."

He smiled happily at them.

"And we were sent off first," he concluded, and hummed a little bathing tune.
...

"And they made sure they sent you lot off first did they?" inquired Arthur.

"Oh yes," said the Captain, "well everyone said, very nicely I thought, that it was very important for morale to feel that they would be arriving on a planet where they could be sure of a good haircut and where the phones were clean."

"Oh yes," agreed Ford, "I can see that would be very important. And the other ships, er ... they followed on after you did they?"

For a moment the Captain did not answer. He twisted round in his bath and gazed backwards over the huge bulk of the ship towards the bright galactic centre. He squinted into the inconceivable distance.

"Ah. Well it's funny you should say that," he said and allowed himself a slight frown at Ford Prefect, "because curiously enough we haven't heard a peep out of them since we left five years ago ... but they must be behind us somewhere."

He peered off into the distance again.

Talk about a project to stimulate the economy.

Before It's Gone -OR- When Talent Lays Down

What started as a stroke of genius has gone awry. D r i f t g l a s s has transformed his Award Winning blog into a snarky aggregator (like most/all of the "A-Listers"). His talent made it amazing but reduced his posts to a headline, a graphic, a link and fun with labels.

The only problem is that he's fabulous at this new form too and has drawn much attention. So why should he go back to the long form? Or toil long over a photoshop masterpiece? Why continue to open his veins and pour out the best damn writing in the blogosphere when he can accomplish the same objectives with a headline, graphic and a link?

The only reasons for him to end his "vacation" that I have are purely selfish. I want to read his words. I want to sense his pith and snark. I want to revel in the enormity of his talent and fully experience the width and breadth of his abilities.

The withdrawal symptoms are freakin' me out!

So please go and enjoy the genius at play, but please do encourage him to get back to work!

Somebody Ought to Say It -OR- Sabotage

That's right. Sabotage. And well within the definitions of treason and sedition.

Where's the proof? Everywhere. In everything. Since St. Ronnie pushed the tiller hard-over and mashed the pedal to the metal, it's been a blurring, white-knuckle ride. Figuratively, the controls are locked out and the brake lines cut. Anti-Personnel mines, IEDs, and booby-traps surround the engine room. Pieces of said engines are disintegrating, flying off and failing at an ever accelerating rate.
Our present trajectory is a corkscrew turning intractably to the right.


Mission Accomplished.

The consequence of this course of action was well-known and predictable. By the time the herd bothered to look up, rise up and get angry, the damage would be done and somebody else would be left to take the blame. Any attempts to fix the damage results in precipitous, violent, stomach churning symptoms that only ease when withdrawn. It is important to recognize that these are only symptoms because they are absolutely essential maneuvers to regaining control. Avoiding the impact, at speed, is crucial to any hope for what any of us might accept or recognize as survival.



Looking to the skies for an interplanetary hero won't help at all.

The unnatural disaster we are screaming toward will be very different unless we prevent it. The only way to prevent it is to clear the minefields, disarm the IEDs and booby-traps and take back the engine room. Whoa, wait just a minute! Isn't that tea-party talk?

No, not at all. If you listen closely to the tea-party message, that's precisely what they want to stop from happening. They are being mislead into thinking that the people trying to fix things are the saboteurs. Granted they seem inept and bumbling in their attempts, but I attribute that to just how colossally FUBAR things are and their unwillingness to appear panicked.

There is a way through this minefield, but it's not a straight line. Step by step, the mines must be found, marked and mapped for later disarming and removal. Until the field is clear, missteps are ill-advised. In that light, progress is being made. There is reason to remain hopeful.

More important there is skill and talent, deserving of our admiration, charting a way out of this valley. What seems to be business as usual just might be a genius at work. You have to set `em up before you can knock `em down. Identify and isolate before you can eliminate. It takes nerves of steel to work on live ordnance embedded in a population. It's a long slow slog not suited to reactionaries.

So when you hear the hysterical screaming over the faux outrage de jour, try to see past it to the horizon. The world is round. We will get there. Only fools rush in. We've been there, done that. You MUST remember...That's why we're in this fucking mess in the first place.