Follow The Bouncing Big Brass Balls -OR- Flopping Mops

Circa 1974. I was 20. A group of ~20 friends were sitting around a roaring campfire in the woods next to the river, swapping stories with two alien visitors... No, not the ET kind. Two blokes from the British Army who were visiting one's sister who lived in the townhouse complex where we lived. There was much drinking and music and dancing and more drinking and dirt bike stunts.
There was undoubtedly some sharing and consumption of illegal substances. In other words, a typical weekend around the compound in which the visitors joined enthusiastically. The Brits were cheeky and fresh off posting in then very turbulent Northern Ireland. A week of R&R before reporting for maneuvers in Canada. It was a great night, full of the kind of memories that have surfaced often over the years.

It was there that I first heard of "Flopping Mops". A Brit/Irish colloquialism akin to the American crumbling cookie, as in "That's the way the..." Nonchalance in the face of the inevitable. That's just the way the mop flops. Whatchoo gonna do? (shrug)
Ranks right up there with "Shit Happens" in my event filing system.

If something is inevitable it must be predictable right? No "knowns or unknowns" Rummyspeak needed. Perhaps not the only possible outcome, just a most likely one. Take collective bargaining, defined benefit plans and the fun with numbers exercise currently in play and on display.

Governor Walker is telling anyone who'll stick a microphone in his face or a tape recorder on the other end of the phone that this is just the way the mop flops for workers in Wisconsin. He has the votes he needs, he has the manufactured conditions he needs, so it's a no-brainer. He is only following orders doing the job for which he was elected.

Who could have possibly seen this financial clusterfuck coming? This isn't the state of Wisconsin breaking its promises, shirking its responsibilities or laying the groundwork for replicant efforts nation-wide. He's just playing the hand he's been dealt, right? Whatchoo gonna do? (shrug)

He doesn't know anything about anything regarding how this hand was dealt. His actions that moved the state into deficit happened independent of the present situation. Just as all of the cascading failures, egregious and blatant fuggery, and general mop flopping that have 'crippled" the economy have NOT been deliberate manipulations to get this game of winner-takes-all and moves it offshore into every element of life.

You don't wanna play? Too bad. You just want the deal you made and signed? Sorry, fresh out. You'll take this NEW deal and like it. Hey! It's not piracy when we steal it legally. Thank you for playing our game.

If you haven't read Matt Taibbi's RS piece "Why Isn't Wall Street In Jail?" you should. Then maybe as these shrugging janitors en masse keep playing their bottom-dealt hands, to simply continue ripping down and acting as conduit to their monied benefactors the remainders of what hasn't been previously looted, you might grab hold of that flopping mop and stick its handle where it will do the most good.

Heads on pikes? Too barbaric? Sez who?

So Tired -OR- Opposite World Whiplash

"You can wait here in the sitting room OR sit here in the waiting room"
See we're giving you a CHOICE!

Straight out of the Rod Serling handbook.

The sociopathic bi-polars, like Mr. Magoo, have done it again. To lauds and laurels from their doubtless delusional, memory-addled troupe of regurgitating followers.

Witless this exchange:
DDRF: "Has nothing to do with hate. Teachers can contribute to there on retirement and there own health insurance like the rest of us.
Great propaganda by the unions though" (sic)

Response: "Teachers DO contribute to their own retirement and health care. It's is part of the salary package negotiated by the districts. For twenty years (at least, you know during the get rich heydays) they've foregone pay raises in lieu of benefits.... It's not the teachers' fault that districts haven't fully funded the benefits that were negotiated in good faith. Districts have been foolish in expecting legislators would actually address the funding issues.

It's not the teachers' fault that health care costs have spiraled out of control. In fact, if this latest assault manages to deduct health care costs from teacher's take home pay, it will FURTHER spiral those costs for everyone. Teachers aren't the budget busters, insane FOR-PROFIT health care is.

Stop blaming teachers. The proof of their value and worth is evident every day in every way. Stop demonizing teachers and education for the failure of legislators to curb their inner-sociopath."

Another DDRF: "The problem is with teachers with tenure. Some of them no longer care and/or are not or were never any good. Yet, they STILL get paid high salaries and benefits like no other. Raises and continued employment should be merit-based. Get rid of the dinasaurs!"

Response: "Teachers didn't come up with Tenure as their road to riches or their way to "stick it to the man". It rose, as did most/all of our labor laws, out of protection against retaliation/loss of job because of the whims/p...olitics of schools and school boards. Because clever folks come up with clever ways to deflect their own responsibilities and accountability.

If anything, many administrators and boards have been HIDING behind tenure to excuse their lack of involvement in EDUCATION issues. We've all had "bad" teachers in our learning experiences, but they are far from epidemic or even predominant in the field.

At this point it's all games and money tricks. Don't fall for it. Get the legislatures and politics OUT of education. FIX the broken health care system so you don't have to play money games with people's lives.

There has been a concerted effort to destroy public education since the Grace Report. The proof that public education works is that you woke up this morning. That alone should be worth the price."

Spouse of DDRF#1: "I agree. Most employees do contribute to their retirement pensions. Even many police and firemen contribute to their own retirement and do not receive insurance once retired. Also, the cost of insurance could be lowered substantially by simply receiving more reasonably priced insurance. I do think that everyone could help but perhaps at least try to negotiate more reasonable benefits as opposed to dictating or running away. Time for all to grow up!"

Response: "There's a vast difference between negotiating and being steamrolled. By the numbers in Wisconsin, Walker wants to strip negotiating from public employees. So, for all intents and purposes, it's negotiate now or fully capitulate that right forever because Walker has the votes to do just that.

Negotiations are two-sided affairs. I haven't heard Walker pushing to eliminate legislatures, state/county/local governments that sat across the table and made these deals. He's managed, once again, to deflect responsibility by making unions the problem.

At no time in his campaign did Walker publicly say, suggest, hint that getting rid of collective bargaining would be his first order of business.
A sin of omission? Had he clearly stated his agenda, is it possible that the election would have turned out differently? So now, when he says we had an election, we won! He is LYING. This is his choice, not the peoples'."


DDRF#1S: "I know the difference between negotiating and steamrolling and if I didn't I just got a great lesson very recently, it is known as Obamacare. My point was that it is time that both sides stop steamrolling and at least make an effort to come... up with reasonable solutions on both sides . Also, there are many people who have foregone pay raises and don't receive benefits because of the state of the economy. Nothing is as it was and the things people feel they are entitled to; even if they are, unfortunatley need to adjust and then adjust more. The money just isn't there. In IL state income tax was just raised, real estate taxes have gone up and gas and food prices have increased. I doubt most people have any room in their budget to pay more for others much less the things they need or want for their own families. As I stated earlier, it is unnecessary to provide top of the line health insurance when so much could be saved by downgrading to a more reasonable policy. Also this issue is not about liking or disliking teachers. It is about money and power and both sides want it. The best solution is to share the power and stop spending so much on both sides. Basedjust on the posts on this subject , it is unfortunately very obvious that this will not happen anytime soon".

Response: "All you can do is spout the talking points? How wonderful life must be with blinders on. Keep shouting for lower taxes and higher standards.
Never look at facts, they'll just confuse you. Keep moving the goal posts and fearing your neighbors. You'll go far.

So we need some kind of "just good enough for them" health insurance? Is single-payer an option in your concept of health care reform? Since health care is crushing employers, employees and wannabe employees alike, doesn't fixing it ONCE the right way make the most sense. I... know that's not Obamacare, but... that was a quantum leap forward from whence we were.
You'd probably be surprised at how fiscally conservative I am, but at the moment we're in the wrong boat on the wrong waterway, paddling the wrong way. "

At this point, the DDRFs were evidently distracted by some shiny bauble and forgot they were in the middle of a debate. [crickets]
I'm sure when they've gently shaken, not stirred, their etch-a-sketch brains, it will never have even happened.
I guess that's to be expected from folks who roared with approval when we invaded Iraq because of 9/11?, WMDs?, insurgencies?, evil-doers? unknown unknowns ... I bet they fly the flag every day too. It IS the absolute very least you can do as a REAL Amurcan."

Our Societal Smart-Bombs -OR- Make It So

They came for the trade-unionists and something SNAPPED!

With several Trillion$$$ of transfered wealth alleged to be on the sidelines just waiting for John Galt. With Trillion$$$ of tax dollars pumping through the financial markets. With Trillion$$$ of tax dollars coursing through the military-industrial complex. With Trillions$$$ of PRE-tax dollars pooling in 401Ks and other misunderstood retirement conduits. With Trillion$$$ of state-incurred debt...
Now is the time!

It's obvious that the problem lies with UNIONS eh? Our GREEDY working class poor. How dare they feel secure and valued in an era of rampant unemployment when laborers would cede almost anything for a paycheck again. You'd have to be one of Driftglass' Flatworms to not see what's going on.



The cowering figure depicted is labeled business. In 1937, a full 8 years after the crash, business was still askeered of the big bad government. Their stalwart, loyal, lobbyists, at the time were the front pages of just about every major newspaper in the country. Each and every day, they railed against Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his programs, his proposals, his very being. Protecting the singular interests of wealth and privilege. The best paid writers of the Great Depression were churning out anti-government, anti-Roosevelt, anti-socialist, pre-Randian tripe about how tearing down the rich was not the way to go. How an unfettered, untaxed, unregulated market was the American way.

Even with unemployment at 25%, massive nomadic migrations, Hoovervilles, grinding poverty and diminishing prospects, the majority of Americans were still working, felt lucky to have jobs and were willing to work harder for less just to make ends meet.

Enormous wealth was attained by those able to buy up troubled businesses for pennies on the dollar. Businesses could become troubled by limiting their access to capital and/or making the capital very expensive to access making more businesses available for bargain hunters.

Robber barons? Feudal Lairds? Carpet Baggers? All pikers comparatively.
Our present manipulators have a far larger, more insidious, more malodorous arsenal at their disposal. It's taken 40 years of patient agitprop and ownership consolidation to assemble the siege tower that will finally topple the last vestiges of FDR's New Deal. Decades of demonization, millions spent on mouthpieces to push the verbiage, endowed think-tanks spewing corporate gibberish chasing the last obstacle to their dream of owning everything. They can almost taste it. The sweat, tears, skin and sinew of generations of workers, put on the block. America for sale.

The people's representatives -set up by economic hit-men- are poised to give it all away cheap. Rolling economic black-outs deployed strategically to break down resistance. So close. So close.

The last best money-trick.

Fun With Numbers -OR- Poof! They Gone!

Ten cents each or two for a quarter.
100% Graduation Rates?

For the second straight year, Urban Prep Charter High School is not only touting that "all" of its seniors are graduating, but that 100% are going to college.


This is being held out as proof of meeting the Charter school's goals and mission.
What they fail to disclose is that last year's junior class of 121 students became this year's 100% graduating class of 104. The undisclosed asterisk?



This also begs the question of college admission standards when only 17% of the school's students met or exceeded state standards on standardized tests.

It's so much better to LOOK good than to BE good.
Isn't that much of what we've become?

An Important Voice Speaks Out -OR- Whatever Will The Villagers Do To Ignore Truth

Out here on the fringe it is hard to put a cogent word in edgewise. For that you have to give credit where credit is due. Out here everything is reduced to non-sequitur. There is nothing in the newsfotainment stream to which desperately needed comment, discussion and debate can possibly relate. Pre-framed, pre-packaged, pre-scripted and served complete with first and last word provided by the rolodex of all knowledge worth knowing whose names are known and accepted as experts (because that's what the caption beneath their name says they are and they wouldn't be on TV if it weren't so). Folks like Pat Buchanhan, George Will, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, Thom Friedman, Cokie Roberts, and the whole of Faux News' stable of liars. Rising and setting on how everything rises and sets only as it relates to maintaining the mythology of RWR.

The teeming millions, desperate for explanations, but too scared, harried and distracted to find and process independent information for themselves, ingest and
assimilate far inferior products as though it is nutrition for the mind. It may not make much sense to them, but the reasonable experts cited above seem to believe and understand it. Right?

So when a voice comes out of the wainscotting and speaks a different sermon, of and for a perspective with no mooring in the narrative continuity, it can sound queer and almost other-worldly; because it is. The world of which it speaks it the one we have lost.

Top of that list, for me, is Noam Chomsky
The ONLY place you'll see and hear him is on the PUBLIC Airwaves. The airwaves about to be defunded as unaffordable in these economic times.

You can see and hear the whole show at
Democracy Now

My favorite part:

NOAM CHOMSKY: This deification of Reagan is extremely interesting and a very—it’s scandalous, but it tells a lot about the country. I mean, when Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy. When he came into office, the United States was the world’s leading creditor. By the time he left, it was the world’s leading debtor. He was fiscally totally irresponsible—wild spending, no fiscal responsibility. Government actually grew during the Reagan years.

He was also a passionate opponent of the free market. I mean, the way he’s being presented is astonishing. He was the most protectionist president in post-war American history. He essentially virtually doubled protective barriers to try to preserve incompetent U.S. management, which was being driven out by superior Japanese production.

During his years, we had the first major fiscal crises. During the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the New Deal regulations were still in effect, and that prevented financial crises. The financialization of the economy began to take off in the ’70s, but with the deregulation, of course you start getting crises. Reagan left office with the biggest financial crisis since the Depression: the home savings and loan.

I won’t even talk about his international behavior. I mean, it was just abominable. I mean, if we gained our optimism by killing hundreds of thousands of people in Central America and destroying any hope for democracy and freedom and supporting South Africa while it killed about a million-and-a-half people in neighboring countries, and on and on, if that’s the way we get back our optimism, we’re in bad trouble.

Well, what happened after Reagan left office is that there was the beginnings of an effort to carry out a kind of—this Reagan legacy, you know, to try to create from this really quite miserable creature some kind of deity. And amazingly, it succeeded. I mean, Kim Il-sung would have been impressed. The events that took place when Reagan died, you know, the Reagan legacy, this Obama business, you don’t get that in free societies. It would be ridiculed. What you get it is in totalitarian states. And I’m waiting to see what comes next. This morning, North Korea announced that on the birthday of the current god, a halo appeared over his birthplace. That will probably happen tomorrow over Reagan’s birthplace. But when we go in—I mean, this is connected with what we were talking about before. If you want to control a population, keep them passive, keep beating them over the head and let them look somewhere else, one way to do it is to give them a god to worship.

Give them a light and they'll follow it anywhere!

Honey Do -OR- To Serve With Love

Nobody I know who deserves flowers from me will see this, but Happy Valentines Day. Do something monumentally foolish for someone you love.

Hopeless romantic that I am, I'm installing a new bathroom floor. Hopefully the last step in an unfortunate series of water-related events. I'm about half way home, but the works are working.

Do you ever feel like your life consists of moving from one broken thing to the next? Me neither. I'm a glass half-full kinda Rehctaw....

One Of Those Head Snapping Moments -OR- Taxman!

If you drive a car,
I'll tax the street.
If you ride to city,
I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold,
I'll tax the heat.
If you take a walk,
I'll tax your feet.

"A bill in Washington state would tax electric vehicle drivers for the gas they aren't using to power their cars."

NPR Marketplace Story

There is no end to the counter-intuitiveness of a determined bureaucrat trying to perpetuate the carnival ride or the seeming gullibility of the American public.

Who gave the mouse the cookie?
Sin taxes have been all but tapped out. The internet has exposed a serious flaw in sales tax collections. Now what? Let's think outside the box. Save energy? That's not good for tax collection?

At what point does reality set in?

Tree Huggin', Peace Lovin' Hippies Like Me -OR- Time Has Come Today

Transformational ascendency is, evidently, a matter of perspective. timing. tenacity and world-wide media attention.

Regulars here may know that I fundamentally believe in self-rule. That is to say that I try to practice self-control. But I'm a practical anarchist too. I know there are rules. ` just want those rules to make sense and be applied as fairly and judiciously as humanly possible to derive maximum benefit. That, apparently, leaves too much wiggle room for some people.

Right now, we are witness to the the end of an error. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who isn't elated with the events in Egypt outside of the Mubarak clubhouse and perhaps the dysfunctional family @ Faux News. Today is a hopeful day. Tomorrow has finally arrived.

Rather than letting anyone else tell you what it means, I encourage you to consider the potential for humankind. Unlike past transformational moments, we can all be there. LIVE.

Mubarak had a club. A very exclusive club. The people in the streets weren't in it, couldn't join it and didn't particularly like that arrangement. What comes next will be manifold attempts to retain the vestiges of the club because that's how things have always been done. Not anymore.

It's a great day for us all.

Change. Transformation. Can be sudden and stark.

I'll let Todd explain it all:

-4 to 40 -OR- Typical Chicago Weather.

The temps here are doubling every 6-8 hours. Just when us flatlanders were starting to adjust to the mountains that sprang up last week, it's time to break out the shorts.

Then again, when you're standing between two eight foot walls of packed snow, I doubt the air will feel anywhere close to 40°. Only one thing to do. Hie with all speed to a completely cleared/plowed, big empty blacktopped parking lot, break out the grill and patio furniture and bask in the warmth.



Just beyond the 7-11 there's just the spot. The site of a former Chevy Dealer which was part of an "auto group" owned by some Brit. He moved the Chevy Dealer into his former Chrysler Dealership just up the road, he got a sweet tax incentive to renovate, similar to the one he got to build the Chevy Building several years ago.

But that's a story for another day. Now it's time to stock up on picnic supplies!

Disposable Dispostion -OR- I Just Gotta Say It

As a Chicago native, I know I'm supposed to loathe the Packers. Either I've outgrown such blind loyalties OR the fabric of the sport has bunched up. Maybe both?

The Bears won the NFC North/Central/MidLandMass (or whatever the division is called these days) title. They didn't do it alone and they sure as hell didn't do it by outplaying their opponents. From their week one GIFT victory against the Lions when the game losing play was overturned and ruled an incomplete pass, until the Cutler/Collins/ Haney playoff rematch debacle against the Packers, being a Bear Fan this year was simply impossible. In that playoff game, the Packers proved they were the best TEAM in the division. In the Super Bowl they showed the rest of the country that the sport of football is, or should be, mostly about TEAM.

Lovie Smith's reign of indifference must end. It won't. As long as Da Bears can, and do, count on blind loyalty from the fans, and somehow end up with a Division championship now and then with the most gawdawful game plans ever conceived and
put on the field, they will play just good enough to get a really shitty draft choice with which they'll select "the best athlete available". Over time they've rivaled the loveable losers of Wrigley Field at making decent enough ingredients unpalatable.

Every Bear fan should be thankful they weren't watching their squad play in SB XLV.

The Lombardi trophy went to the best team. As it should.

A Coke and a Smile -OR- The World Sings... A Hopeful Dirge?

"Elections aren't ONLY about the will of the people. Elections are about organizing politically" - Christopher Dickey of Newsweek on MSNBC

Dickey was free-versing about the situation in Egypt where one-way rule and martial law have governed since Anwar al-Sadat. The Mubarak government has agreed to suspend martial law WHEN the current crisis has ended. There will be more freedom of the press once the current crisis ends. There will be sunshine and moonbeams for all.

The planet is experiencing an unavoidable collision between perception and reality, facts and fictions; their purpose and proponents. Facts and reality are meeting the dominant fictions and perceptions that have been used to organize politically.

Wear a helmet.

Yes We Can Keep the Acronym -OR- Slow, Silent Encroachments

U.S.A.,U.S.A.,U.S.A.,U.S.A.,U.S.A.,U.S.A.,U.S.A.,U.S.A.,U.S.A.,U.S.A.,U.S.A..

Welcome to the Untethered States of America. And to the Distopia, for which it stands.
Several nations, diced, sliced and divvied up. With tolerance and justice for none.

The true legacy of Trickle Down.

Consider, if you will, thresholds. What are yours? How have you adjusted them in light of everything that has happened? Are you tiptoeing past the graveyards of fallen acquaintances? Has your circle of meat-world friends grown or diminished? Do you think of the fallen, displaced, relocated, with whom you once interacted? Constantly? Occassionally? Hardly ever?

Are you too busy with your own problems and fears to do more than feign interest or involvement in the wider scope of events? Do you dare ask what it is that you do? Or whether it is helpful/hurtful, benign/malignant? It is but a small thing in the overall; after all. Where do you find meaning? And what does it mean?
How do you determine value and worth?

Where do you look for validation and what do you find there that is of comfort? To every thing there is a season? The Lord helps those who help themselves? You're good enough, smart enough and gosh darn it, people like you? I'm a law-abiding citizen, I have nothing to fear?

What and how do you share? Do you have more or less than you need? Does that which you choose to share reach your intended target? How do you know?

As you can see, I have questions I am trying to answer. How about you?

Weather News You Can Use

Occupation Getting To Your Brain? Have Another Drink

The Kinks - Have Another Drink Lyrics @ LyricsTime.com

While important people are doing important things trying to keep important people, places and things from being unmasked as actually pretty trivial in the lives of just about everybody, there isn't much to do; except wait.

Take care of yourself and your own. Try not to get bogged down in the tedium. When and where you can, help those you can through UNCONVENTIONAL means. By all means, be a team player, just remember which team that is. And which clubhouse it is, by all measures, that is closed to you.

It's the OCCUPATION. Getting to your brain. Direct your resources toward a sustainable community. One in which you'd like to live. That means you have to stop trusting that the "powers that be" share your interests, or are even interested in your interests beyond how they sustain and protect their own.

These are critical mass issues. Study them. When you see the effort being expended not for remedy, but only to diffuse, deflect and/or distract, it's a pretty safe bet
you're being used.



I'm Not Like Everybody Else