Of course you people who read my blog know that I knew that posting that link to Mark Vernon and Rupert Sheldrake's Science Set Free podcast yesterday would provoke the atheists who monitor this blog. Thought I certainly would have posted it on its own merits if that weren't true, I knew that they'd get into a swivet over it, and they did. I can't claim to not see that as a bonus, I do like to push that particular button and watch the predictable response.
Also in the e-mail newsletter I get from Rupert Sheldrake, listing his recent activities and recommending things he's read and heard, there was a very good and, from what I gather, badly received speech which the science journalist John Horgan gave to a "Skeptics" convention. I recommend it as well worth reading. Even though I sometimes disagree with some of what John Horgan says, like one of my scientist-materialist-atheist heroes, Richard Lewontin, he's an honest person and I suspect even something of a kindred spirit. He says:
I’m a science journalist. I don’t celebrate science, I criticize it, because science needs critics more than cheerleaders. I point out gaps between scientific hype and reality. That keeps me busy, because, as you know, most peer-reviewed scientific claims are wrong.
So I’m a skeptic, but with a small S, not capital S. I don’t belong to skeptical societies. I don’t hang out with people who self-identify as capital-S Skeptics. Or Atheists. Or Rationalists.
When people like this get together, they become tribal. They pat each other on the back and tell each other how smart they are compared to those outside the tribe. But belonging to a tribe often makes you dumber.
Well, I'm not a science journalist but I endorse most of that, especially the last paragraph. I certainly have found it to be the case in online commenting communities, which can get stupider as they go on, or maybe it's just that anyone who isn't prone to stupid group-think drop out of them.
His discussion of various lapses in scientific honesty and practice, especially when motivated by the ideological program of materialists and anti-religious atheists, isn't something I haven't gone over before but it's nice to see that I'm not the only one who has noticed that, even skeptical science reporters have.
The organized "Skeptics" are and always have been a fraud, they aren't skeptical about anything. They never question their own assumptions, they have absolute faith in what they believe in even as they deny that their belief is belief but declare it is knowledge. They have shown themselves to be able to lie and commit fraud and to refuse to look at evidence and to admit what it shows when they see it as any other fundamentalists - and fundamentalists they are. I would say that the current crop of anti-religious "Skeptics" are even more uniformly closed minded, anti-intellectual and dishonest about their motives and their behavior than many who fall in the category "evangelicals" and even many who might be called religious fundamentalists. I think it's more likely that someone who seriously believes there is a God-given requirement to be honest and to question your motives to grow past that than materialists who don't believe they are required to do that, though the difficulty and emotional challenge of doing that is hard for any of us.
We disagree about a number of things but I agree with him that "Skepticism" is largely a fraud and the attitude they have is, actually, destructive of science. His take down of Lawrence Krauss in his emergence as an ideological cosmologist says things I've been pointing out about that for about as long as he has (his links to his previous articles are well worth following up on).
And it should be noted that John Horgan is critical of the field of scientific inquiry that Rupert Sheldrake is often engaged in these days, Psi. Sheldrake clearly isn't going to let that keep him from recommending that people read what he says. Another thing that Rupert Sheldrake recommended in his newsletter is a blog post by Massimo Pigliucci, as he points out a big S Skeptic and atheist who is finding that his fellow ideologues are, in fact, anti-intellectuals and less open and honest than could produce real skepticism or even intellectual honesty. He goes into the matter of Krauss and other heroes of the neo-atheist-skeptic movement. I wish I could hear more of what Pigliucci has to say about the late Paul Kurtz, one of the biggest figures in turning pseudo-skepticism into a self-congratulating, anti-intellectual club of conceited, ignorant snobs. The pseudo-skeptics are, ironically enough, leading us back into the same intellectual decadence of the worst of pre-scientific scholasticism, only without the intellectual standards they practiced back then.
I don't see, a. that science under the regime of the materialists is going to reform itself, or b. that these critics will be taken seriously. I doubt that they will even really fix the wreck that peer review has become in the age of Big Science. I believe that we are well into the materialist-atheist dark age, the unlightenment. And the basic reason for that is because people have been sold on the idea that there is no sin, there are no moral obligations to tell the truth or to care about consequences. A lie is as good as the truth if you can get what you want with it. That is the result of this, even the few honest atheists and materialists are not going to save us from it. That will have to come from outside of it.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Allowing Donald Trump And The Republican Hate Talkers and Gun Industry Enablers To Benefit From The Gun Murders At The Pulse Nightclub Would Be The Ultimate Disrespect Of The Victims
Republicans, the party of opportunistic hatred of Latinos and LGBT people, their hate spouting presidential candidate, Donald Trump, the candidate of most of those who voted in their nominations process are still trying to use the LGBT-Latino victims of a hate crime against both communities united in Latino - LGBT people to gain power so they can continue their hate campaigns against both communities. They are also using hatred and xenophobia against all Muslims because, just like the shooter, Omar Mateen, they are all about hate and like ISIS they are all about grabbing power no matter how they do it.
The Republican Party has transformed itself into the party which is all about the worst of us, appealing to the worst in us for the worst possible motives, to gain power to steal the wealth of this country for the filthy rich. Their candidate, Donald Trump, has made himself famous as an icon of sharp business practice which is all about self-enrichment, of wallowing in the sort of sleazy luxury that is the putridly vulgar and facile form of conspicuous consumption promoted by the bottom end of show biz glitz.
It would be the ultimate disrespect to the people murdered at the LGBT night club to allow their deaths to propel Donald Trump into office, it would be the ultimate disrespect to their memory to allow the same people who denied the horror of previous mass gun murders by psychopaths armed by the Republicans in the congress, the executive and most shamefully on the Supreme Court in order to make it easy for the murderer in this case to buy weapons despite him being on the radar of the FBI and him having been reported as being a violent, abusive hate talker who had been reported for his violent hatred of specific groups, including those he murdered last weekend.
Yet that is what the media is going to allow to happen because they serve the same masters. That is, unless we stop them from stealing the bodies of the dead to use that way.
The Republican Party has transformed itself into the party which is all about the worst of us, appealing to the worst in us for the worst possible motives, to gain power to steal the wealth of this country for the filthy rich. Their candidate, Donald Trump, has made himself famous as an icon of sharp business practice which is all about self-enrichment, of wallowing in the sort of sleazy luxury that is the putridly vulgar and facile form of conspicuous consumption promoted by the bottom end of show biz glitz.
It would be the ultimate disrespect to the people murdered at the LGBT night club to allow their deaths to propel Donald Trump into office, it would be the ultimate disrespect to their memory to allow the same people who denied the horror of previous mass gun murders by psychopaths armed by the Republicans in the congress, the executive and most shamefully on the Supreme Court in order to make it easy for the murderer in this case to buy weapons despite him being on the radar of the FBI and him having been reported as being a violent, abusive hate talker who had been reported for his violent hatred of specific groups, including those he murdered last weekend.
Yet that is what the media is going to allow to happen because they serve the same masters. That is, unless we stop them from stealing the bodies of the dead to use that way.
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Bela Bartok- Quartet Number 5
Allegro
Adagio Molto
Scherzo. Alla bulgarese
Andante
Finale. Allegro vivace - Presto
Ana Török, Răsvan Dumitru - violins.
Traian Boală - viola.
Zsolt Török - cello
The last movement is, perhaps, played a bit too fast for a hall with such a long reverberation, though it might be the recording. It is a bracing tempo, I don't have the score here so I can't check to see what it says.
I wish I'd always played to such impeccably polite audiences. I didn't realize it was played in front of an audience until they started clapping.
I Can't Resist Pointing Out This From A Piece Just Up At Mother Jones Magazine
6 Guns That Got a Barrage of Free PR From Hollywood
From Dirty Harry's monster revolver to Borat's golden gun.
Smith & Wesson Model 29: This giant revolver was on the verge of being discontinued until Clint Eastwood immortalized it as "the most powerful handgun in the world" while pointing it at a cowering "punk" in 1971's Dirty Harry. The gun used in the film is now on display at the NRA's National Firearms Museum.
Hollywood is the breeding ground of the fascist pathology that is the real danger to American democracy that communism never was.
Update: Simps doesn't seem to understand that I'm not the one who wrote the article, I didn't choose the six guns and the movies that placed the products. Sorry, Simpy, you again fail the basic literacy test. I'm telling you, find one of those old SRA reading kits and go through them, one story at a time and you might get up to where 8th graders used to be expected to get. At least in my rural public school way out here in the sticks. I can't answer for yours.
Update: Simps doesn't seem to understand that I'm not the one who wrote the article, I didn't choose the six guns and the movies that placed the products. Sorry, Simpy, you again fail the basic literacy test. I'm telling you, find one of those old SRA reading kits and go through them, one story at a time and you might get up to where 8th graders used to be expected to get. At least in my rural public school way out here in the sticks. I can't answer for yours.
Update: I don't know how Duncan can bring himself to sponsor the stupidity that Simps evoked with the comment he posted here posted there. Really, just stupid.
We always have to point out that the Republicans are sleazy ambulance chasers always trying to use these terror events to gain power, essentially the Reichstag Fire strategy of taking power.
In this case it is especially disgusting because they are the foremost force in both promoting and exploiting the hatred of LGBT people and Latinos, who are most of the people who were murdered in Orlando. Now Trump and the Republican-fascists are trying to steal their corpses to turn them into election opportunities.
In this case it is especially disgusting because they are the foremost force in both promoting and exploiting the hatred of LGBT people and Latinos, who are most of the people who were murdered in Orlando. Now Trump and the Republican-fascists are trying to steal their corpses to turn them into election opportunities.
Two Calm Voices Discussing The Matters That Make Atheists Go Nuts
Mark Vernon and Rupert Sheldrakes' podcasts, Science Set Free, are something I look forward to. For one thing they are always interesting and informed, second, they are always calm and rational, third they always say things in a calm and rational way which makes orthodox atheists go nuts.
Here's the latest
Arthur Berger - Chamber Music for 13 Players I. Variations II. Fantasy
Boston Modern Orchestra Project
Gil Rose, conductor
Tomorrow is going to be Arthur Berger's 104th birthday. He isn't here to celebrate it but his music is, still sounding as fresh as ever.
It's Not A Simple Thing To Fix Why We Keep Handling Terror Crime In The Worst Possible Way
Dealing with domestic terror is not going to be a simple thing that reduces down to or conforms to facile slogans, neither the paranoia encouraging racism and xenophbia of Donald Trump nor the idiotic paranoia about the Feds keeping track of us which would predictably issue from the likes of Glenn Greenwald and the lefty magazines.
The BBC has up a piece asking if the mass murder in Orlando will secure the election of Donald Trump. Which would only intensify the crime into a tragedy because if there is an issue which needs the most mature and experienced of people dealing with it, the campaigns of gun violence - which is as real as could be - and that of domestic terrorism - real as well, and the most exploited of foreign terrorism, real but blown up into an illusion masking the two far larger and real issues in the United States. Donald Trump is probably the worst, possible person to turn to now and the media is doing absolutely nothing to discourage that insanity, they are inviting it.
The police should have the ability to investigate Omar Mateen's past and his associates to see if there is any link to Islamic fundamentalism in the mass murder he committed. They should also be able to look into what media he was watching which informed any claims he made to have committed his murder in the name of ISIS or whatever he thought and if there were any actual links. I would say that even if he had an i-phone that he used to access such media or make such contacts which is locked and which they can't find a third party who can unlock it so they can access that information. The idea that the PR campaign of a corporation like Apple should trump national security should be ended definitively, modern electronic devices that are used to commit major crimes should be as searchable as they need to be to be - with the proper warrants obtained from real judges and with whatever protections for normal peoples' civil liberties. We trust judges to make those decisions when it's plain old physical records, it's stupid to suddenly enable terrorism and organized crime to use electronic media without that possibility. Stupid and unworkable and, sooner rather than later, unacceptable.
That is certainly true in the case of dead mass murderers shot in the act. They and those associated with them can't be treated like they didn't have anything to do with a major crime for the duration of the investigation. It is the business of the cops to figure out who is involved and to uncover those for whom there is no evidence of involvement. Since that is the case, if one of my associates or, please, God, never, relatives did what Mateen did, I'd want the cops most trained and competent and most restrained by oversight looking into it.
The political use of paranoia about the Feds is an unfortunate result of past wrongs committed by them. There is a less than gripping piece by David Corn up at Mother Jones, right now rehashing the matter of the the FBI file on the dear old folkie, the late Pete Seeger. His file began when a letter he wrote while a new recruit to the military, protesting the internment of Japanese citizens in the West was referred to them* I would imagine that his being a member of the military while he wrote the letter had more than a little to do with why they figured he might be a security risk of some kind. He was being trained to maintain airplanes and they were nothing if not nervous about saboteurs. There was a rather friggin' massive war on, at the time. Of course, they kept it up for a lot longer than war time emergency might have warranted. That the FBI has and, no doubt, still does waste time on surveillance on peaceful peace activists, civil rights activists, even the most pacific of groups and individuals has been what made people paranoid about them looking for the ability to gather information and evidence. As have other government agencies. However, letting that get in the way of effectively tacking probable or known terrorist groups and of fighting against their recruitment and incitement propaganda is not going to prove sustainable as they terrorize the population.
From how it looks right now Omar Mateen may well have been motivated by mental illness as much as any ISIS propaganda sites. I don't know if the rumors that Mateen went to the Pulse nightclub trying to pick up men is true but it may have been a factor, as well. But combining instability with the encouragement to violence could, in fact, be what drove him to do what he did. His involvement with Islamic fundamentalism might have been entirely in his own head, in which case the most important thing to figure out how to screen out dangerously mentally ill people from obtaining automatic weapons which any rational country would keep out of the hands of civilians for just the reason that they might use them to kill lots of people in a short time.
The paranoia of the left and the libertarians about the FBI is matched by the artificial and commercially incited paranoia on the right and the libertarians about the government confiscating guns. The National Rifle Association and other gun nut groups, with the promotion of the gun industry are the source of that paranoia. The Republicans have adopted it as a means of winning elections by motivating a small but effective group of zealots to vote for them - the entirely politicized Republican faction of the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court have been actively a part of that campaign strategy. Their part in producing the conditions that have made mass gun murder a nearly every-day occurrence in the United States, multiple 9-11s a slow moving rolling wave of domestic terror which, when someone has the right name, can also be made into a motivation to vote from paranoia instead of reason, which also benefits the Republican Party at its worst. These days that worst IS the Republican Party, the party of Donald Trump and the likes of Paul LePage**. Paul LePage, the governor of my state, is the proof that there is no bottom below which that party won't go. If Trump hadn't done his PR stunt run for president that got out of control and risks destroying out democracy, LePage would have been a fitting poster boy for the Republican Party.
The left came about its paranoia honestly, through being targeted by the Feds - though not entirely without reason in more cases than one is supposed to admit in polite company. The right's paranoia is a creation of advertising techniques to promote it by the gun industry and their allies, the Republican right. The extreme right that is the real danger to us, both from gun violence and through the destruction of our real rights and freedoms. And they will use everything they can, no matter how incoherent it is. You can make anything cohere through repetition through the media. That's how Trump was created.
Just to add, if there were any way to block web sites and other propaganda from terror incitement groups like ISIS from being read or heard or viewed in the United States, I would be entirely in favor of that being done. Their ability to influence the acts of people otherwise unconnected with them is too big a danger to allow those to continue. Of course that's a violation of free speech-free press absolutism in its pure form, which only shows how much more those who advocate that pose - an industry in itself - care more about their slogans than the lives of those who get killed when such incitements incite them to action. Absolutist positions carry their own form of insanity and those are often not without a financial motivation in the lawyers and political propagandists who make money through promoting them.
* His Communist connections, starting with his dad, the musicologist and husband of the very significant composer, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Charles Seeger, probably did nothing to discourage Edgar Hoover's FBI to keep up gathering gossip about young Pete, especially as he and his group, The Weavers, barely cracked into the pop music industry during the brief period when folkie music charted. The idea that communism was ever going to be more than a brief fad for a significant number of people is and always was ridiculous. Democracy, even the far from perfect form of it found in the United States, might not be a secure bulwark against fascism, as we could well find out this year, it is about as a reliable repellent to communism as anything ever invented. I know the old line Marxists figured their big competition was religion and that they had to knock that off before they could take over but their real competition is the possibility that people can make change through democratic means, nonviolently and fairly.
** Both of the "moderate" Republicans Senator from Maine, Susan Collins and former Senator Olympia Snowe have supported LePage, despite him being far worse than Donald Trump. LePage was a protogee of Olympia Snowe's first husband, the "moderate" Republican Peter Snowe. There are no moderate Republicans, no one who is a moderate would remain in that party today.
The BBC has up a piece asking if the mass murder in Orlando will secure the election of Donald Trump. Which would only intensify the crime into a tragedy because if there is an issue which needs the most mature and experienced of people dealing with it, the campaigns of gun violence - which is as real as could be - and that of domestic terrorism - real as well, and the most exploited of foreign terrorism, real but blown up into an illusion masking the two far larger and real issues in the United States. Donald Trump is probably the worst, possible person to turn to now and the media is doing absolutely nothing to discourage that insanity, they are inviting it.
The police should have the ability to investigate Omar Mateen's past and his associates to see if there is any link to Islamic fundamentalism in the mass murder he committed. They should also be able to look into what media he was watching which informed any claims he made to have committed his murder in the name of ISIS or whatever he thought and if there were any actual links. I would say that even if he had an i-phone that he used to access such media or make such contacts which is locked and which they can't find a third party who can unlock it so they can access that information. The idea that the PR campaign of a corporation like Apple should trump national security should be ended definitively, modern electronic devices that are used to commit major crimes should be as searchable as they need to be to be - with the proper warrants obtained from real judges and with whatever protections for normal peoples' civil liberties. We trust judges to make those decisions when it's plain old physical records, it's stupid to suddenly enable terrorism and organized crime to use electronic media without that possibility. Stupid and unworkable and, sooner rather than later, unacceptable.
That is certainly true in the case of dead mass murderers shot in the act. They and those associated with them can't be treated like they didn't have anything to do with a major crime for the duration of the investigation. It is the business of the cops to figure out who is involved and to uncover those for whom there is no evidence of involvement. Since that is the case, if one of my associates or, please, God, never, relatives did what Mateen did, I'd want the cops most trained and competent and most restrained by oversight looking into it.
The political use of paranoia about the Feds is an unfortunate result of past wrongs committed by them. There is a less than gripping piece by David Corn up at Mother Jones, right now rehashing the matter of the the FBI file on the dear old folkie, the late Pete Seeger. His file began when a letter he wrote while a new recruit to the military, protesting the internment of Japanese citizens in the West was referred to them* I would imagine that his being a member of the military while he wrote the letter had more than a little to do with why they figured he might be a security risk of some kind. He was being trained to maintain airplanes and they were nothing if not nervous about saboteurs. There was a rather friggin' massive war on, at the time. Of course, they kept it up for a lot longer than war time emergency might have warranted. That the FBI has and, no doubt, still does waste time on surveillance on peaceful peace activists, civil rights activists, even the most pacific of groups and individuals has been what made people paranoid about them looking for the ability to gather information and evidence. As have other government agencies. However, letting that get in the way of effectively tacking probable or known terrorist groups and of fighting against their recruitment and incitement propaganda is not going to prove sustainable as they terrorize the population.
From how it looks right now Omar Mateen may well have been motivated by mental illness as much as any ISIS propaganda sites. I don't know if the rumors that Mateen went to the Pulse nightclub trying to pick up men is true but it may have been a factor, as well. But combining instability with the encouragement to violence could, in fact, be what drove him to do what he did. His involvement with Islamic fundamentalism might have been entirely in his own head, in which case the most important thing to figure out how to screen out dangerously mentally ill people from obtaining automatic weapons which any rational country would keep out of the hands of civilians for just the reason that they might use them to kill lots of people in a short time.
The paranoia of the left and the libertarians about the FBI is matched by the artificial and commercially incited paranoia on the right and the libertarians about the government confiscating guns. The National Rifle Association and other gun nut groups, with the promotion of the gun industry are the source of that paranoia. The Republicans have adopted it as a means of winning elections by motivating a small but effective group of zealots to vote for them - the entirely politicized Republican faction of the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court have been actively a part of that campaign strategy. Their part in producing the conditions that have made mass gun murder a nearly every-day occurrence in the United States, multiple 9-11s a slow moving rolling wave of domestic terror which, when someone has the right name, can also be made into a motivation to vote from paranoia instead of reason, which also benefits the Republican Party at its worst. These days that worst IS the Republican Party, the party of Donald Trump and the likes of Paul LePage**. Paul LePage, the governor of my state, is the proof that there is no bottom below which that party won't go. If Trump hadn't done his PR stunt run for president that got out of control and risks destroying out democracy, LePage would have been a fitting poster boy for the Republican Party.
The left came about its paranoia honestly, through being targeted by the Feds - though not entirely without reason in more cases than one is supposed to admit in polite company. The right's paranoia is a creation of advertising techniques to promote it by the gun industry and their allies, the Republican right. The extreme right that is the real danger to us, both from gun violence and through the destruction of our real rights and freedoms. And they will use everything they can, no matter how incoherent it is. You can make anything cohere through repetition through the media. That's how Trump was created.
Just to add, if there were any way to block web sites and other propaganda from terror incitement groups like ISIS from being read or heard or viewed in the United States, I would be entirely in favor of that being done. Their ability to influence the acts of people otherwise unconnected with them is too big a danger to allow those to continue. Of course that's a violation of free speech-free press absolutism in its pure form, which only shows how much more those who advocate that pose - an industry in itself - care more about their slogans than the lives of those who get killed when such incitements incite them to action. Absolutist positions carry their own form of insanity and those are often not without a financial motivation in the lawyers and political propagandists who make money through promoting them.
* His Communist connections, starting with his dad, the musicologist and husband of the very significant composer, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Charles Seeger, probably did nothing to discourage Edgar Hoover's FBI to keep up gathering gossip about young Pete, especially as he and his group, The Weavers, barely cracked into the pop music industry during the brief period when folkie music charted. The idea that communism was ever going to be more than a brief fad for a significant number of people is and always was ridiculous. Democracy, even the far from perfect form of it found in the United States, might not be a secure bulwark against fascism, as we could well find out this year, it is about as a reliable repellent to communism as anything ever invented. I know the old line Marxists figured their big competition was religion and that they had to knock that off before they could take over but their real competition is the possibility that people can make change through democratic means, nonviolently and fairly.
** Both of the "moderate" Republicans Senator from Maine, Susan Collins and former Senator Olympia Snowe have supported LePage, despite him being far worse than Donald Trump. LePage was a protogee of Olympia Snowe's first husband, the "moderate" Republican Peter Snowe. There are no moderate Republicans, no one who is a moderate would remain in that party today.
Monday, June 13, 2016
OK, Can Everyone Just Admit It, Trump Is A Full Blown Fascist?
From HuffPo.
Donald Trump on Monday proposed punishing Americans if they don’t turn in their friends and neighbors for behaving suspiciously.
“In San Bernardino, people knew what was going on, they knew exactly, but they used the excuse of racial profiling for not reporting it,” Trump said during a speech in the wake of the Orlando mass shooting.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee was presumably referring to unverified reports that a woman who lived near the mother of one of the San Bernardino shooters had noticed that the family received “quite a few packages within a short amount of time, and they were doing a lot of work out in the garage.”
A man who claimed to be friends with this neighbor said she did not report the packages and the behavior to authorities because she “didn’t want to do any kind of racial profiling.”
In Trump’s America, however, that woman would face serious consequences. “We need to make sure every single person involved in this plan, including anyone who knew something, but didn’t tell us, is brought to justice,” Trump said in New Hampshire. “These people need to have consequences, big consequences.”
OK, so if your neighbor is a shopaholic who shouldn't ever watch the Home Shopping Network, it's your legal obligation to report her or him to the cops so they can bust them for amassing tacky zircon jewelry stockpiles. And, in the mean time people can amass personal arsenals of the kind that so many of our mass murderers have. I mean, yeah, I can see a Republicanfascist congress making it a felony to not report it when too may UPS truck pull up to your neighbors house but no one can keep track of a loony who is on the FBI radar when he buys automatic weapons and Glocks.
Our country is on the verge of being officially certifiable because Donald Trump is still the official nominee of one of the two real parties and he could be the head of the government in less than a year. And the media is being "even handed" in not pointing out one of the two candidates is a certifiable fascist nut case and the other isn't because a lot of people would get upset with them IF THEY POINTED OUT THAT GLARING TRUTH WHICH COMES IN EVERY DAY WITH ALL THE ALARMS BLARING OUT AND THE LIGHTS FLASHING.
In a way this reminds me of the kind of paranoia that some of the really hard core preppers have. I remember one woman who buys huge amounts of toilet paper talking about how she had to be careful because when the big one hits she didn't want her neighbors thinking that she was hoarding TP. You have to wonder what such a person would do if the neighbor she was paranoid about got three deliveries in a week. I can imagine them sending in the feds to bust her for changing her fall pallet as the next deranged mass murderer was buying the automatic weapons he'd be using to try to outdo the last one.
Donald Trump on Monday proposed punishing Americans if they don’t turn in their friends and neighbors for behaving suspiciously.
“In San Bernardino, people knew what was going on, they knew exactly, but they used the excuse of racial profiling for not reporting it,” Trump said during a speech in the wake of the Orlando mass shooting.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee was presumably referring to unverified reports that a woman who lived near the mother of one of the San Bernardino shooters had noticed that the family received “quite a few packages within a short amount of time, and they were doing a lot of work out in the garage.”
A man who claimed to be friends with this neighbor said she did not report the packages and the behavior to authorities because she “didn’t want to do any kind of racial profiling.”
In Trump’s America, however, that woman would face serious consequences. “We need to make sure every single person involved in this plan, including anyone who knew something, but didn’t tell us, is brought to justice,” Trump said in New Hampshire. “These people need to have consequences, big consequences.”
OK, so if your neighbor is a shopaholic who shouldn't ever watch the Home Shopping Network, it's your legal obligation to report her or him to the cops so they can bust them for amassing tacky zircon jewelry stockpiles. And, in the mean time people can amass personal arsenals of the kind that so many of our mass murderers have. I mean, yeah, I can see a Republicanfascist congress making it a felony to not report it when too may UPS truck pull up to your neighbors house but no one can keep track of a loony who is on the FBI radar when he buys automatic weapons and Glocks.
Our country is on the verge of being officially certifiable because Donald Trump is still the official nominee of one of the two real parties and he could be the head of the government in less than a year. And the media is being "even handed" in not pointing out one of the two candidates is a certifiable fascist nut case and the other isn't because a lot of people would get upset with them IF THEY POINTED OUT THAT GLARING TRUTH WHICH COMES IN EVERY DAY WITH ALL THE ALARMS BLARING OUT AND THE LIGHTS FLASHING.
In a way this reminds me of the kind of paranoia that some of the really hard core preppers have. I remember one woman who buys huge amounts of toilet paper talking about how she had to be careful because when the big one hits she didn't want her neighbors thinking that she was hoarding TP. You have to wonder what such a person would do if the neighbor she was paranoid about got three deliveries in a week. I can imagine them sending in the feds to bust her for changing her fall pallet as the next deranged mass murderer was buying the automatic weapons he'd be using to try to outdo the last one.
Bela Bartok - String quartet No. 4
Allegro
Prestissimo, con sordino
Non troppo lento
Allegretto, pizzicato
Allegro molto
Quatuor Ebène
Pierre Colombet, violin I
Gabriel Le magadure, violin II
Mathieu Herzog, viola
Raphaël Merlin,cello
Republican-fascist Double Speak On LGBT Issues Doesn't Keep You From Being Asked To Be An "Expert" When We Are Slaughtered
For some reason NPR's Morning Edition decided it would be a good idea to have on the Federalist Magazine LGBT baiter and Donald Trump supporter, Denise McAllister on to try to claim the mass murder of gay people for the Trump campaign. Perhaps why that is such a massively repulsive idea can be seen from the title of her anti-trans screed published exactly five days ago in what I consider a crypto fascist rag - Why Bruce Jenner Can Never Be A Woman. Other titles you can find if you do a web search, Judges Say Gay Marriage Forced Them Out, North Carolina Protects Religious Rights In Same-Sex Marriage Debate.
And to show how much integrity Denise McAllister has, she talks out of both sides of her mouth, using Caitlyn Jenner two ways, depending on what's most useful for pushing neo-fascism and hate politics, she also wrote a screed called, Backlash Over Caitlyn Jenner’s Cruz Support Proves Leftists Are The Real Bigots.
The Republican Party Is The Party of Hate And Opportunistic Hypocrisy
What does it say about our politics that one of the two real parties is trying to use the mass shooting of gay people as an opportunity to benefit politically by whipping up hate and paranoid xenophobia over it. Especially as the same party has used and is using hatred and paranoid fear of LGBT people in their electoral strategy this year.
The Republican Party is the major force of moral depravity and evil in the United States - especially if you include the media which will promote their lines to get them elected because they are more profitable for media corporations.
That proposal last night that Democrats demand equal rights under the law for the very people being used by Republicans was a serious one. I think that Democrats in the House and Senate should introduce a bill that would explicitly name LGBT people as a covered class under the Civil Rights Act. Today, it isn't an outrageously complex proposal. Just say that from the day the bill is signed into law that discrimination against lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender people is a violation of the law and liable to be prosecuted. Make the Republicans put their votes where there mouths currently are, before they go back to whipping up hatred of us.
The Republican Party is the major force of moral depravity and evil in the United States - especially if you include the media which will promote their lines to get them elected because they are more profitable for media corporations.
That proposal last night that Democrats demand equal rights under the law for the very people being used by Republicans was a serious one. I think that Democrats in the House and Senate should introduce a bill that would explicitly name LGBT people as a covered class under the Civil Rights Act. Today, it isn't an outrageously complex proposal. Just say that from the day the bill is signed into law that discrimination against lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender people is a violation of the law and liable to be prosecuted. Make the Republicans put their votes where there mouths currently are, before they go back to whipping up hatred of us.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
A Modest Proposal
What with those formerly LGBT slamming Republicans all of the sudden all so concerned about us, maybe it's the perfect time for Democrats in the House and Senate to post a bill including LGBT people as a covered class under the Civil Rights Act.
Let Republicans put their votes where their mouths are, since they're putting us to such political use just now.
Let Republicans put their votes where their mouths are, since they're putting us to such political use just now.
Brahms Intermezzo op 118 no 6
Sviatoslav Richter, piano
Update: I will answer a stupid accusation against Sviatoslav Richter that was posted in my comments on a more appropriate day.
On What I've Read About The Mass Gun Murder In Orlando Florida So Far
The latest things I've read say that there are 50 victims dead and 53 who were shot at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. They were shot by a gunman named Omar Mateen whose father said he was angry when two men had kissed and embraced each other in public. There are rumors that he had ties to ISIL or some other alleged Islamic group but his father said that what he did had nothing to do with religion. I'm ambivalent about that, I don't think that if you're going to call the Wahabi style of Islam religion, then it certainly advocates terror and violence. I wouldn't blame anyone who condemns that, as most Muslims do.
I am sure this will be used politically, it already is. From what I've read Chuck Todd of NBC has already declared to talk about this in relation with the powerful automatic weapons used to kill so many people at once is to "politicize it", that in itself politicizes if on behalf of the gun industry and the Republican Party who the gun industry favors.
The FBI has said that they had Mateen on their radar, so they'll take a big hit, fair or not I wouldn't say that if they hadn't been the old Whitewater thing for the Republican Benghazi witchhunters maybe they could spend more resources on preventing domestic terrorism of this kind, well, I just did, didn't I. Tell me what's wrong with saying that.
Though when someone decides to give into their hate and kill a lot of people and they have access to powerful weapons and training - yeah, gun training such as he was reported to have had is such a deterrent, isn't it - then they can kill many people very fast and without any alarms that even the best and most competent of police agencies can have on those they are watching.
If this is anything like the many, many past mass shootings, it will be played and twisted by the corporate media to benefit Republicans, It won't benefit the one candidate for President who has a strong record on opposing gun violence, Hillary Clinton.
Look for more of this, from what I have read ISIS and their colleagues in terror really would like to have the United States lose its mind and elect Donald Trump. They are already using his statements in their recruitment videos.
In quickly re-reading this, I have to ask, if he has an i-phone that the FBI should look at, would the paranoid faction of the Glenn Greenwald set oppose them having access to it? I think someone who kills 50 people + should be held to have given up a teensy bit of their right to such privacy. Ironic in that the FBI have been investigating what appears to be a totally bogus political issue surrounding Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail account with the support of such people.
I am sure this will be used politically, it already is. From what I've read Chuck Todd of NBC has already declared to talk about this in relation with the powerful automatic weapons used to kill so many people at once is to "politicize it", that in itself politicizes if on behalf of the gun industry and the Republican Party who the gun industry favors.
The FBI has said that they had Mateen on their radar, so they'll take a big hit, fair or not I wouldn't say that if they hadn't been the old Whitewater thing for the Republican Benghazi witchhunters maybe they could spend more resources on preventing domestic terrorism of this kind, well, I just did, didn't I. Tell me what's wrong with saying that.
Though when someone decides to give into their hate and kill a lot of people and they have access to powerful weapons and training - yeah, gun training such as he was reported to have had is such a deterrent, isn't it - then they can kill many people very fast and without any alarms that even the best and most competent of police agencies can have on those they are watching.
If this is anything like the many, many past mass shootings, it will be played and twisted by the corporate media to benefit Republicans, It won't benefit the one candidate for President who has a strong record on opposing gun violence, Hillary Clinton.
Look for more of this, from what I have read ISIS and their colleagues in terror really would like to have the United States lose its mind and elect Donald Trump. They are already using his statements in their recruitment videos.
In quickly re-reading this, I have to ask, if he has an i-phone that the FBI should look at, would the paranoid faction of the Glenn Greenwald set oppose them having access to it? I think someone who kills 50 people + should be held to have given up a teensy bit of their right to such privacy. Ironic in that the FBI have been investigating what appears to be a totally bogus political issue surrounding Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail account with the support of such people.
Question: What Do You Think Democrats Owe Bernie Sanders?
Well, for a start, if he's still a Democrat then he's "Democrats". Other than that the short answer is a lot less than it owed him at the beginning of March.
I would like to see the Bernie Sanders supporters among Democrats have major influence on a. economic policy, b. trade, c. commerce, d environmental issues. And I would hope that would include a veto on any appointees from the disastrous, incompetent in-bed-with-the-kleptocrats Geithner-Summers style of economic advisers.
I suppose that e. would be on nominees to courts. I would like a Hillary Clinton to, most vitally urgent of all, appoint only those to the court who are firm opponents of corporate person hood, the equation of speech with money and the preferential option for the filthy rich and other such people.
f. would be on an attorney general who doesn't hold with the Ivy-Wall Street legal dogma that the filthy rich are too big to jail.
I am hearing the dead-enders talk about "process reform" but, frankly, unless they are willing to get rid of the grotesquely undemocratic caucuses and the anti-Democratic open primaries, I'm not greatly enthusiastic about giving up on the super delegates just yet. Those were invented to fix problems with the nominating process that are not fixed and, as can be seen in the Republican nomination, they might be able to pull the party back from a fit of insanity that can nominate a Donald Trump with a Ted Cruz coming in second. Of course the real dead-ender aren't really interested in "process reform" they are interested in destroying the Democratic Party. I think a lot of them are Greens - I know a lot of them at our caucus were because I heard them talking about it - and a number of them are Republican agit-trolls who are just trying to ratfuck this years election for the Republicans.
But all of those things are things that the liberals in the Democratic Party might have gotten a long time ago if so many on the alleged left hadn't turned out to be so unreliable and unrealistic in previous elections. The United States has never had a far-left president and the prospects of us ever having one are vanishingly improbable. A real left will work with the best deal it can get, not pie in the sky that it will never get.
I think Bernie Sanders should be asked, for once, what he owes the Democrats who have allowed him to declare, at the age of 74, that he is suddenly a Democrat who deserves to have the nomination of a party he never joined before then. Democrats have made him far more famous than he was before, now, nearing the end of his political career and might provide him with the high-point of his influence if he and his alleged supporters don't continue to blow it. He's blowing it even now. I wish the Democratic Party owed him a hell of a lot more right now than it does, and that's his choice.
I would like to see the Bernie Sanders supporters among Democrats have major influence on a. economic policy, b. trade, c. commerce, d environmental issues. And I would hope that would include a veto on any appointees from the disastrous, incompetent in-bed-with-the-kleptocrats Geithner-Summers style of economic advisers.
I suppose that e. would be on nominees to courts. I would like a Hillary Clinton to, most vitally urgent of all, appoint only those to the court who are firm opponents of corporate person hood, the equation of speech with money and the preferential option for the filthy rich and other such people.
f. would be on an attorney general who doesn't hold with the Ivy-Wall Street legal dogma that the filthy rich are too big to jail.
I am hearing the dead-enders talk about "process reform" but, frankly, unless they are willing to get rid of the grotesquely undemocratic caucuses and the anti-Democratic open primaries, I'm not greatly enthusiastic about giving up on the super delegates just yet. Those were invented to fix problems with the nominating process that are not fixed and, as can be seen in the Republican nomination, they might be able to pull the party back from a fit of insanity that can nominate a Donald Trump with a Ted Cruz coming in second. Of course the real dead-ender aren't really interested in "process reform" they are interested in destroying the Democratic Party. I think a lot of them are Greens - I know a lot of them at our caucus were because I heard them talking about it - and a number of them are Republican agit-trolls who are just trying to ratfuck this years election for the Republicans.
But all of those things are things that the liberals in the Democratic Party might have gotten a long time ago if so many on the alleged left hadn't turned out to be so unreliable and unrealistic in previous elections. The United States has never had a far-left president and the prospects of us ever having one are vanishingly improbable. A real left will work with the best deal it can get, not pie in the sky that it will never get.
I think Bernie Sanders should be asked, for once, what he owes the Democrats who have allowed him to declare, at the age of 74, that he is suddenly a Democrat who deserves to have the nomination of a party he never joined before then. Democrats have made him far more famous than he was before, now, nearing the end of his political career and might provide him with the high-point of his influence if he and his alleged supporters don't continue to blow it. He's blowing it even now. I wish the Democratic Party owed him a hell of a lot more right now than it does, and that's his choice.
I'll say something about the mass murder at the Orlando, FL gay club when there are reliable reports about it. Other than that a lot of people were murdered and injured by another American gun killer, we don't know anything about what his motives were. I won't repeat rumors because a lot of those are bound to be wrong and a lot of them are most likely motivated by bigotry, just as the murders would appear to be.
For now, my country has been driven insane by right-wing corporate media to the point where even this being routine doesn't drown out the gun industry lies and slogans.
For now, my country has been driven insane by right-wing corporate media to the point where even this being routine doesn't drown out the gun industry lies and slogans.
Dump The Unreliable Play-Left
I am tired. I am old. I've seen this movie over and over again. It's like the Midsummers' Night's Nightmare of lefty drama festivals, the drama queens of the play-left poised to blow another election because their guy isn't the nominee of the party. They want us to bend over backward and kiss their collective asses or they're going to vote for Jill Stein or Donald Trump or stay home and preen in their lefty purity as the country and the world goes to hell because their dream candidate didn't win the nomination or, as I'm beginning hearing that Naderite excuse for gargantuan irresponsibility echo over and over again, "the debates".
I don't include all of Bernie Sanders supporters in that, some of them aren't idiots, many of them appreciate and care about reality. But I think anyone who is talking that way at this point in the middle of June is never going to vote for Hillary Clinton and it's best to tell them to go to hell and we should stop wasting our time trying to placate them. Their reaction to a real and accomplished heroine of the left, Elizabeth Warren. this week was the last straw for me.
The Democratic left, the left that actually has sitting members of congress and a few Senators and even the odd governor have to get rid of the dead weight of the play lefties because they are not someone we will ever be able to work with or depend on. They are a dead weight on us.
How would I define a play lefty? Someone who, as we have the all too real prospect of having Donald Trump as president, is now talking about voting for someone other than the one and only woman who stands in the way of that effort, Hillary Clinton. Those people and the organizations and media sources of the left who encourage them are the play left. At this point I would also include anyone who is giving any platform for the Greens to promote their bull shit con game and that includes just about all of them from Democracy Now to the more obscure magazines such as In These Times. If they didn't learn anything from 2000 and 2004, they are invincibly ignorant. I'm at the point where I don't even want to read them anymore.
I am also rather tired of the perennial and condescending insistence that we have to court "the young" as if "the young" are a monolithic pro-Sanders mass instead of a mix containing everything from those who are rabid Trump supporters to their most accommodating allies, the la-la lefties who this post is about. And I would guess their fair share of young rational left and voters who will not fail to vote for the only other candidate who will be president in January, Hillary Clinton. I know of young people who are quite enthusiastic about the prospect of her being president. To pretend that all of youth fell lock step into the Bernie or Busters or even those people who supported him on a reasonable basis is to lie about "the youth vote". It is one of the most cherished lies of the let's pretend left that "youth" is going to support it. It's just like they're always so confident that the blue collar vote - much of it solidly Republican for decades- is going to magically join their revolution.
Today, I'm totally uninterested in the goofy guys and gals of the play left, no matter what age they are. The young among them may. may, possibly, theoretically, may be able to do what their elders who, even after the Bush II regime, are still fans of fantasy revolution gaming haven't done, grow up and out of it. But they are going to have to do that through the hard school of experience. I know, that's how I grew out of it. I stupidly and shamefully voted for Barry Commoner in 1980 and Ralph Nader in 1996, though I'd grown up enough to not repeat that shameful folly in 2000. Coming to realize that much of what I was reading in the lefty magazines who continued to support Nader - I subscribed to four in those years - was dishonest bull shit and a con job was a big part of that shift.
It's my experience that most of the play-left will never grow up, look at the geezers who scribble for that media mentioned above if you want an example. Some of them will evolve, but only into the not so distant ideology of neo-conservatism. Quite often when they figure they can make more money from it. For most of them politics has as much reality as an appropriately themed video game that they play at when they're not spending their lives being entertained by something else.
We have got to stop considering them as any kind of potential allies, they aren't anyone we can depend on and the cost of stroking their egos has come with too high a price. We have to face the harder reality that if we are to ever really gain power and keep it for the minimum of two election cycles needed to make change, those guys are totally unreliable. Dump them now.
I don't include all of Bernie Sanders supporters in that, some of them aren't idiots, many of them appreciate and care about reality. But I think anyone who is talking that way at this point in the middle of June is never going to vote for Hillary Clinton and it's best to tell them to go to hell and we should stop wasting our time trying to placate them. Their reaction to a real and accomplished heroine of the left, Elizabeth Warren. this week was the last straw for me.
The Democratic left, the left that actually has sitting members of congress and a few Senators and even the odd governor have to get rid of the dead weight of the play lefties because they are not someone we will ever be able to work with or depend on. They are a dead weight on us.
How would I define a play lefty? Someone who, as we have the all too real prospect of having Donald Trump as president, is now talking about voting for someone other than the one and only woman who stands in the way of that effort, Hillary Clinton. Those people and the organizations and media sources of the left who encourage them are the play left. At this point I would also include anyone who is giving any platform for the Greens to promote their bull shit con game and that includes just about all of them from Democracy Now to the more obscure magazines such as In These Times. If they didn't learn anything from 2000 and 2004, they are invincibly ignorant. I'm at the point where I don't even want to read them anymore.
I am also rather tired of the perennial and condescending insistence that we have to court "the young" as if "the young" are a monolithic pro-Sanders mass instead of a mix containing everything from those who are rabid Trump supporters to their most accommodating allies, the la-la lefties who this post is about. And I would guess their fair share of young rational left and voters who will not fail to vote for the only other candidate who will be president in January, Hillary Clinton. I know of young people who are quite enthusiastic about the prospect of her being president. To pretend that all of youth fell lock step into the Bernie or Busters or even those people who supported him on a reasonable basis is to lie about "the youth vote". It is one of the most cherished lies of the let's pretend left that "youth" is going to support it. It's just like they're always so confident that the blue collar vote - much of it solidly Republican for decades- is going to magically join their revolution.
Today, I'm totally uninterested in the goofy guys and gals of the play left, no matter what age they are. The young among them may. may, possibly, theoretically, may be able to do what their elders who, even after the Bush II regime, are still fans of fantasy revolution gaming haven't done, grow up and out of it. But they are going to have to do that through the hard school of experience. I know, that's how I grew out of it. I stupidly and shamefully voted for Barry Commoner in 1980 and Ralph Nader in 1996, though I'd grown up enough to not repeat that shameful folly in 2000. Coming to realize that much of what I was reading in the lefty magazines who continued to support Nader - I subscribed to four in those years - was dishonest bull shit and a con job was a big part of that shift.
It's my experience that most of the play-left will never grow up, look at the geezers who scribble for that media mentioned above if you want an example. Some of them will evolve, but only into the not so distant ideology of neo-conservatism. Quite often when they figure they can make more money from it. For most of them politics has as much reality as an appropriately themed video game that they play at when they're not spending their lives being entertained by something else.
We have got to stop considering them as any kind of potential allies, they aren't anyone we can depend on and the cost of stroking their egos has come with too high a price. We have to face the harder reality that if we are to ever really gain power and keep it for the minimum of two election cycles needed to make change, those guys are totally unreliable. Dump them now.
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