I Don't Care About The Movies - Hate Mail

IN MY BRAWLS HERE over the years,  I noted that that distinguished American author whose magnum opus, Huckleberry Finn,  my generation was supposed to regard as THE GREAT 'MERICAN NOVEL, Mark Twain, was an extremely uneven writer producing, for the most part, crap.  All of his most notable novels are written from the point of view of a boy or, in one case, the book he wanted people to regard as his best,  a young girl AND EVEN THAT IS TOLD AS RECOLLECTED BY A LITTLE BOY sixty years later.  That book, Recollections of Joan of Arc, is not well regarded today, probably because of its positive treatment of religion,  but I think Twain wanted it to be his stab at writing an important adult book.   He claimed to have researched it for years, 

I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none.

I deeply sympathize with Mark Twain, no doubt he was sick to death of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and the other (now entirely dated) humor that made him famous.   Of all his books,  and I went through the project of reading all of him available to me years ago, the one I still like and could imagine re-reading for pleasure, Life on the Mississippi,  was his attempt at good natured but not notably humorous realism.   I could imagine re-reading parts of Huckleberry Finn, the parts without the putrid Tom Sawyer in it,  with some pleasure though I don't think I would.   Why read that when you can read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman or Stephen Crane?

As to today's and yesterdays Twain schollars not liking it,  anyone who would have gone into a life study of Twain would have done so on the basis of his more typical production so it's not a big surprise they wouldn't like his project to escape those confines.   You usually judge an author on the basis of their typical and most lauded work, not on the outlier. 

So I don't think Stephen Spielberg's several attempts at adult movies makes up for the bulk of what he did in, along with so many others in Hollywood once the 1970s BLOCKBUSTER movie that you could get teenage boys to pay to see 37 times in the first run had become a thing, to end Hollywood's brief post-WWII attempt to make adult movies.   I've seen some of that and found it rather bland and sentimental.   I would much, much rather have seen what Stanley Kubrick was planning by way of a movie about the Holocaust than what Spielberg did.  I've read that Kubrick abandoned his project when Spielberg's Schindler's List was announced.   I do not regard it as in any way up to the topic, but, then, no movie could be what that movie is made out to be.   Kubrick's would probably not have been a big audience pleaser in the same way. 

I recently noted the great effect on American drama that the Yiddish Theater and the Federal Theater Project had had once those who were involved with those got to write plays, produce plays, act in them and also to make movies dominated the field.  Sidney Lumet's work  is an example of that trend which started stalling out in the mid 70s.   Just "The Hill" not one of his big movies proves that.    I don't have favorite directors but he might be the one I chose if I was forced to choose one. 

There were still adult movies being made and, I suppose, there still are but for the most part I don't want to sit through the months worth of dross to find the two hours of gems.   When I told my brother-in-law I didn't watch TV anymore he talked about this or that show that I was missing out on.   I told him if someone poured a bucket of quarters into a cesspool,  I wouldn't dive in to retrieve them.   I'd rather go looking at something that doesn't take as much time and where I can, generally, have more success at finding something worthwhile.   Besides, these days I'd have to subscribe to some scheme to see new movies and it's not worth it.   I'd rather look at the remnants of the Federal Theater Project and its offshoots that are available for free online,  and I don't mean War of the Worlds.   Though Welles was a product of that depression era project.  

Iran's Deal That Trumps The US - A Few Thoughts

DECADES OF THE SOVIET UNION'S  attempts including arms races,  making deals with smaller countries, its entire foreign and much of its military policy has not done what Bush II in Iraq and Trump in Iran have managed to do in a quarter of a century, TOTALLY DESTROY AMERICA'S HEGEMONY ACHIEVED BY COMING OUT OF WWII INTACT AND WITH THE POLICIES THAT FDR AND TRUMAN PUT IN PLACE.

Trump's surrender note to the Iranian regime was, as many have said all along would happen, is a total capitulation to the Iranian regime.   It is such a disaster for the United States, for United States power, for our economy, for the People of the United States that I doubt the Republicans in the Senate will allow it to come for a vote,  if it does, they will have put the final nail in the coffin of MAGA because there is no way they can vote for it and, perhaps other than the brain dead Fetterman, NO DEMOCRAT WHO WANTS TO CONTINUE IN POLITICS WILL VOTE FOR IT.    They would have to pass it with Republican votes and any Republican who votes for it should consider retirement too.   About the only Americans who would welcome the thing are those who, like me, wasn't a big fan of American hegemony as it turned out to be but I don't favor it because it is so unfavorable to the welfare of The People of he United States and it would leave a very smart, very skilled, very mature and measured dictatorship in Iran as a major regional if not world power.  

As in Bush II's Iraq disaster,  Trump's Iran disaster is also a disaster in which Israel and the corrupt anti-Iranian dicatators of Saudi Arabia and some of the other Gulf states had a hand in convincing a stupid and corrupt American president into.   I doubt that the American status quo in regard to Israel will ever return to what it was.  Not after the combination of its self-posted genocide in Gaza and its somewhat less arrogantly self-posted Lebensraum violence in the West Bank and its role in convincing the stupidest and most corrupt president in American history to use the powers that the Congress stupidly gave American president to foment yet another disastrous foreign war.  

While Norman Finkelstein is not incorrect in noting that Trump is,  as Cheney and Bush II were before,  quite capable of having other, largely financial motives in bringing these wars of such terrible consequence,  the role that Israel and it's dangerously out sized influence in American politics through the Israel lobby here IS A HUGE PART OF THIS.  In that Israel is not more at fault than other countries and, in fact, the United States are in their manipulation of other countries.  We have made that extremely easy for them because Israel and its lobby here merely take advantage of our native corruption.   We have chosen to maintain that exploitable corruption all on our own. 

But that they have NOT been able to goad other presidents into direct American military involvement in the form of a war shows that Finkelstein's dismissal of their role in getting the two presidents with the least legitimacy (each was originally installed through an illegitimate electoral and, in Bush II,a  corrupt, partisan judicial maneuver) to go into enormously disastrous wars is one of his few real errors of judgement.  Israel and the Israel lobby are going to pay a price for this,  unfortunately so will many entirely innocent American Jews who have been against the whole thing.     

You can con even a conman by appealing to their weakness and Trump is a degenerate and stupid locus of the greatest accumulation of the most exploitable weaknesses that any American president has ever been.   If Iran's rulers have been brilliant in their conduct of their response to the American-Israeli attack on it, I will give Israel's fascist government this,  their corrupt leaders are far smarter than the corrupt leaders the American oligarchy put over us in the last half century.   They just got too ambitious in their own corruption figuring that like Dr. Seuss's Sneetches, Americans don't learn anything from even the hardest of experience. 

I think in his case Finelstein realizes that one of the real consequences of this is that it puts American Jews in danger in ways that they have never been in in American history till now.   I worry about that too, and not just for the very large number of American Jews who have been opposed to all of this from the start and those who have finally seen what a disaster the last great European colonial project has been.  First in terms of morality, second, and also in terms of morality,  for Palestinians and others in the Middle East.   Here in the United States the Israel industry and lobby has twisted and perverted our already twisted and not infrequently morally perverse foreign and military policy.   They have been empowered in that by that line of the stupidest Supreme Court rulings in our history.  Its billionaires have been attacking everything from whatever shreds of integrity our propaganda and lie filled alleged news media has  to the blackmail of racist Zionist billionaires and their goons in the Trump regime and the Congress over our educational institutions.   As in Britain, we are in another period like the red scare no behalf of Israel.   In every way when a foreign country has had that kind of influence over the United States, it has ended up being to our detriment,  though in the past only Britain has had that role, with some of the larger European economies, such as France's having some minor role in that regard.   But getting into that will get me off of the topic of this post.

America has had two hugely disastrous wars in the Middle East within a quarter of a century, three if you're going for about a third of a century with the Bush I Gulf War.   All of them brought by Republican administrations, all of them with the support of billionaire-millionaires who figured either to profit from them or to get support for their pet ideological projects, as if you can tease out any selfish motives for even those billionaire hobbies.  Given the Bush I Gulf War which was the prelude to HW Bush's son's war,  I'd say that's three Republican presidencies in a row that have done this and you can bet that there will be another one if Republicans get in again,  they are utterly corrupt to start with and they are proven to be suckers for those trying to sell us on another war with terrible consequences.   Eisenhower was the last Republican who had any sense when it comes to the cost of war.   There won't be another from that party. 

I used to say that the war in Iraq was sold in no small part to racists who really believed that the Iraqi People were going to roll over and do American bidding once Saddam Hussein was gone.  It wasn't only the neocons who claimed that,  Dick Cheney and Little Bush really believed that just as they believed that the utter catastrophe that Afghanistan has always been for empires far closer to it could be brought to heel by the great white hope that they certainly picture America to be.    Racism has been the strongest and most durable of malign traits of the United States as a collective entity,  it is our greatest evil and our most powerful one.   It has ruled many states of the United States every single year of their existence, apart from the brief period of Reconstruction, it has ruled virtually every state in the country for at least part of its existence.   It is a mainstay of our media, both the "news" and, especially in so-called entertainment, which is far more powerful than any purported venue that gives out alleged information.  It is no accident that Trump has done what not even the two Bushes have done, go directly into a war with Iran which Saddam Hussein was stupid enough to start WITH THE HELP OF THE UNITED STATES AND AT THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION.   The racism inherent in our elites as well as in the lowly here leads to a kind of amnesia when the lives destroyed by such wars are not considered white.   Well, those so forgotten or not considered to start with don't agree,  they have not forgotten and the consequences result in animosities that the average American and even those who get elected president by the worst of us are mystified at.   

No deal would be better than the surrender Rubio, Vance, Kushner and the other real estate crook, Witkoff are presenting.   Just coming home with our tails between our legs would be better.  The worst consequences of this war are guaranteed to be the status quo for decades to come no matter what is signed.  By then the, forgive me but there is no other way to put it strongly enough,  retarded lard ass of a president the Republicans and the oligarchs gave us will be long rotted in his grave.  If the Trump family are true to form it will be either in some grotesque tomb for which they'll get some grift or it will be dumped in a hole on some Trump property for tax purposes.  Look where Ivana's brats allowed her corpse to be dumped without any regard for the grave-site.   Nothing is sacred to these sub-humans except money.    And look where that has brought us.  

Just a few thoughts on the treaty to nowhere. 

I Know Nothing About Spielberg's New Movie Other Than He Apparently Is Remilking The ET Teat That He'd Already Milked When He Made That Tearjerker

I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE MOVIES especially not sci-fi-adventure movies.  

If it's true that, on the basis of a movie script which, or so I understand, is based on a treatment by Spielberg, himself, him making any kind of speculative declarations of what a scenario he imagines would do to Christianity are based on an even greater level of ignorance than my almost total nescience about his movie.   What if the "ETs" turn out to be highly religious in a monotheistic way compatible with the Abrahamic religions?   What if they convert to Christianity?   If so, I'm hoping it's one of the peace churches or we might be in big trouble. 

Spielberg is one of those whose movies of the mid-1970s onward buried the attempt at Hollywood to make movies for adults in favor of adolescents who would go see the same movie over and over again in one month.   Which helped me to come to the conclusion that I really don't care about the movies, prefering the cheap, cheap, close to the author's intent form of radio drama - though, again, I generally don't care for the sci-fi and fantasy genres, too easy, too stupid.  

That's a problem for any kind of theater but especially for the movies.  Going back and looking at some of the classic movies I enjoyed when I saw them,  the stories are largely absurd, the acting looks contrived and old fashioned and while some of them are visually striking and even to some extent artistic, that doesn't make up for the stories and the acting.   

I suspect that whatever might happen if "contact" is made,  it won't have much of an impact on those of us who really believe the Gospel of Jesus.   It's not as if the Bible was the last word in that,  though it certainly must inform any genuine understanding of the Gospel.   When I imagine "ETs" who manage to have technology powerful enough for them to get here,  I imagine they learned such things as "the meek will inherit their planet,"  "do to others what you'd have them do to you," sharing food and drink is to share in the very substance of God.   Any species that developed technology that didn't share those truths of the Gospel probably end up destroying themselves like the materialists in the human species are doing right now.  If Spielberg doesn't have that as a theme in the movie, it's bullshit. 

Remember I Pointed Out That Millionaire Spoiler Who Got Paul LePage Elected Governor

WITH LESS THAN A MAJORITY OF THE VOTERS SUPPORT,   the ego that ate Maine, twice, Elliot Cutler, had had five chances that someone who wasn't a multi-millionaire elite lawyer pedo-porn addict wouldn't have gotten?

Well one of Paul LePage's judicial appointments just gave him a sixth chance to go right back to the crime he was convicted of. 

Eliot Cutler released from jail again

The disgraced gubernatorial candidate and sex offender was arrested last week for failing to sign a probation treatment plan document — his 6th alleged probation violation.

According to court documents, the 79-year-old man from Brooklin refused to sign a contract required for participation in problematic sexual behavior treatment.  . . . 

A probation officer said that decision, as well as Cutler’s discharge from the counseling program, indicates that he “has no intent of following his ordered conditions.”

But during a court hearing in Hancock County on Tuesday morning, Superior Court Justice Patrick Larson agreed to remove the treatment program as a court-ordered requirement until his court proceedings are resolved.

I would like to know what Larson's record of treatment of non-millionaire, repeat parole violators has been up till now.  I have a feeling this may be a unique case in Maine where someone has gotten six chances and the judge makes such requirements sound like it's something unusual as a condition for parole. 

The legal profession, including the judges and, worst of all the "justices" is riddled with among the scummiest of sleeveens who know that their first order of business is to serve the rich and powerful, their training in how to lie about that in complex, elegant sounding language so as to fool the gullible.   Lying and meting unequal law because they know which side their bread is buttered on.   

I'd ask if the legal profession, including the judges and "justices" can get any lower than they are now, but, of course, they can.  

T is for Trump and also for trash

Torching the country,  its burning to ash.    

My impromptu couplet on the corruption.

Saturday Night Radio Drama - Gordon Pengilly - Bailey's Way: Simply Judy

 Simply Judy 

 

Written by Gordon Pengilly, Bailey's Way stars Esther Purves Smith as Tanis Bailey, a young rookie constable on the the Calgary Police Service determined to make’Detective’ just as soon as she can. 

David LeReaney as Sergeant Mann 
Grant Linneberg as Detective Donaldson

Introduced by Bob Boving 

I was going through some thumb drives and found the mp3 of Gordon Pengilly's excellent radio play,  Seeing in the Dark which won a prize from the BBC.  Unfortunately the transfer of the recording of the BBC production was taken down so I can't repost that.  I'd like to. 

I also can't post any of his plays that I've only read but never saw a production of, a number of them for radio, which is my favorite form. I'd love to hear some of those I haven't heard.   I have always liked his work.  He wrote the series Bailey's Way for the CBC's Mystery Project so I've decided to post those over the summer, starting tonight.  

I Suppose It's Too Much To Hope For What With Our Stupidly Written First Amendment In The Hands Of Our Corrupt Supremes

THERE IS A FAINT GLIMMER OF HOPE for those of us who value the truth and honesty and just basic correct information against lies,  self-interest and online slop, not that it will survive the US Supreme Court's usual BJ prostitute servicing of the billionaires, millionaires and "corporate persons" but a court in Germany has held that the part of Google that is giving even we the unwilling "AI" search results are liable for lies it throws out to the world.

Potentially impacting all AI search engines and chatbots known to poorly paraphrase source links, a German court has ruled that Google is liable for false statements in AI Overviews.

The preliminary ruling came in a case flagged by The Decoder, where two publishers found that Google’s AI Overviews incorrectly linked them to scams and other sketchy business practices. After smearing publishers by making affirmative statements like “Yes, [it] is known for dubious business practices and is often perceived as a scam,” Google failed to correct the misleading output, even after the publishers sent a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year.

Google tried the usual arguments to shield itself from liability for false statements in AI Overviews, such as arguing that most users understand that AI outputs aren’t always accurate and must be verified.

But the court found that, unlike traditional search engines that merely present lists of links to third-party statements, Google’s tool made “independent, new, and substantive statements” based on its own misinterpretation of links on the Internet.

That’s a problem, the court said, because while publishers may have been able to sue to stop third parties from publishing defamatory statements appearing in Google search results, only Google can correct the underlying algorithm and outputs displayed in AI Overviews. And because, at least initially, the company did not, it therefore “must be held accountable,” the court ruled. Beyond that, Google’s argument was deemed particularly weak, since the AI overview in this case “contains statements that do not appear in the search results at all.”

All but the most tech savvy of those who have favored so-called "artificial intelligence" and those they have gulled among the public have the most magical and unrealistic view of it and its potential and that includes virtually every tech billionaire, individually or clustered into malignant herds of them and their tech goons.  Their view of it more influenced by sci-fi, sci-ranger cultism, scientistic, atheist-materialist ideology or just the typical greed that has fed many a stock market bubble.   

Other than the successful use of "AI" for some highly technical things, like scanning cell samples and imaging to look for signs of pathology, most of it is commercial crap fueling the approaching and disastrous pop or the current bubble the world economy is sitting on.  That is concerning but, as I've noted, the use of "AI" to destroy real information in favor of slop, truth in favor of lies,  oligarchic propaganda over everything else, is destroying equality and democracy as well.   

Whatever parts of Google who still care about responsibility and not being evil - remember that slogan? - should buck the "AI" mania and shut it down and get it out of their search engine.   I might go back to using it if they did that, with it, no.   They're going to take a hit when the bubble bursts which,  I think, given the eagerness of the tech billionaire oligarchs trying to dump their stocks in IPOs all at once, is about to happen, they might want to at least mitigate the disaster for their company by publicly trying to get shut of it.   

But back to "AI" that libels companies and, no doubt, individuals making the corporations, billionaires and millionaires liable for their algorithm's lies here in the land lorded over by the lawyer-liars on the Supreme Court,  I wouldn't suggest you wait up nights or hold your breath.   Those Supremes love them some billionaire-millionaire lying.   They have for at least sixty four years.   I hope in other countries without our out of control Court they can keep the truth alive because it's got little chance here. 

Note:  You can, of course, use it to tell the truth or, at least, something closer to the truth than, for example, the American "free press'" version of things.   I would, by the way, include the Iranian use of "AI" generated cartoons to hurl against Trump in that.   Though they certainly wouldn't be interested in turning it against the dictatorship in Iran, once the Israeli-American war on them stops.   If we live that long. 

Hey, Anyone Working For The Platner Campaign

 you have my full permission to use this or a snappier variation of this, informally or formally, to get him elected.

ANOTHER UPPITY BLUE COLLAR MAINER FOR PLATNER

Considering The Media Were OK With Trump's Known Adulteries And Those Of Countless Other Rich Women And Men

including Susan Collins' maybe their going after Graham Platner is a class issue.

After writing this, I wondered how many stories per day have been filed about the "scandals" of Graham Planter as opposed to past and proven sex scandals with an added boost of hypocrisy, like Henry Hyde's adulterous affair as he was chasing after Bill Clinton's sex life,  Newt Gingrich's dumping of his first wife for the woman he was having an affair with as she was fighting cancer.   And that's not to mention the many, many stories that are never touched in the media when it's a member of their own profession posing as a moral arbitor.  

I wrote about Mika Brezinski's hypocrisy in questioning whether given his known minor issue of talking dirty with consenting adults online, if Graham Planter had the moral purity to go after Donald Trump for his Epstein involvement.   She could have certainly asked Susan Collins that same question,  Susan Collins is known to have been involved with her husband as his previous wife was fighting cancer which is a lot sleazier than the "scandal" that has blown up against Graham Platner's online sexy TALK.  Which his wife and he have reportedly worked through PRIVATELY and he stopped doing it.    It's reported that Collin's husband, who she was seeing for quite a while before, divorced his wife while she was ill.  Exactly what Newt Gingrich did to his first wife. 

And then there's the reemergence of Donald Trump's old pro liar, Kellyanne Conway who lied about what he's accused of WHILE WORKING FOR THE KNOW EPSTEIN CLASS #1 GUEST STAR IN THE EPSTEIN FILE,  THE MAN WHO MIKA AND JOE GAVE PHONE CALL SEGEMENTS TO ON THEIR MORNING SHOW AS HE WAS A KNOWN ADULTERER RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT AT A TIME HIS KNOWN FRIENDSHIP WITH EPSTEIN DURING THE PERIOD OF EPSTEIN'S KNOWN CRIMES  WERE PART OF THE PUBLIC RECORD.  

And, as mentioned last night, the media who is going after Graham Planter to put a general sense of unease around him IS FULL TO THE TOP OF REPORTERS, OPINION SCRIBBLERS, EDITORS, PUBLISHERS AND RIGHT ON UP TO OWNERS WHOSE OWN MORAL HISTORIES DISQUALIFIES THEM FROM THROWING THE FIRST NOT TO MENITION THE NEXT STONES IN THAT REGARD.   Everyone from David Brookes and his dumping his first wife for a far younger woman, to the likes of Rupert Murdoch whose fortune was, in no small part, built on peddling pornography,  the soft core titty pics to the hard core stuff.  And with his known history.  

I remember while I was studying medieval and later history in high school and college that it was striking how the monarchs and nobility and aristocracy and, yes, the clergy were such notable adulterers, fornicators, rapists, etc. whose sexual sins were known but who seldom to never suffered the consequences  meted out when the same became known of among the peasants.  The same is certainly true in American history in which the rich and famous and connected had sex with whomever they wanted to,  most famously Thomas Jefferson who raped at least one of the young girls he kept in slavery - the very crime of Epstein and Trump and the billionaires Epstein serviced - but who will be lionized as he is every 4th of July.   And what he, as a member of the Southern aristocracy did, was common practice, so common that it was remarked on how many of the children among the enslaved looked like family members of their enslavers - one of the reported attractions of the girl Sally Hemmings to Jefferson was that she was almost the spitting image of his late wife - we can be in little doubt as to why that may have been. 

But the same thing that is commonly accepted and acceptable when it is known to be done by the rich,  both men and Women,  certainly in the media class - itself now an appendage of the show-biz industry which is like a pack of dogs or herd of cats in perpetual heat is presented as having no moral disqualification at all.   It's hilarious for Republicans of any kind to be pretending to get the vapors about this, considering how many of its biggest figures have really sordid histories,  Ronald Reagan and his Hollywood past, Newt Gingrich who, like Trump, seems to have committed adultery with all of his wives - the present Mrs. Gingrich was screwing him while he was married and while she was a choir member at the National Cathedral - several of Gingrich's replacements as Republican Speaker's of the House including Denny Hastert who is known to have been a serial pedophile sexual abuser who is the highest member of the government to have ever served a prison sentence.   The present Republican caucus as well as the Trump regime are full of sexual sinners, likely sexual criminals as a number of them are either suspected of or known to have been in the Epstein class.   Then there's their gentleman's agreement policy on the likes of Lindsay Graham and many others who, if a Democrat shared their sexual history, they'd go after hammer and tongs. And don't forget the several accusations that the current Judiciary Chairman, Jim Jordan knew about the sexual harassment going on against his wrestling team members at Ohio State while he did nothing about it.   I'd like to know the monthly percentage of stories about that as compared to the coverage that Graham Platner has faced.   I'd put years to weeks that the media firestorm over Platner has been far heavier and more concentrated. 

I think they're going after Graham Platner on the basis of him being a blue collar man from a small state, someone who from an early age grew up doing physical labor, who went into the military as a means of advancement and who went back to physical labor.   It's certainly an issue of class and, not improbably, him not coming from a place like New York or California or Virgina or even Ohio.  Certainly a likely issue in the NYT's  treatment of him.   It was one of the things that was certainly part of the media's sandbagging of the man who may well have been our most moral president,  Jimmy Carter whose Georgian farmer origin was likely an issue for the media elite, as certainly was Bill Clinton's Arkansas origin was in their willingness to make his history an issue.   Susan Collins, as a guaranteed to never vote against the financial interests of the Epstein class and the big media moguls, is given a pass in that regard.  

There is more than a little it of outrage among the national media that their hit job on Graham Platner doesn't seem to have worked and, if my observation, shared with many others may well have driven up the Planter vote in Maine, it increased his support. It also may be the final hurrah of the influence of the traditional big media outlets like the Times and the cabloids.   I hope that's right because it will certainly mean that at least a lot of Mainers have seen through their games and their self-interest and snobbery.   Maybe it's because we've experienced the snobbery of so many elites from away who have colonized Maine.  Especially those from the NYC area.   I think they look on Graham Platner as an uppity rustic.  One who doesn't aspire to be their handmaid like Susan Collins has so reliably been. 

Mika and Joe And The Rest of The Mainstream Media Had No Trouble With Their And Trump's Adulteries As They Gave Him Free Air Time In 2016

HEARING THE ADULTERESS MIKA trying to push the "scandal" of Graham Platner and consenting adults talking dirty online WHEN SHE AND HER HUSBAND AND COUNTLESS OF THOSE IN POLITICS SHE AND THEY HAVE NOT GONE AFTER FOR THEIR ADULTERIES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE makes me think maybe Graham Platner should only go on TV to be interviewed with only those who are not only celebate but who have led lives of total chastity. 

Good luck finding anyone in the media or in politics who isn't an actual adulterer.   

I'm not going to wait for Graham Platner to make us in Maine giving a giant FUCK YOU! to the mainstream media a plus for his campaign,  I'm going to leave no opportunity to push that as one of the things we can accomplish by voting him into the Senate by a landslide.    So, fuck you, Mika, Joe, NYT, etc. all of you FILTHY RICH Republican-fascist oligarch tongue bathing hypocrites. 

The Things I Do For This Blog!

SOMEONE WANTED ME TO look at a video of the guy I used to call The Blessed Virgin Benny,  that annoying, screechy voiced dweeb,  Ben Shapiro.   I won't bother with the content,  it's racist crap.  

Now, I don't listen to those who annoy me very often, especially those whose content is worthless and predictable,  so I hadn't noticed before.   He very much reminds me of another massively annoying Republican-fascist adjacent vidiot,  who has very similar style and look and presentation and total wave of BS content.   

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that Little Benny and Nick Fuentes have a hell of a lot in common?  I mean other than the racism and generally fascist adjacency?   Maybe it's the incel vibe with both of them.  

Take Into Account That All Of This Is A Product Of Speech HATE SPEECH And It's Freely Allowed Under Liberal Democracy

 

It's January 6 style organized goons attacking neighborhoods and cars and,  as Owen Jones says,  it's spread freely by the Reform fascist party, other facsists,  in the British media and on Musk media. 

Imagine what they could do if they had a Second Amendment and the level of gun ownership that we have here.  

Going No-Tech As A Way To Fight Back? Big Tech Will Try To Keep You Endentured

JUST READ about a small tractor manufacturer in Alberta,  Canada that is making the kinds of tractors that everyone I know would like to have,  one which has no computer tech in it that makes you, in effect, a renter of a tractor you paid for, in full, because John Deere or some other big name in tractors put such proprietary computer code in it which you have to buy back to fix the damned thing.   All farmers who own such equipment are, in a way, tenant farmers.  Anyone with any experience of tractors know that a farmer spends a good deal of time having to fix a tractor or, if they'r unfortunate enough to have one new enough,  paying a tech working for the company they bought it from because no one else is authorized to fix it and you can get into a lot of trouble if you bypass that crooked monopoly.   I hope that the Alberta company, or others taking their cue from them, start making tractors for smaller scale farmers who don't have a hundred thousand or so to drop on buying their tractors.  Things are tough enough for farmers without that problem.

The same goes for car manufacturers and everything else that crooked, billionaire acquired companies have done to turn ownership into subscription,  one of the reasons that I'd never have owned a Mac and one of the reasons I dumped Windows after one of their Windows 10 mandatory "updates" that completely crashed my computer, that of all of the other Windows users I talked to the same day.   And that was before the Windows 11 subscription enslavement of Windows users. 

Looking at the rumblings around Linux these days,  I get the feeling that big-tech is trying, through controlled politicians here and elsewhere, trying to thwart and destroy the alternatives to the big tech operating systems and freeware.    California's "Age verification" legislation has supposedly good goals of protecting underage computer users,  though it's an absurd idea and about as easily skirted by the minimally savvy computer users under the age of 16.  What it really does is place ruinous burdens on Linux operating system developers who are generally doing it for nothing with minimal to no resources, and Linux developers of low cost or freeware applications.   Buffy Wicks, the California Assembly member behind the legislation, who allegedly wrote it,  has taken lots of big tech oligarch's campaign money, as well as those from such scams as the "charter school movement."*   

I don't think it's paranoid of Linux developers and those of us who use Linux to be deeply suspicious of such legislation,  which I will bet most of the legislators voting on it gave minimal attention to.  All they had to hear was that they'd be tarred with not "protecting children" and that was enough for them to vote for it.   You can be certain that when the financially interested corporations and their oligarchic owners and their hirelings among lawyers and PR flacks and other associated liars are planning things like this,  if they can wrap it in "protecting children" or "free speech" (ha!) or other knee jerk words, they can get politicians to vote for them out of fear of what their next campaign opponent or some troll farmer can spread about them.  These days they don't have to farm trolls, they can do it with bots. 

But I'm not going to point out that the biggest reason for all of the dirty money pushing dirty laws, such as those that don't allow farmers to fix their own tractors or get independent - and far less expensive - technicians and mechanics to fix THE TRACTOR THEY BOUGHT TO OWN is the Supreme Court's corruption of a. making corporations "persons" with all rights and privileges of, you know, real, natural, limited People and b. such things as making money = "speech" one of the biggest reasons that PACs and Super PACs have corrupted our law and our politics to the extent that it has.   If that original clean-elections legislation passed more than fifty years ago had stood, the oligarchs might have come up with other means of corrupting our elections - they still had the original corruption of Sullivan that invented the media's "right to lie" - but the ones that dominate us now wouldn't exist or, at least, wouldn't dominate as they do.   As Buffy Wicks' career shows,  if you have billionaires and multi-millionaries and they can give freely,  the politician can pretend they're not taking dirty money but getting it from the oligarchs directly.   

Did they write the legislation she introduced, what is their motive for doing that?   Does anyone really believe it's going to protect children from online porn and hate speech and online crooks?   That is apart from the corporations that have their hand in the pocket of anyone who, in reality,  rents their software or equipment.        

*Here, from the East Bay Democratic Socialists' FAQ about her.

What does Buffy mean when she says she takes no contributions “from corporations”?

Buffy’s campaign is awash in corporate cash. That includes money from the bank accounts of:

• Corporate billionaires (like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman)
• Corporate employees who make concerted donations (like Ron Conway and other employees of SV Angel)
• Corporate trade associations (like the California Association of Realtors)
• IEs funded with corporate cash (like “Govern for California”)

That’s why the audience at the October 2 League of Women Voters debate broke out in laughter when Buffy said “Jovanka and I are, I think, two of very few candidates in the state of California who have chosen to take no corporate money in this race.”

What Buffy actually means is that she hasn’t taken money directly from the bank accounts of corporations. Her website makes a far narrower claim: “I have not accepted contributions from corporations in our campaign.”

That’s a dodge—as The Atlantic explains, “more of a political maneuver than anything else.” Like many corporate Democrats who have begun rejecting checks from corporations and their PACs, Buffy isn’t “actually rejecting corporations’ resources”—as this website illustrates in detail.

We don't think it matters much whether a donation comes from a corporation’s checking account or its CEO's personal bank account. We're concerned about the billionaires spending big to change the outcome of our elections, and about what policies—anti-worker, anti-tenant, anti-patient or anti-student—they hope Buffy will support in their interests.

Red Norvo Trio - Move

 

Red Norvo - Vibes
Tal Farlow - Guitar
Charles Mingus - bass

For some reason Tal Farlow videos started showing up in my sidebar yesterday.    

They Don't Know Us

 

You Know Of Course I Have To Pursue It

I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE to find the late Stephen Jay Gould's review of Jeremy Rifkin's book Algeny,  I've got some of Gould's books but the one in which that review is reprinted, Urchins In The Storm,  I read my brother's copy of.  He's not sure if he still has it, if he does it's in some box of books somewhere.   I couldn't find it online.

The thing I saw in the Wiki article on Rifkin yesterday that set off my curiosity was this:

Rifkin's work is controversial due to a purported lack of scientific rigor in his claims as well as some of the tactics he has used to promote his views. These include claims that the theory of evolution is a product of "19th century industrial capitalism" . . . 

I don't know if Gould's criticism of Rifkin has anything to do with that but if you clean up the all too common confusion which conflates "evolution" with Darwinism* (and I'd bet you easily 95% of evolutionary scientists regularly conflate them) there can't be any case made that Darwinism, that is the theory of natural selection IS NOT a product of 19th century capitalism.   Darwin, himself made the connection as strongly as possible by saying 

"I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed."

From his Autobiography

As can be seen all through Darwin's and his disciples' scientific writings, the notions of what is "favourable" and what "unfavourable" is everywhere tied in their imaginations to human ideas of economic utility, often mistaking that as everything to do with nature.   Darwinism, natural selection, is inescapably a product of a very specific kind of human imagination since its working and presence and even existence is entirely invisible.   It has not, once, been seen to be at work in the divergence into a new species in nature (nor could it, the time that would take) apart from some story made up by some scientist or popular writer or the like.   There is a reason Gould accurately criticized his scientific and ideological opponent's Sociobiology and, worse, evo-psy as "Just-so stories."  though those he favored did that all the time, too.

Malthus, who gave the good news to the aristocracy that they were favored by nature,  was one of the most influential economists in early capitalism, both in academic scribblage and babbleage and in the fomenting of some of the worst law and policy ever since,  and one whose theory, which was based entirely on the artificiality of human made laws and not on the observation of nature,  couldn't be more tied to the creation of the theory of natural selection.   Though it is reported online that Darwin's co-inventor of natural selection, A.R. Wallace was influenced by Malthus' theory in HIS line of evolutionary theory, at least at the end of his life he was decidedly not a Malthusian nor was he a eugenicist.  If you read the interview with him,  The Last Great Victorian, you'll see that his line of theory was entirely swamped by the Malthusian-Darwinist line of it.  No doubt Darwinists would see that as natural selection at work, no matter how artificial it is in reality. 

The Malthusian nature of most of the dominating strains of evolutionary science, all the various "Darwinisms" that have risen, briefly flourished and then been carted off to the boneyard of discontinued science, is deniable only if you're determined to be willfully ignorant of that fact.  I will pursue trying to find out if Gould was at times that willfully ignorant.  He was certainly a vigorous critic of the consequences of that fact being a dominant one in his own science but the idea that it wasn't the dominating factor in all Darwinian theory and its application in eugenics - even today in the putrid and absurd recapitulation of it in "Darwinian economic" theory that got lots of People killed during the Covid pandemic - was as wrong when he wrote that passage in the 1980s as it has been ever since Darwin wrote his On The Origin of Species. 

I'm loathe to buy a copy of Algeny and would bet any copies that were in any of the public libraries I have access to would have probably gone where even such important books do, into a book sale.  I used to love to find little circulated books that didn't have a return date stamped on them for a century while looking in the stacks but that's not how modern libraries are run these days.   You want a book to be available, put it in Archive.org or Project Gutenberg or some such online source.   

* What is pretty securely certain is that modern species and untold numbers of species in the past evolved from other species, though what is and what isn't a closely related "specie" is hardly well defined, though those farther separated in "evolutionary time" are very well defined as at least different species.  Evolution is as firm a fact as exists in science, natural selection is not, at all, a fact nor even securely defined as a theory.  I have come to believe it is entirely a product of human imagination, one based, in fact, on late 18th and early 19th British aristocratic economic theory.  

Wish I'd Said That

 "AI is this years Beanie Babies for billionaires."  

I HATED THE BI-CENTENNIAL hype and hoopla fifty years ago.   We'd just come off of a terrible war and a terrible scandal in Watergate, and Ford had pardoned Nixon so the biggest criminal in both was getting off.   His associated criminals were, to some extent, getting some punishment for their part in Watergate though the bigger criminals, such as Kissinger, weren't even in any real danger for their war crimes and genocidal scale killing.   1976 was not a year for celebrating the "American experiment" as it was called.   I already saw the real nature and potential disaster of Buckley v Valeo, one of the landmarks in the destruction of American democracy - after all I'd seen the role that media lies and campaign ads had played in putting Nixon in the presidency in 1968.  That year was my start in understanding the real nature of "free press-free speech" which included media lying for profit with impunity. 

When one of my mother's cousin's housebreaking was breaking up as he went into a nursing home - they had no children and no siblings and my family were the ones they turned to - some odds and ends came my way.  One was a fake leather folder with a $2 bill in it from the bicentennial year - the kind of crap they peddled in the Parade Magazine - they were suckers for such touted investments.   Her mother read the Record American (aka "the little picture paper") after all.  Loved aunt May but she would believe anything.  I looked up the value of it last year,  yeah, it was worth $2 in 2026 dollars so, according to an online calculator of the value of money:

$2 in 2026 is worth $0.34 in 1976

I wish I knew the amount that my mother's cousin paid for postage and handling and the, no doubt as advertised "real leatherette display folder."   I don't know if that enhances the worth of it as an object, though I doubt it. 

About the only good thing I can think of that came from what the surprisingly still active Jeremy Rifkin called "the buy-centennial" was the New World Records lable, which started to put out many fine and some not as fine, LPs of American music, classical, jazz, "experimental."  It somewhat diminishes my pleasure in it that it was started with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation - I don't much trust anything with that name associated with it but it was only a grant.   And they took in the sadly discontinued Composers Recordings Inc, the venerable CRI label which issue many fine and fascinating recordings of American composers.  And some not as fine though interesting in an antiquarian way, if you're interested in now obscure American composers.   Some of that obscure music is very good and would enrich the musical scene if it was played from time to time.   I wonder if any of my old CRI LPs have increased in value.  I took good care of them. 

Update:  I never read Rifkin's controversial book Algeny which apparently got even the leftist Darwinists like Stephen Jay Gould pissed off at him - the Wiki article on Rifkin quotes his scathing review.  I'd be curious to see if his critique of Darwinism has any relevance to mine and how the claims of the scientists who objected to his book match current biology.  Forty years ago they were making all kinds of claims in evolutionary biology that have fallen into a state of desuetude as much as much of the conventional biology in my high school bio textbook - many of those which became the reigning ideology of biology  Gould, himself, was in the business of debunking.   

The Legacy Of Charlie Kirk In One Motormouth Moron

 

An Answer On The Clintonization Of Platner To Get Susan Collins Back In

The corporate media, from the New York Times down through the TV networks, the cabloids and right down to the neo-Nazi online garbage is an engine for inventing Democratic "scandals" of exactly this kind.  And they wonder why fewer and fewer normal People trust them.   Scott Pelley is acting like what Weiss and the Ellisons are doing at CBS is some new outrage - as the more than $100 million dollar, three decades and counting "investigations" of Hillary Clinton WHICH HAVE PRODUCED NOT ONE INDICTMENT OR CONVICTION OF HER proves,  they've ALL been doing it for decades now.   And that case is only one in dozens I could name. 

As Great A Speech As Has Been Given In The United States