I'm Sure Susan Collins Is Concerned As J.D. Vance Pretends To Pray About It But

IF YOU DON'T 

SUPPORT

GUN CONTROL 

IN 2025

 

YOU ARE IN FAVOR 

OF

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS.

PERIOD.

Try Again Next Tuesday Simps

I KNEW that dissing jocks would get the pasty-old-white-couch-potato and resident half-wit at Duncan Black's idea of an Athenaeum in a swivet.   He claims his daddy played football at A&M and he's got some serious daddy issues, though it could just be he's a devoted practitioner of maintaining the conventional point of view.   It was his job for most of his life to repeat the conventional POV.  

Is there any serious case to be made that jocks don't tend to be right-wing which, in itself, is a symptom of selfishness, self-obsession, greed and bigotry?   Especially the ones who make a lot of money before they largely blow it on self-indulgence. Their fan base tends that way, too.  And I doubt there was ever a person who taught in high school or college who didn't encounter the anti-intellectualism that sports encourages.   While there are, of course, exceptions to those rules of thumb, they are notable because they are exceptions.  And it has always been thus.  

As for Simps,  other than him being an odd case of a kid vicariously living through their daddy instead of the typical other way round (the tales of the Little League father-coaches from hell I have heard!) I doubt he follows any sports at all.  Me,  I kind of like the idea of adult baseball as long as they don't take it seriously,  especially the ones who play by old rules in old fashioned uniforms that leave a little to the imagination.   And I've known a lot of Womens' softball players - there are lots of Lesbians who do, that sterotype is true in my experience - and they tend to be a hoot.  Just as long as they don't expect me to take it seriously we can get along just fine.  

American football is depraved, the most violent sport outside of boxing and the most boring.  You'd have to be seriously stupid or drunk to stand watching them standing around trying to decide what just happened,  standing around talking, lining up, over and over again so they can smash into each other for twenty seconds over and over again. . .  I'd rather watch the wall for two hours, it's less mind obliterating.  And it's not a breeding ground of fascism.   And no commercials. 

As to sports being good for your health, last time I saw my class mates, it was the ones in band who hadn't gotten dangerously fat and the jocks who either had or were dead from it.   I wonder if anyone has done a statistical analysis of that,  comparing the non-jocks to the jocks for health and lifespan.  

America's White Male Crime Wave - The White Supremacist Sent Me Some Hate Mail Last Night

FROM TWO POSTS about school shootings and mass shootings . 

First from Statita

Shootings according to gender of the shooters. 

Since 1982, an astonishing 149 mass shootings have been carried out in the United States by male shooters. In contrast, only four mass shootings (defined by the source as a single attack in a public place in which four or more victims were killed) have been carried out by women.

Gun ownership in the U.S.

Possession of firearms in the United States is protected by the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution and has been a defining aspect of American civil liberties since the writing of the Bill of Rights. It is estimated that the United States has the highest rate of civilian-owned firearms in the world, and Americans continually poll against handgun restrictions.

Shootings according to the race of the shooters from this paper:

White individuals in the United States (US) have historically had disproportionate access to firearms. The real-life availability of firearms, including those most lethal, may still be greater among White populations, manifesting in the number of victims in shootings. We compared the severity of US mass public shootings since Columbine by race and/or ethnicity of the perpetrator using The Violence Project Database of Mass Shooters, assessing fatalities (minimum four), total victims, type, and legal status of guns used. We used data visualization and Quasi-Poisson regression of victims minus four – accounting for truncation at 4 fatalities – to assess fatality and total victim rates comparing Non-Hispanic (NH) White with NH Black shooters, using winsorization to account for outlier bias from the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. In 104 total mass public shootings until summer 2021, NH White shooters had higher median fatalities (6 [IQR 5–9] versus 5 [IQR 4–6]) and total victims (9 [IQR 6–19] versus 7 [IQR 5–12]) per incident. Confidence intervals of NH Black versus NH White fatalities rate ratios (RR) ranged from 0.17–1.15, and of total victim RRs from 0.15–1.04. White shooters were overrepresented in mass public shootings with the most victims, typically involving legally owned assault rifles. To better understand the consequences when firearms are readily available, including assault rifles, we need a database of all US gun violence. Our assessment of total victims beyond fatalities emphasizes the large number of US gun violence survivors and the need to understand their experiences to capture the full impact of gun violence.

Looks like America's got a really bad white male problem.  I'll bet if they filtered the statistics to check for whether or not those guys identified their sexuality they'd largely be straight and I'd bet that if you did an economic analysis they'd largely be middle-class or above - those guns tend to be pretty expensive. 

But Hollywood won't reflect that as they promote racism and racist fear.  

Don't Know How I Completely Missed The Death Of The Timeless Sheila Jordan

She was 96 and sang her last performance last Valentines Day, the same day she released her last album,  Portrait Now.  And unlike most of those who are still repeating themselves into  their 70s and 80s,  she was still very much worth listening to, making it new every time. 

She was a great artist.  The kind of person you get so used to just being there you can't imagine she isn't performing somewhere.    

CNN Has The Vestigial White Brains Behind The Biggest Loser Lecturing Black People On Slavery

I WAS UNAWARE that someone named Jillian Michaels existed though I may have seen her on the bogus vehicle for pushing products,  The Doctors.  When I was taking care of my mother in the last years of her life she watched the piece of trash until it got to be too obvious garbage for her to tolerate.   Our mother had worked in hospitals in Boston and elsewhere early in her life and she had an over-reverent view of that profession though she knew when someone was trying to sell products, not evidenced science.   As an aside, I read that "The Doctors" was produced by "Dr. Phil" the phony TV shrink and Trumpian-fascist - Oprah has a lot to answer for. 

Anyway,  Jillian Michaels is apparently a figure in the TV fitness industry who - on the basis of having absolutely no expertise in anything much other than getting her white self on TV - was on one of CNN's food-fight shows to blather about her support of Trump suppressing the unpleasant truth about slavery in the United States at the Smithsonian.   The skank proved immediately that she may have absorbed some Republican-fascist-white-supremacist talking points but she really is as stupid as your typical white jockette.*   There's a clip on this video by Jamelle Bouie of her spouting off in this video where he demolishes the white-supremacist talking points she echoed from her empty head.

Here's my comment that I posted partway through his erudite presentation.   He did get there as I should have had every confidence that someone as intelligent and knowledgeable as he is, would. 

He could have gone a lot farther than he did in his comments, he could have mentioned how completely the slave-power dominated the Supreme Court and presidency before Lincoln, how the 3/5ths provision matched with the disenfranchisement of those People so enumerated for representation stole that extra influence for the white enslavers and those who profited from slavery. 

As to CNN,  I wish that disastrous experiment which the entirely regrettable 24-7 "news" format had closed decades ago.  I can't see that it serves any purpose other than to give air-heads like Jillian Michaels and so many others air-time to spout their stupidity.   I mean, she's not even a phys-ed teacher, she kinda played one on TV.   

*  If I had the time I'd make a list of jocks and jockettes who are prominent in the Republican-fascist-Trumpzi world.  Off hand, there seem to be a lot of them.   Sports most builds bad character.   Selfish-egomaniacs who are greedy and who have little use for the truth.   

Trump Doesn't Just Cave He "Cries Like A Little Girl" When The Real Tough Guys Push Him Around

 This one explains a lot more about it than the banker calling him "TACO."  

New York Mobsters Son Drops Bomb On Trump

How I Went Too Far For The Bill Moyers Site - Last Summer Rerun As An Answer - Hate Mail

 

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

How I Went Too Far For Bill Moyers' Site

I have been trying to leave a comment at that  Neal Gabler piece I posted about at Moyers and Co. since comments were reopened but they have been rejected by the moderator.  Here's my comment I tried to post this morning.

We live in The Age of Lies, in which the truth went from being reality to it being relative to it being optional and now it's seen as irrelevant. And that is largely due to the electronic media and the string of legal decisions starting with the Sullivan Decision that made it impossible for politicians to sue the media when it lied about them. The permission given in that most clueless of decisions by a liberal court was taken by the corporate media which already dominated the collective attention span of the United States to propagandize them for their own benefit. That permission grew and was more skilfully exploited by the oligarchs which have arisen to lie about, almost exclusively liberal politicians and potential politicians so they would lose elections. The fifty three years of the regime of freedom of the lie which the courts and the legal theories of highly placed lawyers working for the media has seen the fatal wounding of democracy. Now we see it might have actually killed it off. And when I turn on NPR or I see CBS I see they are normalizing what Trump's thugs are doing in tearing apart egalitarian democracy and a decent society.

The media, freed to lie by that interpretation of the First Amendment is what got us here. There won't be any restoration of democracy until the reality that the electronic mass media isn't like 18th century print media is accepted as a hard and mandatory reality that democracy either adapts to or it will die by a media which will like in service of oligarchy. Our legal system refuses to take that reality into account, the media certainly doesn't want it to. The Free Press, freed to lie will destroy democracy, not serve it. That would seem to be about as close to a law of nature on this issue as you're going to find.

You will excuse me if I'm far less worried about journalists who work for the media which has gotten us here than I am the people who are the victims of what they produced.

Here are some of the comments which have made it through moderation at Moyers and co.

HelpSaveMaryland • an hour ago
What utter leftist BS. The GOP defeated Dems at the national, state and local levels across the country. Now that is true diversity. Time to get America back on track. Trump 2016!

TNO  David • 15 hours ago
"It all started when Wallmart .... and when Sam Walton died ..."

In all your vast research, did you come upon the fact that HRC sat on Wallmart's board for years? Hmmm...

Wonder if she was on the board when Sam died? Any bets? Anybody, anybody? The answer is YES! She was on the board when they made that horrible decision. Guess what? It was HER IDEA!

Wanna know how she described it? "I moved the board forward during my tenure." I guess moving forward means ruining it. Typical Clinton Style.

Pull your head out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05...
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lotusgdess  TNO • 7 hours ago

Hillary joined the Walmart board so she could have some input into issues such as promotions for women and other worker issues. So stop distorting the truth like the right wing always does. You people think like Joseph Goebbels. Just keep telling the Big Lie enough and the masses will believe it. Well the masses are asses.

Seedee Vee  David • 2 days ago
It's not anger that made 60 million people vote against a war mongering Harpy. It was self preservation.
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Sam  Seedee Vee • a day ago
he LOST the popular vote, never forget that. The majority of humans in the US who voted voted for Clinton, voted AGAINST hatred, and all the things he stands for.
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Seedee Vee  Sam • a day ago
Dig out, Buddy. The winner - by a vast amount - was None Of The Above.

What percentage of eligible voters voted for Hillary?
Nowhere near 50%, was it?

Who is going to live in the White House in 2017?
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David  Seedee Vee • 21 hours ago
Are you brain dead Seedee Vee or whoever you are. Clinton WON the majority of the vote nearly a million votes. Here again the facts being twisted to suit your own agenda,
telling lies like Trump. When is it going to stop, it won't stop until people start putting people like you in your place that are literally just sitting there lying through your teeth.
And stgp using clang, it only shows your lower IQ and intelligence and education.
What are you a 14 or 15 years been brain washed by your brain dead parents.


BleedsBlue365 • 21 hours ago
He won't last. ISIS will take him out sooner rather than later, if we are lucky.

Seedee Vee  David • 21 hours ago
I can't show you all of the dead bodies because I am neither a funeral home director, a war crimes investigator nor your mommy proving to you that there are no monsters under your bed.

The Clintons are monsters and the World is very lucky to not have them and their sycophants in power for at least the next 4 years.


At least until Chelsea buys her seat in Congress.

Phil W • 5 hours ago

So we should have voted with the communist billionaire, Soros, and voted for an extremely corrupt Hillary? You nominated a horrible candidate. It's the DNC's fault they lost.

I have to say, I'm not entirely surprised that my heresy against the fundamentalism of the free speech industry is considered beyond the pale while that kind of stuff is within it. 

Note from 2025:  Risking tempting fate,  I'm feeling better so I expect to start writing new material again. 

Ten Years And Not An Answer To These Ideology Obliterating Questions - A late summer rerun with a bit of editing.

I'm posting another summer rerun which has an interesting comment thread on it.  It's been ten years since I challenged the materialists to answer these questions which,  I hold even more so today,  defeat their materialist-atheist ideology.   

Note that you can find the blog brawl that this caused at the link, I think it's worth reading through.   "Tlaz" was and maybe still is one of the Eschaton blog rats,  she never engaged honestly in any argument I ever had with her and didn't risk coming here unlike a couple of her buddies.   I often brawled with "JR" who also went by the name "Freki" and unlike most of them,  I actually had some respect for her intelligence, though not always her honesty.  "Skeptic tank" was and, for all I know, is still an ass.  One who apparently had a career in university-based science. 

Materialism in any form I've thought out can't account for our most basic and secure of experiences, our own experience of our own conscious existence.   Without an answer to these questions,  their materialist basis of consciousness just simply can't work.   I will note that this is also a problem for most of the so-called sciences that allegedly deal with minds, individually, in groups and in societies, because science can only deal with such things as material objects and that simply doesn't work.  

If any materialist-atheist of the scientistic kind wants to take on those questions posed here, for about the nineth month running that year,  try your best.  I deal with a couple of the more intelligent - well "JR" was more intelligent than your average blog-rat atheist "Skeptic-Tank" wasn't - which only shows that they inserted words and not ideas into the discussion.  The claim that "DNA" or "natural selection" was an answer to it is exactly the kind of thing that I'm familiar with in your typical atheist discourse but, as you present the problem with it - it only forces the observation that all they've done is take the problem it is for "brain-only" models of consciousness and handed it over to the even less obviously capable "DNA" or "natural selection" without answering the questions.   I've found that that is not only typical of blog-atheists, it's typical of materialist ideology universally.   

Maybe you'll find it as fun as I did to re-read this. 

Friday, September 18, 2015

An Open Challenge To Materialists Since April And Counting

All ideas are preceded by mind; they have mind as their chief; they are mind-made. If one speaks or acts with an evil mind, pain follows him just as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the cart.

Dharmapada, verse 1.1 

I am pretty tired and won't be writing anything new today. [Note from 2025, it was allergy season then, too.]  I will, though, remind everyone of my open challenge for materialists, the "brain-only" type to clear up a problem with their model of the mind as the epiphenomenon of physical structures in the brain, the "real" things, physical objects and structures that are the ideas our minds contain and work with.  

If that is the case:

- How does it know it needs to make a new physical structure to BE the basis of a new idea? 

- How does the brain know what to make for a new idea before that idea exists in the brain to tell it what to make?   

- How does it know how to make the physical embodiment of just the right idea without that idea already being in our head?  

- How does it know it has made the right idea or, if it makes the wrong structure to be that idea?

- How does it know that that idea, which is, then, in the brain is the wrong idea since the "right idea" isn't in there but the wrong one is? 

All that is at stake in this is the entire edifice of materialism because it it can't account for our minds it has to fall.  For materialism, and with it almost all of what most people hold as atheism, to stand they have to explain how our brains could do what they so obviously wouldn't know how to do if the "brain-only" model of the mind is real.  

The only mechanism I can think of that could save the "brain-only" model is for there to be some form of psychic information that could tell the brain what to make, since the idea isn't, physically in the brain.  But, then, the idea would be real in a non-physical form and that would, as well, invalidate materialism.  

Update:  If Her Coprophagous Highness, Tlaz, would like to answer the challenge I promise to post her attempt with commentary.   

When Thiel's Bitch Vance Is President He'll Be A Less Druggy Musk - Things We Need To Know

 

Tabloid Culture That Produced Trump As A New York City Phenomenon Was More Than Matched By What The Cabloids Did To The US

But Hollywood is what sold us America's Hitler. 

STILL ILL so here is another video I watched which was enlightening in a totally different way from the last one posted.  Of all the Youtube Legal AF programs, I prefer the one with Sean Wilentz and Sidney Blumenthal.  It didn't occur to me till this morning that that could be because of all of them, they're not lawyers.  

This discussion with Jonathan Mahler about how New York City in the 70s to today produced Donald Trump is full of reminders and the kind of insights that come from the honest study of history.   It was, in fact, the tabloid culture of New York, which I would say has to include the New York Times as well as the little papers, is what taught the crafty but vapid, sly but stupid and, most of all privileged straight, white, affluent Trump how to turn his criminal sleaze,  his real-estate wealth, into the kind of celebrity and power that became the stock in trade of not only that city but the national media which followed it into the cesspool that America has become largely due to the mass media.  

I do think that concentrating on the moribund ink on cheap paper media -which was admittedly important in the period and was the spear point in dragging us into the sewer - is a mistake because if that was important electronic media, hate-talk radio and cabloid news - which were also getting going in the biggest way at the same time - has been far far more important.   

The time period that they concentrate on, from about 1980 on, is notably the exact same period that produced several phenomena, most notably the Hollywood B list actor Ronald Reagan's presidency.   It should not be forgotten that his presidency, following on the Nixon-Ford presidency with the relatively clean Jimmy Carter presidency as a brief intermission produced what was, till Bush II and Trump the most criminal administration in American history with the most members of it convicted of felonies while in office.    Like Trump as a politician,  Trump is a product of the American free press,  certainly the entertainment division of it but also the "news" division of it.   Trump is a media phenomenon far more so than he is a product of the organized-crime saturated NYC real estate world.   And as such he is a direct product of the libertarian Supreme Court rulings flowing from the Warren Court's disastrous interpretation of the First Amendment.  

I think the location of the media that produced Trump as a political figure being located in New York City is largely incidental to his national presence,  though it's certain that a figure like Trump in most other cities would never have gotten the attention from that media as he got as a product of that stupendously corrupt, celebrity and pop-kulcha infested city.   Trump as a national figure is far, far more due to Hollywood than he is New York.   And most of all he is a product of the fact that our indigenous form of fascism,  white supremacy, was also ascendant at the same time.   

Stacey Abrams, in that last video I posted,  mentioned the role that "white evangelicals" played in the destruction of Jimmy Carter's administration,  certainly meaning the Arlington Virginia based Jerry Falwell and the other racially motivated TV hallelujah peddlers who the media also started promoting as "Christianity" largely through cable TV in the same period.  And,  I will say as a positive fact, for largely the same reason,  that they were a useful weapon to destroy a Democratic president and attack any Democrats who endangered their owners wealth.    That was certainly something taken up by the NYC based media but it didn't start there.   They used "reborn Christians" to bring down probably the most Christian president in American history in favor of the adulterous, divorced, remarried, and corrupt Reagan.   The combination has given us today what would once have been considered a bizarre phenomenon of "white evangelicals" supporting the very thing that they were alleged to oppose the most,  a sex criminal,  Antichrist,  given to serial blasphemy and self-worship, a crook and cheat, someone who has repeatedly and publicly broken every single commandment,  including murder, now.   And someone who has done in the most extreme possible way what the very same white-supremacist "evangelicals" railed about for generations,  sending federal troops in to take over against the objections of state and local governments.  In every way Trump exposes both the "trad-Catholics" (I won't go into that here) and the Protestant "white-evangelicals" as pseudo-Christianity,  but what the media has promoted as being "Christianity" for the past half century - I say due largely to the real thing being no more congenial to their wealth than the presidency of the moderate Democrat Jimmy Carter was. 

I think the areligious media culture of the US, many of its major figures certainly hostile to Christianity has made common cause with "evangelical" Antichristianity and it was certainly helped along in the effects that has had in American life and politics by those on the alleged left who shared the media figures' disdain for religion with an overt hatred of Christianity.  The role that the American "left" has played in the rise of Republican-fascists - never forget the role the Green Party and Ralph Nader played in the election of Bush II and Trump I and others in the sandbagging of Biden - is a minor but important part in this.  The American left - largely college credentialed in its most public face - has been incredibly stupid, that is if what they claim to want in government is what they actually find most important.  And I doubt that they do, certainly not as compared to their self-satisfying conceit    They've got more in common with Trump than they'd ever want to contemplate of have a thought criminal bring up. 

---------------

Someone asked what I was sick with.  It's allergy season, goldenrod and ragweed, etc. I always get a bad cold during allergy season and I don't work as well through it as I used to.   So, sorry, nothing fatal except being over 70.  Which is fatal enough to be getting on with. 

Keep Getting Sick This Year - This Made Me Feel Better This Morning

Hadn't known that Stacey Abrams has a podcast.   I listened to the one posted three days ago and it faces the hard issues we're facing but her conversation with Bishop William Barber and Fr Greg Boyle feels like a health tonic.  I'm a subscriber now. 

Christian nationalism is an extremist, anti-democratic ideology rooted in the belief that the United States should be a nation for Christians to the exclusion of all others. In modern times, the Trump administration and its Republican allies have wielded this ideology as a weapon to divide Americans and implement an agenda via plans like the infamous Project 2025 that eviscerates the rights of immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community, questions the rights of women to vote, restores a freedom to discriminate against others and targets reproductive rights. This week, in response to a listener question asking what Christian nationalism has to do with the central tenets of Christianity, Stacey shares her own experience as a progressive, democratic Christian, pulling back the curtain on a core truth: the malice and hatred preached by right-wing religious leaders who shape our politics has nothing to do with Jesus’s actual teachings. She’s joined by Bishop William Barber, president of Repairers of the Breach, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, and professor at Yale Divinity School and Father Greg Boyle, Jesuit priest, founder of Homeboy Industries, and author. Together, they break down the threat Christian nationalism poses to democracy and show how faith, at its best, can be a powerful force for justice and progress. This inspiring conversation has so much to offer all our listeners, whether they come from a Christian background, some other faith background, or no faith at all.

Never Thought I'd Say Something Like This

but I'd give twenty dollars to a go-fund-me for Hunter Biden to force Melania and Trump to be deposed in her threatened lawsuit against him.   I can't say I have had an extremely high opinion of Hunter in the past but if he carries through on this suit and forces them to tell about their past in regard to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell he'd be a hero to me in that regard. 

Do it, Hunter. 

I've Got To Make It A Rule

to turn off Toby Laboutillier before he gets to the pop hits of 1965.   It seems to be the year that pop music in the US took a real nosedive.   I mean, "Hang on Sloopy?"   "We Got To Ge Out Of This Place?"  "Summer Nights?"  "Where The Action Is?"  "Who'll Be The Next In Line?"  

Geesh!  It's almost enough to make me want to hear The Association.  

Save me

Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog and Down Home Shakedown

It's time to rip up the Code of Liberal Ethics - Hurray For Gavin Newsom

THE FIRST THING in the first blog post I ever posted at 9:45 AM EDT on May 13th, 2006 * started this way:

To start with, there are two things about the Code of Liberal Ethics that bother me. One, that we are supposed to be entirely fair to everyone and especially in instances when that would put us at a disadvantage, will be dealt with later. The one I will deal with first is the assumption that liberals must get it right every time, not only right but correct. That liberals and leftists, such as myself, must be purer than pure or relegated to the tip, is something I'd better address right now in this first post.

Yesterday a Democratic Politician, for the first time of any significance, took a step out of the worse than futile, prissy,  sanctimonious, liberalishy-laywerly scrupulosity that sacrifices everything,  democracy and millions of lives to, as I heard one of the MSNBC type lawyers piously say it "the rules, the norms and the manuals."   I'm talking, of course, of Gavin Newsom's plan to put it to the highest authority in any government,  The Voters, to override the liberally-lawyerly reform to prevent that ubiquitous anti-democracy practice under our corrupt system, partisan gerrymandering which Republican-fascists never put into effect in the states they control, so as to rig the Republican minority into a majority in the House of Representatives.    In doing so he not only FACES REALITY INSTEAD OF THE PIOUS CORRUPTION OF HEAD-IN-THE-SANDS THEORETICAL IDEALISM,  HE DID SO IN A WAY THAT MAKES IT WHAT REPUBLICANS NEVER WILL MAKE IT WHEN IT'S NOT A SURE THING FOR THEM,  A CHOICE OF THE VOTERS.

The corruption of the Federal system,  dreamed up largely by John Adams, even more so than that baked-in corruption I noted in a post the other day,  by rigging House districts began as soon as elections under the Constitution were held.  The "Gerry" in gerrymander is Elbrige Gerry, one of the founders,  VP under Madison and one of the drafters of the so-called Bill of Rights who rigged the Massachusetts Senate districts to keep his party in control of the Massachusetts Senate.   A practice that has proved popular with incumbents bent on holding on to their seats but has been extremely popular with America's indigenous fascists, the white supremacists, both as the slave-power and today as Republican-fascists as a way to thwart equality and, so, any legitimate government in the United States.  When I read that on Gerry's death John Adams praised him as an unusually moral politician it did a lot to open up my eyes, not about Gerry, but the real character of John Adams.   And it wasn't in his favor. 

I remember when the idea of "making things fair" through taking redistricting out of the hands of the so obviously interested politicians in state legislatures took hold in response to the scandal of ubiquitous gerrymandering to give more power to a party whose policies and actions in government were unpopular.    As I recall it, it was one of those schemes dreamed up by politician-lawyers and the lawyerly types who tend to get control of so-called civil society non-profits.   And it would have been a nice idea if it wasn't an idea guaranteed to never be put into effect by Republican-fascists in enough places to ensure that the anti-People, pro-billionaire-millionaire-white supremacist party would control things.   Democrats in reliably Democratic majority places should always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS BE SUSPICIOUS OF "REFORMS" THAT THEY KNOW WILL NEVER BE PUT INTO EFFECT IN PLACES LIKE TEXAS or other white-supremacist majority states.   Facing reality even when that means you don't adopt the piously advocated, purity asserted plans of the scrupulous and, especially, lawyerly should be the universal rule, the norm and even written in the manuals of Democratic Party politics.  

Maine has suffered enormously through the idiotic scrupulosity of such "liberals" of the past and today., most of those I know of by name,  yes, lawyers.   But the United States as a whole has been put in danger by them.   It's time to rip up the Code of Liberal Ethics and fight fascism without two hands tied behind our backs.   I say any "reform" commission that ends up with the House in the hands of the Republican-fascists is no reform, it's sheer idiocy.   I wonder if the reason Newsome is willing to do that is that he isn't a lawyer,  a profession that, despite what you see in TV and movie fiction,  makes big money through cowardice and surrender to evil    I wonder if the reason that the governor of the third largest state,  Kathy Hochul hasn't proposed that is because she's a lawyer. 

I will pray every day that if Democrats win back control of the government that they don't let the lawyers talk them out of really, really taking power and doing what's necessary to defeat Republican-fascism, that they do what the lawyer and law school teacher Obama never would have done and which Joe Biden should have certainly known he had to do - BREAK THE RULES, THE NORMS AND WHAT IT SAID IN THE MANUALS BECAUSE EQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY ARE THE ONLY LEGITIMATE THINGS IN GOVERNING.   As I've mentioned, my nightmare is that the next Democratic president will appoint another Merrick Garland who cares more about keeping his own lily white hands clean and not the breath of scandal away from his name,  a goddamned "institutionalist" who cares more about the "DoJ" than he does democracy as Attorney General.  And if that's not enough to keep me awake at night, the lawyers in the Senate and House will be there to surrender egalitarian democracy to the jaws of Republican-fascism.   And then there's the Republican-fascist stacked judiciary.   We need a rule-breaker, even more so a norms-breaker and someone who will order the manuals be rewritten to take reality and hard experience into account.   If Gavin Newsom is that person,  I now have fewer doubts than I did the day before yesterday.   He did so as Mayor of San Francisco when he started issuing same-sex marriage licenses before the country, temporarily, caught up to him.   I have some deep disagreements with him, none more so than over the homeless but I think he'd try to do something more effective to house them than the alternatives would.    If he became the nominee, his first wife, the psycho-fascist Kimberly Gilfoyle would be a problem.   But so far he's looking like our best chance to save democracy.  

*   I remember what motivated me to finally post something on that blog I'd set up but hadn't posted to was hearing the smarmy Scott Simon on NPR's Weekend Edition scolding about some Democrat not rolling over backward to be fair to some Republican-fascist, otherwise I'd have dealt with the first one first.   I loathe Scott Simon.  

Are RFK jr. And His Sleazy Colleagues Chasing Another Ambulance?

AS SOON AS I HEARD LITTLE BOBBY say:

Nobody blamed The New York Times for spreading that disinformation that football can cause injuries.

to deflect his role in motivating the guy who murdered a cop as he shot hundreds of rounds at the CDC campus the other day, the first thing I thought is what a massive fucking liar that scumbag lawyer was.  Have I mentioned that Little Bobby Kennedy is one of the things that definitively put me off of that scumbag profession?   I mean in the last several days?   

If there's one thing that is known about football without any possible question of it being a fact IT IS THAT IT CAUSES INJURIES.   The first recorded deaths FROM INJURIES WHILE PLAYING THE GAME date from the earliest years of the game in the late 19th century.   Teddy Roosevelt named a commission during his administration to address the massive number of deaths from the game.  Though I am within my rights, due to what the lying scumbag said to include that,  I assume the scumbag lying lawyer was denying the clear fact that among those injuries are long term and often fatal brain injuries - another fact as clear as any about the favorite sport of his family.  It was one of the things that drove poor Ted's first wife to drugs and mental illness that the assholes in that family made fun of her during their famous touch football games.   

But, of course, that fucking liar of a lawyer, with all of the arrogance of the worst of his kind lies about vaccines and, as we found during the questioning of him during his confirmation hearing  the scumbag lawyer liar intends to keep on profiting perhaps in the tens of millions of dollars off of his anti-vaxx ambulance chasing which he is currently providing with lies for the courtroom about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.  

So,  I have to wonder if he and his fellow scumbag liar lawyer colleagues are hoping to cash in on defending football whether professionally or at the college or high-school or even pee-wee levels as they are sued by those that industry feeds off of.  

The Trump regime is full to the top of scumbags but Kennedy is in a class of his own both trading off of his family name but far worse than that in what he's doing which has the potential to, over time, get millions killed.   And I have ever confidence that he's planning in his worm rotted brain, to profit off of it. 

I hate that guy and I'm not ashamed to admit it. 

Update:  The college-credentialed "r" word journalist and resident wit at Duncan's idea of an athenaeum and Little Bobby level liar wants to post a comment that's especially stupid even for him.   If someone other than him begs me to post it,  I will and I will answer it.   He's at the Pee Wee Herman level of stupidity without the late Paul Ruben's talent or intelligence.   Writing pop reviews for an ad flyer must have been close to the minimal requirements to be an American journalist in the age of the Sullivan decision.   I haven't considered that decision as the reason that American journalism, briefly and in part once somewhat better than the Hearst-Pulitzer period has gone even stupider than it traditionally had been but it may not be just a coincidence that it happened in the same timeline as that decision brought us to fascism. 

Israel Is a Genocidal Apartheid State - Hate Mail

Katie Halper,  Dr. Feroze Sidwha and Dr. Mark Perlmutter talk about just a few of the atrocities the so-called "IDF" have committed in Gaza and the Israeli government supports in the West Bank, including the IDF burying Palestinian children alive.   

Katie Halper says that opposing Zionism is a mitzvah.   I don't have the right to say that but I would say it's a mortal sin for a Christian to not oppose "Christian" Zionism.   

Back in 2006 when I first wrote about the disaster that Israel is, in reality,  I made a prediction that I think is coming true:

Their alliance with fundamentalist “christians” should be all the evidence you need of their stupidity if not duplicity. End timers have only two uses for Jews, especially Israelis. Jews are either to be converted to “christianity”, perhaps by force eventually, or they are extras waiting to die in their pre-enactment battle fantasies based on the Book of Revelations. As the events around Lebanon this month show, the fundamentalist ghouls can hardly wait for the real slaughter to begin. Their script calls for Israelis to die in the millions.

Failing the fundamentalists’ favorite wish, Americans of future times will grow weary of supporting Israel if it is engaged in endless wars, endless conflicts and, especially, if idiocy on the level of this war in Lebanon continues. A constantly attacked Israel will become increasingly militarized and isolated and paranoid. With that will come the destruction of democracy. A nationalistic, perhaps theocratic and despotic Israel is certainly nothing that the vast, vast majority of Israelis or Americans want to see. If someone can convince me that isn’t where it is headed I’d really really like to believe otherwise.

I have every confidence that these ideas have been thought about in Israel. I can’t believe anything I’m writing here hasn’t been more fully considered there where investigating every contingency is a matter of life and death.

I was clearly wrong about a majority of Israelis not wanting that because it was in their hands and no one elses to keep that from happening and they haven't. 

Elsewhere at that time I said in all sincerity that I would be in favor of admitting Israelis who hadn't committed war crimes into the US as full citizens.   At the time I believed I was talking about the large majority of Israelis who were innocent of the crimes of the Israeli government.   Now I'm pretty certain that it would be a minority of Israelis who didn't have blood on their hands.   Which is sad but, especially if the poll are right, is true.   I would not want any former members of the IDF here, we've got more than enough home grown fascists already.  I'm less willing to pretend that Israel deserves the benefit of any doubt,  they'd already lost the right to that by 1980. 

Summer Rerun Brokeback Mountain, Good Story, Meh! Movie, Great Opera Has It Really Been 20 Years Since The Movie?

Note:   Hearing it was the 20th anniversary of the release of that horse opera I went back to see what I'd written about it.  Here's something I think is worth going over again.   You might want to read the brawl at the original posting which featured mostly the superior observations of RMJ and the opposite from you know who and one of his side-kicks and with minimal content from me.   I found it interesting  

Friday, November 18, 2016

I've Never Heard Liberals Say "Mansion Trash" or "Penthouse Trash" The People Who Really Gave Us Trump

I suspect that, unlike most of the people who throw around the term "trailer trash" and who use that form of housing as a term of disparagement, I've known a lot of people who lived in trailers.  Most of them are quite decent people who have that most unforgivable of conditions even among the allegedly liberal, being poor*.

Having gone to college, knowing lots of college faculty, having spent time among the Ivy League class of people, I also have had a chance to see the clean, well coiffed and manicured wealthy up close and in their element and. as well, the academic and intellectual class.   I will say that they've got nothing on the people who live in trailers by way of trashy behavior.  If anything, more of the people I've known who live in trailers have higher morals than the wealthy and well-educated, a number of them have more sense, as well.

I can't talk about this without again bringing up the main character in Brokeback Mountain, Ennis Del Mar and that Annie Proulx not only put him, that most sympathetic of tragic figures among the liberal elite, in a trailer,   And the admirable Ms. Proulx, not only put him in a dilapidated trailer, she made him what would be considered "trailer trash" from the start, having him urinate in the sink.   I doubt anyone I know who lives in a trailer does that, though almost every man I've known who lives in a trailer has a wife who wouldn't put up with that.

But urinating in a sink, if it's your sink and no one else uses it, is a crime against your own sanitation, it isn't rank amorality and moral depravity of the kind our elites envelop the world in.   Reading about how Charles Kushner, Ivanka Trumps father in law father got back at his own sister and brother-in-law for turning states witness against him.

Now he has stepped down as chairman of his company. His days as a political force both nationally and in New Jersey are over. Saddest of all, he has shattered his once close-knit family. The days when the Kushner clan—Charles and his three siblings and all their spouses and kids and grandkids—would travel to Miami together for Passover are long gone. He and his older brother, Murray, have not spoken in more than two years as a result of a bitter lawsuit over money Murray believed Charles owed him from deals they had done together—a lawsuit that Charles Kushner’s supporters claim opened the door for the U.S. Attorney’s investigation into his campaign-finance activities.

And, of course, to add to the horror, the federal witnesses he had attempted to retaliate against were his sister and brother-in-law, who were cooperating with that same investigation. Kushner paid a prostitute $10,000 to lure his brother-in-law to a motel room at the Red Bull Inn in Bridgewater to have sex with him. A hidden camera recorded the activity, and Kushner sent the lurid tape to his sister, making sure the tape arrived on the day of a family party.

As he sat in his office less than 24 hours after his guilty plea, the phone rang. The caller couldn’t have been more unexpected—it was Governor Jim McGreevey. Though Kushner had given the governor more than $1.5 million for his two races and was instrumental in his rise to power, the two had barely spoken in months.

I don't know anyone who lives in a trailer who has ever done anything worse than these guys and their tale of trashiness could be met with equally trashy stories from the millionaire and billionaire class thousands of times.  You wonder why liberals don't put the blame for the creation and election of Trump where it really belongs, with this class of trash.  Could it be because their alleged liberalism is a manifestation of upper class snobbery far more than any real devotion to economic justice?  Could it be because it's far less risky to kick down than up?   Or could it be that they're really just not liberal?

The rich class, beyond any doubt, contains a far, far higher percentage of people who engage in the trashiest of behavior than the poorer class, yet it's poor people who are blanketed with the behavior of the worst of them.  Rich people hire lawyers and lobbyists and buy politicians and judges to make their trashiest behavior legal and allowed, they get praise for it in the well paid media, staffed by rich people - look at Trump.   A real difference in what gets called "liberal" and what gets called "conservative" in the United States, Britain and elsewhere is in which poor people are the objects of their scorn and hatred.   Conservatives in the United States focus theirs on Black People, Latinos, and others while treating poor whites as stupid people who can be manipulated into a resource, acting as their tools.  Alleged liberals, those people who are always congratulating themselves on their brilliance,  aid them by heaping scorn and derision on poor white people while sentimentalizing the poverty of Black People and Latinos.    The liberal supported American media has been part of the right-wing's gaming of the stupidity and hypocrisy of alleged liberals to their political and, so, financial advantage.  In this, the biggest dopes of all have been liberals of the type who have not learned a single thing in the past half-century of what happens when they play along with this.

As I said, to the fury of several people, after watching them for more than half a century, secular liberals are about the stupidest political identity, the kind who can go on with a rotten and stupidly self-defeating habit as it fails and fails again and again. They really are stupider than the Sneetches in Dr. Suess's story.  They learned from getting cheated through their own stupidity.  I see little sign that many liberals have or will.

I put any hope for liberalism learning and not acting so stupidly on those who put egalitarian democracy and justice before their own preening self-congratulation.  The kind of people who wouldn't think in terms like "trailer trash" or find it fun to say it because they know it is wrong and the don't want to hurt people.

*  I used to wonder what the difference between living in a trailer was and living in one of the "tiny houses" that may still be a fad among such wealthy people.   I suspect the difference is in the price per square foot.  When I first started reading about the "tiny house movement" my first thought was of small houses that would be good for poor people to live in, then I saw the bijoux boxes that, somehow, seem to get bigger and bigger in the "tiny house movement" little custom made mansions that have more to do with Thomas Jefferson's useless garden folly than with Thoreau's cabin or the Mad Houser's outlaw huts for the destitute.   I can't think of anything more trashy than some of the Faberge class tiny houses I've seen.  They turn my stomach in a way that reading about Ennis Del Mar pissing in his sink doesn't.

Update:  An example is demanded.  Well, here's what the oh, so amusing Rude Pundit had to say recently.

My friend Duke from West Virginia said something that had crossed my mind but had shoved aside as bitterness: "Fuck the white working class. Obama gave them health insurance and a chance to get new jobs and they hated him. Fuck them." 

Without thinking, I immediately agreed, and as soon as I did, it made total sense. "You're right. Democrats need to abandon the white working class." By "abandon," I mean not trying to desperately court the votes of people who always vote against their best interests and against those who are trying to help them. See, Democrats don't have a working class white people problem. Working class white people have the problem. When you vote against those who are trying to help you for the very people who have harmed you, then you are not dealing with rational thought.

Yeah, that's patronizing and elitist. But nearly half of the voters in a presidential election chose the man who regularly lied to them. So you'll have to forget it if you want me to romanticize and normalize their ignorance.

By the way, that ignorance is a product of years of Republican fuckery at the local level to assure them that they do not get educated. That long game has finally paid off big time.

Just who does he think has benefited from large numbers of the white underclass believing this is how liberals think about them for most of the past fifty years?   And why does a smart guy like him figure that pattern won't continue?

Poor white people will make common cause with poor Black People and poor Latinos before such liberals give up their preening conceit.

Update 2:  I've pointed out who voted for Trump, white people in our age group whose median income is about $72,000 a year.  Higher in income and older and whiter than those who voted for Hillary Clinton.   If you want to blame anyone for electing Trump, Simps, it's more likely to be people who were grooving with you in college than not.

Update 2025:  You don't have to take my word for it,  you can hear and watch the opera.   Annie Proulx did a really, surprisingly good job with the libretto, which is a far different thing from writing a prose story.   I have no doubt at all that of all his many works this is the one work of Charles Wuorinen that will enter into the repertoire.   If he has "a" masterpiece  this is it. 

I Can't Imagine The Roberts Court

will not be actively participating in the Republican-fascist campaign of 2026,  which is why it will blow up marriage equality ten years after the Court declared its banning to be a violation of the Constitution. 

I don't for a single second believe any of the Republican-fascists on the court care deeply about the sanctity of hetero-sexual marriage,  considering how they are facilitating the biggest, most publicly known serial adulterer,  serially married (and ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE IN AN ADULTEROUS MARRIAGE TO THE MOST SUCCESSFUL NEO-SOVIET HONEYPOT , RIGHT NOW) and, lest anyone forget for a second, CREDIBLY ACCUSED CHILD RAPIST in his quest to become an even more absolute despot in the US than the Roberts Court has already made him,  those whited sepulchers in black robes don't care about that at all.  

Nor do I believe a majority of them really care if same-sex marriages are legal or not.   I mean, maybe Thomas does but only because he can use it as a chance to practice his sadistic cruelty against LGBTQ+ People,  maybe Alito does because he's such a prissy little and totatally corrupt goody-two-shoes.  Maybe Coney-Barrett due to her membership in a deeply twisted "trad-catholic" cult  But Goresuch, Kavanugh (speaking of credibly accused sexual criminals) the so deep in the closet Roberts that he believes no one remembers he's there? 

But them taking up the case or it making it this far has nothing to do with the issue of same-sex marriage.  

NO.  What they are dedicated to is being part of yet one more of the every-two-year whipping up of hate that is the perennial theme of Republican-fascist election campaigns, hoping to get the idiot seniors and low-info voters to forget that Trump and the Republican-fascists in the Congress have just robbed them of an average of $1,200 dollars as they give it to billionaires and millionaires and have promised to rob them of even more if they continue in office in any security by appealing that the drug that Republican-fascist voters are addicted to,  hate.   THAT IS WHY THIS ISSUE HAS BEEN BAKING IN THE REPUBLICAN-FASCIST SUPREME COURT TEST CASE KITCHEN SET UP BY THE BILLIONAIRES AND MILLIONAIRES.   They want to ride it to success in yet another election in which, along with People of Color,  LGBTQ+ People are the boogyman used to scare their low-info-high-on-hate voters to the polls to vote against their own welfare,  yet again.   They've been doing it every election cycle of my lifetime, even those I don't remember but have looked back on.   

On Trump Bragging About His Gold Gilding The White House

Can't say it better than someone in a comment online did: 

I thought he'd put a tariff on all that Temu junk.  

Update:   It occurs to me he's got a 6-year-old girl's sense of beauty.   And I mean one who's watched way, way too many Disney princess movies. 

If Truth Telling Reigned They Wouldn't - Hate Mail

THE SENSIBLE CANADIAN OBSERVATION that speech was a right but it isn't the only right has it right, as far as I'm concerned.   The Canadian anti-hate speech law is far better than free speech absolutism which gives words more rights than the objects of lies and hate speech are given.*   The victims of lies and hate speech might have that "more speech" which the preening idiots of the American civil liberties industry give as the universal antidote for the most deadly of hate speech though those idiots - Ivy League JD'd or LLD'd or credentialed in some just as bogus degree in journalism or whatever - don't seem to be able to notice that if their victims have "more speech" the hate speakers have their "more speech" on top of their hate speech ("more-more")A ND GIVEN THE FINANCIAL INTEREST THAT MANY OF THE RICHEST AMONG US HAVE IN LIES AND HATE SPEECH AND THE GIANT MEGAPHONE OF THE COMMERCIAL MEDIA that hate-more-speech is louder than the speech of their victims ever is.    If "more speech" was the antidote for hate speech and lies that the idiots of the ACLU pretend it is then slavery, women's' subjugation, wage-slavery, etc. would have ended quite abruptly centuries ago instead of not only persisting but flourishing sixty one years after the Sullivan Decision made lies told in the mass media theoretical equal of truth being told.  Only the golden age of liberty that was the promise of the free speech theorists of that age up till today has not worked out that way, at all.   "Civil liberties" as it has come to be in reality means that millions can die after living lives of slavery and subjugation and it's no concern of the "free speech-press" crowd if all the blather in the world doesn't change that.   The most rational view of this by the victims of lies and hate speech is that the "civil libertarians" can FOAD.  

It is the most telling thing about the wrongness of the ACLU types,  that Strossen idiot,  the pantomime Fredrick Douglass,  Cornel West (he has every right to dress up like him and I have every right to point out he ain't no Fredrick Douglass) is that today the biggest, fattest proponents of "free speech" "free press" are not only the liars and haters but also THOSE WHO IN POWER ARE ATTACKING THE FREE SPEECH AND PRESS RIGHT TO TELL THE TRUTH THEY HATE SO MUCH and that the "more speech" of the civil liberties industry is failing so abjectly in defeating them.  American Nazis and fascists (white supremacists) and Republican-fascists are the biggest fattest "free speechers" there are.   Look at how some of the biggest fattest "civil liberties" lawyers like Dershowitz **is thick as a thief with them these days!   

The idea that since the courts are unreliable in the even-handed, non-interested administrations of the law that we are to always give up to the hate talkers and liars is absurd.   They have shown themselves to be just as capable of being biased and entirely interested under "free speech-press absolutism" as they have been under any other aspect of legal action.   They may feel the need, on occasion, to make some phony, bogus rationalization of their suppression of speech and truth telling ESPECIALLY WHEN THOSE PROVE TO BE A REAL DANGER TO THEIR PREFERRED PARTY AND IDEOLOGY but they'll lie through their teeth to back the suppression of it.   Watch the Roberts Court in regard to any university that really challenges the Trump regime's suppression and wholesale control - control which so many of the most elite educational institutions HAVE ALREADY SURRENDERED TO, SOMETIMES IN ADVANCE, as well as the big networks and the few big rags on paper.   

The question as to who will decide what is a lie and what is hate speech,  well, the answer to that is we will.  With all of the risks and dangers of that,  we will because no one else can do it.   The risk of letting lies and hate speech reign are far more certain than the theoretical risks of making that a matter of the law,  risks that we take in so many other instances.

What we can be certain of is that the likes of the Roberts Court, the lower Trump-McConnell-Grassley packed courts will do whatever they have to to suppress the truth being told whenever that endangers the Republican-fascism that they favor.   That is on those occasions when truth telling isn't already effectively banned by the corporate media, the networks, the big online operations and, when that doesn't work,  their goons with their very real as well as threatened violence and endangerment of the truth tellers.    And make no mistake about that, IF TRUTH TELLING REIGNED, THEY WOULDN'T.  

Scratch a professional civil libertarian and you'll find someone who's really  OK with oppression and even murder.   Especially the lawyers but even many of the academics. 

* I suspect one of the reasons for that perverted inversion of values is that words can be a property of some monetary value whereas People are not.   The perversion of the Anglo-American legal tradition cares far, far more about objects of monetary value than it does human lives.   I dream of a time when Americans and others are so fed up with the perverted values of our legal tradition and systems that they scrap it for something that puts life above property.   It is one of the most effective refutations of the widespread superstition that the American legal system is based on Scripture that the Mosaic Law and the even more radical economics of Jesus are far from the Anglo-American system that turns property and money into the all-powerful idol of the civil law.   I'd trade the entire legal code for the teachings of Jesus and I'd fully expect that the entire society would be better off,  though the rich would be leveled out of their wealth.    We should be so lucky as to have an egalitarian update of the Mosaic Law as the basis of it instead of the perverted neo-feudal English common law tradition.   

** Speaking of the Dersh.  I used to say "he's an advocate of torture who used to play a civil liberties lawyer on TV."  Look at how  his relationship with the truth and hate speech developed and how these days he's supporting not only torture but also genocide.