It’s hotter than hell in a heatwave here in lovely Virginia, and tempers have been flaring. Mostly mine, I will admit. We have a short table, just one big WTF?? because, well, it’s too bloody hot to cook! 105 degrees here yesterday, and if it keeps up with no rain, looks like I got me some oceanfront property in Arizona.
Welcome to the table, folks, and let’s get started.
WTF?? – The Martyrdom of Shirley Sherrod to the Altar of Fox News. I was going to have a say about this entire episode of Breitbart’s edited videos picked up by Fox, the resultant accusations of “reverse racism” (which is really just a euphemism employed by white people who are afraid one might detect that they are, themselves, racist to some degree) and her ouster from the USDA, only to be offered reinstatement when it was discovered that the POS Breitbart doctored the video so badly that nothing about it was true anymore. I was going to have a say, but my friend Isaac, whom I have extended a “contributors” license here at The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and who I hope will come by occasionally and drop some wisdom on us, said it better. Here is what Isaac had to say about it, and let me make this clear: The following comes from a series of emails where he wasn’t even trying. If you want to see a formidable writer in action, just wait until he’s trying.
I think there’s another context here and it’s not a pretty one.
In the last couple of months there have been other instances of people saying or writing something that pissed off the right and immediately their jobs disappeared with no questions asked.
Helen Thomas, one of the best, if not THE best reporter ever to grace the White House Press Corps saw her distinguished career end when she made a brief public comment regarding Israel and Palestine.
The same thing happened to Octavia Nasr, who was fired by CNN over a comment about the Middle East.
Dave Weigel was immediately let go from the Washington Post after he made a comment on an e-mail list for journalists, which was not a public email list, about the Right wing that the bowtie-wearing shit stain Tucker Carlson didn’t like. Carlson made the comment public, and *poof*, Weigel gets fired.
Now Shirley Sherrod.
Anyone with more than a handful of brain cells working should be asking where are the examples of right wingers being terminated from their jobs for saying something somebody didn’t like?
Look at what also happened to ACORN and Van Jones, with public verdicts coming in before there was even a trial.
And when the answer to the above question comes back “zero,” the next question should be why are news and government organizations so quick to bend over backward looking out for the hurt feelings of the Right and cut people loose who don’t kiss right wing ass?
Liberal media, my hairy ass. Although Sherrod wasn’t in the media, it was the right wing media that drove this thing. A couple of accounts I heard said that she was forced to resign because Glenn Beck was going to run the story that night. Glenn fucking Beck?
When did not pissing off the Right become the standard? They do what they do because they know they can get away with it. They know that the people in charge on the Left will fold faster than Superman on laundry day if a right winger looks at them cockeyed. These people are bullies and they know they can keep taking our lunch money without a fight.
Octavia Nasr, Dave Weigel and Helen Thomas weren’t in the government, they were members of the media speaking their minds outside of their professional roles as journalists.
If I remember correctly, Octavia had sent a Tweet that the right didn’t like. Helen Thomas said what she said into a microphone during an interview, and Dave Weigel, as I said, spoke his mind on a private e-mail list. Their media organizations didn’t waste any time showing them the door at the first sign of right wing hissy fit.
Media organizations should be the last ones to react that way, given specific Constitutional First Amendment protections. The gist and spirit of that amendment must be something that a media organization is mindful of when it comes to the speech of its employees.
The proper response to free speech is more free speech and the Right exercised their right to it. But the spirit of free speech isn’t that someone only has the right to it until someone doesn’t like what was said. The proper response should have come down to some version of “She/he said, she/he has the right to say it, we stand behind their right to have and express an opinion, and if you don’t like it, you can piss up a rope. If you’re so all fired hot to make a big deal of it, submit your thoughts and we’ll run it on the opinion page or we’ll make time on one of our shows for a representative of your point of view to appear and articulate your position. Until then – choke on it.”
Instead, what happened is that these organizations gave more weight to the free speech rights of the Rightwing, and granted them another right that doesn’t even exist – the right not to be offended. The Right essentially now has more free speech rights than the rest of us.
These were the personal views of journalists, but the Right were able to successfully call into quesiton the “objectivity” of these journalists. To me, that signals a humongous case of projection on the side of the Right – that a journalist’s personal opinion will be what drives their coverage rather than giving them the credit to be able to objectively report the facts. When I was a working reporter, I could report objectively. I was forced to write negative stories about people I liked and complementary ones about people I didn’t like. Fox News never reports objectively, with the exception of Shepard Smith, who refused to go along with the Shirley Sherrod smear. He knew what no one else at Fox either knew or would admit – that anything coming from Andrew Breitbart is questionable, at best.
They are all for free speech when it benefits them, but let someone organize a boycott of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, and you’d think the sun had just exploded. The Right doesn’t boycott – they go after the heads of their enemies, and the government and the media follow right along rather than investigate the situation or even offer token resistance or support for their own.
So now we’re in a position where “free speech” is only for the right wing and the First Amendment means whatever the right says it means, and we just keep getting our lunch money taken away.
Why does our side suck so bad?
I have to agree with Isaac, we suck, and we suck badly. Right now after Shirley Sherrod was martyred on the alter of fox news, the Obama administration and the man himself are looking like the kings of suckers because they not only fell for the edited video from an extremely suspect individual, they ran with the stupid thing.
The left has never been as good at the devious and dirty pool tactics that the Right has consistently used to its advantage. If the most recent polls showing Obama’s favorability ratings taking the fast road down the proverbial toilet are true, then the Left has already lost. Hell, we lost when John Kerry got his war record in Vietnam swiftboated by a bunch of yahoos who never knew him, and the ones who did know him in Vietnam lied through their teeth just to ensure that doubt would be cast during a “time of war” and that the horse’s ass didn’t change in mid-stream. We ended up with a second term of Georgie Bush because too many fell off the cliff for that “he’s no war hero” line. Now, republicans have zero to bring to the table but trash, trash and more trash, be it Sarah Palin’s dipstick bumpkinisms wrapped up in an Armani suit, or the resurrection from total political annihilation of Newt Gingrich, of all people. They have no ideas on how to clean up their mess (and make NO mistake, these wars, this economy and the constant infringements on the Constitution were republican messes. Bush had 8 years to fix whatever perceived mistakes Clinton made, but didn’t bother because he was too busy faking that he liked horses and could be a Texas rancher and in the process managed to make more, and bigger mistakes, so save the “no new taxes” crap). But they’ll blither and blather on for ages about those “reverse racists” in the USDA, sacrificing a woman’s career to their baggage-laden hubris. The sad and pathetic part is they can’t even find anything really, really nasty to get a Shirley Sherrod, or a Helen Thomas, or an Octavia Nasr, or an ACORN on. They have to game the system, edit the videos and run their little half-assed personal “sting” operations, and even those they have to edit the living daylights out of to get anything they can pass off as “reverse racist” or “marxist” or whatever crap they’re drinking out of the Koolaid bottle this year.
So let’s talk about “special interests” and “entitlement society.” If the NRA isn’t a special interest, then tell me, What is?? And if the Right thinking that they should be able to talk any trash they please because of their “first amendment rats” while the rest of us are supposed to shut up and say “thank you sir, may I have another?” isn’t an entitlement society, then I don’t know what is. From their politics and their personal boogeymen to their wacked out religions, they think we’re supposed to all join them on the bandwagon to nowhere-real-fast and I’m taking a pass on the crazy, thank you very much.
I’ll leave you with something I ran across this week as a nice little “Strikes My Fancy.” Enjoy some Sarah McLachlan and Run DMC:
Tags: Acorn, CNN, Dave Weigel, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Helen Thomas, liberal media, Octavia Nasr, Run DMC, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah McLachlan, Shirley Sherrod, Van Jones, Washington Post, White House Press Corps
This week is a short table, but it’s all good, right?
WTF?? 1. When did the educational system become afraid of children? I’m not talking about the 17 year old 300lb linebacker who threatened to beat the hell out of the teacher, or another student, after school. I’m not talking about 16 year old girls driving each other to suicide and murder with their malicious sense of self-importance. We’ll be talking about a 6 year old who, after breaking a school rule, was handcuffed over a chair. Last May, Ja’Briel Weston, a 6 year old at Sarah T. Reed Elementary School in New Orleans had an argument with another student over a chair. Like all children do, from time to time – they squabble and argue over things of seemingly no importance to anyone but themselves. Lil’Bee does it all the time. I’m sure you kids do, or did, too. But with zero-tolerance policies in hand, and school security outsourced to private contractors, we end up with a child treated like a hardened criminal who just shanked a prison guard. All I can do is shake my head, and wonder, when did the educational system become so deathly afraid of children? The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a class action suit against the school, where this type of treatment of young children has been routine for some time. I hope they win, and I hope they go after any other school that shackles young children to anything. We can only hope that young Weston learns of a different path, has a different experience soon that shows him that school is not a jail but a place and could free his mind so that he can overcome his fear and loathing of his oppressors, for that is exactly what they have become. This is not education, this is sanctioned oppression, and I find it intolerable. Treat a child like a dangerous felon long enough, and guess what that child will eventually become?
WTF?? 2. Watch the NRA flex its muscles. As I’ve said before, this is an organization that presents a clear and present danger to the republic. If you still have any doubt, read the following from the New York Times:
Beyond Guns: N.R.A. Expands Agenda
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON — Fresh off a string of victories in the courts and Congress, the National Rifle Association is flexing political muscle outside its normal domain, with both Democrats and Republicans courting its favor and avoiding its wrath on issues that sometimes seem to have little to do with guns.
The N.R.A., long a powerful lobby on gun rights issues, has in recent months also weighed in on such varied issues as health care, campaign finance, credit card regulations and Supreme Court nominees.
In the health care debate this year, for instance, the N.R.A.’s lobbyists worked with the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to include a little-noticed provision banning insurance companies from charging higher premiums for people with guns in their homes.
The N.R.A. worked out a deal last month exempting itself from a proposal requiring groups active in political spending to disclose their financial donors. Its push this spring for greater gun rights in the District of Columbia served to effectively kill a measure — once seemingly assured of passage — to give the district a voting seat in Congress.
With a push from the N.R.A., a popular bill last year restricting credit card lenders came with an odd add-on: It also allowed people to carry loaded guns in national parks. And the gun lobby put potential supporters of the Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on notice this month that a vote for her would be remembered at the ballot boxes in November.
The N.R.A.’s expanding portfolio is an outgrowth of its success in the courts, Congressional officials and political analysts said. With the Supreme Court ruling last month for the second time since 2008 that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to have a gun, the N.R.A. now finds that its defining battle is a matter of settled law, and it has the resources to expand into other areas.
When the N.R.A. had a narrower range of targets, it relied on a core group of political figures and met with stiffer resistance from vocal gun control advocates in Congress and outside groups. It now has freer rein to leave its mark politically on issues that once seemed out of its reach.
“The last two years have been a disaster for us,” said Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat and a longtime advocate of increased gun control. “A lot of members are just afraid of the N.R.A.”
On Monday, the N.R.A. began broadcasting advertisements urging senators to oppose or filibuster the Kagan nomination. But the group’s top priority is still finding ways to use the Supreme Court ruling in cities, states and courts nationwide to overturn more restrictive gun laws and establish gun rights measures.
N.R.A. officials say they are determined to protect gun rights even if it means using the group’s $307 million budget and membership of more than four million gun owners to influence ancillary issues. (editor’s note: don’t forget those more than 4,000,000 members outnumber 2 to 1 ALL law enforcement and active military – ALL of it).
“What you’re seeing is a recognition that support for the Second Amendment is not only a very powerful voting bloc, but a very powerful political force.” Chris W. Cox, the N.R.A.’s chief lobbyist, said in an interview last week at the group’s Washington office, a few blocks from the Capitol.
He pointed to the debate this spring over loosening gun laws in the District of Columbia after a 2008 Supreme Court ruling found the city’s gun ban unconstitutional. At the time, advocates for district voting rights saw their best chance in many years to gain a voting seat in the House, but they abandoned their own proposal after gun rights supporters attached a provision weakening local gun laws.
“I honestly don’t care about D.C. voting rights,” Mr. Cox said of the legislative maneuvering. “I care about reforming D.C. gun laws, and we’re going to use voting rights or any other vehicle at our disposal to address what we consider a blatant disregard for the Constitution.”
The N.R.A. was just as aggressive last month in getting Congressional Democrats to carve out an exemption tailor-made for the group to exclude it from the so-called Disclose Act, requiring disclosure of donors, rather than risk a defeat of the whole bill because of opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats supportive of gun rights.
“They shot holes in the Disclose Act with such precision and force that it would make an N.R.A. member proud,” said Kenneth Gross, a Washington lawyer who specializes in lobbying issues.
But the group’s muscle has generated tensions with some gun owners themselves, who do not like the idea of the N.R.A. straying into areas outside its core base and aligning itself with Democrats as it broadens its agenda.
The headline on a recent blog post from a rival faction, the Gun Owners of America, singling out the N.R.A.’s exemption from the campaign finance bill, captured the sentiment: “The N.R.A. Sells out Freedom to the Democrats.”
A point of contention on both the left and the right is the N.R.A.’s close working relationship with Mr. Reid, the Senate leader who helped get a number of pro-gun rights measures included in broader bills.
That relationship has led some gun rights supporters to lobby against the idea that the N.R.A. might endorse Mr. Reid in his tough re-election campaign this November in Nevada.
The N.R.A. is not tamping down speculation. While Mr. Cox said the group had not decided on any endorsements, he pointed to what he considered an unattractive alternative if Mr. Reid loses and the Democrats hold power. “I’ll give you four words: Majority Leader Chuck Schumer,” he said.
Mr. Reid, for his part, does not run from his support for the N.R.A. His office noted that he had been a longtime “champion of the Second Amendment.”
One reason for the group’s greater political leverage is that battles in Washington are so closely fought now that powerful interest groups hold more sway even if they can only deliver a handful of votes.
Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, said in pursuing an ambitious legislative agenda, President Obama — who has been largely silent on gun issues — and Congressional Democrats must either work with the gun lobby or risk losing votes. “They basically end up saying, ‘We’re willing to capitulate to the N.R.A. to get the greater good of whatever passed,’ ” he said.
That approach bothers him and Ms. McCarthy, who first came to politics on a pro-gun-control platform after a gunman with a semiautomatic weapon killed her husband and five others during a rampage on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993.
Ms. McCarthy said the group drew its power from its money — it has donated more than $17.5 million to federal candidates, mostly Republicans, since 1989, and spent millions more in lobbying — and the fear of political retribution.
“I’ve told the Democratic leadership, if you give in to them once, you’re going to see every piece of legislation with a gun amendment added to it,” she said. “But it’s put the leadership in a very difficult position because they know they might not get their bill passed.”
N.R.A. leaders say they plan on broadening their efforts.
“I think we’ve done it better than any organization in the country, to be honest,” said Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s executive vice president.
If that doesn’t make you sit up and wonder just what that sociopathic “organization” is capable of, given the right stresser event, then I don’t know what will. I’d like a shout-back from all my loyal readers: What do you think would be an event that just tips the NRA into calling its “reserves” into “active duty” against the country itself?
For this potluck, I only have one Strikes My Fancy dessert item on the menu, and it’s Meatloaf. He has a new CD out called “Hang Cool Teddy Bear”, and it’s pretty darned good – especially the track “Running Away From Me” which is suprisingly catchy. Some of Meatloaf’s stuff sans Jim Steinman was…mediocre, at best. This new one isn’t with his old partner Jim (who wrote the songs on Bat out of Hell and BOOH 2 and 3), but it was produced by Rob Cavallo, who produces Green Day, and I can recommend it for the song-writing and reasonably good rock-opera’esque feel.
The following is from “Bat Out of Hell 2: Back Into Hell”, and it’s an oldie but a goodie. Enjoy!
Tags: 6 year old handcuffed in school, Bat Out Of Hell, Hang Cool Teddy Bear, Meatloaf, NRA
Welcome back to the table folks! Belly up to the bar, tuck in your nappys and let’s chow down.
WTF?? 1. Who are the real deadbeats? The Uber-Rich, of course. One in 12 homeowners with mortgages less than $1 million dollars defaults and walks away. One in seven with mortgages of more than $1 million walk away. And they’re the ones we are all supposed to look up to as scions of society? Those are the people we are supposed to want to emulate? I’ll take my low-class neighbors any day of the week as role-models, thank you very much. Why are the wealthy walking away from their mortgages? Why else? Theirinvestments went sour. Here’s just another example of how the rest of us, who when faced with losing our homes, sell everything else we can first, then try to find a second job (if we even still have our first job) before losing our homes will end up paying for the wealthy and their bad investments. Oh, poor Mr. Gotrocks lost half the value on his villa Los Altos. Poor, poor Mr. Gotrocks. Why should he continue paying on a bad investment? But don’t worry, the banks that foreclose, well, they’ll get all that money they’ll lose when the property sells for 33% of the outstanding loan balance back. They always do. Maybe they’ll hike your credit card rates again. Or maybe they’ll come up with some new fee they can charge you – like charging you to speak to a human on the phone…or to walk into their brick and mortar branches and having the gall to want to actually perform a transaction. Wait, they already do that. Maybe it will be a fee for even daring to ask to use their bathroom. Or maybe when you forget about that check you wrote for the kid’s soccer lessons and bounce your account, they’ll smack you with some more brand new fees they told you all about in that mailing 6 months ago – you remember, yeah, that one, the one with 3 point font that you couldn’t read with your 98 year old grandfather’s coke bottle glasses. But don’t you worry, in the end, Mr. Gotrocks will be just fine, and whoever lent the deadbeat all the money to begin with will get theirs back, too. From you and me. Welcome to the true welfare state, folks.
What the hell, give him a swiss bank account.
WTF?? 2. Walmart fighting $7,000 fine. Remember the Walmart worker who, black friday before last was trampled to death by asshats fighting their way in at 3 in the morning for a piece of shit brand-you-never-heard-of $200 LCD tv that would last probably a week? Yeah, that poor schmuck. Well, it seems that since then, Walmart has cut some deals with Long Island. Walmart created a $400,000 fund for customers trampled that day and donated $1.5million to various programs in Nassau County. However, Walmart is fighting tooth and nail a penny-ante $7,000 fine OSHA levied against Walmart for not providing a safe environment for the employees and getting one TRAMPLED TO DEATH. OSHA wants Walmart to provide for foreseeable accidents…like when you have 2,000 slavering mad people outside the door at 3 a.m. with the bloodlust of $2 kids pajamas and $200 laptops clouding their vision, you can reasonably expect that eventually you will have pushed your luck and one of the 3 people you put at the door to herd the shoppers through the store will wind up hurt or dead. I’d say that’s certainly foreseeable. Walmart calls it “unforeseeable” and the OSHA requirements “vague.” Really, this is what it boils down to: Walmart doesn’t want to stop riling up the crowds standing outside their doors 2,000 thick with the promise of cheap christmas presents, and they know good and well they can’t control that crowd if that crowd suddenly gets it into its collective mind to get ugly. I think we’re all aware of how quickly a crowd can become a mob. So, was it foreseeable? Of course it was. It was not only foreseeable, but only a matter of time.
...if you don't get trampled, that is...
Time for some dessert, some Strike My Fancy to wash away the unpalatable tastes of the WTF??’s.
SMF 1. Mark Twain tells us what he really thinks. I for one am looking forward to the new, 3 volume, 500,000 word autobiography of Mark Twain, of which the first volume will be published in November. Volume one will have approximately 5% new material over previous published auto-biographies. It will be in Volumes 2 and 3 where we will really see some substantive differences from previously published volumes. 
If you thought Mark Twain could be caustic in what has been published before, bear notice: His heirs and editors, and even the great bard himself, thought some of what he had to say was entirely too caustic for the times. Twain considered that maybe the world would be ready to hear what he really had to say 100 years after he was gone. That remains to be seen. Twain will talk again, not in that sanitized version we’re all so used to, but in that ascerbic, caustically witty manner to which we are unaccustomed, but in which we see the real man behind the image. Twain said the following: The world believes that the elder Rockefeller is worth a billion dollars…He pays taxes on two million and a half. Nothing much has changed. Technology has brought us together, and divided us even further along the lines of ideology, religion and personal hubris, but the wealthy still don’t pay their share, the churches still tend all too often to be bastions of greed and self-righteous immorality. Twain would, I think, find it both disheartening and supremely ironic. I don’t know if this country is ready to hear what one of its golden children really had to say, but what I can tell you is this: I’m ready to hear it. Tell me what you really thought, Sam.
SMF 2. My decent human being award of the week goes to: Denise Sakai. Denise, a full time independent hairdresser with a husband and a young child, learned about Gregory Reese’ problem, and decided to solve that problem. Reese, a homeless man stranded in Hawaii after the job offer he moved there for fell through, has a father dying of lung cancer in Seattle. Reese’ dilemma made the news. State lawmakers got involved, one chipped in $100 bucks for a plane ticket for Reese, while the rest dithered and I hope did not try to make it a “look at me, vote for me, I’m a nice guy” political ploy but of which I’m certain that they did indeed try to turn it into a political PR moment. Meanwhile, Denise didn’t dither while waiting for the camera flashbulbs to show her in all her legislative glory. She ponied up and bought Reese a plane ticket back home to see his dad.
Tags: Mark Twain autobiography, mortgage default, OSHA, walmart
It rained here in Central Virginia today. In spots. Oh, not enough to make a dent in the heat, nor enough to keep my Hibiscus from keeling over, nor enough to ensure that one stray spark won’t burn down the entire county. Just enough, however, to create a lot of steam. It’s like a sauna that you can’t walk away from.
Let me tell you about my day. At 5:30, I wake up with swelled up left eye (no, Mr. Bee did not clock me, he would never, ever do such a thing) from my mold allergy. At 9:00, I’m eating a bagel at my desk when the permanent crown I got a little over a week ago…fell out. So much for permanent. At 9:30, I get an email from an operations department telling me I fucked something up. Turns out I didn’t, they just can’t read. At 11:30, a co-worker says “hey, wanna order chinese delivery?”
“Sure!” I said. There’s nothing like a little Triple Delight and fried rice to make a girl feel better about life. But then the food arrived, and instead of the Triple Delight I ordered, I got the “homestyle tofu.” Who the hell eats tofu anymore, anyway? (Jess, don’t say it! Don’t say it!)
I had the permanent crown glued back in at 4:00. I guess it rained during the 15 minutes I was in the chair, because I walked out to a steam bath. Just wish me luck that the crown stays in this time. And two hours later, the layer of steam hanging about 3 feet off the ground is. still. there.
Did I mention I’m looking for a new dentist??
So, here I am, sitting here whining, and feel free to tell me to zip it.
I saw a few headlines today that caught my eye.
From MSNBC.com: Tapped-out consumers weigh on recovery. It’s not that we don’t want that 50 inch 3D LCD tv, it’s that WE DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY, STUPID!
Another from MSNBC.com: Iranian Embassy denies widow to be stoned to death Once it got into the media and the human rights organizations started screaming, Iran backed down on the “death by stoning” penalty for an Iranian woman who was convicted of adultery. She’s already served 5 years and whipped with 99 lashes, so it’s good news that Iran won’t bury her in the ground up to her neck and let a bunch of losers with a death-lust and nothing better to do throw rocks at her until she dies of cerebral hemorrhage.
Again from MSNBC.com: BP: Early plugging of well in ‘perfect’ scenario Today a BP exec said that in a perfect scenario, they’ll have that well plugged by August. The problem is, nothing is ever “perfect.” There simply is no such thing as a “perfect” scenario.
More from MSNBC.com: U.S.: Russia to release 4 in swap over spies What century is this? I didn’t even know spy swaps still happened.
And finally, from MSNBC.com: Girl welcomed home after kidnapper kills self A 4 year old in Missouri was abducted by a convicted sex offender. He held for for 3 days, then did her, her family, and the world a favor by abandoning her and shooting himself to death. For once, we get a bit of good news. The little girl is alive, and her tormentor did what he should have done a long time ago.
Tags: BP well cap, dentists, east coast heat, Russian spies, stoning
It’s the Fourth of July, in case you hadn’t heard. Time to reflect on what we’re all doing here, and a time to belly up to the table for a helping of potluck. Enjoy.
WTF?? 1. Oh, it was just fine when Bush was President… President Obama says “let’s reform immigration – it’s broken and dangerous” and the Bee would add draconian and completely unsuited to the world of the 21st century. He wants to see something done, this year if possible. So what does he do? He goes to 11 republican senators who were gung-ho and ready to roll on immigration reform when Bush was president and immigration reform meant “kick all those deadbeat brown people out and bring back our pristine lily-white country where life was like the Andy Griffith show, and everyone had Aint Bee livin’ in the kitchen cooking up the chicken and every kid was kind, generous and well-behaved like Opie!” Doesn’t matter that life was never like that for most of the country, and even where it was like that, it really wasn’t like that, but you know, they’re republicans, so those facts just don’t really matter. How do those 11 republican senators explain themselves and their complete about-face now?
Some of the 11 senators whose support is critical to his plans signaled Thursday that they are not ready to back reform this time around. They also denied that they had changed their positions for political reasons.
Yeah, and my ass isn’t really wide, it’s just the way the light reflects off it. Come’on, Senators, we’re not all stupid…we know the GOP is the party of NONONONONONONO, meaning they aren’t going to agree with the President in any way shape or form, no matter what the problems facing all of us are, no matter if it were a matter of life or death. They’re like Pavlovian dogs, conditioned to say NO! to whatever comes out of the President’s mouth.
“Hey, you’ve got your foot caught in a bear trap. That must really hurt. Here, let me help you get out of it,” said the President.
“NO!!!!” screamed the republican Senator, “It’s fine! This isn’t a bear trap, it’s an electronic brace….I mean, it was a present from my wife! Yeah, that’s it!”
WTF?? 2. Those FEMA trailers were fine for the brown people when Bush was President… But now that BP-disaster-of-the-century-and-we’re-only-10-years-in-and-god-what-will-happen-in-the-next-90??? cleanup crews are having to live in them, they are just too damned stinky and dangerous. Turns out those trailers were auctioned off with all kinds of warnings like “CAUTION: slow, lingering and terrible death awaits you inside!” Why were those trailers auctioned off anyway? And what numbskull would buy one? Oh, wait…that would have been BP. Those trailers really should have been destroyed, oh, let’s see, 3 years ago. I’m picking on BOTH sides here, by the way.
WTF?? 3. Everything you buy is crap and will kill you. Maybe that was a bit melodramatic. In 2009, there were 465 product recalls of tens of millions of items, from circular saws to Jesus Fish Beads (and why couldn’t Jesus make those beads free of lead? But that’s a whole other post). Nearly every baby item on the market has been recalled at one time or another. In this Washington Post article, the writer talks at length about how it’s easy to get the products off a store shelf, but harder to get individuals to take those recalled items back. I say, with that many recalls of dangerous and defective items, the problem isn’t the recall process. The problem lies the shabby items made in unsafe and unsanitary conditions in an unsustainable economic system highlighted by the voodoo of “free market.” You see, free market doesn’t really equate to more competition. It really just equates to shortcuts in manufacturing, which directly leads to an across the board decrease in quality. It’s all about the bottom line and it’s all about not providing decent product. More effective regulations coupled with tangible and severe penalties when a company peddles dangerous crap would be in order here, because the manufacturing sector here and abroad ain’t cutting the mustard on their own quality control procedures. How about some jailtime and stiff fines here in the US, and some trade regulations for importers?
And now, for dessert. Here is the “Strikes My Fancy” item that…well, struck my fancy this week.
SMF 1. There is still some decency out there, you know that, don’t you? Nicole Parizo of Concorde, New Hampshire, lost her wallet just a few days after giving birth. Let me tell you how easy that is to do: If you had a C-Section, you’re doped up. If you didn’t, you should be. Either way, you’re nowhere near 100% and that’s when wallets are easily lost. But Nicole didn’t suffer some of the usually bad side effects of losing her wallet, such as some turkey running up the credit cards and draining the bank account. In fact, she got her wallet back, and the guy who found it stuffed some extra money in it for good measure, along with a note telling her to do something nice for someone else as payback. Pay it back, then pay it forward, and Nicole has signed up for the bone marrow donor’s list. I love a story that ends well, don’t you?
Last night, we packed a cooler and joined some friends at the Powhatan County fireworks display. The kids had a great time being mini daredevils in the bouncy-houses. The adults got a chance to talk and just hang out. No alcohol was allowed inside the grounds, so we weren’t subjected to the idiotic drunken parking lot fights afterwards. Getting out took awhile. The locals had a nice little system worked out for guiding traffic off the grounds. It was fair and equitable, but of course, there’s always some asshole who is in a tremendous hurry to leave that he actually cussed out one of the teenagers who volunteered to direct traffic. I could see another mouthing “bitch” when I wouldn’t let him cut across two rows and cut in front of me, after I had already let out 8 vehicles that were in my row, thank you very much. It was another case of “Me! Me! Me!” syndrome.
As for the guy who cussed out the traffic attendant, guess what sticker the turkey had in the back window of his mini-van? “Former embryo on board.” Yeah, big surprise, a rightwingnut, in such a hurry that he cussed out a teenaged volunteer traffic attendant for daring to make him stop when his turn to stop and allow other vehicles to leave came. Because, you know, it’s all about them. They all want “their” country back. I’m not clear on just where it went, or which country it is that they want back. I don’t think they are either. Perhaps it is the country where blacks and women knew their place. Perhaps it is the country that tested DDT on its own citizens without their knowledge or consent. Perhaps it is the country where the poor were left to die in the streets, where children were worked 16 hours per day in clothing factories, where 50% of women died in childbirth, where injured and mentally debilitated white veterans were turned out on the streets and where black veterans were medically experimented on mercilessly, where deadly lead toys were the norm, where a man could beat his wife and molest his children with virtual impunity…well, you get the picture. Things are better now on nearly all counts, but we still have a lot of improvements to make. You see, we’re all stuck on this land together. We can work together to make those improvements to the general well-being, or the rightwingnuts can sit back and cry foul over their “lost” country, the one they can’t even effectively describe and refuse to see it for what, in too many instances, it really was. We are a work in progress, all of us. From the individual to the group as a whole. The day we become utterly stagnant and trapped in the boxes of the status quo, we are doomed. We are very near that point already.
So, to those with “Me! Me! Me! Syndrome,” all I can say is: shut up, sit down and wait your turn. Cussing out a parking lot attendant and mouthing obscenities at me when you’ve got 1,000 vehicles all trying to funnel into the same one-way egress doesn’t serve any purpose other than to get you mocked in a blog and to make your own blood pressure rise. Me? I’m not in any hurry, and can’t help it if you are.
In a couple of hours, I will be sitting in a pink floatie chair in a spring-fed lake, sucking back Coronas with lime, just waiting for the brisket and steak to be cooked. I’ll be around friends that I love dearly, who I can only hope love me as well. We’ll probably do some talking about this country of ours, about those improvements that need to be made. We’ll talk about the future, because we love our land, and like good parents, we want it to be better than we were. We don’t want to go back into that past I mentioned above. We want to move forward into a better world. The rightwingnuts can join us…or sit down, shut up and stay out of the way.
Tags: FEMA trailers, immigration reform, Nicole Parizo, potluck, recalls
The Supreme Court today invalidated the rights of states and localities to pass laws restricting handguns when it decided today that Chicago’s proposed “gun ban” was unconstitutional, and that the 2nd amendment applies to states and localities, and how dare those reprobates try to infringe on the common man’s right to carry a Dirty Harry .45??
You know, I try, and try and try again to wrap my head around the absolute suspension of rational thought that seems to be a congenital defect in the brains of the right wingers. Here in Virginia, just a couple of years ago, we had a complete mental case buy himself a 9mm at a gun show, no questions asked, and he snapped one day and shot over 30 students and teachers. You might remember that, it was world news for a week or so. And this guy was being treated for severe mental imbalance.
In Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, where the Civil War officially ended, a man went on a rampage and killed 11 people – some were kids. You probably don’t remember that. He was a white-redneck-cracker-militia-type, and even here in the local news, coverage was scant, at best. Of course, my local newspaper is just another Republican Propaganda machine, and has been ever since President Obama had the utter gall to not only be black, but to run for president, and even worse (in their eyes), to win.
Despite Columbine, despite Virginia Tech, despite all the killings and rampages these last few years, the Supreme Court thinks that Chicago shouldn’t have any right to try to make the city a safer place like Washington DC did a couple of decades ago. 52 people got shot in Chicago over the weekend – and it would have been a hell of a lot more had everyone been armed.
When DC, the nation’s capital and home of the…go figure, Supreme Court, banned handguns, it did so during a time when DC was the annual winner of the “City with the Most Murders” award. It was the murder capital of the United States. When handguns were banned, and it wasn’t quite so easy to carry them, or buy them, the murder rate when down significantly. Recently, the Supreme Court reversed the DC handgun ban, and reversed a law that for a couple of decades was working reasonably well.
Chicago would have liked to give it a try, and have a city that’s a bit safer, a murder rate that’s a bit lower. I call that fair enough. But, the NRA doesn’t like it, they think that every tom dick and dirty-harry-wannabe out there should have as many large and useless-for-anything-but-human-killing handgun and assault rifle they can get their hands on.
Despite all the “rats” rhetoric from our little friends on the right, despite the massive propaganda and congressional control machine that is the NRA to the contrary, where there are readily available handguns, there will be murders. Period. That’s the way it works, folks, and I don’t want to hear about “law abiding citizens,” because when “law abiding citizens” get themselves a Dirty Harry heater, they tend to go a little power crazy. I’ve seen it myself, and it isn’t pretty. If you make it easier for “law abiding citizens” to get their hands on any kind of gun their little hearts desire, you end up with a whole lot of “not-so-law abiding citizens.” It’s like living in a constant Mexican standoff. We all know the psychological and societal results – most of us remember the cold war quite well. Eventually, someone will want a tank. Then someone will want a rocket launcher, and by god, the 2nd amendment states that a well regulated militia should be armed to the teeth, and a well regulated militia these days needs tanks and rocket launchers! Funny how they always forget about that “well-regulated militia” part, isn’t it? Doesn’t quite equate to a bunch of idiots with pipe dreams of being a Rambo, does it?
What we see here is a clear cut case of true judicial activism – right on the Supreme Court bench. This bunch of right-wingers on the Bench will crow about state’s rights all the live-long day if it involves anything BUT what might actually benefit the American People just a little bit. Then it’s “FEDERAL LAW, BY GOD!!!” All bought, brought and paid for by the NRA. Here in Virginia, as of July 1, any yahoo with a gun can walk into any bar in the state…as long as they don’t drink. Yeah, you tell me how that’s going to get enforced. You see, it carries a misdemeanor charge to drink in a liquor-licensed establishment while carrying one’s concealed weapon. The only way anyone will know is when someone gets shot. So much for that misdemeanor charge, and so much for some innocent schmuck just trying to eat dinner…maybe even with the kids in tow. Because, you know, Outback Steakhouse serves beer. So does Ruby Tuesday’s. And most everywhere else that isn’t fast food. So tell me, where are those individual rights to not have some drunk hothead start shooting when me and Mine are just trying to enjoy a dinner out?
And let’s not forget that the well-armed NRA dues paying membership outnumbers the military and all law enforcement 2 to 1. The NRA sent the Supreme Court on a fool’s errand, and they are just howling hallelujah over it.
I gotta tell you, this is NOT what the founding fathers imagined when they wrote the ultimate screw up that is the portion of the 2nd amendment, and even further bastardized by the NRA:
NRA Members. You wanna live around this??
Oh, folks, it’s a full table of WTF this week and I’m introducing a new category, “Holy Shit”, so grab your sporks and chow down.
WTF?? 1. The Democratic Joe Barton? This week, Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.), speaking before the House during the horse trading session known as the Financial Reform bill, said: “We’re giving relief to people that I deal with in my office every day now unfortunately…But because of the longevity of this recession, these are people — and they’re not minorities and they’re not defective and they’re not all the things you’d like to insinuate that these programs are about — these are average, good American people.” And he is being portrayed in the MSM, as in this Washington Post article, as having made a huge gaffe. It certainly does seem like a particularly smarmy thing to say, doesn’t it? But watch the video:
I see frustration with those who actually DO say that programs that benefit minorities and the “defective” should be eliminated – in other words, frustration with the republicans.
they’re not minorities and they’re not defective and they’re not all the things you’d like to insinuate that these programs are about
Well put? No. Not well said at all. However, basically how the republicans view anything that doesn’t benefit their big corporation handlers? Yep, true indeed. It’s all about context, isn’t it?
WTF?? 2. Disclosure. The House thursday passed a provision of the financial reform bill that included requirements of disclosure for corporations and organizations who promote a political candidate through advertising. GREAT!!! Unless it’s the NRA, of course. Ok, so the Sierra club got exempted too, but really, I think that was a complete accident. The intent was the exempt the NRA. Let’s face it, any organization tightly bound by ideology and who has an armed-to-the-teeth membership that outnumbers all active military, all local state and federal law enforcement and all college/university campus police 2 to 1 will get pretty much whatever it wants. I said it last week, I’ll say it again today: The NRA is a clear and present danger to the republic.
WTF?? 3. Darth Cheney Did Not Have A Heart Attack. DAMMIT!!! Isn’t that old bastard ever going to die??
WTF?? 4. Headline today from MSNBC.com in regards to the Financial Reform bill finally agreed upon by the House and Senate: New Rules, But Will Wall Street Play By Them? Don’t count on it.
WTF?? 5. Maybe those Kindergarten Graduations should just be chucked. Personally, I think one of the dumbest ideas that the educational system ever came up with is graduations from kindergarten, elementary school, 3rd grade, 6th grade, middle school, 9th grade, etc. etc. etc. I just don’t see the benefit of celebrating something before celebration is warranted. This seems to me to tie back into the popular, and seriously misguided notion that children shouldn’t lose at anything, that everyone should succeed because it might hurt little janie’s feelings if she didn’t win the 50 yard dash on the last day of 4th grade. It provides no incentive for children to try to succeed, if they know they’ll get a ribbon for “just taking part.” Just taking part isn’t good enough in adult life, and it cannot be good enough in a child’s life. Children need expectations, and if those expectations are not present, then those children will grow up with no sense of having to work to succeed. We see every day around us (or, at least, I do) people who have their heads so far up their own asses that they may never see reality again. I work with a few. I’m betting you know at least a couple of people like that, too. If graduations from Kindergarten provide no real benefit to the students, then perhaps the detrimental aspects should be reason enough to do away with this nonsense. One detriment that comes to mind is that it just provides idiots masquerading as parents the excuse to have a twenty person fistfight on the graduation field. Right in front of their five year olds. Nice job, moms and dads. Are there any adults left in this country?
My last entry deserves a new heading, so instead of WTF, this one is Holy Shit.
Holy Shit: Blood iPhones. You’ve heard of blood diamonds – gems mined by slaves who are beaten, worked literally to death, murdered regularly with complete impunity. Ever heard of the blood iPad? In eastern Congo, there is a war going on that is so low on the radar it doesn’t even register above Miley Cyrus’ wardrobe malfunctions despite the fact that over 5 million have died in the Congo, and women have taken the brunt of the violence. What do the militias in the Congo have to do with your new iPad, iPhone, blackberry or laptop? The metals and minerals, particularly tantalum, used to build that sleek, sexy little gadget you picked up at Best Buy last weekend might have come from the Congo, and might very well be fueling those militias that rape, murder and mutilate at will and without consequence.
Would you like to know how can you voice your displeasure with suspecting that your newest gadget is made from minerals and metals that came from the Congo and was sold by a brutal militia? Take a stroll over to the grassroots organization Raise Hope For Congo, and see what they’ve got going on.
That’s it for this Sunday, folks. I know I haven’t had much of the Strikes My Fancy desserts the last few weeks – I’m having trouble finding any suitable for the table. Fact is, we’ve got some serious problems in this world, and not much of anything is really being done to address those problems. I will leave you with one last thought. In the Congo, we see militias armed to the teeth and turning their countryside into hell on earth. Here in the United States, where we live in a country safe enough for two world leaders to walk into a burger joint for lunch. However, no one ever said that the United States will always be as safe as it is…particularly with a well-armed organization like the NRA outnumbering 2 to 1 every other potential armed buffer between them and us on the prowl. You see, when a group of humans gets control over another group of humans, hell usually does break loose. I can easily see the NRA and it’s true believers loosing hell in this country one day. They only need a really good excuse. Fortunately, so far, a black man in the white house hasn’t been an excuse quite good enough – but it’s damned close, folks, it’s damned close indeed.
Tags: blood iPhones, campaign finance reform, Cheney, Congo, Enough! campaign, financial reform bill, kindergarten graduation brawl, kindergarten graduations, NRA, Paul Kanjorski; minorities and defectives, political advertising disclosure, Raise Hope For Congo
Oh, let’s see. I’ve had about 400 things this week that really pissed me off, and maybe 2 things that didn’t, so the table is full of great big fat mushroom stuffed WTF, MAN???? Grab your forks, tuck in those little bibby napkins, and let’s chow down on some bitter dishes.
WTF?? 1. Educators and Shrinks think kids shouldn’t have best friends. Seriously. The new “In” theory amongst some educators and shrinks (self-described and the ones with actual sheepskins) would rather see children taught to…get this…rather than have a best friend, children should be taught tobe friends with everyone! Yeah. That’s what I said. WTF, Man?? Evidently, it’s all through fears of exclusivity and bullying. Here’s what one…ahem, cough cough, Director of Counseling had to say:
“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends…Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”
I don’t remember ever once “preferring” to have a best friend…that’s just how it happened. Because, you see, we humans are a diverse lot when it comes to personal preferences – likes and dislikes in every possible field, from music to politics to religious beliefs to whether Revlon mascara is better than its Covergirl counterpart, or if we should just chuck it all and go with Clinique. We can’t be friends with everyone. There will always be people who annoy the living daylights out of each of us. I can think of a couple right now that annoy the living daylights out of me. There will always be people who we annoy the living daylights out of, in turn. Just ask Mr. Bee.
We live in a society that is plugged in to every distracting device we can get our hands on. Blackberries, iPhones, iPads, netbooks, laptops, constant news streaming 24/7. GPS mobile alerts. QVC shopping channel mobile alerts, for christ’s sake. Our television and movies tell us every day that close relationships don’t really exist, but at the same time they tell us that love should come easily and naturally, which it rarely does. What is the divorce rate in the US now? 50%, more or less? If the other person doesn’t turn out to be our “perfect soulmate,” whatever that is supposed to be, we ditch a relationship rather that learn to deal with the fact that we can’t control others, no matter how hard we try – or we drive a relationship away entirely because of a constant yearning for that movie scene where the hero and heroine kiss and live happily ever after. It doesn’t work that way. In reality, we’re all pulled in 5,000 different directions each day.
So when a kid finds a friend who they can develop a close relationship with, share secrets with, trust implicitly, call at the drop of a hat without invitation, just show up at the friend’s house unannounced with the inherent understanding that they will be welcomed, we’re supposed to tell them “No, you can’t go to Janie’s house, you two are entirely too close, and you need to be friends with everyone.” Talk about setting up kids, once again, for an epic fail. What do we tell them when they realize that reality doesn’t work that way? That you cannot please everyone, and not everyone will please them in return? So, I call bullshit on this little theory, because it is counterintuitive in the extreme to how humans function.
WTF?? 2. Pot should remain illegal! Why? Because it worsens the effects of schizophrenia! Fine, then don’t give the schizophrenics a doob. As for the rest of us, well, okay, me, I’m not schizophrenic, and I could really use a nice big fattie right about now. You’ll understand once you see #3.
WTF?? 3. Who rules the land, Baby? The NRA thinks they do. In the continuing saga of the finance reform bill, a saga worthy of Tolstoy in sheer number of words and twists, the NRA won…again. They managed to get themselves an “out” from the donor disclosure requirements in the proposed bill. So, in other words, because they’re soooo very big, and soooo very prevalent, and give sooooo very much money to various congress-critters, they get a pass from any potential donor disclosure requirements. We little people, we don’t stand a friggin’ chance against this. Oh, I’m sure someone out there might accuse me of not being fair. But Bee, they might say, You wouldn’t complain if it was the ACLU getting the pass!
And they would be right. I wouldn’t complain one damned bit if the ACLU was getting the pass, and let’s look at why. The ACLU defends the rights of everyday, ordinary americans from infringement by others, even by the Federal Government. And let’s not let the Right-wingers forget that the ACLU defended the self-proclaimed and crowned leader of the conservatives, Rush Limbaugh, when the Feds wanted access to his medical records to find out just how he was getting all those prescription painkillers he was hooked on. On the other hand, the NRA is an organization that promotes nothing but violence. Despite rashes of shootings across the country, despite the all-too-regular occurrence of mass murder by gun in this country, despite school shootings like Columbine and Virginia Tech, despite the sheer number of people who are severely mentally ill and the number of people who are just plain meaner than a broken-tailed snake in this country, they still keep prattling on about the “gun rats!” Enough, already! This is the organization that has opposed legislation that would ban people on the TERRORIST WATCH LIST FROM BUYING GUNS IN THIS COUNTRY. That’s right, you heard me right. How imbecilic does one need to be to realize that hey, maybe allowing every tom, dick, terrorist and mental institution escapee to legally buy a gun in any shop in the freaking land might NOT be a good idea. As I wrote about some time ago, the NRA now wants to have elementary school educational programs on gun safety in the public schools. Some localities in Virginia have already signed up for that particular sales pitch, and a sales pitch is what it is. It’s all a bit of PR in a pathetic attempt to deflect attention from their lobbying efforts against any flavor of gun control legislation, even if it means that some asshat on the TERRORIST WATCH LIST can walk into the local gun shop and buy himself a sawed-off, or even better, that Uzi sitting up there on the shelf, gleaming black as midnight with its promise of instant death to any mammal on the planet. Now they probably won’t even have to disclose to the rest of us how much they paid for those congressional leaders. If that’s not a wake-up-call WTF, MAN???, then I don’t know what is.
I like to think that the NRA doesn’t really pose much danger to the American public, but my gut tells me that their agenda doesn’t stop with free-gun rights, it doesn’t stop with the bastardization of the Second Amendment, and it doesn’t stop with allowing every tom, dick and Terrorist Watch List Name to have all the weapons he or she wants. The NRA lays claim to 4.3 million members, spread across all 50 states.
4.3 million members in the NRA. They are overwhelmingly white, republican-voting and they are, without exception, armed.
The United States has approximately 1.4 million active duty personnel. Several hundred thousand are stationed overseas, and we know where a big chunk of that number currently are stationed.
4.3 million vs 1.4 million. Local, state and federal law enforcement equates to approximately 800,000 in the United States. 4.3 million armed members of the NRA versus 2.2 million armed military and law enforcement personnel.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about those numbers. Let’s speculate for a moment about what the NRA’s real agenda might be. Right now, the NRA seems to be content with a propaganda campaign to bastardize the Second Amendment in the American psyche, and so far, they are succeeding. Right now, the NRA is content with their bought and paid for members of US Congress as well as their servants in state and local government. One future segment of their agenda could be that the NRA thinks ahead to the possibility that one day, their bought governmental representatives, legislatures and PR campaigns won’t be enough to keep them in the power structure they currently enjoy with just a flick of the wrist on the checkbook. The way I see it, their exemption from any possibility of having to disclose how they spend their money on Capital Hill and in State Legislative houses in all 50 states is the least of what we need to consider. The NRA, through sheer numbers, firepower and common ideology, poses a grave threat to the Republic.
Think I’m paranoid? Maybe I am. I actually hope I am. Someone once said, though, that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
That’s it for this Sunday potluck, folks. I think it’s probably enough, don’t you?
Tags: ACLU, assault rifles, how many members does the NRA have, NRA, pot worsens schizophrenia
Sorry the Bee-Cook has been such a slacker lately, folks. At least one person, who shall remain unnamed (Ok, it’s SW Anderson) has requested a Sunday dinner. Yesterday I was too sun-logged and Pabst Blue Ribbon-logged and lake-water-logged to post, but here goes. Basically, throughout the world, it’s the age-old story of SSDD. Same Shit, Different Day.
WTF?? 1. Doctors at Gitmo suffered a lapse of medical ethics. Yeah, do ya think? Let’s see: Waterboarding, sleep deprivation and who knows what other torture methods used, all while docs were testing a detainee’s physiological and psychological responses to it during the process. Not quite what Hippocrates had in mind, methinks. Right now, I can think of about…oh, let’s say 150 or so people who need to be in jail. We’ll start with Bush, Cheney, Condi and the rest of the Asses of Evil (oh, what a oldie but goodie), and end with the Junior Mengeles getting their scientific rocks off with human experimentation. Do we all feel safe yet?? SSDD. BTW, Doctor Mengele looked totally harmless, didn’t he? Evil always does look benign.
Doctor Mengele
WTF?? 2. The Greeks Once Made This:
Greek Sculpture Courtesy of the Louvre
Now, the Greeks promise the U.S. a sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr to grace a new memorial on the National Mall in Washington DC. Only the Greeks didn’t actually sculpt it, they promised to ship it from China. It’s not the shipping part that is the WTF here, it’s the “they didn’t even sculpt it, they offered to buy it from China” part that is the WTF?? When a country that once ruled the known world, and ruled it reasonably well, and created some of the world’s great masterpieces has to buy a gift from the global equivalent of WalMart, then something is very, very wrong on many, many levels. No wonder their economy is in the shitter.
WTF?? 3. Better than Bush is Not Good Enough. The President was in the Gulf Coast region today giving a pep talk, i.e., talking out of his ass, in the wake of how knows how many hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude has been lost from BP’s Massive Fuck Up Of The Millenium. According to the President today:
…things are going to return to normal…
…the region’s fouled waters will be in even better shape than before the catastrophic BP oil spill…
…Gulf seafood safe to eat…
This is why the republicans are going to end up back in power in the House and Senate this November, and this is why he will be a one term president. Oh, there are numerous other reasons why, including a mass-insanity that has spread across the country during the past year, and I’m not even talking about the teabaggers. And when the republicans get themselves back into power based on the bullpucky of “national deficit” and “national debt,” just wait. Think the Gulf is a bad situation now? Think that the jobs reports are looking bad now? Think everything has gone to hell in a handbasket now? Just wait until their get themselves planted on those cushy little seats in Congress again. Meanwhile, we have someone who could have been a great president feeding us a pack of horsehockey about the Gulf seafood being safe to eat and pie in the sky crap about the Gulf waters being cleaner than before, one day.
Yes, Mr. President, maybe after the next ice age scours the planet clean. You see, we don’t need pie in the sky. We need cold hard facts and an agenda. Yes, you heard me correctly, we need an agenda. We need some of those so-called experts the President has been talking to lately to come up with some ideas on how not just solar, not just wind, not just bio-diesel fuel can save the planet. But how all the alternative energy schemes all working in tandem could save the planet. That’s the only pie in the sky I want to hear right now, and I want it backed up with scientific research. The research exists, now put it to use. We need the truth in this country, and we need it now. I for one am sick and tired of talking points when the reality falls so short of the goal, and the goals were so obtainable. Obama rode into office on a wave of populist anger at the republicans and how they mananged to, in the words of Joe Pesci in the movie Casino, “fuck it all up.” He rode in on one of the biggest win margins we’ve seen in decades, with progressives and most of the indies and even some of the republicans and most of the rest of the world going “Ok, make it better. We need better.”
We’ve received better, certainly. Better than George Bush and Dick Cheney, that’s for sure, and there is no denying that for anyone but the lamest minds out there. However, what I need right now is a hell of a lot better than better than Bush. Because really, that’s not saying much. I don’t need a Commander in Cheer. What I need is the cold hard truth, what we all need is the cold hard truth, so we can start facing the dilemmas head on and start working out alternatives to our problems as a nation and as a planet full of humans who mostly can’t think past what’s for lunch. I crave a visionary, and I’m not seeing it.
In lieu of a Potluck today, let’s talk about closed systems.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics deals with entropy. The basic definition is that in a closed system, eventual homogeneity of temperatures will develop. In other words, heat death. Everything will end up at the same temperature, and everything will cease to work – be it cells, hearts, lungs, rivers, oceans and motorcycles.
Entropy also has another definition: inevitable social decline and degeneration.
What I want to talk about is a mixture of the two definitions in regards to the current environmental crisis we face – the BP oil spill.
BP exists for one reason, and only one reason. It exists to provide profits to shareholders. Big Oil is just the method with which it moves those profits. As a paper entity, it exists for solely that reason. Over the past 30 years or so, we’ve found ourselves in an increasingly closed economic system of unfettered capitalism due to the effects of massive deregulation – of both the industries to be regulated, and the regulators themselves. Who watches the watchers, indeed.
Free Marketeers would like us to believe that if we only give these corporations free rein, they will always do the right thing. After all, aren’t they run by humans? Aren’t they staffed by humans? Isn’t it in their ultimate best interests to do the right thing? Wouldn’t it be in BP’s (or Exxon, or Shell’s) best interest to have the technology available to stop a gushing oil well a mile down in deepwater should something go wrong? Yes. However, the reality of the situation is quite different.
When a corporation becomes so big that the humans who run the show seem to be flies on a hippopotamus’ back, the corporation takes on a life of its own. And it continues to go about doing the one thing it was created to do: provide profits to shareholders. Ingenuity shrinks with profit, and eventually, this closed system becomes untenable. The inevitable conclusion is that while the company is charged by its very existence to drill baby drill, it has no incentive develop contingency plans for when the system fails in a massive way. Hence the need for injections of heavy regulation in to the closed system of capitalism. The only body significant enough to enforce the regulation is the federal government. Leaving it up to the corporation to “do the right thing” could not work because this closed system of shareholder happiness and the unfettered need for constantly rising profits precludes the corporation from doing anything but that which gives immediate short term gain. The problem we face as a society is that the corporate mandate has become so ingrained that we blanch at the very thought of a world without them. We are unable to regulate them effectively, even were sufficient regulations imposed, because our regulatory system has become corrupt and has become its own closed system. Entropy is settling in on both fronts.
The above example is presented with the assumption that all the flies on the hippo’s back are honest, ethical people who just lost control of their paper monster. This is not always the case. In fact, given the human nature to succumb to the darker desires for wealth and power, I would say this is not even usually the case. Human greed brings the societal problem of corporate power to another level.
I can think of a million “closed systems” which failed because entropy took over. The Roman Empire fell more because of a complete degredation in the ruling class leaving them unable to rule effectively than because of barbarian invasions. The invasions overwhelmed it because it was stagnant at just the wrong time, and was unable to reverse its entropy. Enron was provided unfettered freedom to pursue its profits, until entropy took over and there was nowhere left to hide the cooked books. GM had to be saved because the entropy caused by a lack of forward thinking and lack of ingenuity closing its system. If left alone without the injection of federal funds as energy, it would have died a figurative heat death.
While BP cools to its own increasingly inevitable heat death from selloff of stock to the really bad PR it is getting as it tries and fails to staunch the hemorrhage of oil a mile deep in the Gulf, a question occurs to me. We know that the oil being released into the waters is in quantity far more than BP originally allowed us to believe. And we know that BP has been calling the shots as far as media coverage of this tremendous Fail. What I don’t believe we know yet is how much oil BP managed to obtain from that well before the rig exploded…and how much might be left to escape the earth’s crust. BP’s most recent attempt at damage control failed badly. If subsequent attempts fail, as I believe they will, we’ll all be left just hoping that the strike was not a big one – and that this well will, sooner rather than later, exhaust itself. Regarding how we know what we know, we can see another closed system: All the news coming out of that area is either directly from the mouth of BP, or from reports which can safely be assumed to be vetted by BP. While the subject is still in the headlines, it is delegated to the lower rungs of the news ladder – that which the mainstream media thinks we want to hear about. Or perhaps more insidiously, the news that the mainstream media wants us to focus on.
The only way I see of opening our closing economic and societal systems is an injection of original ideas and the courage to carry them out. All of our old ways are naive, outdated and no longer suitable for a world where the human population constantly increases, but where originality of thought is sparse. Our economics don’t work, our social ideas don’t work and our propensity for “debate” in fields that really don’t need any further debate does not work. In theory, humans are capable of astounding feats of technological advance. In reality, we still don’t have a clue what to do with those technological wonders, and we don’t have a clue what to do about it when the technology breaks down. Until we have a clue, there are a few areas we as species should be strictly regulated in exploring. Offshore deepwater oil drilling is obvious. The problems are immediate and inherent – no one knows how to stop a leaking oil well a mile down in the water. Until the technology is seriously contemplated for the contingencies where it all begins to go badly, we’re better off as a nation being dependent on foreign oil if it means poisoning our coastlines and turning the Gulf into a deadzone. Not because the Gulf is pretty, or because we want clean beaches to sunbathe on, but because the ocean is a life-giving or a life-taking force. Killing off long swathes of it will kill us off, in the end, if we’re not careful to know our current limitations while working toward reducing those limitations.
At the end of the day, fingerpointing is useless. We’re all to blame, in a way. We’ve allowed ourselves to be lulled with the concept that all politicians are crooked and that’s just the way it is. This leaves a closed system where entropy in the intellectual vacuum of politics reduces leadership to the heights of mediocrity. Throughout the past several decades, numerous persons who show the spark of potential for ingenuous thought have raised their voices, but more often than not are drowned out in the bullying of the masses who are perfectly content to live their McDonald’s and big-screen tv lives in complete denial of the big picture of societal entropy.
I feel trapped in a society with my species that seems to think that intellectual and technological innovation is a 3D tv. I yearn for true technological and intellectual innovation, the likes of which we really haven’t seen in decades. Money settles all issues, and dictates what course technological and scientific research takes. NASA seems at a standstill. Medical research seems stuck in the search for a better erection enhancer or eyebrow growing drug. The computer that I am using to type this post is not much different than the computer I was using 25 years ago. It is faster, and can hold a lot more data, but there really isn’t much difference between it and that Packard Bell I used to take apart in my younger days. BP had no reason to develop a fix plan for potential disaster. We can see the effects of entropy in arts and literature, where originality is a nearly extinct species. The Dukes of Hazzard movie is all the proof I need to support my supposition.
I can’t tell you if this country, or even any other country in the world, will be able to reverse its technological and societal entropy. I can’t tell you if a genius will come along and give us some new ideas to try beyond the tired and naive mantras of capitalism, conservatism, liberalism, libertarianism, objectivism, socialism, religionism and etc’ism. All I know is that I am certainly not that person. I have no illusions of having an original thought. I do hope that I will have sense enough to see it when that genius with the new working plan does come along.
And I really hope that damned oil well peters out on its own soon, because I really don’t see BP or any other entity being able to stop the flow.
Crossposted on Mad Mike’s America.
Tags: BP, entropy, intellectual stagnation, oil spill, techolognical stagnation
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