"Legs Are Going, Jab Ain't Working, Nothing's Working...

...and you wanna help me?!"

Rocky is such a great movie. Proof yet again that morons can make masterpieces, without any inkling whatsoever of what they mean. The author is irrelevant. It really is what the viewer takes from the piece. Dammit all to hell, the postmodern weenies were right.

Out of ideas for today. Jab ain't working, nothing's working...

Jackass of the Day

The city's full of them, and they're all on Friendster (has that become "uncool" yet? God, I hope so.)

Today's entry: Dominique.
Enjoys: Licking phallic objects (especially black ones...hiiiiii yooooooo!), "polishing door knobs" (what the fuck? Phallic, see?), "sleeping, drinking water, eating unsalted pretzels" (yo, bitch, this is a list of hobbies, not what you did this morning. And while we're here: what other mundane activities do you want to claim as hobbies? Breathing? Walking? Showering? Having feet? What?).

Die, die, die, die!!!

Old Movies

A friend who is now a history professor brought this up years ago: what was the cultural phenomenon that produced the "Army" characters in old movies? Unlike today, where military types on film are one-dimensional, barking little dictators, who can always be counted on by us, the viewers, to do something insanely brutal and self-destructive, there was a brief time in American cinema where the Army characters were the good guys. More than that, actually--because to be "good" then, as now, often merely meant being "American"--they were well-educated, smart guys, who had the interests of humanity as they understood it, from their educations in philosophy and the humanities, at heart. What happened to THAT idea? It would be easier to believe the link between patriotism and militarism existed if that image endured. Where did it go? How far have we come/gone?

Orcas are Nature's Humans

I heard somewhere that the reason that animals are "better" than people is because they only kill when they need to, not for fun. I think I heard this from a dirty, stinking hippie, but it really stuck with me, just like patchouli stink sticks to a dirty, stinking hippie.

Anyway, the idea is bullshit; as anybody who owns a cat can tell you, animals kill other animals for fun all the time. Another, more convincing case (after all, perhaps cats are sadistic because they spend so much time around bad old humans--right, hippies?) is that of the orca, or killer whale. A BBC nature film I saw the other day, entitled "Seas of Life," featured a long-ish segment on the killer whale and its penchant for harrassing, torturing, and killing other sea life.

Now, you might say (if you are a hippie or an overly-serious person), "'torture' has no meaning in the animal kingdom--you, the human, are imposing that designation on the whale." You would be right, except that orcas play with their food. See, when a pod of killer whales stalks the calf of a larger species, it chases the baby and mother to tire the younger one out. Once tired, the juvenile can be held down by the orcas' bodies and drowned. The killer whales do this, but they stop from time to time, back off, and let the calf catch its breath. Is that natural? Is it serving some purpose? It appears to be only a way of prolonging the hunt--in other words, it's a way for the orcas to derive more satisfaction from the kill and the act of killing itself. In other words, it's sadism.

Similarly, killer whales will often charge into the shallows and catch seals in their mouths, stunning the seals so they can be eaten. However, on "Seas of Life," the killer whales continued to catch seals even after they were done feeding. So, when the whales were no longer hungry, they kept on grabbing seals, stunning them, and then carrying them out to sea. There, the orcas flipped the live seals back and forth with their mouths and tails, vaulting them high into the air and, eventually, killing them. The narrator claimed this was done so the whales could keep their hunting skills sharp, but they just finished eating a bunch of seals. Sharp enough? I would argue that this behavior represents a possibility that naturalists apparently refuse to consider: killer whales are psychotic assholes. Not a catchy title for a movie, I'll grant you: "Free Willy: the Psychotic Asshole Whale."

Anyway, killer whales do one other thing that reminds me of people. After they kill a whale calf (which is pretty hard to do and seems too time-consuming in an ocean teeming with smaller, easier prey--do they derive satisfaction from the fact that they are killing a calf in front of its helpless mother?) the only thing they eat is the tongue and lower jaw. Kind of like how people eat pate--you don't think the rest of that goose gets used, do you? What kind of thing is that to do? Is it "natural" to spend four hours making a kill and then to only eat one piece of the body, only about 1/10 the total mass--particularly when it's a pod of 6-8 killer whales that have to eat?

This all seems unnatural to me. I think whales, as a higher species of mammal, are fucking sick--they've developed a taste for pointless slaughter. They must be stopped, and so I propose a renewed effort to find things, frivolous things, that can be made from their hides. We will hunt them to extinction for the sake of fashion and, in my heart at least, because the world already has enough pleasure killers in it. Either that, or they can hunt us. But one of us has to go.

Unclear on the Concept

There's a pernicious rumor going around that the Discovery Channel is holding a poll (clearly, based on the last two presidential elections, that's the BEST way to decide anything) to find the "Greatest American." But, as my wife astutely pointed out, the whole point of being an American is that no one among us is the "greatest." In the land of freedom and democracy, we're all supposed to be the same, more or less. No kings, no rulers, no "natural aristocracy" (but apparently there ARE "smart ones" and "dumb ones," and the fact that I'm pointing this out ought to give a good indication where some of the dumb ones are working). Got it?

So what gives? Why are people like Matt Lauer and the folks at the Discovery Channel trying to undermine part of the mythology of America?

I've asked it before and I will again, now: why does the Discovery Channel hate America so much?

Traffic Jams

I have been thinking over the past several years about traffic jams and what causes them. The idea is that they do not happen instantaneously (you never find yourself at the front of one, do you?), but rather grow from rather unremarkable circumstances. My father, my wife, and I have discussed this and come to the fuzzy conclusion that one could make a mathematical model of a traffic jam if one were so inclined. We are not. But we theorized that snarls are caused not by actual incidents (ie, accidents/roadblocks/sinkholes, whatever) but rather by a geometric progression moving backwards from a point of an event in time. That is, one need make only a slight variation from a flowing traffic pattern to begin the chain of small, but multiplying and growing greater, incidents in the waves of traffic behind you. It's like the butterfly effect, but plausible.

For example, in smoothly-flowing traffic, you may overcorrect when changing lanes. This may cause the driver in the next lane to brake suddenly. The person behind him brakes as well, losing 10-15 mph in speed over one to two seconds. You, who have swerved into a new lane, are traveling slower than upcoming traffic as well. While all the cars in your immediate area are able to rapidly recover speed and move on (the road is clear in front of you--you just slowed down, thereby letting preceding traffic create a gap between you), the wave of braking will move backwards from that point and grow more severe--particularly if someone behind you isn't paying attention and has to brake even more sharply. Perhaps not immediately, but even an hour later, you have gridlock, a situation where conditions have multiplied to the point that the loss of speed and number of cars on the road adds up to conditions that cross some threshold point and movement is impossible until you get to the front of the line.

This website, which I just found, has more. He's got better graphics, too. Enjoy.

Now I wish someone would address the duration of traffic jams and the point at which they are at their peak and begin to decline. Be sure to read page 2 of the above site for an interesting recommendation for helping curtail the length of time it takes a traffic jam to run its course.

Live Out Your Repressed Homo Dreams...In the Army

Yet another borrowed story from Yahoo! News (I don't do my own digging, you see):

The Pentagon is trying to outsource its recruitment database to a private company, thereby bypassing the Privacy Act provision that forbids the government from obtaining and keeping certain information about people. Under the new scheme/dodge/conspiracy, the Pentagon's information-gathering agancy would get high school and college students' personal data, including grade point averages, and use them to decide whom to recruit. This is just a guess, but I'm going to say that poor, black, and Latino students are the intended targets of this project.

There are several implications to this--and not just what the "privacy advocates" (slippery term, that: even fundamentalist Christians are advocates of privacy when it's their privacy that is threatened) say: that this doesn't live up to the spirit of the Privacy Act and that more personal information in the hands of government is not a good thing. The biggest and most interesting facet of this program is that it proposes to gather this information on all college students. That includes, of course, College Republicans and wealthy dumbasses like George Bush's daughters, nieces, and nephews. It will be very easy, one would think, to check the actual demographics of future recruits against the known (it's all college students!) recruitment pool--what does the Pentagon do when it is revealed that none of the rich, white kids in the targeted group will join the service? What, then, happens to our collective attitude towards the Armed Forces, the GI Bill, and the nature of class relations and responsibilities in this country?

Another angle is, for the Libertarians and nuts out there, that if the Pentagon can live up to the letter but not the spirit of the law and get away with it, then why can other government agencies not do the same? Isn't the Pentagon's attempt to do this akin to a prosecutor attempting to introduce into evidence a plain, brown package that came over the transom in the middle of the night? Will American courts and the American public accept the proclamations of government agencies who claim no knowledge beforehand of the information third-parties are being paid to collect on you?

The Pentagon says that, if you for some odd reason (perhaps you fear death, or maybe you actually LIKE yourself the way you are and you don't want to be mindfucked for the next four years?) don't want to be part of the winning team, going in for the big score, then you can "opt-out" of the database. Of course, they also say that the exact same information will be gathered on you, but rather than using it to recruit you or your offspring, it will just be put in a separate file and kept, um, like, for no discernible reason. And, of course, the two files will never, ever, get mixed up. We are looking at a first step towards a total information society, and I for one can't wait to get the mark of the beast on me...oh, wait--I mean, I can't wait to get that microchip implanted in my forehead. That's better.

Finally, The database may not be the real issue here. I'm not sure myself. But, if lifelong experience means anything, then it seems that many (by no means all, or even most) of the people in the Armed Forces want to be there in some capacity. It ain't (much as I wish it were) that they're all there for the college money, folks. Some of them want to shoot at human beings, kill women and children, eat dead, burnt bodies, and see veins in their teeth. And some of them probably actually believe that the Army builds roads and schools and helps people. Helping people is a key--it also explains the crossover between military people and cops and firemen.

But I digress (no! me?). The problem is not necessarily one of access; that is, giving the Pentagon little Dick's phone number does not equal signing him up for a six-year hitch in Afghanistan. I would like to think that any responsible parent would raise a child smart enough not to piss his life away just because some loudmouth jarhead calls him up and calls him a pussy for not wanting to enlist. But more than the fact that some people actually are in the market for military service and that some people are too dumb to say no, the problem with any effort to step-up recruitment is that such efforts too often cross the line and enter the realm of illegality. Recall, if you will, the situation brought to light last month, where an Army recruiter threatened to get an arrest warrant if a teenager did not agree to meet him to discuss enlistment. That was a crime. Similar crimes are committed everyday, and no one seems to care because 1) the kids being coerced are poor and brown and 2) it's all in the "service" of the country--one that has become quite a scary place in the last few years, thanks largely to that kind of thinking. So the point is not "I don't want the Pentagon to have my information" but instead "The Pentagon's malfeasance is troubling, but as long as we defend the force of the rule of law, then the Pentagon can go fuck itself for all I care."

That's a Real Pickle

OK, here's the daily waste of ink that passes for both a White House press release AND solid AP reporting these days: "Dems Playing Politics with Bolton--White House". Well, I'll be plum-jiggered; the Democrats, a political party, are playing politics. Shame on them for doing their jobs. And the Republicans are...doing what, exactly? Picking flowers and writing sonnets about rainbows?!?


What the F did I say, White House? Don't you read anymore, or was the goat book a first time/last time/best time experience for you?

So Much for the Crazy Vote in 2008

Bill Frist, after being bitch-slapped with hard evidence that Terri Schiavo was brain dead and beyond recovery, now says that the whole thing was just a mistake, the "chapter is closed," and he really didn't mean to call Michael Schiavo and Democrats murderers. Silly, silly Bill Frist. He was just playin'. Speculatin'. Guessin'. Just what doctors usually do.

It's a good thing that, contrary to popular belief, the last election was won via massive vote fraud committed by Republicans and not, as Bush wants you to believe, by "getting out the Christian vote" (read: batshit crazies who think God speaks to them personally and Bush is the instrument of His will). Because if the 2004 election HAD actually been won by the mythical "3 million conservative Christians" that Karl Rove dreamed up, then Bill Frist would have all but torpedoed his own presidential hopes today when he admitted that the poor, brain dead woman he was screaming about protecting two months ago really wasn't worth all that effort. Apparently, you don't have to keep 'em alive if they're medically proven to be vegetables. That whole "culture of life" pile of crap was just a convenient line. Duh.

Naturally, Frist was told beforehand, by every rational person in the medical establishment who wasn't also trying to get elected the next president of the United States, that Schiavo was beyond hope. But hey, a half-assed apology and one unnecessary autopsy later, he's off the hook. And, happily enough, his career as ass licking toady to the Religious Right never really got off the ground. Say goodbye, Bill.

You Don't Suppose...

Bush's top aides (read: Karl Rove and ilk) are stinking rich. Just another case of Bush's government working for YOU.

Aren't you glad you voted for the outsider who would work against entrenched, monied interests?

And what's more, aren't you glad Yahoo! News chose to post this article in the middle of the fucking night?

Daily Dose of Crazy

Here it is. Take it or leave it. Why did the World Trade Center collapse? Massive impact of jet airplanes........or government plot to demolish them? We speculate and mislead, you decide.

The Culture of Life

I also believe in the Culture of Life. But, see, mine is a political thing. I believe we have a duty to God and Country to keep alive every little sin the GOP commits, and to keep talking about them long after the Republicans have tried to bury them. Do you remember Terri Schiavo? How about the speech to the UN? The State of the Union speech about uranium? Bush's people telling South Carolina voters that John McCain had an illegitimate black child? The male prostitute who was given clearance by the White House to pose as a reporter--but who visited the White House multiple times on days when there were no press conferences? Valerie Plame? Keep those in the back of your head next time you talk to someone who thinks GWB is an OK guy.

That Was Quick

Recall November (I wish we could have a "November recall"), when the word of the year was "blog." All the empty heads on TV could talk about was "blog this, blog that." Newspapers and radio gibbered unceasingly about the rising power of the blog, the new world order of the blog, the obersturmbloggenfuhrer, etc. etc.

Oh, little media seemed to have Big Media on the run. But what has happened? Are blogs primed to take over the world? Not even close. A minority of Americans even know what a blog is. But, there are so many blogs that, save for a few mega-blogs (who have a problem similar to the media that has singled them out for notice in that the big ones, like Atrios, Kos, and Powerline, have to mediate their content to the point that it is barely more stimulating than what you might find on CNN, the uber-whore of Big Media), nobody even reads the millions of little blogs out there. Look at this site's counter if you doubt it.

Truly, the giants of "journalism" (the field seems dead; perhaps better to call it "reporting" or "spokes-modeling" from now on?) have countered the blog threat masterfully. How do you parry an attack from an upstart? Well, easy: you make the upstart part of the establishment. Every major network scrambled to include blog coverage in its lineup prior to and following the election. It has risen to heights of absurdity such that anchors on MSNBC now read blogs on the air, to the viewers.

The result? Everyone is sick of blogs and just wants them to go away. The word, stupid-sounding to begin with, has become an irritant. Like any fad that supersaturates the market, blogs are losing their "cool" with every passing day. Furthermore, the character of them has been set by Big Media: little blogs even, ones that were originally meant to be humorous (like this one) are now merely outlets for political rantings--because that's what NBC and CBS and CNN told me they were supposed to be. Hence, any apolitical sorts out there will in all likelihood avoid blogs in the future.

The mainstream media put itself in charge of the marketing campaign for a new, threatening commodity, the exchange of ideas on the internet. Like any bad marketer--and done intentionally--the media overhyped and oversold blogs, knowing full well that the public's patience would be tried by all this carnival barking and phony self-examination ("Peter, Daily Kos writes today that your report on Iraq last night was disingenuous and just parroted the GOP talking points...what do you think? Could we have done a better job?"). Big Media fixed the outcome by choosing the forum of discussion of the role of blogs in our political landscape. ABC News introduces the guy from Eschaton, he smiles politely, the anchor-skank asks a whole bunch of earnest questions (albeit in a mocking tone) and then closes the segment by telling the viewer that he ought to decide for himself whether blogs are useful or not. Gee, I wonder what the answer will be...?

So much for the media revolution.

How Many Different Ways Can I Say "I Told You So" ??

All right! The press has finally caught on that Bush is a completely unlikeable moron, and they now report that the GOP is concerned that his failing presidency will hurt the whole party. Well, that and damage the United States of America. But, they're not so concerned with the latter as the former. See, the US of A can go down the shitter, for all they care, as long as someone from the GOP gets to be King Turd of Shit Mountain.

There are lots of problems with this story only coming up right now. For one, this would have been the story a full four years ago, pre-September 11th, except that the media then still thought it was cute to follow Georgie around and tell the public (for whom the media has nothing but utter contempt) what a neat guy he is and, yeah, he's really dumb but he means well. Even after that horseshit was washed off by the blood of 3,000 Americans on 9/11, the media continued to ignore Bush's outrageous behavior and dumbfoundingly bad policy decisions.

Now, the press wants you to know that the President is in a bad spot. Welcome to the party, stupid. Or, I suppose more accurately, the press wants you to know that it knows what you already know. See, all the media has been doing for the last five years is reporting what it wants you to think. That's right: ABC News manufactures consciousness--it decides what you should be thinking. Well, now that millions of people have run screaming from Big Media as if it were a shit-cannon launching cholera-infected feces, well NOW the press wants you to know that it has tapped back into reality and is on the same page as you.

No thanks, bitches. Your job, if you didn't know, is to go find news, investigate, and report it. Not to tell us what to think and say; also not to tell us what we already know. Your sole duty to the public is to tell it what it doesn't know, and to do so in a way that protects the public interest. In other words, the media is supposed to help us, not lecture us, or mislead us, or belittle us. And, for about five fucking years, I've been feeling pretty goddamn insulted by the way the press has been talking to me. When Bush stumbles, I don't call it a "victory march." When he misspeaks, I don't call it "colorful" or "creative." When he gets 1700 kids killed because he doesn't feel like telling the truth, I don't call it "decisive leadership." The media does.

Other interesting angles to the "revelation" (I wouldn't call it that, either) that Bush is a fucking asshole and a liability to the entire planet?

How about the hordes of shitsucking voters who went dutifully to the polls and affirmed that they like being lied to, humiliated, and murdered? Well, all I can say, besides "I told you so, you fucking douchebag idiots" is that I hope Bush gets you killed before he does me, so I can see your terrified faces as you get your ticket to Hell punched.

And for all you Democrats, or worse, Green Party/did not vote/threw your vote away assholes: tell me again that Kerry would have been exactly the same as Bush. Go ahead. I dare you to say it. Your lazy asses couldn't be bothered to do any work before the election, you run and hide whenever there's a real fight to be had, you sit around and jerk off over the fucking fantasy utopia that Ralph Nader or some other dicksucker promised you, and then you scurry back into the woodwork after the election, unwilling and unable to see that you, just as much as anyone, have fucked the entire nation over.

Why We Need PBS, Reason 999

Because PBS provides science programming from writers who have heard of a little thing called Occam's Razor.

The Charlotte Observer ran some jackass syndicated editorial awhile back about how cable TV has rendered PBS obsolete (something about magic of the marketplace or some crap).

Heh. I just watched a show on Animal Planet with an African Grey parrot who accurately described numerous photographs displayed to him, remotely, by his owner. Now, Dr. Irene Pepperberg has already shown us how smart Greys are - a notch or two above the average Libertarian (not bad for a dinosaur, you know). But Animal Planet's explanation for this amazing example of avian cognition? Mental fucking telepathy. Rather than delve into the far more interesting evolutionary development of intelligence in species separated by immense phylogenetic time-frames, Animal Planet gives us mental telepathy.

So, PBS gives us a well-researched, scientific, educational series like the monumental Evolution, or great documentaries on Nature about macaws, and animal intelligence. What does cable tv give us? A bullshit psuedoscience pile of stinky doo-doo. Silly me, I think a science show should be about, uh, science, and science is all about the testable explanation of observation.

A Hard Act to Follow . . .

. . . so I'll try to throw in something positive to that (though it will take me a minute to reach the upshot). Krugman did a fine job of addressing the structured decline in wages for working families here. The fact of the matter is, real wages have gone to shit in the last three decades. And it's not because workers are, by nature, dumb and lazy people*** who "need to get a better job," but rather due to economic policies that are an act of - and I will make no apology for using this term - class warfare. Deal with it.

Our minimum wage is a joke. No, wait, it isn't a joke, because when a full time worker lives well below an already ridiculous poverty line, as defined by the Fed. Govt., it's not god damn funny.

Uh, uh, but raising minimum wage is bad for business! No, it isn't. One thing we know is that if people have expendable income, they will rush out of bed on Saturday morning and buy whatever the fuck Target has on sale that day. Turning the almost-lumpen class into the consumer class is good for business. You can't have a business without customers. More customers = more profit. The word here is "sustainability." Further, to use a real-world example, compare Costco to Wal-Mart. Ethical arguments aside, living wages reduce turnover, create more productive workers, and are a long-term boon for businesses (even if said business depends on suburbanites thinking that a 20 pound block of cheese is a good deal while ignoring that 18 pounds of it will get green and fuzzy before they ever eat it).

For those of you who might argue that the only people who actually make minimum wage are middle class white kids saving for bling-bling wheels and a fart pipe for their Honda, shut the fuck up. You're wrong, and I won't legitimize your supposed rebuttal by answering it. I'll take the advice of Jebus on this and not cast my pearls before swine. Besides, you're probably the same people who fill up college seats because you had to earn an MBA just to figure out that revenue less cost equals profit, and I don't give a god damn if paying your employees a decent wage means you have to pass on new granite counter tops to replace the "no longer chic" Corian counters from 2000 and a Sub-Zero stainless steel fridge for another three months.

But I said I was going to be positive, so here goes. This article in The Nation reports that several states have increased minimum wage on their own:

"even if Congress continues to leave millions of working Americans in the lurch, the movement in states shows no signs of slowing down."

In all, the article says 12 states have decided to do the right thing and raise wages. What can we learn from this? While we certainly should not decline to fight the radical theocons in D.C. who are running this train full speed towards the abyss, let's not forget that sometimes, on some issues, our energy is better spent on more local levels. More immediate results can be made there.

Then again, if the Democratic Party wants to sling some balls (or, uh, labia) around to overthrow the coming aristocracy, they should run with this. Hell, if there's one thing that gets people interested, it's money.

***
For clarity's sake, in line with Josh's previous post, all people have a propensity towards laziness, and while evolution gave us all intelligence and we are not, therefore, dumb, some choose to remain ignorant, and this transcends class placement.

Jamie Does All the Heavy Lifting...

But then again, he's a true prol--has a job and everything. I'm a gone-soft, used-to-be-prol who always thought he would make it into the bourgeoisie but somehow stay true to his humble roots. But you know what Joe Strummer says: you can throw away all your he-man theories once you've lost that grubby feeling. Of course, he was talking about fucking and he was spot-on: you can't fuck if your hands ain't dirty...look at Viagra. It's a crutch for limp-dick desk jockeys. But the sentiment holds, I think, for larger questions of what it means to be working class or middle class. Perhaps the fact that he can't fuck is all you really need to know about somebody in a button-down.

Anyway, to answer an only marginally related question, Jamie, every institution that calls itself a "university" (and every bumfuck college in America is seemingly rushing to get a nursing/business/paralegal program just so it can do that very thing) requires students to carry insurance. UNC did; though God bless 'em, the Original Public University In America charged next to nothing for its self-funded student health program and still provided excellent benefits. Others, like my current school, which also owns the student insurance concern, appear to be in it for the money alone: it's about $800 a year and provides almost no real coverage, plus you have to pay an additional "health fee" that covers the services you really DO use, like seeing a doctor for a routine checkup. Thus, insurance merely satisfies the requirement for enrollment--they're preying upon your inability to get health insurance before you have to register for classes. Still others use third-party insurers, like the University of Chicago does, which allows the U. to claim no knowledge of the malfeasance of the insurance company it chose to represent its students.

Clearly, this is all about money. But, like tuition and fees, Jamie is entirely correct that universities are squeezing the working class out of their student pools. This is also not accidental, I suspect, but I have no direct proof of a class bias except to note anecdotally (and hence, without weight) that the whole project of higher education willfully avoids the interrogation of class relations in this country. Politics does, as the dumbass conservatives will maintain (equally anecdotally), find its way into the classroom, but it is a classless politics that merely suggests, rather than argues against, the existence of inequality or the failure of the social contract in America. Conservative professors, for their part, seem to only want to argue economics, and take no part whatever in the questions of A) reality or following from that, B) class.

One could argue, I suppose, that there are so fucking goddamn many colleges and universities in the US today that it does not matter at the moment that many of the best and largest are creating atmospheres deadly to less affluent students or, to put it another way, students who just want to learn, not drink for four years, snatch an MBA or journalism degree, and get the fuck out. Unfortunately, the small schools are the cutting edge of this jihad against knowledge, not the poor (ha!) cousins of the better-known institutions.

So back to the basic question: where is a poor boy to go? Well, much as it stings, it looks evermore like the only permitted destination is the same as it was before 1945 and the GI Bill: back to the workaday grind. Concurrent with this push to exclude poor kids from higher education (and the other playgrounds of the rich that were temporarily opened to a wider segment of the populace by our quickly-dying social welfare programs--politics, business, Wall Street, the CEO's office) is a disgusting and hateful ethos of the nobility of the working class. Even those trusty lefties in the academy are spouting it: labor historians think they are doing us a big fucking favor by building up their subjects, either as martyrs to the cause of equality or as tragic heroes caught up in the machinery of cold capitalism, but the result is the same: workers are noble.

No. They. Fucking. Are. Not.


Workers are just like other people: small, petty, stupid, drunk, violent, exploitive; but also amiable, caring, intelligent, protective, and generous. But their work doesn't make it so--the fact of LIFE, of their HUMANITY makes it so! Anyone who would argue otherwise is a fool. Working with your hands is not ennobling--even though it may be quite fulfilling--it's degrading and destructive. Your body wears out, your mind goes blank, your pride takes a beating. You don't walk tall at the end of the day--how can you when you just got assfucked by everybody you met today? And then you get to go home (if you have a home) and hear all about Smirky the Chimp and his plans for an ownership society. It's enough to make you go on a rampage. But, alas, you're too tired from working--you don't have all the free time of the dipshit eggheads who work in offices or sit in classrooms and spout emptily about the plight of the poor, noble worker. You got a family to feed, motherfucker. You're the backbone of America, and just like all the poor steelworkers Andy Carnegie wanted to give libraries to, your back is broken and you don't feel a whole lot like picking up a fucking book tonight. Thanks for fuckin' nothing, dickhead. How about a college education for my kids?

Sure. Do they have insurance?

Die For Knowledge, Sucker!

Nothing compares to the voracious recruiting by the Armed Forces on a due-to-graduate high school kid (save for credit card companies, but I'll get to that later). In These Times nails this pre-emptive strike on blue collar children to the fucking wall.

The "lies" mentioned by Bhagwat include the reality that, on average, two-thirds of recruits never receive college funding and only 15 percent graduate with a four-year degree. As for a "secure" career, the unemployment rate for veterans is three times higher than non-veterans.

One one hand, we're telling kids not to use guns and violence to solve problems. But we offer the golden egg of military-financed college education to those who need it most by training them to kill. Hypocrisy. Further, it's an intrinsic part of military training to follow orders without question. Heh, you won't learn a gawddamn thing in college if you don't ask questions.

But it is tempting - a recruiter recently called me, and all but promised to personally pay my way into Cornell and wash my clothes and cook my dinner while there. Hell, she even tried to argue that the Army has valuable experience for an Ecology major, for fuck's sake (yeah, restoring the riparian borders of the Tigris and Euphrates is high priority for the military, I'm sure). For one brief second, I felt the tempting urge to sign up. But then I pulled my head out of my ass.

So what's my point? As anybuddy who has ever been placed on the recruiter's call list (by educational institutions who should fuckin better know better) knows all too well, these folks are as persistent as herpes. I received my last call on the eve of the November election coup. So, if they won't leave you alone, I found that if you politely explain to them that you're something of a Marxist who would rather not write his term papers in the blood of Iraqi children, they won't call back - ever.

Sorry, Josh, that was a little autobiographical, but I think you'll let me slide on this one . . .

Balance is Bullshit

As my favorite apologist for science and atheism, Richard Dawkins, reminds us, "...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong."

Wether it's in the media, politics, or academia, balance is not intrinsically good. Free expression of ideas is good, and debate is a vital part of democracy. But debate should have, as its fundamental aim, the intent to arrive at the most accurate form of truth. If the media, our profs, and our elected reps. would admit this, we would go a long way in removing our collective heads from the pink, fleshy tissue of our own colons. Compromise is invalid when we're compromising with stupid.

So, when certain people have a problem with prolonged debate, we should cast a skeptical eye to their intentions. Especially if it's a person who doesn't know the difference between "disassemble" and "dissemble." Or someone who calls an Amnesty Report "absurd" based on one little word in the introduction - "gulag" - which allowed this administration to ignore the facts of the report. Bad use of language, Amnesty, but not nearly as bad as these bullshit non-rebuttals.

Unfortunately we live in a society that has little interest in an idea too large to fit on a gawddamn bumper sticker.

Dispatch from the Class War

Both sides of the aisle wax flaccid when dealing with, or more accurately, refusing to acknowledge, structured inequality and class barriers. The Bush administration, amidst their orgasmic continuance of the trend to shift the common wealth upwards, not to mention pissing a good portion of it away on spreading freedom and liberty, er, bedlam and seeds of terrorism, hands us workers the simple solution – if you don't make a living wage and don't have benefits like health insurance, get a better job. What a revolutionary concept; us dumbass blue collars were too busy watchin' the race and listenin' to Toby Keith to think of that.

These "better jobs," of course, require some that higher learnin' stuff. If this is the solution to our "improving" economy, why do they keep building walls to prevent us from getting there?

The new Bush budget "would cut 48 education programs totaling $4.3 billion, including $2.2 billion for high school programs, mostly state grants for vocational education . . . $500 million in education technology state grants, $225 million for the Even Start literacy program, $280 million for Upward Bound programs for inner-city youths . . ."

Further, tuition is going bat shit crazy across the U.S. – mine has increased 30% in 3 years. And now, the 4 year institution I plan to transfer to has decided to require that all students have health insurance. So basically, if you're going to college to get a job with benefits like health insurance so you can, you know, participate in the "ownership society" and start a family and not subject them to abject poverty, fuck you. You can't go to school now if you don't have health insurance. Way to go, UNCC. Who gives a fuck if the professors are talking about class conflict; apparently the administrators are on the wrong side of the goddamned class war. But I should expect nothing more from a post-war redneck boomtown that has the pulsating cock of Bank of America firmly wedged in her mouth . . .

That Evil Filibuster

To counter the claims of some so-called liberals out there, let's actually look at the history of the Senate filibuster. There will be some ugly moments along the way, like Strom Thurmond's record for the longest speech given on the Senate floor, a 1964 filibuster against the Civil Rights Act. Of course, although critics of the filibuster like to bring that speech up whenever they attack (calling it a tool of the bigots, a minority delay tactic, undemocratic--as though "democracy" somehow meant "majority"), they never get around to reconciling their call for the end of the filibuster with the fact that the Civil Rights Act actually passed. We ain't talking about the fucking League of Nations here, or the second US Bank. The CRA survived the filibuster. What's your fucking problem, again?

But, what about all the appointments and pieces of legislation that DIDN'T make it out of the Senate because of the filibuster? Gee, you aren't hearing a whole lot out of the liberals on that subject. Maybe they just don't like to do homework. Or perhaps they are just as committed as the Republicans to doing away with the filibuster because, in their own sick little way, they think the Democrats can do what the Republicans probably can't: get and hold power in the Senate, beginning in 2006, and use that power to destroy the minority party. That's all I can think of.

As for all this bullshit about how the filibuster contradicts the democratic process by making obstructionism a matter of rule, all I can offer is that shit gets done. No one is now or ever has been able to claim legitimately that the Senate is in stalemate. The essence of politics is compromise, as everyone knows. What's more, and to return to the question of what democracy is--or perhaps we ought to ask what liberals think democracy is--we are hearing a lot about how the Senate is and always has been an elitist institution, designed to rein-in the foolish masses as represented by the House. It's like the Electoral College: nobody likes that anymore because it's "elitist" (which sounds like loser talk to me. If Democrats thought they could win with the Electoral College or the Senate, they wouldn't be saying these things). In terms of "elitism," well, yeah, I guess you could say that in some ways, ALL safety catches are elitist: they all presume to know better than you do what the correct course of action is. From smoke detectors, to Microsoft SpellCheck, to the backing-up sensor on your Hummer, the whole idea is that YOU don't know everything. And neither do I. And a whole mess of us together is just a mob, it's not a brain. Let me put it this way: if you, rabid individualist that you are, would put your future in the hands of the House of Representatives, step forward.

Nobody? Not one person? (cricket sounds)

Alright, now that I've disabused you of that little fantasy, let's look at a filibuster. This week's installment is Abe Fortas. A crooked, unethical Supreme Court judge, nominated for Chief Justice by LBJ but forced to withdraw after revelations about his inappropriate ties to the White House. Basically, he was Johnson's personal Justice--think Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and GW Bush all in a three-way together. That was what was proposed as the future of the Supreme Court in 1968.

From the US Senate's website:

"In June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren informed President Lyndon Johnson that he planned to retire from the Supreme Court. Concern that Richard Nixon might win the presidency later that year and get to choose his successor dictated Warren's timing.

In the final months of his presidency, Johnson shared Warren's concerns about Nixon and welcomed the opportunity to add his third appointee to the Court. To replace Warren, he nominated Associate Justice Abe Fortas, his longtime confidant. Anticipating Senate concerns about the prospective chief justice's liberal opinions, Johnson simultaneously declared his intention to fill the vacancy created by Fortas' elevation with Appeals Court Judge Homer Thornberry. The president believed that Thornberry, a Texan, would mollify skeptical southern senators.

A seasoned Senate vote-counter, Johnson concluded that despite filibuster warnings he just barely had the support to confirm Fortas. The president took encouragement from indications that his former Senate mentor, Richard Russell, and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen would support Fortas, whose legal brilliance both men respected.

The president soon lost Russell's support, however, because of administration delays in nominating the senator's candidate to a Georgia federal judgeship. Johnson urged Senate leaders to waste no time in convening Fortas' confirmation hearings. Responding to staff assurances of Dirksen's continued support, Johnson told an aide, "Just take my word for it. I know [Dirksen]. I know the Senate. If they get this thing drug out very long, we're going to get beat. Dirksen will leave us."

Fortas became the first sitting associate justice, nominated for chief justice, to testify at his own confirmation hearing. Those hearings reinforced what some senators already knew about the nominee. As a sitting justice, he regularly attended White House staff meetings; he briefed the president on secret Court deliberations; and, on behalf of the president, he pressured senators who opposed the war in Vietnam. When the Judiciary Committee revealed that Fortas received a privately funded stipend, equivalent to 40 percent of his Court salary, to teach an American University summer course, Dirksen and others withdrew their support. Although the committee recommended confirmation, floor consideration sparked the first filibuster in Senate history on a Supreme Court nomination.

On October 1, 1968, the Senate failed to invoke cloture. Johnson then withdrew the nomination, privately observing that if he had another term, "the Fortas appointment would have been different."

What happened to Abe Fortas, dear readers? The son of an immigrant Jew, he came from Tennessee, worked for the Roosevelt administration, and helped Lyndon Johnson get his first elected seat in Congress in 1948, a Senate seat from Texas, amidst charges of election fraud by the Johnson team. Fortas, a prominent attorney, "persuaded" the judge who was asked to sort out the whole mess not to overturn Johnson's 87-vote margin, even though 100 votes for him were cast in alphabetical order. Ah, good ol' majority rule. When Johnson became President, he put pressure on Justice Arthur Goldberg to resign, which he did, and then appointed Fortas to the Court.

When filibustered, Fortas faced a split Senate. You might think that Republicans were his undoing, seeing as how he was deemed very liberal, but in fact in the cloture vote 10 Republicans and 35 Democrats voted for cloture, with 24 Republicans and 19 Democrats voting against. 12 Democrats did not show up for the vote. This was, in other words, not a Republican hatchet job, nor the work of anti-Semites, nor any other kind of conspiracy to hold up and defile democracy.

Richard Nixon, who was the next President, as we all know, then appointed Warren Burger to head the Court. Goddamn that filibuster!

But back to Fortas. He was forced to resign from the Supreme Court in disgrace, I'm afraid, because in 1969 he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar once again. After it was established that Fortas took $20,000 from a former client under indictment for securities fraud, the Justice was forced to resign under threat of impeachment. Yep, Abe Fortas was an all-around class act. If only there had been no filibuster, he could have been Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And we could all be living in a world where the President dictated to the Court its rulings, the Justices were all on the corporate payroll, and helping to fix an election put you on the fast-track to a judicial appointment.

Not that it matters (and I don't consider this to be powerful evidence since no one, least of all Richard Nixon, could predict the future), but Fortas' seat on the Court was filled by another Nixon appointee, Harry Blackmun.

What did he ever do? Well, he wrote a little majority opinion on a case you may have heard of: Roe v. Wade.

Why does the filibuster hate America so much?

The World Can Blow Him

Bill Clinton wants to be head of the UN. On the one hand, he's a genius and possibly the smartest President ever. On the other hand, he's a compulsive lech and not technically eligible to hold the office, since the US has a permanent seat on the Security Council.

Could this be a good idea? What is his platform, exactly?

liar. Murderer. TRAITOR.

You Rotting Cunts

This is how ABC News, which knows full fucking well the impact of this story, treats Bernie Sanders' run for the Senate seat in Vermont. The headline is just "Socialist Leads Senate Race in Vermont." NOT "Congressman Runs for Senate" or "Bernie Sanders leads Senate Race" but "Socialist leads Senate Race in Vermont."

What is the meaning of this? In These Times magazine here in Chicago thinks a lot of Bernie Sanders, and their write-up of his campaign in this month's issue is not so fucking obsessively focused on his "socialist" leanings. Could ABC "News" article have something to do, maybe just maybe, with that damn ol' liberal press wanting to drum up support for Red Bernie ahead of next year's election?

You don't suppose (gasp!) that it's the other way around, do you? Maybe the media is happy to sling around the word "socialist," knowing full fucking well the hysteria that usually follows it, and then sit back and cluck its tongue at the mayhem it caused. The description of Sanders in the article could have come from any smear pamphlet directed at Eugene Debs--Sanders is frenetic, disheveled, and kooky. Hey, you know, if you don't have a story just create one. That's what counts--not the subject, not the facts, but how much motherfucking DRAMA you, the "impartial" journalist (or maybe I ought to put "journalist" in quotes?) can create.

Fox "News" was happy to pick up the ball and run with it, adding their own take, which was (and I quote verbatim) "Socialist congressman has gone from outcast in Congress to favorite at home"--yeah, douchebag, he was such an "outcast" that he got re-elected seven times and was well-liked and well-respected by Reps from both sides of the aisle! But no, the point is to make him appear as a crazy anomaly on the political landscape, a blazing wildfire of nutty idealism and socialist menace; and like a wildfire sloppy, out-of-control, and unable to sustain momentum.

Fuck you, ABC News. Fox, you don't even rate the effort it takes to raise my middle finger. But both of you just made my list. When Bernie Sanders, our Red Czar of Vengeance, takes over the government from the inside and the revolution is upon us, you two will be the first ones up against the wall.