- In: "the Holidays" | alcohol | Music | Open Thread | You Tube
- 44 Comments
Is it over with yet?
Good Saturday and Weekend!
Make it a double-no ice.
Yes, if you haven’t already been bombarded at the malls, grocery stores, your mail, emails and all the rest, we’re into the “special season” of the year. Oh what fun…
I was originally going to do a Christmas/holiday movie post but I didn’t have enough phenergan on hand to counteract the nausea that would induce. So instead I’ve opted for “Christmassy” songs. I feel that will be holiday themed enough for us.
When we get inside I’m gonna pee on your Christmas tree, my human
Perhaps I’m being overly pessimistic but with the advent (ha!) of a tRump Presidency and his four horsemen who will be leading the apocalypse, uh running the country, I see at least four years of lumps of coal for us not in the one percent or not being Putin. So without further adieu here we go!
(1) A Christmas Festival ~ Leroy Anderson ~ Boston Pops Orchestra: A staple of high school and middle school bands across America (Why listen to one Christmas classic when you could listen to a brass-blasting medley of nine?)
(2)‘Cold White Christmas’ ~ Casiotone For The Painfully Alone
Background info: The subject of this ballad is a young graduate who decides to go and make it on her own, only to find herself in a dead-end job and a mouldy flat. But with too much pride to face her family, she ends up spending Christmas alone, counting bed bugs.
(3) Dear Santa (Bring me a man this Christmas) ~ The Weather Girls
(4) Santa Claus ~ The Sonics
(5) Merry Christmas (I don’t want to fight tonight) ~ The Ramones
(6) Run Rudolph Run ~ Chuck Berry
So okay, those are my choices/selections for this weekend before the holiday. Please share yours in the comments below.
Vlad The Conqueror
Posted on: December 14, 2016
The problem with the Russians is that they are always fighting a world war. No matter what it is. An actual World War or the Eurovision contest. The public and the government treat the two with equal ferocity and dedication. When the Soviets formed a human shield around Stalingrad in 1943 they beat back the Nazis with the same fanaticism with which they try to defeat foreign pop singers, especially the transvestites. Wall-to-wall coverage on the news, front page headlines, celebrity coaches, personal visits and encouragements from members of the government – all the way up to Comrade Putin – it’s literally all the same thing to them. There is always an enemy at the gate, ready to destroy Mother Russia and all that is Holy about it. Sometimes the enemy carries a machine gun, sometimes a microphone. But to come in second is to come in last.
So when the mighty Soviet Union fell, something Vladimir Putin once declared to be the greatest tragedy to befall His people, it brought with it festering and oozing scars of humiliation and anger. USSR fell not because it was incapable of functioning, but because the West destroyed it. The West – and Reagan specifically – happily embraced this view of events. But they underestimated just how deeply these events cut the Russian people.
The West – and America as its face – have always been the Enemy of Russia. As much as the Russian public is obsessed with American money, culture, fashion, etc., it also views it as a perversion of purity and righteousness which Russia represents to its people. It is very much like Gollum and The One Ring. It hungers for The West and hates it in one breath. This belief among the general public that the West generally and America specifically are always trying to destroy Russia should not be underestimated. It’s why the Russians love strongment leaders like Putin. These leaders are the forces who will protect the people from Western interference. Because the West wants all that is Russian: to take it, eat it, consume it and destroy it like it destroys everything. The West is an agent of greed and sexual perversions – and Russia is always under attack. They believe these things with the sincerity of saints.
Russia’s rejection of The Other has over the years taken on odd forms. For example, in his day Tchaikovsky’s music was seen as too European, his embrace of Europe suspect. The real champions of Russian music in the 19th century were The Mighty Handful, consisting of Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Cui, Balakirev and Borodin. They deeply resented the fact that Tchaikovsky was conservatory trained and attacked formal education of music. Though they tolerated Tchaikovsky himself, Rimsky-Korsakov once wrote that “Tchaikovsky’s Conservatory training still constituted a considerable barrier between him and us.” (None of the Five received a formal education in composition.) To this day Russia – a deeply homobigoted country – refuses to acknowledge that Tchaikovsky was gay. Russia – also a deeply racist country – refuses to discuss that Alexander Pushkin, its greatest poet, was half black. These ideas are revolting to them, too Other.
So as we learn more details about Russian interference in American elections, we must understand that this is Russia’s war for survival. The attempt to reverse decades of what they see as humiliations at the hands of the West – and America specifically. Russia is like a Holy Land, its people its righteous pilgrims, and the barbarian Western hoardes are at the gate.
The news of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf (and they are now attempting to take down Angela Merkel too), isn’t news to anyone who paid attention before November 8th. Hillary Clinton discussed it in the 3rd Presidential debate on October 19th.
CLINTON: Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States.
TRUMP: No puppet. No puppet.
CLINTON: And it’s pretty clear…
TRUMP: You’re the puppet!
CLINTON: It’s pretty clear you won’t admit…
TRUMP: No, you’re the puppet.
CLINTON: … that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him, because he has a very clear favorite in this race.
So I think that this is such an unprecedented situation. We’ve never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17 — 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing.
WALLACE: Secretary Clinton…
CLINTON: And I think it’s time you take a stand…
TRUMP: She has no idea whether it’s Russia, China, or anybody else.
CLINTON: I am not quoting myself.
TRUMP: She has no idea.
CLINTON: I am quoting 17…
TRUMP: Hillary, you have no idea.
CLINTON: … 17 intelligence — do you doubt 17 military and civilian…
TRUMP: And our country has no idea.
CLINTON: … agencies.
TRUMP: Yeah, I doubt it. I doubt it.
CLINTON: Well, he’d rather believe Vladimir Putin than the military and civilian intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect us. I find that just absolutely…
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: She doesn’t like Putin because Putin has outsmarted her at every step of the way.
But for reasons that will spend decades trying to understand, the story never found traction in the media or among the patriotic Americans who supported Trump. John McCain and Lindsay Graham were silent. The New York Times did not cover the story above the fold of its print edition, like they covered FBI’s announcement that they were looking at Anthony Wiener’s computer with 3 stories above the fold in a single edition. I suppose we should be grateful that finally people are taking notice, although Mitch McConnell prefers not to drag Trump into it.
This was a very long game played by Putin. One really should try to admire it, if one was not the victim of it. Putin will have Trump’s election engraved on his own tombstone. “Here Lies Vladimir Putin, Wrestler of Bears, Shirtless Horseback Rider, and Conqueror of America.” Putin is making Russia Great Again. With the assistance of Julian Rapist Assange and Glenn “Leftwing Dictators are grrreat and Putin totally has nothing to do with this election” Greenwald. Bernie Bros reposting fake news stories on social media and the American news media that never met an e-mail it didn’t like to speculate about. Soviet leaders spent decades trying to bring Red Russia to Blue America. Putin has finally succeeded. Putin has put a momentary numbing balm on Russia’s persecution mania.
Note that the color Blue in Russia represents homosexuality. That depraved Blue America has taken on the color of Red Mother Russia means so much to them. Hail Comrade Putin! We thought we would all have to learn Chinese in the new century. I suggest people start taking up Russian instead.
Most awesome Twitterness…
Posted on: December 12, 2016
Good morning Widdershins. I truly hope your weekend was a great one. If you are wondering, our friend MB is on a much deserved vacay. She will be enjoying some R&R through next week.
Something much different for today. Almost finished with a post, I ran across this awesome and most righteous Twitter thread from yesterday afternoon. If ever there is a Nobel Prize for Twitterature, this gentleman will win it.
Eric Garland
The author’s name is Eric Garland, @ericgarland. His profile says he’s a strategic analyst for businesses and government agencies. A linguist and a bassist.
Imagine for a moment, this is over 240 tweets, back-to-back over a couple of hours yesterday afternoon. To get them in a form acceptable to WordPress, I copied, pasted, by the ones went through them, and put them in an acceptable form. The substance of the tweets remain original to Mr. Garland.
As to what you would call this, I don’t know. This is a call to arms. A call of patriotic resistance. The climatic speech of every science fiction movie president. A Fox Mulder long-stare soliloquy. Whatever it is, it is worth the read.
<THREAD> I’m now hearing this meme that says Obama, Clinton, et al. are doing nothing, just gave up. Guys. It’s time for some game theory.
ACTOR ANALYSIS: The Russians enter the Game with a broad objective, flexible tactics, and several acceptable outcomes.
Russian interests have been, for many years now, the subversion of Western institutions, principally NATO, but any will do.
This subversion can take many forms: driving wedges between US-Commonwealth-Euro intel cooperation, break up NATO, create chaos.
This game has been developing for many years, is asymmetrical, and much cheaper than building a decent aircraft carrier.
Plus, the Russians f**king rule at covert shit. Always have. Ask a cold warrior. Mucho respect for our adversaries. They do clever work!
Post-communism, they’re reduced to Drunk Uncle status in the global balance of power. Mouthy, smart, degraded, much reduced in stature.
Russians as *people* are civilized, artistic, enamored of brilliance and tragedy, and generally proud. And should be. They do not like this.
From this position launches an initiative from an old hand at the KGB, now solidified in influence: Subvert for the throat. Go big. Go hard.
While the West is frivolous and lazy and “Post-History,” the clever take advantage. And here begins our present story.
Let’s skip ahead to “Wikileaks.” BRILLIANT. Ingratiate the Left into this anti-establishment distrust of Western intel.
The Dubya Years
George W Bush and Dick Cheney being slovenly, reckless idiots, the moral authority of Iraq and US intel is nil. In step “journalists.
Stealing hard drives from US intel and dumping them to foreign agents? That’s *snicker* “journalism!” FREE SPEECH! ROFLMAO.
Oh, and such grand characters, so well run: Manning, Greenwald. So righteous, yet fragile! And feisty! Try a Twitter war with Glenn!
OH YOU PHILISTINE, YOU JUST HATE JOURNALISM! *sigh* *swigs something strong* And Moscow must have been doubling over.
Putting Snowden and his mole in context
THEN, OMG, that worked so well that the pièce de résistance was next: SNOWDEN!!! BOOYAH! THE BIG GAME! NSA! PRISM! SPASM!
(incidentally, the NSA was about the only agency the Russians took seriously) But then this EARNEST young man. He tells THE TROOTH!
DID YOU KNOW YOUR TOASTER IS SPYING ON YOU? THE GUBMINT! IT IS EVERYWHERE! THEY SPY ON (*controls snickering*) ALLIES! ALL BAD!
And still hungover from the rotten venality of the Iraq War and Bush’s perversion of the Intelligence Community as reliable, Wikileaks journalisms the NSA!
DON’T YOU CALL IT SOMETHING ELSE. HARD DRIVES FROM THE NSA IZ JOURNALISM! Even when you take the files to Brazil! Honest! Ask Glenn!
And then, automagically, our man Ed ends up…what’s this now? In Russia? Well, they are such welcoming folks! How…nice!
Langley and Fort Meade run out of bourbon in about three hours, and every intel guy in Russia is drunk, dancing on the desks, and LAFFING.
AND THE LEFT! HOLY F**KING ADORABLE BATMAN! Honi soit qui mal y pense! How dare you suggest untoward Russian involvement! Journamalisms!!!!
US intel snorts all of the Robotussin in the DC/MD/VA area. Putin calls Snowden “A weird guy.” LOLZ. Moving on to the current chapter.
MEANWHILE, AT THE FOX NATION FORUMS: The other part of this impressive op is percolating – the buttress of the Alt-Right.
ONCE UPON A TIME, Dan Rather chased Nixon around a room asking him questions VERY HARSHLY and the notion of the Evil Media Elite was born.
See, because Nixon got impeached, that meant the media was in on it! WaPo! NYT! Traitors! We look bad! And the media hate begins.
Never mind that to know something in Topeka, somebody’s gotta send you a newspaper or a radio signal or whatevs: The Media Is Lying.
Now, it’s true, high level journalists and editors don’t always see the world like Johnny Lunchpail in Missouri. True facts. But. Trouble.
Republicans decide to create a whole new layer of think tanks and media outlets in the 1980s dedicated to The Other Side.
The think tanks have a POV, but some are quite good, Cato in particular. Heritage came up with what’s now Obamacare. AEI…ehhh. 2 outta 3.
But then the media play comes in. The cranky insane tent pastors on AM radio get…a makeover. They become Legitimate. Embraced.
Magnates start investing in outlets. Brand new pundits get huge audiences yelling about The Way Things Ought to Be (for White People).
And it’s more successful than free chicken and beer. The money flows, the ratings swell. An Australian starts a TV network in the US.
What develops is an attractive, well-produced alternate universe. You no longer need an alternate take. You have alternate facts.
Al Gore mutters and bores his way out of a presidency in a race against a guy who spoke English like he learned it from Rosetta Stone.
And now, the stage is set for a metastasis of batshit nuttery, jingoism, and irrational autocratic fervor. A party becomes a cult.
9/11 and our Response in Context
September 11, 2001 occurs. A buncha guys are in DC who couldn’t wait to go to Iraq. And the right wing media is shiny and tuned-up.
We go kick a bunch of barbarian ass in Afghanistan, as well we should have. They were beating women and destroying Buddhas. F**k ’em.
But then, The Axis of Evil Speech. And all the analysts in DC I know collectively go, “Oh, fuuuuu…they’re not serious, are they?”
Bill Clinton spent most of his years pounding the living snot out of Hussein. Dude built anything funny lookin’, in came the rockets.
There was one concerning nation-state for most, and – hint – it’s in Asia. The other threat was non-state actors. *ahem* Which played out.
And now – *headdesk* – they’re going to Iraq. With bullshit intel. Goddamn it. GODDAMN IT. This is going to suck, said smart people.
And there’s the entire right-wing think tank and media machine blaring, careening, gloating. From the gov’t itself, and from every outlet.
HOW DARE YOU BE SKEPTICAL? WE HAVE AGENCIES! INTEL! IT’S SECRET! DO YOU WANT MORE PLANES IN YOUR NOSTRILS, UP YOUR BUTTS? BE PATRIOTIC!
And goddamn, did those media outlets sell a lot of ads for trucks, pain killers, pharmaceuticals and financial services. $$$$$$
Many earnest patriots also pointed out, hey, um, there apparently are no weapons that could have blown up Cleveland, so…
But now, this whole thing has morphed into tribalism. YES THEY DID TOO FIND WEAPONS OF MASS DEPRESSION AND YOU SUCK BUSH ROCKS PUSSY
Ann Coulter comes on TV to talk over B-roll of rusty munitions WE SOLD HUSSEIN and said, well look, there they are. Total. Propaganda.
America looks like shit. Our intel services take a helluva beating. Iraq’s invasion – which was basically unplanned – results in chaos.
Katrina. Bush. Looking out the window. Confused. Hey, but in intel news, the National Geospatial-Intel Agency helps critically.
2008. The housing Ponzi we used to get out of the DotComBust-9/11-era recession has now gone pear-shaped. Utterly nuclear.
America’s banks, the one thing other than movies and video games we do reliably, all shit the bed simultaneously.
The Obama Administration
We then elect a cappuccino-colored president whose middle name is Hussein. The Right goes completely over the f**king cliff into insane.
They start the TEA PARTY! YO REMEMBER BOSTON! PAAAATRIOTS SOMETHING SOMETHING! TEA PARTY! NOTHING MATTERS TAKE IT ALL BACK YAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
This political movement happens when the only thing Obama has really said with conviction is “Fired up! Ready to go!” In late November 2008.
But ON GEORGE WASHINGTON’S GRAVE THIS HAS GONE TOO FAR!!! And the entire right-wing media gets its next several years of revenue LOCKED.
Now, we’ve got a really, reaaaally fertile field in which former KGB agents can make a long play. And Moscow gets to work.
America’s at this weird nihilistic place, which is one thing for France and Russia, but NOT for earnest midwesterners who are agape.
Now the American Left has got some juice back again. But the Right is just apoplectic from pure suffering. Both are ripe for subversion.
The Left is out of love with American business and military-industrial, the Right foams at the mouth against legitimate government.
And the guys who have been twisting minds from Vladivostok to Havana and back get to work building an “alt” media structure.
We’ve already covered the genius of that who Wikileaks op on the Left. SCORE! Now for the perversion of the formerly nationalist Right.
JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST THERE’S A BLACK DUDE IN THE WHITE HOUSE! LIVING THERE! It’s not hard to convince Southerners this is insane.
But put a little elbow grease in on some internet forums, and pretty soon you can have Northern John Adams-type conservatives, too.
A whole generation of disaffect Rush Limbaugh fans (WE LISTENED AND DITTOED SO HARD WHY IS THERE A BLACK DUDE THERE?) is ripe for picking.
In addition to alt-finance sites and “Russia Today” a new TV network, they start infiltrating “social media.”
Disclosure: Because I’m mouthy all the time like this, RT had me on as a guest. They prop up US “subversives.” And they don’t edit you!
Fun fact: Al Jazeera and RT just let me talk. US media almost always wants some hand in your final product before booking you. Ironic, no?
But from about 2009 to the 2016 election, a madness is being brewed and slowly poured down the throats of increasingly hysterical Americans.
When you imbibe from this potion, everything is awful and everyone official is lying to you. Only other members of the cult are with you!
US media, which is complicit in many of our problems, is portrayed for the extremists as conspiratorial liars. All the time.
Formerly sane members of US society start sounding like my schizophrenic grandfather, who said Government was keeping him from His Mission.
Only the Gubmint knew the Archangel Gabriel was sending him to find the next Jesus. So, cut it out, CIA! Stop it, Giant Conspiracy!
And then people you knew from Functional Daily Life started talking that way. People with car dealerships. Dentists. Regular folk.
They started with CONSPIRACY, especially after 2012, because DAMMIT NO THERE SHOULDN’T BE A BLACK DUDE TWO TERMS NOOOO! NO NO NO NO NO NO
THEY ARE ALL IN ON IT. THE CORPORATIONS. THE MEDIA WHORES. THE GOVERNMENT! (except for my Medicare, don’t touch that) ALL OF THEM!
A CABAL CALLED The Pentaveret: The Queen. The Pope. The Gettys. The Rothschilds. AND COLONEL SANDERS, BEFORE HE WENT TITS UP!
If you haven’t unfollowed by now, 1. You’re nuts and 2. Thank you for indulging my So I Married an Axe Murderer reference.
The 2016 Election
MOVING ON. The conspiratorial fever at about 108, we begin the 2016 election – AGAINST EVERYTHING HOLY – in 2015.
The Republicans debate over 712 times, discussing topics such as who hated Obamacare more, and who had a large penis. Jesus, that happened.
The Democrats all debate who’s going to get out of Hillary’s way first, except for VERMONT’S OWN BERNIE SANDERS, who…gets popular?
I’m from Vermont and have known Bernie forever, so I’m very surprised, but everyone kinda likes it. Hillary wins anyhow.
And now, the target for electoral mischief is enormous. Hillary is the most known quantity in America, with huge backstory.
Creating a conspiracy narrative around the Clintons is like creating a “southern” narrative around NASCAR and grits.
Now – with Trump as the non-conformist, not-like-all-the-other-rotten-conspiratorial-assholes paragon, the Russians go into overdrive.
The Russians didn’t create Trump – only New York City and American gullibility could have done that. But they’ve got a SWEETHEART outcome.
Trump – a moron – is probably unlikely to take the whole enchilada, but that’s perfect. If he gets close enough, he can cry UNFAIR! forever.
Amazing scenario for Russia – instead of RT, they get an institutional nihilist chowderhead with American credentials. They butter him up.
Hell, to hear many tell of it, the have kompromat on him. But anyhow, they invest in his stuff. He was there in 2013. They have a lever.
IF on the off chance, Trump actually (and who could guess this) wins, then…wow, they’ve got quite an opening.
Either way, on the run-up to Nov 2016, Russian involvement was as subtle as a fart in a spacesuit. Scroll down my TL for details.
The U.S. IC had its hair on fire. This situation was incredibly dangerous. A paranoid U.S. faction backing a rogue with ties to Russia.
Back to Present Day
OK, Jesus, at LONG LAST, back to my initial premise. Why didn’t Obama and Clinton “do something?” JESUS, WHAT CAN YOU DO?
You come out and have the CIA enter the goddamn race for Clinton? True or not, we look like some weird cryptofascist state.
Or, you let the Russkis laugh and taunt and infiltrate Facebook with majillions of propaganda tales for idiots? Just let them run around?
Do you come out the day after this totally weird-smelling abomination of an election with all its technical difficulties?
Do you tell America the day after the election that Russia spearfished all of our think tanks in brazen fashion?
Hillary, for her part, gives a brief and all-too-calm speech and goes hiking. Probably the best move on the board.
Obama WELCOMES! Mr. Trump in an intense, welcoming welcome. To the White House. Mr. Big Winner Guy! Welcome! Fellow American!
Trump looks like he swallowed a goldfish and stares at the floor a bit too long. As if maybe a joke has gone too far.
In the next month, a small band of propagandists run in a circle and try to look like they’re forming a government. It’s ungainly.
And now, it’s December 11th. Trump says he don’t need no stinkin’ intel agencies. Russia (BWA HAHAHAHAAAA) blames Ukraine! LOLOLOLOLZZZ
A lot of Republicans stare into the middle distance, except for McCain and Graham who are NOT HAVING THIS SHIT. (I salute you, gentlemen.)
And here we are. Americans. Hopefully soon united. This isn’t a partisan issue. Obama isn’t late to the party. People are doing their jobs.
If you think any of this is easy, you’re ignorant and delusional. Tonight, though, I write to you with great hope.
Music Working Up to Crescendo and Aliens are about to get Whooped
This may be America’s finest hour, as we act together with unshakable resolve to deal with enemies foreign and domestic.
We have done so in the past and come out a stronger, more just, more pluralistic nation. We will do so now. And for me? Or die trying.
America is the steward of a genius system entrusted to flawed stewards whose descendants seem to act on the right side of history.
This system is not rotten, not beyond repair, not exiled from the future. We have been infiltrated by agents who would drive us mad.
This is a nation built on civilization, humanity, and reason, rejecting the febrile superstitions of the past. It must stand. And will.
We are at present in a place of danger where some of our fellow citizens have forgotten our most cherished values. We’ve been here before.
America, reluctantly but dutifully, recognizes its internal contradictions and failings. Slavery. Racism. Internment. Classism.
The genius documents that gave rise to noble American sentiments were themselves authored by those who failed them. (h/t @ Mr. Jefferson)
We spilled the blood of our brothers to resolve the contradictions of slavery and then abandoned the project while killing Indians.
Americans proclaimed the equality of all men while treating women as chattel and all non-whites as lesser. We are indeed hypocrites.
But to be American is to accept that unflinchingly and to soldier forth for future generations, and DO BETTER, GODDAMN IT.
There are those who would mire us in worldly cynicism, to anchor us in a world where our institutions betray forever, where values perish.
And to be American is to face that intellectual, moral, and spiritual assault with the unshakeable devotion to something more lofty.
And when that loftiness fails, as it so often does, to be American is to seize it again and again, knowing that our Creator desire Progress.
Progress can come from Traditionalists or Labor Unionists or mystics or musicians or doctors or Senators or journalists. All are exhorted.
The Progress demanded by our Creator can be achieved by immigrants and natives, skeptics and believers, the elite and the humble alike.
That is America. That is the promise that Americans oft ignore and which more cynical nations would defile for their own gain.
That America will last long after I have died, long after new people have picked the torch. Long after we betray it again, as we will.
But America will go on, even if by another name, unless all who have heard her name are extinguished. This is just the locus of promise.
America came from the olive groves of Italy and the shipyard of Plymouth and the islands of the Philippines. Indivisible.
America came from the Torah and Voltaire’s Candide and Adam Smith and zen koans and Greek mathematics and Rumi’s poetry.
America is all these things, and should yet another absolutist demagogue, foreign or domestic seize her, it will be far from the end.
Now is a time for patriots. It’s also Sunday afternoon. I’m gonna get a beer and watch football. God Bless America, and all nations.
What’s on your mind today?
- In: dis 'n dat | lazy weekend | Music | Open Thread | You Tube
- 43 Comments
Good Saturday and Weekend Widdershins!
I don’t know about where all of our Widdershins live, but here in Bama we’re having our first real cold snap 
with an arctic front moving through. We’ll be having lows in the twenties and teens and a few days where the highs will not climb out of the forties. The Winter Solstice is just a few weeks away. Yikes! Fredster is not happy with cold weather.
Perhaps we could make an analogy between the shorter, darker and colder days to the results of the election, but we won’t go there today. We’ll just ascribe the cold weather to the normal seasons and not give the other thing much thought. At least for this weekend.
So with that let’s look at some songs about cold, cold weather and the like. Maybe some cold hearts perhaps? My choices are below and I look forward to seeing yours in the comments.
(1) Out in the cold ~ Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
(2) Cold Song ~ Sting
(3) Cold Weather Blues ~ Muddy Waters
(4) Die Winterreise ~ Der Liermann ~ Schubert: Fisher Dieskau
(5) The Four Seasons-Winter ~ Vivaldi
(6) Cold Wind To Valhalla ~ Jethro Tull
* * * * *
Bonus clip just because I thought it was funny:
Okay, those are my selections, so please share some of your musical choices below.
Good and hard…
Posted on: December 9, 2016
Another week has passed and I’m no closer to closure on the election. Professor Krugman had some suggestions on Twitter. He opined that anti-intellectuals see the very act of trying to figure out how to solve problems as arrogance. He also suggested anti-intellectuals see liberal elites as intolerant since liberals refuse to ignore the fanatical prejudice exhibited by anti-intellectuals.
Such highfalutin thinking brings me full-circle to a larger question: What’s a person to do if half the country despises you for insisting “Real America” is a bit larger than a NASCAR track or a WWE ring, isn’t always found in the sights of a firearm, and becomes increasingly enjoyable as homogeneity decreases? Put another way, post-factual prejudicial ignorance seems to be a winning political strategy.
Speaking of such folks, around here we dubbed the Tea Party crowd, the “I’ve got mine, sorry about your luck” party. Finally, people are coming around to understand there is no vestige of the Tea Party remaining just a month after the election of President-Elect Pussy-Grabber. Everyone from pitchfork wielding Ted Cruz to Jabba the Limbaugh has dug into their bountiful arses to make excuses.
If somebody involved in the tea-party debate of 2009–2010 had predicted the events of 2016, conservatives would have refused to believe it. Hell, even most liberals would have refused to believe it. It’s one thing to suspect tea-party rhetoric was phony, quite another to believe the entire GOP could disregard every single putative principle of the movement even before it had its hands on power. Why is anybody pretending these notions ever really mattered?
That last question is the linchpin of these voters’ tenuous grasp on reality: Why should anyone pretend that conservatism has any guiding principle whatsoever outside the wresting of political power?
Paul Ryan, the guy who still gets a college boner over a Russian alcoholic atheist, has as much as admitted it. The Tang-hued groper can steal as much as he wants as long as he wants for the small price of taking health care away from 20 million people and privatizing Medicare and Social Security. There will be not the first hint of investigation from that pubic-headed Utah heathen who insists Hillary must continue to be investigated and hounded for “emailghaziwhatevergate.”
Of course, so many lefty brotards complain, if Hillary had only talked about the economic plight of the working class whites, we wouldn’t have these problems. The simplistic heads belching these inane statements wouldn’t even make acceptable doorstops. For instance:
Famous 1960s photo from Appalachia. The chronic problems didn’t start in 2008 with a guy named Obama…
Here is the troubling reality for civic minded liberals looking to justify their preferred strategies: Hillary Clinton talked about the working class, middle class jobs, and the dignity of work constantly.
She detailed plans to help coal miners and steel workers. She had decades of ideas to help parents, particularly working moms, and their children. She had plans to help young men who were getting out of prison and old men who were getting into new careers. She talked about the dignity of manufacturing jobs, the promise of clean-energy jobs, and the Obama administration’s record of creating private-sector jobs for a record-breaking number of consecutive months. She said the word “job” more in the Democratic National Convention speech than Trump did in the RNC acceptance speech; she mentioned the word “jobs” more during the first presidential debate than Trump did. She offered the most comprehensively progressive economic platform of any presidential candidate in history—one specifically tailored to an economy powered by an educated workforce.
So these intellectually bankrupt Trump Chumps voted themselves out of health care with no prospects for sustainable employment. What does the appointment of millionaires, billionaires, and disrupters portend for these reality adverse, low-information, highly prejudiced voters? Three quick examples:
First, while the Taiwan phone call engineered by the $20,000/month political man-whore Bob Dole (I hope when I’m 310 years old I won’t have to be wheeled out to perform fellatio on an Orangutan) is fast fading from public consciousness, there’s something literally hidden just beneath the surface. You see, one of my very first posts here at TW was about the South China Sea as a potential world flashpoint.
Even before the Orangeloupe has gold-plated the first urinal in the White House, he has upended a forty-year Foggy Bottom bulwark, our two-China policy. “Why,” you ask? Remember the clamorous Yam’s preoccupation with taking Iraqi oil?
Guess what those pesky dinosaurs left throughout the shallow South China Sea? On the high side, 213 Billion barrels of oil and 500 Trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Those 6,000 year-old dinosaurs plopped another Persian Gulf right off the coast of China. Now doesn’t the Taiwan call make a little more sense? Doesn’t a Exxon-Mobil Secretary of State send a tingle up your gas hose? Not being able to toss a kangaroo scrotum comb-over without hitting a General seems much more reasonable doesn’t it?
Full employment might well be on its way for all those puritanical “Bernie or busters.” I hope they know how to swim.
Second, there’s good old Dr. Ben. Who says, “Let a sleeping neurosurgeon lie?” Given that he grew up (Development) in a house (Housing) in a city (Urban), does not qualify him to be the Secretary of an agency of 8,000 employees and a budget of $50 Billion. And contrary to what all the pundits say, “It isn’t because HUD is reserved for an African-American appointment.”
Truth is, Republicans for time ever-lasting have sported a diamond-cutting erection to get their hands on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obviously, housing policy means very little to the Bannon alt-right brotards, but it means quite a bit to those who want to make some serious cash. Since old-man Fred Drumpf made a considerable part of his fortune from public housing, don’t think for an instant the enormous graft potential of HUD has gone unnoticed by the Mango Meerkat.
Third, and this could be the perfect white-collar crime: Say you are the clodpates Uday and Qusay Trump. You hear from your orange Papi that a Twitter storm about a company is imminent so it would be a good idea to short the stock. The perfect crime — who could prove it — especially when the SEC is going to be gutted like last week’s fish.
Twenty-two minutes after the Boeing CEO made a mildly critical statement about Herr Drumpf’s trade policy, the Mango Man-Child went on a Twitter rant. A lying, fictitious rant, but a rant of retribution nonetheless. It cost the Boeing shareholders over a half-Billion dollars in equity. In one day. One 137 character tweet. There’s plenty of money to be made in “them-thar” tweets. Where the Clampetts found black gold, these Trumpets have Twitter.
More examples will surface. Plenty more opportunities for regret will arise. Multitudinous tossups between ignorance and criminal intent will confound us. And we have 70,000 white guys in three states to thank for it. As H.L. Mencken said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Here’s hoping those 70,000 guys get it, “good and hard.”
What’s on your mind today?
Here and There
Posted on: December 7, 2016
- In: 2016 Election | Civil Rights | Current Events | Donald Trump | Entertainment | Feminism | Gay Issues | Gay Rights | Hillary Clinton | Human Rights | Marriage equality | misogyny | Music | Patriarchy | Politicians | Politics | Propaganda | Remembrance | Sexism | Uncategorized | Veterans | War | Women | Womens' Rights
- 60 Comments
A few of random thoughts for the week, my fellow Widdershins.
This weekend I attended a friend’s wedding in Washington DC. My friend, Mike, served for 5 years in the Army, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and worked his way to Captain before leaving service. He came out of the closet to his friends in the army shortly before leaving and before DADT was repealed. (His husband used to work in a publicity firm in DC that serves politicians. Because everybody needs good PR.) They took Trump’s election very personally, especially as a gay couple. But it was encouraging to have the military chaplain, who presided over the ceremony, acknowledge how difficult life for gay men and women is in the military and how much he hopes things get better.
I was seated at the table with some of my friend’s former military brothers and sisters, all straight. My direct neighbor was one very Southern redneck from Texas. I, the East coast elite, looked at him with suspicion at first. But as he cheered the grooms’ first dance I was reminded of a story another friend once told me about Spike Lee. That friend was a manager of a movie theater in Harlem and they held premieres of several Spike Lee movies. At one premiere a fight broke out in the audience. Lee came up to my friend afterwards and apologized for the fight, though he had nothing to do with it. My friend responded: “Oh it’s fine, we were expecting it so we were prepared.” Lee responded: “You shouldn’t have expected it and it shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry it happened.” Lessons learned about assumptions, so I shouldn’t have made any about this large Southern military man and what he thinks about gay people and their marriages.
Speaking of gay, Madonna was just named Billboard Magazine’s woman of the year. I love Madonna, not just in that back-handed “Well she’s proved her mettle for 30 years and she’s got a few big hits” sort of way. I genuinely love her music, she’s written some of the most infectious and important pop songs of the last 30 years. She’s charted more No. 1 hits than any other artist in Billboard’s history. Her tours have earned $1.3 billion, the most of any female artist. So it’s not just shock values, she has proven her musical chops for 30 years. I also admire her determination. This is one woman who refused to bake cookies. One may not like her music or respect her approach to fame, but it’s hard to argue she’s more famous than Jesus’s mother at this point. That’s quite the feat. She’s paved the way for many women in the entertainment industry. Now, as a 58 year old, she’s still pushing boundaries. About a year ago she posted a photo to Instragram with hairy armpits. Internet broke. People were very upset. Mind you, she caused controversy with hairy armpits in the 1980’s too and maybe the fact that people were still angry about it is why it was important for her post the photo. The Billboard interview that accompanies the Woman of the Year headline, by the actress Elizabeth Banks, touches on a few interesting topics. Madonna hosted a rally for Hillary Clinton in Washington Square Park in NYC the night before the election. She says since the election she’s felt like “someone died.” And she was disappointed by how many women voted for Trump.
Women’s nature is not to support other women. It’s really sad. Men protect each other, and women protect their men and children. Women turn inward and men are more external. A lot of it has do with jealousy and some sort of tribal inability to accept that one of their kind could lead a nation. Other people just didn’t bother to vote because they didn’t like either candidate, or they didn’t think Trump had a chance in the world. They took their hands off the wheel and then the car crashed.
Madonna is also asked about ageism in the entertainment industry and America. One thing people constantly tell Madonna now is she should stop flaunting her boobs or hairy armpits because she’s an old woman. One way to dismiss her is to call her “irrelevant.” Nobody says that about Mick Jagger. And they were telling Madonna to not flaunt her boobs when she was in her 20’s too.
Age is only brought up with regard to women. It’s connected to sexism, chauvinism and misogyny. When Leonardo [DiCaprio] is 60 years old, no one is going to talk about his relevance. Am I relevant as a female in this society that hates women? Well, to people who are educated and are not chauvinists or misogynists, yes.
And speaking of Washington DC, above is a photo we took at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday.
And one of the places we visited was the Holocaust Museum. The subject of the Holocaust is one I’ve read about a fair amount in the past. Nazi atrocities have always fascinated me so I’ve done a fair amount of reading on the subject because I keep trying to understand how ordinary people could such awful things. I highly recommend Richard Rhodes’ “Masters of Death,” for example, about the Einsatzgruppen, an elite group of SS soldiers who followed the German army into Eastern Europe and exterminated, virtually by hand, about 1.5 million people as the German Army advanced into the Soviet Union in 1941. It was the first step of Hitler’s Final Solution. So the images and the stories at the museum are something I have been reading about and studying for some time. But having everything assembled in one place and in such a thorough fashion is very heavy. Two places at the exhibit were particularly haunting. At the end of the Final Solution section the hundreds of shoes in a pile are hair-raising. But the most emotional moment, unexpectedly so, was walking through a train car used to deport Jews to Dachau. You walk in, you stop for a moment inside – and it just takes your breath away. You can hear the voices still echoing inside the walls.
In the first part of the exhibit, about Hitler’s rise to power, it’s really difficult to not see the ascendancy of Trump and its parallels to Hitler. I know, you’re not supposed to compare people to Hitler. But sometimes you can and you should. Hitler rose in power in part because nobody believed he would do any of the horrible things he said he would do. His ideas and philosophies were not new to anyone. He articulated them in his book and he spoke about them at length as he rose to power, before he was appointed to be the Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler challenged Hindenburg for Presidency in 1932. The vote was close and they had to have a run-off, one week of campaigning. Hindenburg delivered one radio address. Hitler rented a plane from Lufthansa and spent the week flying around Germany, holding rallies in 22 cities in one week. The public was electrified, he made headlines of every newspaper. Hindenburg, a very well-known figure, won the run-off. But Hitler, the master rally-holder, became a big enough thorn in Hindenburg’s side that he appointed Hitler to be Chancellor of Germany. Hindenburg’s allies convinced the aging President that Hitler could be controlled from the inside and that appointing him would be harmless. We know the rest.
As Germany’s Left shattered because nobody could agree on a common adversary, and a certain wing of the Left didn’t think everyone else was pure enough to support – Hitler, who promised the frustrated Germans that he would make Germany relevant again – quickly consolidated his power. He then did exactly what he said he would do. In one documentary shown at the museum, a female reporter returning from Germany held a press-conference on a boat. (Sadly I did not jot down her name and have not been successful at locating this press-conference online. I couldn’t even narrow down the name of the reporter.) But she said explicitly that she observed that the Nazis had started doing in Germany exactly what they all along said they were going to do, so maybe America and the world should start taking them seriously.
I’m not saying Trump is Hitler. I’m just saying…
One thing I really liked in the exhibit is that the final section is dedicated to many individuals who fought against the Nazis and helped Jews during the Holocaust. There are many names and photographs, and brief summaries of how they helped. None of them are as famous as Oscar Schindler. But how amazing that someone remembers their individual stories, ordinary men and women of different ages, backgrounds, professions and religions, who risked their own lives to save others.
I kept checking for their death dates and was glad to see that many of them did survive the war and lived long lives. Though not all.
Hans and Sophie Scholl with Christoph Probst in summer 1942
A few college students formed a small group The White Rose. Consisting of students from University of Munich that included siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, Willi Graf, Christoph Probst, Alex Schmorell, another Scholl sibling Inge and a philosophy professor Kurt Huber. The students were in their early 20’s. Between June 1942 and February 1943 they distributed leaflets denouncing the Nazis and their mass murders of Jews, some of which the members of The White Rose hand witnessed first-hand at home and at the front. Soon they were all arrested and executed. Hans Scholl’s final words were: “Long live Freedom!”
Prior to their deaths, several members of the White Rose believed that their execution would stir university students and other anti-war citizens into a rallying activism against Hitler and the war. Accounts suggest, however, that university students continued their studies as usual, citizens mentioned nothing, many regarding the movement as anti-national. Their actions were mostly dismissed, until after the war when their efforts were eventually praised by the German consciousness.
What’s on your mind folks? This is an open thread.
Activist Monday: Our Hail Mary…
Posted on: December 5, 2016
Rests on the shoulders of perennial presidential spoiler, and now epic Jewish Guilt sufferer, Jill Stein. Strange days, indeed.
For reasons of “electoral integrity” (aka: “Oh sh*t, what did I do?!”). Stein is determined to press forward with recounts in the three states previously considered part of the Democratic Firewall: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. At this point, Drumpf’s margin of “victory” in the 2016 election is down to about 70,000 votes. An automatic recount is very close to being required in both Michigan and Pennsylvania, due to the extremely small percentage of der Trumperer’s “win.” Whether or not this recount adds any votes for HRC is almost irrelevant, as what it is far more likely to find is evidence of vote tampering and/or hacking. Indeed, in Wisconsin, in one county, the seal on 5 of 9 ESS voting machines was clearly shown to be broken.
If the name “ESS” rings a bell, it should. The machines are notoriously favorable to Republicans. Yet they’re still used in both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Quelle coincidence! Here are some interesting parallels between a completely outrageous election result in South Carolina in 2008, based on ESS machines, and the still impossible-to-believe result in the 2016 election.
Strong disparities between absentee ballots and election day ballots
Dr. Miller performed additional tests to determine whether there was a significant difference in the percentage of absentee and Election Day votes that each candidate received. The result in the Senate election is highly statistically significant: Rawl performs 11 percentage points better among absentee voters than he does among Election Day voters. “This difference is a clear contrast to the other races. Statistically speaking, the only other Democratic candidate who performed differently among the two voter groups was Robert Ford, who did better on Election Day than among absentees in the gubernatorial primary,” Miller said.
Dump Trump
Comments