Godless

"All so-called revealed religions consist mainly of three portions, a cosmogony more or less mythical, a history more or less falsified, and a moral code more or less pure."

- Sir Richard Francis Burton

Joseph Heller's Other Masterpiece

Something Happened. Good book, with prose inspired by Beckett. Best enjoyed in that nice 1974 Knopf hardcover edition with the red-colored top textblock and rough-trimmed fore edge. Best way to find a copy (outside of your local library): Abebooks (limit to hardcover and search within results for a "fine" copy).

Social Security calculations for rich people

Courtesy of the N.Y. Times, the paper designed for the elites. Average household income of weekday N.Y. Times readers was $74,656 in 2009 and their average home value $263K, so why is the article focused on household incomes much higher than that?

AT 45 YEARS OLD Our couple now earn $140,000 and has amassed about $255,000 in a 401(k) account. But if they learn their Social Security benefits are going to be cut by nearly 20 percent, they will need to save nearly an extra $90,000 — which is about 8.3 percent more in their taxable and tax-deferred accounts — by the time they retire. To do that, they need to cut their discretionary spending by about 9.7 percent a year for the rest of their lives.

“They have a larger permanent reduction in their living standard than the 35-year-olds because they have fewer years to adjust,” Professor Kotlikoff said. “They can’t spread out the loss in spending power over as many years.”

AT 55 YEARS OLD Informing people a mere decade from retirement that their Social Security payments will be cut or that the retirement age will rise, is not likely, experts said. Even so, let’s assume the worst for a moment.

At 55, our couple are earning about $175,000, and has nearly $525,000 in total retirement savings. But to help offset the lost Social Security money, they will need to save $82,900 more — or nearly 7.7 percent across all accounts — over the next decade. To do that, they will have to spend 10.4 percent less each year.

“Increases in Social Security’s retirement age is another way to say Social Security benefit cut,” Professor Kotlikoff said. “And big benefit cuts, like those being contemplated, will mean big hits to the spending power of the affected generations. Younger cohorts would suffer less pain, but for a longer time, while older cohorts experience more pain for a shorter time. Either way you cut it, it hurts.”

One financial planner, who has dual citizenship in the United States and Greece, said he was not taking chances. “Having seen what happened in Greece, I feel even more strongly today that I should not count on any Social Security for me and my younger clients,” said the planner, George Papadopoulos, 43, of Novi, Mich. “I will continue to tell clients not to highly rely on Social Security and think of any money coming their way as gravy.”

"The state is in no danger from its subjects, the killing machine free to operate sans serious objection."

Dennis Perrin:

In a reasonably healthy society, the Wikileaks disclosure about US behavior in Afghanistan would raise political hackles, potentially threatening the government itself. And while the military and Obama's circle warn that Wikileaks is doing just that, in reality the state is in no danger from its subjects, the killing machine free to operate sans serious objection.

"Wake up, America."

How I hate...

"How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity. "
- William S. Burroughs

"And what does the money machine eat to shit out? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity."
- William S. Burroughs

And something I've been trying recently (and unsuccessfully) to articulate myself:

"Political conflicts are merely surface manifestations. ... To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth."
- William S. Burroughs

Smart man.

No more Target for me

"I'm going to boycott Target until they make this right."

Inequality is not a sign of merit, it's a sign of failure

Robert Paul Wolff:

Let me say it again: virtually all of the boys and girls in our society are capable of learning how to perform well-compensated jobs in a perfectly adequate fashion, and most of them could perform creditably in even the most demanding jobs, if given half a chance and the proper preparation. The lesson I learn from a lifetime in the Academy is very simply this: Any group of averagely intelligent young boys and girls, given the proper support, socialization, assistance, and opportunity, can prepare themselves to fill successfully one of the good jobs in American society. If a large proportion of the young people of some racial, ethnic, religious, or gendered group are failing to do this, the fault lies with the society, not with the boys and girls. Performance on so-called objective tests is neither evidence of, nor a prerequisite for, the ability to succeed in American society. The boys and girls of every city, town, or village in every society in the world, are capable of becoming averagely competent and productive members of their adult world. If they are failing to do so, it is the fault of the adults in the society. With attention, guidance, and with the unshakable conviction on our part that they are going to succeed, they will in fact succeed in becoming averagely successful.

"So you have no health care, Mr Crimmins?"

The great Barry Crimmins. More of the story here and here.

She brought me to a desk at the other side of the FOX-News Memorial Waiting Room. There she announced to all the other patients and me -- "So you have no health care, Mr Crimmins?"

Getting into the spirit of farce, I stage-whispered, "None at all. I made the horrible mistake of getting sick in the United States, where we need our money for more important things like senseless, endless wars and haranguing the indigenous people of the Southwest for moving back and forth across borders created by thieving scum! But you know all about that, what with your daylong exposure to fair and balanced FOX-News!"

She kept smiling like a used car salesperson hell-bent on unloading a YUGO that had only been through the one flood. She then informed me that there may be a way to subsidize part of the costs I was bound to incur at the for-profit joint named after Jesus's friend. It seemed all I had to do was answer several embarrassing questions about my life and finances, well within earshot of all the other poor souls in the FOX-News Memorial Waiting Room.

I said, "Oh good. This way we can not only humiliate me, we can also drive away some of the other deadbeat ill and injured people, who had the nerve to come to a hospital when they were feeling poorly. The last thing a sick person feels like doing is be made an example of so let me serve as a warning to all the poor devils who are politely pretending they can't hear everything we're saying.

"Nice system you have here-- first you pound would-be patients with some FOX News where they fairly blame poor people for all of our economic woes. Then you bring them in for a private grilling. Then you haul the remains out here for the final indignities.

Well enough of that! Even if I get past you today, it will just mean that I'll be sent to the next desk where my pariah status will set off alarms from here to the board of directors. Where once again I'll be treated as a scamming thief rather than as a person in need of care and compassion. And where some other functionary for fiscal evil will talk down to me, even though I would never be so low as to do a job that helps add to the body count of decent people who made the mistake of dreaming of forestalling mortality for a few more years. Well screw that. I will take a simple vow and then leave you to your slack-jawed shock. Here it is: Death before begging corporate scum for my life."

With that I turned around and walked out of St. Moneychanger's.

"Death before begging corporate scum for my life."
- Barry Crimmins

"Please holler with me. If we remain silent then we're going down and going down hard. If we speak up, the worst case scenario is that we bite the dust cursing the forces that drove us into it. It beats going quietly."
- Barry Crimmins

Welcome to the Great War Association

[source]

Trench warfare nostalgia lives.

Our battle reenactments take place within systems of opposing trenches complete with a crater-pocked No-Man's Land. There are belts of barbed wire, used to protect the sandbagged front line trenches, and the opposing positions are punctuated by bunkers with functioning machine-guns. Behind the main lines are supporting and communication trenches, connected to underground dugouts, where officers plan operations and the common soldiers eat and rest.

From the moment you arrive at an event you will be submerged in the Great War. From the clothing you wear, to the food you eat, to the trenches you fight in - nothing is out of place! World War One reenacting is truly, "The Reenactor's Reenactment!" [source]

What are they smoking? Common sense.

Jon Walker:

Proposition 19, which would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana for adults over 21 years old, is currently winning by a wide margin among California voters according to a new PPP poll. The measure is supported by 52% of voters while opposed by only 36%.

Public Policy Polling:

The state will save millions, from prisons to resources spent on stopping marijuana trafficking. This poll reaffirms that [it] isn't about wanting access to marijuana it's a much deeper political issue that Californians understand-- marijuana is tied to immigration, prisons, the economy and much more.

Get ready for another vapid Burns brothers eulogy to America

WSJ (via Bad Attitudes):

Get ready for “Goldman Sachs: The Movie.”

That isn’t a real movie title. But filmmaker Ric Burns, who created the PBS series “The Civil War” with his brother Ken, is shooting a documentary about the Wall Street firm. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is paying for the film, has editorial control and is overseeing the project through its marketing department, a Goldman spokesman said.

Sentimentalizing America, one stupid documentary at a time.

"By their lights,the perfect recovery would necessarily be 100% jobless."

Joe Bageant:

Paying the workers in society to produce real wealth costs money. Capitalists hate any sort of cost. It represents money that has somehow escaped their coffers. So when any behemoth corporation hands out thousands of pink slips on a Friday, Wall Street cheers and "the market" goes up. No ordinary mortal has ever seen "the market." But traders on the floor of 11 Wall Street, people who've deemed themselves more than mortal by virtue of their $110 Vanitas silk undershorts, assure us the market does exist. No tours of the New York Stock exchange are permitted, so we have to take their word for it.

In any case, in the money economy, eliminating costs, even if those costs happen to be feeding human beings, citizens of the empire, is sublime. That is why economists in the tertiary economy can declare a "jobless recovery" with a straight face. By their lights, the perfect recovery would necessarily be 100% jobless. Human costs of generating profit would be entirely eliminated.

"Symptoms of a general crisis of world capitalism."

Labor leader Ben Tillett, "A message from the trenches"

The symptoms never go away. Crisis is inherent to capitalism. It lurches from crisis to crisis, sacrificing freedom, security, and even life to the free market.

Rob Sewell:

In Britain, despite the reforms of the Liberal government, the social gulf between the classes continued to widen dramatically. In a study by Chiozza Money entitled Riches and Poverty (1905), out of a population of 43 million no less than 38 million were categorised as poor. Money-wages between 1900 and 1908 had increased by only one per cent, while the cost of living rose steadily, causing real wages to decline. According to G. H. Wood's calculations, quoted by Cole and Postgate, average real wage-rates were 4 per cent lower by 1910 than they had been in 1896. According to another source, average real wages probably fell by 10 per cent between 1900 and 1912. In contrast, profits and interest rose by 55 per cent between 1899 and 1913. Under such conditions of class polarisation, and a massive build up of grievances in the working class, strikes began to develop.

[...]

The growing crises in economy, in politics, and in international relations, were all symptoms of a general crisis of world capitalism. All were a manifestation of the fact that the system was reaching its limits, that the contradictions were intensifying, and that there was no peaceful way out of the impasse.

[...]

The outbreak of warfare on a greater scale than ever seen before, was the clearest expression that the limits of the capitalist system were being breached. In an attempt to escape the increasing contradictions of capitalism, the major powers were taking to the road of military aggression and the imperialist re-division of the world. The insoluble contradiction of private ownership and the nation state, which placed the productive forces in a straightjacket, was coming to a head at a feverish pace. This world crisis would have a devastating impact upon all classes in society, but especially on the working class.

"Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes."

[source]

"A radically different notion of work would mean a radically different world."

Brendan Cooney:

Now imagine a socialist society of people operating the means of production in cooperation. .... Imagine a factory in this society in which the people who work the machines are the same people that design the machines. The workers don’t produce under the compulsion of competition because their pay is not a result of their output but a result of their needs. (Remember Marx’s famous description of communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”). This means that these workers have radically different incentives in the way they design and carry out their work. Rather than using technology to increase their output and pace of work in order to make a super-profit they would most likely use technology to make work more fulfilling, and reduce working hours. It is a sad commentary on the unfulfilled promises of capitalism that with all of the dazzling technological progress of our society we still have masses of impoverished unemployed and masses of people working 60 hour weeks, two-jobs, and foregoing retirement who still must rely on mortgages and credit to make ends meet. It’s sad that despite all the labor-saving technology in the world people still hate their work. In a capitalist society our own creative control over the labor process is taken away from us to become a tool for our own exploitation and over-work.

Bourgeois theories of subjective value like to project the current subjectivities of modern society backwards and forwards in time as if humans have always been and will always be rational, utility-maximizing individuals operating with the same cold, calculating logic of the CEO. But economic choices for maximizing self gain only occur in a society in which we produce not for our own needs but for exchange. It is production for exchange which creates an autonomous force of profit and capital which drives society to follow its bidding.

"The rich boast of their wealth, i.e. of robbery; ... commanders of armies pride themselves on their victories, i.e. on murder."

Leo Tolstoy:

“People usually imagine a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute, knowing their occupation to be evil, must be ashamed of it. But the very opposite is true. Men who have been placed by fate and their own sins in a certain position, however irregular that position may be, adopt a view of life as a whole which makes their position appear to them good and respectable. In order to back up their view of life they instinctively mix only with those who accept their ideas of life and their place in it. This surprises us when it is a case of thieves bragging of their skill, prostitutes flaunting their depravity or murderers boasting of their cruelty. But it surprises us only because their numbers are limited and – this is the point – we live in a different atmosphere. But can we not observe the same phenomenon when the rich boast of their wealth, i.e. of robbery; when commanders of armies pride themselves on their victories, i.e. on murder; and when those in high places vaunt their power – their brute force? We do not see that their ideas of life and of good and evil are corrupt and inspired by a necessity to justify their position, only because the circle of people with such corrupt ideas is a larger one and we belong to it ourselves.”

"The slow extinction of the roughly 1,700 wolves left in the Rocky Mountain West."

N.Y. Times:

In Idaho and Montana, in early 2009, gray wolves were removed from the endangered species list and left to the mercy of state “management plans.” Those plans have been crafted to satisfy hunters rather than protect the wolves or the ecosystem in which they play an essential role. They all but guarantee the slow extinction of the roughly 1,700 wolves left in the Rocky Mountain West.

The wolf-hunting quota in Montana was 75 animals last year. This year it is 186 out of an estimated 524 wolves in the state. Idaho, which is expected to announce its quota next month, will allow wolves to be trapped, then shot, and it will let hunters use electronic calls.

These plans are the extension of a weak and outdated recovery plan (approved by the federal government in 1987) that requires each state to maintain only 100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs — far below what’s necessary to guarantee genetically healthy populations. And since that is the only official minimum on the books, it is an invitation to Idaho and Montana to keep killing wolves, until they approach that number. (In Wyoming, wolves are still on the endangered list because the state has yet to develop even a minimally acceptable management scheme.)

As a coalition of environmental groups has been arguing in federal court in Montana, there also is no scientific or legal basis for splitting the management of contiguous wolf populations among the states. The wolves should be restored to the endangered species list and returned to federal management.

The Radical Right can't comprehend the most basic lessons of Jesus

Eli:

Jesus preached peace, yet the GOP is the party of torture and war and guns everywhere for everyone.

Jesus preached love, yet the GOP is the party of virulent spittle-flecked hate. Hate for minorities, hate for immigrants, hate for Muslims, hate for women, hate for gays, hate for liberals. It pours out of right-wing blogs and talk radio, teabaggers and health care townhall thugs. It is the very backbone of the Southern Strategy.

Jesus preached compassion and charity, yet the GOP is the party of greed, callousness, and cruelty. The party that says we mustn’t help the sick or the poor or the unemployed because they’ll become too dependent, or it would be a socialist government takeover. The party that says we can’t afford more stimulus or unemployment extensions and have to cut Social Security and Medicare, but won’t hear of raising taxes on the rich. The party that thinks corporations are people and gays aren’t.

"We humans are ethical bottom-feeders. Parasitic serial abusers, exploiters, and murderers of other species we are."

Jason Miller:

Starting about 10,000 year ago, we domesticated some species of animals, making them dependent upon us for their survival. In essence, we enslaved them. A truly moral race wouldn’t have created slaves in the first place, let alone exploiting other animals for their reproductive secretions and killing them for their “meat.” Yet in recent decades, we’ve taken exploitation to a level that’s left obscenity in its wake, genetically engineering our charges so that they grow in deformed and painful ways, warehousing them in techno-hells that subject them to unimaginable suffering, ripping their children away from them at birth, murdering many of the males because they have no “intrinsic monetary value,” and ultimately boiling, slitting, slicing, dicing, and sawing them into pieces so that we can feast upon their decomposing body parts.

We consider arming ourselves to the hilt, wearing camouflouge, sitting in blinds, and employing all manner of technological advantages to slaughter deer, waterfowl and other forms of defenseless wildlife to be a “sport.” Infinitely cruel, bow hunting ensures that 50% of the victims of an arrow-piercing will escape the “hunter,” most of whom will die a slow, agonizing death through infection or blood loss. And we have the linguistic deficiency (or duplicity) to call this a “sport.”

[...]

We trap or raise other animals who have the misfortune of having been born with beautiful fur. Instead of finding contentment with wearing a coat fashioned with other materials, or even our own skin, we anally electrocute or break the necks of minks, chinchillas, or foxes so that sickeningly vain people with too much discretionary money can wear someone else’s skin. And in some instances we skin animal alive so that some members of our species can wear a dress, coat, or hat fashioned of the victim’s fur. What does that say about our sense of ethics and morality?

We shock, prod, poke, tease, punish, beat, and verbally abuse bulls, horses, elephants and the like to manipulate them into performing for our pleasure in circuses and rodeos. We then teach Little Susie to love watching the tortured elephants, horses, and tigers do “tricks” that are a profound insult to their innate dignity.

We chuckle and smugly proclaim that we are at the “top of the food chain.” Yet ultimately, we humans are ethical bottom-feeders. Parasitic serial abusers, exploiters, and murderers of other species we are. As rampant consumers of “meat,” eggs, and cheese, the human species has condemned itself to dependence on those to whom we believe ourselves to be superior. Ultimately, our arrogance and dependence will come back to haunt us, as “meat” production and consumption causes many diseases and is doing profound damage to the environment in a variety of ways.

And those amongst us who continue to participate in the Animal Holocaust don’t deserve the eternal bliss and beauty of the pleasant fiction called “heaven.”

No, heaven is not the domain of those who choose to remain complicit in a holocaust of immeasurable proportions. To depict their deserved fate, we need to resurrect Dante and set him to the task of creating a Tenth Circle of the Inferno, for mass murderers of the innocent and defenseless.

Today's Liberal = Dormant Doormat

A talk by Chris Hedges, my favorite scold.


(h/t Socialist TV)

Do you Cool Water Hula?

When confronted with apocalypse, some dance and pray. How much liberal activism is as ineffective as the Cool Water Hula dance? We're very good at bringing attention to outrageous corporate and political behavior but, in the end, the opposition knows how to do more than just dance and wave its arms.


Troutsky:

Last weekend I went to a Cool Water Hula on the rim of the Berkley Pit in Butte Mt. A ten year anniversary of the first "hula," it drew over a hundred progressive environmentalist dancers but guess what? Ten years later the pit is still filling with toxic sludge, water around the planet is still being polluted at a catastrophic rate and there are no "politics" within liberal democratic capitalism with which an agent can affect any positive change. Amidst the sad speeches about "mourning the devastation" and appealing to a positive spiritual energy, no one had any idea about how to change anything. So they do a stupid dance and get back in their fuel efficient cars to go back to their organic gardens and progressive fund raisers, discouraged, disoriented and conflicted.

The shadows sway and seem to say
Tonight we pray for water
Cool water
And way out there please hear our prayer
Teach us to care
For water
Cool clear
Water

Religion as cop out: "Those who have repented make much better workers. It's part of God's plan."

I Cite:

Economist Robert Samuelson has been going on about Americans not being in the mood to spend, about how such attitudes hurt the economy. Robert Reich makes the obvious point that many people can't spend. Apart from the top 1%--getting richer all the time--the majority have seen their income remain stagnant or decline over the last decade. My own view is that decreasing spending, and decreasing debt, can be steps out of consumerism. These steps should be furthered with large tax increases on the top 1% as well as a lifting of the cap on income taxed for social security. These large taxes will suppress/depress private spending by the wealthy and enable more public spending on collective goods--alternative fuel, alternative transportation, expansions in green and sustainable ways of living, dismantling of suburbs and exurbs and reinvigoration of cities, etc

Yesterday I spoke with a couple of women who had a different view. They were standing at a street corner in Geneva. It wasn't very busy. It was pretty hot, pretty humid. One of the women held a sign calling for us to repent and return from our backslidden ways to God.

[...]

I tried to talk about BP and corporations and they talked about God caring for each hair on our head and fornication.

[...]

The women shared my criticism of corporations, but they thought that the problems of corporations could be solved by repenting: those who have repented make much better workers. It's part of God's plan. Wouldn't I want my employees to be responsible? I confess that I was pretty confused at this point and having trouble responding.

By channels I couldn't quite follow, one of the women got to a joyful description of heaven--dancing with Jesus and eating all you want without getting fat. And this while basking in God's love. It was a message of abundance, one that she directly connected to an explanation for early death: God brings some of us home so that we don't have to remain in this fallen, awful condition any longer. Who wouldn't want to die?

"Failure to comply with many of society's shallow and silly niceties..."

[source]

Barry Crimmins:

Harvey and Joyce (and yes, even Danielle) are now legendary figures. Much of that legend comes from their failure to comply with many of society's shallow and silly niceties. That legend is not built on myth. Their quirkiness was an honest reaction to a world of bullshit. Harvey and Joyce saw no need to be polite to hypocrites, liars and lightweights. Their approach set a tremendous example for the rest of us. They eschewed rituals that would make them appear to be genuflecting before phony altars. They just didn't make a big deal of it. Instead, they swept in, behaved as they saw fit and always left something behind that was very special for those who bothered to notice.

Unbridled Capitalism = One Third for One Percent = Middle Class Extermination

[source]

More charts here.

"A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement." [source]

"24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year." [source]

"Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975." [source]

"For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together." [source]

"More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying." [source]

Inequality. It's what revolutions are made of.

(h/t Pharyngula)

"Bereft of roots that reach down into the renewing loam of the earth, to where mortal vanity is delivered to dust and desperate hopes rot..."

[source]

Phil Rockstroh:

In an age, when nature is besieged and the political landscape blighted, and one stands, stoop shouldered and wincing into the howling wasteland of epic-scale idiocy extant in the era, a solitary person can feel lost … marooned inside an increasingly isolated sense of self. Whether urban, suburban, or rural dwelling, the sense of alienation, for an individual, is profound … as discernible to the eye as the constellations of foreclosure signs stippling overgrown front lawns across the land … as hidden as the abandoned dreams within.

The fraying ligature of the landscape of the United States reveals an inner geography of alienation and anomie. Living on the island of Manhattan, I daily negotiate an urban layout of practical, but identity-decimating grids — a cityscape of harsh, inhuman right angles … a geography that renders street encounters abrupt, curt and intrusive.

After a time, one begins, by reflex, to buffer oneself against such intrusions, withdrawing inward … becoming a self-enclosed, walking fortress, shielding oneself from the degradations of these impersonal affronts (that feel altogether personal) — with I-Pods, Blackberries, and other vestments attendant to the muttered prayers of the self-absorbed.

While above the street — corporate towers — that are steel and concrete kingdoms of blind, willful ascension — blot the skyline … these structures flee upward, as if to escape the implications of life lived at street level and sharing in the consequences of decisions made within their sterile, insular sanctums of power and cupidity.

This is architecture as blind hubris: creations made by the hands of mortal men … yet failing to have any connection to the ground, these buildings crowd out the real estate of the sacred. Moreover, their manic skyward thrust leaves them, and those imprisoned within, bereft of roots that reach down into the renewing loam of the earth, to where mortal vanity is delivered to dust and desperate hopes rot and transubstantiate into the compost that nourishes new life.

"...corporate towers — that are steel and concrete kingdoms of blind, willful ascension — blot the skyline … these structures flee upward, as if to escape the implications of life lived at street level..."

Atomic Records

[source]

Wikipedia:

On July 16, 1979, United Nuclear Corporation's Church Rock uranium mill tailings disposal pond breached its dam and 1100 tons of radioactive mill waste and approximately 93 million gallons of mine effluent flowed into the Puerco River. The contaminated water from the Church Rock spill travelled 80 miles downstream, reaching as far as Navajo, Arizona. Shortly after the breach below the dam radiation levels of river water were 7000 times that of the allowable level of drinking water.

[...]

In terms of the amount of radiation released the accident was comparable in magnitude to the Three Mile Island accident of the same year and has been reported as "the largest radioactive accident in U.S. History."

Narcosphere:

As the Obama Administration plans more nuclear power plants, and corporations target Navajo communities with new uranium mining, Navajos and other New Mexicans will gather to remember the nuclear industry's legacy of death at Church Rock and Tularosa, N.M., on July 16.

It was on this day, July 16, 1945, when the first atomic bomb was detonated 35 miles southeast of Socorro, N.M., at the Trinity Site.

Let's Talk Trash...

"No fishmonger on earth can sell you a certified organic, wild-caught fish."

- Charles Moore

Goth fantasies and cool ranch Doritos

James Howard Kunstler:

The reality I spend these days rambling the river with is the reality of a nation riding a great wave of entropy into the unknown. Only at this stage of the ride can we indulge in our Goth fantasies of the charming vampire nether-life. Believe me, when things really get dark we will all be wishing desperately for something more like lambs-in-the-meadow and the kindly touch of a loving hand and the dim memory of what it was like to care about anything or anyone.

Where we are now, to me, is the real dark time, the proverbial moment before the dawn. The depravity of our culture, Disney merchandise, cool ranch Doritos, and all, is something that people of the future will marvel at for centuries to come. The purity of our surrender will fascinate them. They will conclude that we looked into the abyss... and decided that we liked what we saw in there.

Fuck You, Fannie and Freddie

Ilargi:

Fannie and Freddie are the main cause why home prices in the US have risen so high that millions of Americans are being evicted from their homes as we speak simply because they can't afford to live in them anymore. Fannie and Freddie (and the FHFA and FHLB and Ginnie Mae) have been used to guarantee any mortgage at any price and at any liar's conditions, and all at the risk of the American people.

"Anyone not seeing the pattern is just not paying attention."

Existential Cowboy:

Since 1900 the U.S. has 'experimented' with 'robber baron economics', 'supply-side economics', 'trickle down theory' and assorted 'stimuli' that also put the fat cats and so-called 'investor' class at the top of the pecking order with often tragic results -- the Panic of the late 1800s, Hoover's Great Depression, Ike's 'Recession', Reagan's 'Tent City' Depression of over 2 years! Anyone not seeing the pattern is just not paying attention.

[...]

Clearly, the U.S. remains powerless to address these issues as long as the government is literally owned by the dwindling few who benefit. It is simplistic and naive to expect a government beholden to the super-rich to work -in good faith -- for those who are denied both a voice and a meaningful role in this 'government of the people.' It is simplistic and naive to expect a robber baron class to simply bow to the will of what it must surely believe is but a great mob of unwashed masses...!

"The scope of this is beyond belief."

R.I.P. Harvey Pekar

[source]

Alternative Existence

From John Opie's Virtual America: Sleepwalking through Paradise:

When Americans did venture outside in the 1880s, they saw themselves no longer as explorers, soldiers, or migrants but now as tourists and vacationers. They comfortably framed the outdoors through the windows of a train’s Pullman car or of the sitting room of a resort hotel deep in the Rocky Mountains. Yet another frame would appear by the 1920s, when a vacationing family could peer through their automobile’s windshield when they pulled over at a designated “scenic overlook” or “inspiration point.”

By the middle of the twentieth century another window had taken over, not in the parlor but in the family room. The bright glow of the television set joined the aptly named “picture” window overlooking a standard suburban lawn and street. Television and suburbia merged in Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. The entire outside world marched across the family’s screen, though strongly filtered by producers and advertisers. Americans began to experience a visual saturation that both trivialized the experience and demanded a higher power of discrimination than most gave to entertainment.

[...]

By the end of the twentieth century Americans had added another window that swept away all earlier windows: cyberspace and its virtual realities. The combined power of screen, keyboard, mouse, and joystick is magical.

[...]

Each time we fire up the computer, we whisk ourselves into cyberspace to inhabit a seductive alternative existence. William Gibson remarked, “Everyone who works with computers seems to develop an intuitive faith that there’s some kind of actual space behind the screen.” MIT computer professor Sherry Turkle calls this the “Disneyland Effect,” where the dreamworld makes ordinary life and the messy real world so disappointing that one can hardly wait to return to the dreamworld. Neither Alice in Wonderland nor Dorothy in Oz, neither Aeneas nor Dante, has anything over us.

Who are you? The last of the immune? What is it with you? You broke my heart from the start.

"BP does business right."

And business done right = screwing us over in any way they can. From June, Kindra Arnesen takes on business done right and the government that facilitates it.

"We are expendable to these people. We do not matter.
...
This is unacceptable. They are slowly poisoning every person that I've ever been close to in my entire life and I'm standing here saying: NO MORE. ... My people are more important to me than their bottom line."

- Kindra Arnesen

"Maybe these overlapping pyrotechnics of horror ... are necessary to teach Americans the nature of class war."

Glen Ford:

We are living in the late stages of overwhelming dominance (hegemony) of finance capital – and, secondarily, the oil and gas money-machines. It is a period characterized by destruction of the domestic manufacturing base and frenzied predation of the public sector. The mission of Capital’s servants in government is, therefore, to assist Wall Street and the energy sector in the fastest possible conversion of natural and social resources to private exploitation.

Those among the public and media that still harbor the illusion that government is there to serve the people, despite seeing so much evidence to the contrary, speak of a national “malaise,” a loss of purpose, a temporary failure or flaw in the national character. What nonsense! What we are witnessing is the destructive behavior of a predatory class that sees its future in trillion-dollar derivative bets; commodification of every conceivable resource (food, water, air?) and manipulation of every commodity market; privatization of every possible state function (schools, safety nets); constant expansion of the “market” in the maintenance of empire; and the “primitive accumulation” of the spoils of war.

For such a class, there is no room, rhyme or reason for anything resembling domestic nation-building, and they will not assign their servants in government to any such project. Worse than simply being on their own, the people face the same oligarchic enemy at the commanding heights of both the public and private sectors: the Democrat and the banks, the Republican and Big Oil, and vice versa – and all of them aligned with the military complex.

The pace of disaster-making is quickening in America, which indicates something very much like “the end is near.”

Maybe these overlapping pyrotechnics of horror – Katrina, the Crash of 2008, the Great Gusher in the Gulf – are necessary to teach Americans the nature of class war, that it is, indeed, hell. At any rate, the oligarchs can be counted on to accelerate the processes of their own demise. It is up to the people to save themselves, through organizing; there are no guarantees.

"It is up to the people to save themselves, through organizing; there are no guarantees."
- Glen Ford

“The multimillionaire disciples of Jay Gould ... have quite completely transformed our people..."

“The multimillionaire disciples of Jay Gould — that man who in his brief life rotted the commercial morals of this nation and left them stinking when he died — have quite completely transformed our people from a nation with pretty high and respectable ideals to just the opposite of that; that our people have no ideals now that are worthy of consideration; that our Christianity which we have always been so proud of — not to say vain of — is now nothing but a shell, a sham, a hypocrisy; that we have lost our ancient sympathy with oppressed peoples struggling for life and liberty; that when we are not coldly indifferent to such things we sneer at them, and that the sneer is about the only expression the newspapers and the nation deal in with regard to such things.”
- Mark Twain

U.S. Force Commander General James Mattis: "It's fun to shoot some people."

"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis said during a panel discussion. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."
- James Mattis

Fun times.

The professor visits a redneck bar

From Robert Paul Wolff's memoir:

Susie and I are accustomed to a glass of wine each evening before dinner [well, she has a glass -- I usually have two], but her son and his wife do not drink, so we walked down the street to a local neighborhood establishment. I think it was the first time in my life that I have ever been in what could genuinely be called redneck territory. They didn’t have wine, of course, so we settled for beer and bellied up to the bar. There were maybe ten people in the bar in all, including the bartender. Seated next to Susie was a middle-aged man, wearing a T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes in a rolled up sleeve that revealed a tattoo. Susie and I were not talking loudly, but we were obviously out of place, and everyone in the little bar could hear us. After a bit, the man leaned over and said, “Are you Yankees?” I allowed as how I was [it was the first time I had ever been called that], and we got into a desultory conversation about the weather up north as compared with the local weather. After a pause, he asked, “What do you do?” Not really thinking, I said, “I am a Professor of Afro-American Studies.”

The bar fell silent and the temperature dropped abruptly about twenty degrees. “I suppose you think they have been treated pretty badly, should be given jobs and all,” he said. I didn’t have to ask who “they” were. “Well,” I pointed out quietly, “they built your homes, nursed your children, grew your food, and then cooked it and baked it, so I guess they have pretty well proved their abilities.” He muttered something I couldn’t pick up, and then said grudgingly, “Well, I suppose they work all right under direction.” This from a man who didn’t look to have held a steady job in some years. Susie and I finished our beer and left. When I told this story to Esther and Ernie the next Monday, they both said, with genuine concern, “Bob, don’t do that again.”

"We live peaceably in a state of war"

[source]

Tom Engelhardt:

Of the nearly trillion dollars the United States invests in war and war-related activities, nothing goes to peace. No money, no effort, no thought. The very idea that there might be peaceful alternatives to endless war is so discredited that it's left to utopians, bleeding hearts, and feathered doves. As in Orwell's Newspeak, while "peace" remains with us, it's largely been shorn of its possibilities. No longer the opposite of war, it's just a rhetorical flourish embedded, like one of our reporters, in Warspeak.

What a world might be like in which we began not just to withdraw our troops from one war to fight another, but to seriously scale down the American global mission, close those hundreds of bases -- as of 2010, there were almost four hundred of them, macro to micro, in Afghanistan alone -- and bring our military home is beyond imagining. To discuss such obviously absurd possibilities makes you an apostate to America's true religion and addiction, which is force. However much it might seem that most of us are peaceably watching our TV sets or computer screens or iPhones, we Americans are also -- always -- marching as to war. We may not all bother to attend the church of our new religion, but we all tithe. We all partake. In this sense, we live peaceably in a state of war.

Crisis Capitalism Marxed

Courtesy of David Harvey and a wonderful graphic artist.

"It's interesting. You had a finance crisis in the financial system. You sort of half-solved that, but at the expense of a sovereign debt crisis.
...
It's CRAP."
- David Harvey

(h/t I Cite)

"Let’s look at a few facts. Fact, the world has divided into rich and poor as at no time in our history."

Last week, Democracy Now! featured an important speech by Maude Barlow. Please watch it. Please pass it along.

On the eve of this G-20 gathering, let’s look at a few facts. Fact, the world has divided into rich and poor as at no time in our history. The richest 2% own more than half the household wealth in the world. The richest 10% hold 85% of total global assets and the bottom half of humanity owns less than 1% of the wealth in the world. The three richest men in the world have more money than the poorest 48 countries. Fact, while those responsible for the 2008 global financial crisis were bailed out and even rewarded by the G-20 government’s gathering here, the International Labor Organization tells us that in 2009, 34 million people were added to the global unemployed, swelling those ranks to 239 million, the highest ever recorded. Another 200 million are at risk in precarious jobs and the World Bank tells us that at the end of 2010, another 64 million will have lost their jobs. By 2030, more than half the population of the megacities of the Global South will be slumdwellers with no access to education, health care, water, or sanitation. Fact, global climate change is rapidly advancing, claiming at least 300,000 lives and $125 billion in damages every year. Called the silent crisis, climate change is melting glaciers, eroding soil, causing freak and increasingly wild storms, displacing untold millions from rural communities to live in desperate poverty in peri-urban centers. Almost every victim lives in the Global South in communities not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and not represented here at the summit.

The atmosphere has already warmed up a full degree in the last several decades and is on course to warm up another two degrees by 2100. Fact, half the tropical forests in the world, the lungs of our ecosystem, are gone. By 2030, at the present rate of extraction or so-called harvest, only 10% will be left standing. 90% of the big fish in the sea are gone, victim to wanton predatory fishing practice. Says a prominent scientist studying their demise, there is no blue frontier left. Half the world’s wetlands, the kidneys of our ecosystem, have been destroyed in the 20th century. Species extinction is taking place at a rate 1,000 times greater than before humans existed. According to a Smithsonian scientist, we are headed toward of biodiversity deficit in which species and ecosystems will be destroyed at a rate faster than nature can replace them with new ones. Fact, we are polluting our lakes, rivers and streams to death. Every day, two million tons of sewage and industrial agricultural waste are discharged into the world’s water. That’s the equivalent of the entire human population of 6.8 billion people.

The Fourth of July is for the People, not the Politicians

[source]

The Fourth of July is, at bottom, about altering government so that it better reflects the will of the people. On Independence Day, declare your undying independence from politicians who use office to take our power from us.

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to. Institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags--that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it. I was from Connecticut, whose Constitution declares "that all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have at all times an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient."

Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.

- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

"The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor."
- Mark Twain

Our national priorities on display: 37 billion for war, 10 billion for teachers

WaPo:

Democrats in the House begrudgingly approved an additional $37 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Thursday, as a growing number of members of President Obama's own party cast doubts about his strategy in Afghanistan.

[...]

Democrats also inserted $10 billion into the legislation in aid to states for education, looking to avert widespread layoffs of teachers and other state employees that could occur this year, given that many state governments are running short of money. The teacher funding was less than half of the $23 billion that Democrats had pushed for earlier this year, as deficit-wary Democratic members in the House and Senate balked at the additional spending.

Double Dip Odds: 1 in 4

Seinfeld:

TIMMY: What are you doing?
GEORGE: What?
TIMMY: Did … did you just double-dip that chip?
GEORGE: Excuse me?
TIMMY: You double-dipped the chip!
GEORGE: "Double-dipped"? What are you talking about?
TIMMY: You dipped the chip. You took a bite. And you dipped again.
GEORGE: So…?
TIMMY: That's like putting your whole mouth right in the dip! From now on, when you take a chip – just take one dip and end it!
GEORGE: Well, I'm sorry, Timmy … but I don't dip that way. [George takes a chip]
TIMMY: Oh, you don't, huh?
GEORGE: No. [dips the chip] You dip the way you want to dip … [takes a bite of the chip] I'll dip the way I want to dip. [double-dips the chip]
TIMMY: Give me the chip! [Grabs George and the chip goes flying.] Give me the chip! [George and Timmy start to struggle.]

BusinessWeek:

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy may be headed for a slowdown reminiscent of the one it suffered in 2002 as the sovereign-debt crisis in Europe, fading government support and persistently high joblessness weigh on expansion in the second half of the year.

Economists have begun to lower their forecasts for the first time since the recovery began in the middle of 2009. Allen Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics, and Michael Moran, chief economist at Daiwa Capital Markets America in New York, said they now see annualized growth of 2.25 percent to 2.5 percent in July-December, down from around 3 percent previously.

“The risks to the recovery are growing,” the New York- based Sinai said. “We’ve raised the odds of a double-dip recession to one in four from one in 20.”

Cutting Social Security = Increasing Poverty for the Elderly

Urban Institute:

While boosting the retirement age would not hit lower-income groups harder than others, it would push more retirees into poverty. Raising the age would increase the share of retirees with incomes below the wage-indexed poverty level in 2050 from 14.4 percent under the current system to 16.2 percent, an increase of 1.5 million people.

AlterNet:

Tea partiers, egged on by Sarah Palin, were fond of claiming during the health-care debate last summer that government "death panels" were going to off our grannies, even though it was an outright lie. Now that we have a much more serious and credible threat to the well-being of our elderly poor population (the majority of whom are female) in possible cuts to Social Security, Palin and company are strangely silent.

Obama's Debt Commission = Instant poverty for 1.5 million elderly people!

Freedom of the Press = Freedom to Call Torture Something Else (especially if we do it)

From the study Torture at Times: Waterboarding in the Media (via Raw Story):

From the early 1930's until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By contrast, from 2002-2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture.

[...]

[N]ewspapers are much more likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is the perpetrator. In The New York Times, 85.8% of articles (28 of 33) that dealt with a country other than the United States using waterboarding called it torture or implied it was torture while only 7.69% (16 of 208) did so when the United States was responsible. The Los Angeles Times characterized the practice as torture in 91.3% of articles (21 of 23) when another country was the violator, but in only 11.4% of articles (9 of 79) when the United States was the perpetrator.

You Want Class War?

What do you want people to do? Steal?

Read more.