Good news for all right-thinking humans.
ReplyDelete“A disability rights group has sued the City of San Diego and three companies—including e-scooter startups Bird and Lime—over alleged violations of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act and other related state laws.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/e-scooter-startups-city-of-san-diego-sued-by-local-disabled-plaintiffs/
These scooters are ubiquitous in my neighborhood. Either being ridden or lying abandoned on sidewalks at every intersection. Like George Carlin*, I’m hoping to be a witness as one of these witless ones collides with an immovable object or another scooter shithead. Or a motor vehicle.
*https://youtu.be/0IWx96qPtn8
No, not for everyone do things turn out for the best in America. The Bureau of Labor
ReplyDeleteStatistics has the percentage of Americans who do NOT have at least $400 in savings.
I do not want to ruin your day by mentioning this percentage, for I do not want to
dash your hopes about Making America Great Again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D23jmVJ9yh4
Hey Morris Berman, am reading that you went through a surgery and recovery period. Still on the mend? I hope you feel better!
ReplyDeleteFor yours and all WAFers health, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foBYhx7qiHU , Dufay: Apostolo Glorioso, Isorhythmic Motet For 5 Voices
I could listen to a lot of isorhythmic motet.
How the Idea of Hell Has Shaped the Way We Think
ReplyDeleteFor centuries, we’ve given lavish attention to the specifics of punishment, and left Heaven woefully under-sketched.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/21/how-the-idea-of-hell-has-shaped-the-way-we-think
"'In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render greater thanks to God for it,' Aquinas writes, 'they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned.'" Not cool, dude
On the other hand "For all the barbarism of Hell as it is traditionally taught—its ludicrous time frame, its unfair and somewhat bigoted admissions policy—at least some of the right people turn up in it."
Milton's Satan has the best line in the essay: “Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n.”
Casper-
ReplyDeleteThanks for asking. I'm still doing phys. therapy and daily exercises, plus taking painkillers. Improving slowly. Whether I'll ever be doing Centre Court at Wimbledon, however, is still an open question.
It recently came to me how America might save itself. If every American between ages of 5 and 95 were to study the Nimzo-Indian defense for 1 hr/day, I think we might turn things around. Wafers are encouraged to guess as to what % of the population is currently doing this, and suggest ways of increasing that number.
Chuck J. recently sent me a copy of "Shantaram," which I devoured. Highly recommended.
mb
ps: Where Americans need to put their attention:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/food/shortcuts/2019/jan/22/meghan-duchess-sussex-avocado-toast-whisperer
mb
It would've been great to have "Proud to be an american" playing in the background.
ReplyDeleteThese are some of the exceptional folks who will revolt, resist, and rise up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmvYbgolrQM
All due respect, MB, but I think you're promoting the wrong candidate. As a staunch anti-interventionist, Tulsi is at least slightly less reprehensible than the most of the rest of the douchebags seeking the presidency. The gal you're looking for is Kamala Harris, who among other things aggressively pushed a truancy law that made "criminals" out of black teenagers for being out after dark, opposed reducing prison sentences of non-violent offenders because California "needed" their "free" labor (slavery by another name), while letting that little troll Steve Mnuchin and his bank off the hook for massive systemic mortgage fraud. "Hillary in black face" is how she's been referred to on the twits. Get her some Botox injections and we're all set for a pairing with that colossal douchebag Beto "The White Obama" O'Rourke for a Dumbocratic dream ticket.
ReplyDeleteNever forget: Centrism is unpopular because it is cruel. "These people–the hateful Evangelicals, the ones who vote not out of self-interest but out of raw, Jeezus-fueled hatred of outsiders–are the ones who can truly never be reached by the Democratic party. And yet these are exactly the sort of people the Dems have been courting since the early 90s. These are the upstanding suburbanites that Chuck Schumer was so certain would defect in exchange for the Democrats abandoning and demonizing blue collar voters. These are the preening cowards who demand to put black teens in jail for wearing sagging pants, the vicious apes who hoot with excitement at the thought of Muslims being incinerated indiscriminately, and the sadistic perverts who become sexually aroused at the thought of someone’s food stamps being cut. These are, in short, exactly the voters the Clinton campaigned pitched itself to. And you can see how well that worked out."
Dr. B-
ReplyDeleteThis is apparently the guy who incited the recent row at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC-
https://nypost.com/2019/01/22/this-hebrew-israelite-from-brooklyn-sparked-the-covington-controversy/
It seems like the Native Americans may have prevented violence.
Recently you said that one can't be both a Wafer and a prog, and I will admit to doing some fence-sitting of my own in that regard. But even though I know those kids from Covington this weekend weren't being the perfect angels their parents seem to want us to think they were, the way the prog-dems on social media are doubling down on their hate-mob fucking insanity towards these dumb kids is making me fall right off that fence squarely into true Waferdom! I sincerely apologize for doubting your wisdom and insight, Dr. Berman.
ReplyDeleteMB & Wafers,
ReplyDeleteInteresting piece by Linh Dinh today: http://www.unz.com/ldinh/man-war-and-nation/
Talks about culture, language, traditions, PC culture, and many other topics, and ends up with this last paragraph:
"Though culture began as a mere a fig leaf over funky nature, it’s now striving to displace it, especially in the most advanced and progressive nations. An au courant man, therefore, may not just pretend he doesn’t look, smell or function like one, but claim he’s no man at all, as in, “I’m a woman,” “I’m a cyborg” or “I’m just an emoticon.” Since unreal men can’t defend anything, America is finished."
Hi Professor, glad you enjoyed 'Shantaram'. A sequel came out in 2015 that I haven't yet read.
ReplyDeleteHope all is going well.
Chuck
Bill-
ReplyDeleteI just like the idea of having a Hindu in the White House. Add to her Lorenzo Riggins and Penny Snoots, and we've got a winning team!
mb
https://www.newsweek.com/china-grants-ivanka-trump-trademarks-trade-negotiations-1299272
ReplyDeleteChina grants Ivanka Trump five trademarks as White House continues trade negotiations with Beijing
I see a thriving future for her ... in Chinese politics
Dr.B
ReplyDeleteI did read "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Poe. Maybe this is appropriate for our times.
I have difficulty with most poetry but I do love some of Poe's works. Poe resonates with me.
Hello, hello, hello MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeletePenny Snoots:
Penny Snoots has a mouth just like a suction cup
Pics of every head she's had the pleasure to know
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say "Hello"
On the corner is a man w/a McDonald's sack
And little Wafers laugh at him behind his back
Lorenzo was shorted a Big Mac
Wearing his chartreuse coat, very strange
Penny Snoots is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back
In Shaneka there's a woman w/alotta sass
In her pocket sits an old receipt
She likes to keep her gun and magazine clean
It's a clean machine
Penny Snoots is in my ears and in my eyes
Foreplay is a risk inside her finger pie
In Brittany, meanwhile back
Girlfriend of a man stuck down by a motor car
While the EMT works away a wallet is in play
And though she feels as if she's in a ballet
She is anyway
In Penny Snoots she looks about for another customer
We see a man sitting on a hood waiting for a rim
And then the policeman rushes in
Grabs her by the mane, very strange
Penny Snoots is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back
Penny Snoots is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
Penny Snoots!
Filed under No Surprises Here: the rich are reportedly getting richer, and the poor poorer:
ReplyDeletehttps://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/davos-climate-and-inequality/
"the hypocrisy of the deliberations at Davos on these issues is exposed every year by the news that over 1500 individual private jet flights are made by the participants to get to the Swiss ski resort venue for the World Economy Forum – that’s some carbon footprint. The Davos devotees are transported to a special airfield in Dubendorf so they do not have to mix with the unwashed. It makes a cruel joke of the Davos session led by famous anthropologist David Attenborough telling the audience that urgent action was needed on climate change. The number of private jet flights grew by 11% last year."
Just be sure that a gazillionaire is on the ticket, along with Snoots and Riggins, so that the proper treatment of the Deplorables goes ahead as scheduled.
O&D, here we go! Best to all, Puss
At the intersection of the law, lunacy, and the lewd and lascivious, a proposal for addressing the shutdown and the need for a border wall from an Arizona state lawmaker that is sure to find favor among both Ds and Rs:
ReplyDelete“Arizona House Bill 2444, proposed last week by State Rep. Gail Griffin (R-Hereford), would require makers and distributors of Internet-connected devices to ship such devices with blocking software "that renders a website that displays obscene material inaccessible by default." Under the bill, any Internet user who wants to deactivate the blocking software would have to pay "a onetime deactivation fee of at least $20 to the Arizona Commerce Authority."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/pay-for-trumps-border-wall-with-20-online-porn-fee-ariz-lawmaker-says/
This 2-min video clearly shows that Nader is a communist. We knew this for years.
ReplyDeleteHe gives an example of how mere words can destroy good Americans while no one
cares about their deeds. What wrong can a good American actually do?
https://vimeo.com/184167920
MB -
ReplyDeleteI've been listening to people talk about the Benedict Option, which is somewhat like the NMI life, but specifically for Christians. I think the idea is that the culture and institutions are so rotten, that people with the same beliefs need to come together to form intentional communities, while interacting with the wider culture in a much more limited way. I think the idea is you should mostly surround yourself with like-minded people, that having friends and coworkers from the wider world is inappropriate, and that home schooling is the only appropriate option for children.
For myself, I've felt it would be best if I didn't have to spend so much time around people in the wider culture, that having to be around the average person at my apartment or at work is too much exposure to the rotten culture. My time around intelligent people is basically an hour or two a week, and the rest of the time I'm either alone, or with idiots. Each time I have to spend considerable time talking with a rotten person, it really wears me down since they're just so far gone.
I must say, for me the NMI option seems more the right path all the time. Leaving the country entirely sounds too difficult, but founding an intentional community of orthodox Christians seems far more practical. I have recently been meeting people with similar beliefs who attend more traditional Catholic churches, and I believe all these people share the same fears and beliefs about the wider culture as you do.
Jeff-
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite songs. There is someone on this blog labeled Penny Lane, but I'm guessing she's no relation to P. Snoots.
mb
Hola los Waferes,
ReplyDeleteI've been "gone to tejas" as they used to say... but have kept up as I can with DAA blog...unable to post on motor hotel computers; attempts aborted...as one great poet put it, "I forgot that love existed, worried all the time"...
@PK- MB is correct, forget about San Antone. Tejas, period. Best to build The Wall at the Red river up there towards Oklahomey. Houston is a nightmare, though "it could've been worse" with out the comradeship of Tejanos Danny, Owl, Ky Hote and Geeta...
@cubeangel - check out the reference to Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" in Bradbury's classic "The Martian Chronicles".
I read an interesting short article about Edgar A. Poe in the current issue of Smithsonian magazine. I will try to find a link for that in my next post. His birth date was January 19, 1809. As usual, the GSWH is a step or three ahead of the zeitgeist.
My latest good book read: "The End of the End of the Earth" by Jonathan Frandzen.
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the chess tip, Dr. B, but it is wasted on me, as I'm the world's worst chess player. My missus once said I play chess the way I play hockey, which is like ...did you ever see that cartoon with Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam Von Schamm charging each other in the Battle of Bagel Heights? My chess strategy is like that.
I'm reading Linh Dinh's "Postcards" these days. This is definitely Wafer reading. I suppose the progs would call these unfortunate people "deplorables." Do conservatives still refer to them as the "swinish multitude?"
So, other than that she's running for office in the USA, what's wrong with Tulsi Gabbard? I don't know anything about her, but she seems no worse than anyone else. Given this criticism, she's probably all right:
https://sputniknews.com/society/201901231071755360-NYT-Columnist-Calls-Gabbard-Assad-Toady/
My, aren't we SO much better off with the Dumbocrats in charge of the house? House Votes Overwhelmingly to Bar US Exit From NATO.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of the crumbling empire and NATO's folly: Taliban Kill at Least 126 Afghan Police in Attack Near Kabul. Money quote: "The attack began with a US Humvee full of explosives, as a bomber smashed the Humvee into the facility by ramming through a checkpoint, and then detonated inside the campus, causing a large number of casualties." Our glorious military is so incompetent, it can't even keep it's own hundred-thousand dollar vehicles from being used as truck bombs. Virtually no mention of this attack in the MSM--they were too busy trying to turn a minor verbal confrontation and a smirk into the second Civil War.
And still more stupid Dumbocratic empire tricks: Leading Democrats are backing the Trump administration’s right wing coup in Venezuela.
@Mister Roboto--as a former prog myself, I feel your pain. Yet the fact that the stories I linked to above, demonstrating prog complicity in mass death and destruction all over the globe, all happened in just the past few days and is an all to common example of how opposing and mocking them not only easy but for me a moral imperative.
Penny Lane weighing in to disavow all connection with the mimic Penny Snoots. But if she wants to continue capturing hearts and minds with her antics while I hatch my escape from the matrix, that's fine with me. The more tacky, incontinent exhibitionism, the better! USA!!
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile thanks to whichever of you magnificent bastards posted Darren Allen's 33 Myths of the System. Quite the pep-talk, lol.
Interesting points made here:
ReplyDelete"The shutdown shows the weakness of the resistance"
https://www.richmond.com/opinion/their-opinion/guest-columnists/david-leonhardt-column-the-shutdown-shows-the-weakness-of-the/article_7876ba62-529a-5ccf-9889-470d559e781a.html
"When I’ve spoken to people from other countries over the past couple of weeks, they have been shocked that Americans have not begun protesting the shutdown in large numbers. [...] If this were happening in Europe, as Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago told me, people would be pouring into the streets."
But of course Americans are house-trained, "Kiss Up, Kick Down" strivers who are convinced they'll be rich. They don't want to change the system, they just don't want to be on the bottom of it. I only recently heard the phrase "Kiss Up, Kick Down" but I thought it described the American mentality perfectly.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteArt-
ReplyDeleteOne can only hope. My worry is that Trumpola will lose on a razor-edge vote. What we need is for him to abs. clobber the opposition, whether it's Tulsi Gabbard, Liz Warren, Lorenzo Riggins, or Laquisha Jones. Or P. Snoots, of course.
Onward-
This is why claims that our oppression is due to the ruling class have definite limits. Leaving all the gender and race crap aside, this economic system is exactly what nearly all Americans want and believe in, certainly since 1945. Well, they're getting the results of what they wished for.
Penny-
Not to be overly vulgar, but I think the correct phrase wd be "hearts, minds, and dicks."
al-
Maybe switch to the Sicilian defense, what can I tell you? As for Tulsi, I'm 100% behind her, as long as she marches into the White House flanked by Shaneka Torres (with an AK-47) and Laquisha Jones (with a brick), with Penny Snoots as her wing man.
mean-
I like Austin, actually, but that was 20 yrs ago.
mb
Wilbur Ross, secretary of Commerce, says he doesn't understand why furloughed Feds are visiting soup kitchens:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.vox.com/2019/1/24/18195782/wilbur-ross-shutdown-workers-loans-food-banks.
He suggests they take out loans against future pay. As far as I know, that's also called unemployment checks, which will have to be paid back when (if) the (partial) guv reopens. As far as I'm concerned, this is all about determining who is essential, and who isn't (and because I do research, I am not essential). One of the catches (there are many) is that if you are working, and unpaid, you can't collect unemployment. If you are not working and not being paid, you can collect unemployment. So, all those extra expenses for working (gas, childcare, etc.) have to come from somewhere.
So imagine, they will take out loans ... and then the back pay will be cancelled. I mean, this IS how things work these days, yes? Everything is a con. O&D we go.
Good news Thursday, I just had a job interview (not in Texas, thank you so much for feedback!). Wish me luck!
MB,
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't been to Austin in 20 years, you wouldn't even recognize it now. It's become a parody of itself, a place that has turned itself into a "product" with an ego to match. Truly sad to say the least. The South by Southwest festival is a corporate shit show. Technodouchebaggery is the name of the game and the art scene has become kitsch. Essentially you have Dallas with nicer scenery and a "trendier image," although ironically enough Dallas has gotten a little better over that same time frame (relatively speaking).
I wouldn't recommend Texas to any Wafer though. It's America on steroids. If you don't like overhyped cities with insane claims of "exceptionalism" and "coolness," avoid Austin. If you can't stand hustlers, conspicuous consumers and shallow displays of wealth, avoid Dallas. Care about the environment? Avoid Houston.
Now, I know what you are thinking, "This is more to discourage our attempts to MAGA."
ReplyDeleteThe first few minutes will inform you that things are not exactly as prezzz D tells us.
He wishes to tell us this in his presidential address but has yet to find a location
for his sales pitch. I think he should wait for the borrrrring Oscars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkLJ1D0wGlo&feature=youtu.be
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteFreedom Ryder Zobrist, arrested for dancing naked in Waffle House restaurant parking lot. Freedom also attempted to grab a WH employee's joint:
https://krcrtv.com/news/offbeat/report-woman-arrested-for-dancing-naked-in-waffle-house-parking-lot-01-23-2019
mean's quote: "Houston is a nightmare." A group of women attack food court employees after card is declined. Where? You guessed it: Houston, TX:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/manager-claims-group-women-attempted-attack-food-court-employees-credit-card-declined-021536790.html
Enjoy, Wafers!
Miles
ps: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/obituaries/mary-boyd-higgins-dead.html
https://truthout.org/articles/millions-of-americans-flood-into-mexico-for-health-care/
ReplyDeleteDr. B-
ReplyDeleteAnother Latin American country in the crosshairs, with almost 100% bipartisan support-
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/01/24/so-called-trump-resistance-mostly-silent-us-president-openly-foments-coup-detat
I'm With Her (Tulsi): "The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future." Meanwhile, all other major Dumbs are either supporting Trump's coup or staying silent. Even Sanders made a mealy-mouthed statement that could be interpreted either way like the political coward he really is.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, American cruelty at it's finest:
School superintendent faces charges for using own insurance to help sick kid. https://nypost.com/2019/01/24/school-superintendent-faces-charges-for-using-own-insurance-to-help-sick-kid/ $223--that's how much "fraud" the asshole prosecutor charged her with "stealing" to help an ailing child. Meanwhile, uber-douchebaguette Kamala Harris let every thieving rich banker in California who committed systematic mortgage fraud off the hook.
Alaskan Guide Fined After Herding Grizzly Bears With Snowmobiles So Clients Could Shoot Them More Easily. "Fined"
53 year-old homeless man arrested after trying to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy toothpaste and food. Manhattan DA prosecuted him, a jury convicted, and he was sentenced to 4-8 years in prison. Note: a jury of supposedly liberal New Yorkers voted to make this guy a felon. Just think, at least now he'll have a roof over his head.
Talk about innovation in achieving capitalistic goals
ReplyDeletein America. Warning language a little rough around
the edges.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Oomlb9xm-YQ
A bit hyperbolic, but on the money:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/25/dancing-on-americas-grave/
Following Caligula's assassination yesterday, Claudius is accepted as Roman Emperor by the Senate On This Day 41 AD.
ReplyDeleteCel-
ReplyDeleteIs Counterpunch finally catching up to me?
Bill-
The real question is, Where does P. Snoots stand on the Venezuela issue?
Jeff-
A pity Shaneka wasn't able to participate. When are they letting her out, BTW?
Birn-
Check out DAA, plus work by Steven Kinzer and Wm Blum. All the US knows how to do is make war and to interfere in other countries. We get all excited abt Russia meddling in our elections, when we do this constantly, including to Russia (1996). I live nr the Museum of Interventions in Mexico City, which documents 250 US incursions into Mexico since 1848. Sure, let's fuck over Venezuela, what the heck. Meanwhile, the wo/man in the street cheers us on.
mb
Not certain how this story fits with O&D but for me Roger Stone's arrest is pretty awesome. I dig the idea of jack boot thugs showing up at 4 am and dragging this swamp scum (no doubt wearing gold leaf pajamas) outta his bed and off to jail.
ReplyDeleteUSA TODAY: 'FBI! Open the door!' Video shows Stone's arrest
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/25/trump-associate-roger-stone-arrest-video-shows-fbi-storm-florida-home/2675857002/
In the military as paper tiger dept there is this op-ed - fuckit when all else fails declare yourself Victor's and leave.
USA TODAY: 'Declare victory and get out' of Afghanistan
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/01/23/trump-pull-us-troops-end-unwinnable-war-afghanistan-taliban-column/2645055002/
The American Dream is dead:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/american-dream-world-economic-forum-poll_us_5c4583b7e4b027c3bbc33c48
Activist Deb Ozarko nicely captures the general state of sociology-environmental wretchedness in her essay ‘Coming “Home"', even quoting from the film ‘Beautiful Creatures’: “Most people are either too stupid to leave, or too stuck to move.”
ReplyDelete"From coast to coast, forests that once teemed with life, are virtually silent. Trees and plant life are brittle, dry and frail in appearance. Beaches that once provided a sense of calm, are littered with rubbish and detritus as far as the eye can see. Rivers, lakes, streams, and oceans that were once healing grounds for tranquility, now suffocate in plastic, sewage, pesticides, oil slicks, heavy metals, and god knows what else. Meadows and fields once soothing for contemplation, naps, and cloud watching, are infested with disease-carrying ticks, poison ivy, giant hogweed, wild parsnip, and aggressive, sleepless mosquitoes.”
http://www.debozarko.com/cominghome/
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteThe stupidity of the Trump admin is breathtaking:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-backs-a-coup-in-venezuela-with-strong-wordsand-what-else?fbclid=IwAR2QaliV5DIlPatIbCfBF6nScaQHGF69QrGKJ7pfUcJMkeLD7zTyp_fi2R8
Meanwhile, I just caught the subliterate Trumpola on the radio discussing his Wall loss and his buddy, Roger Stone -- good god what a gruesome meandering word salad it was! Jesus, I need a drink.
O&D, Wafers, O&D!
Miles
Apparently helicopter parenting is not enough and now we have “intensive parenting” becoming the norm for American families, not just the upper middle-class.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/01/intensive-helicopter-parenting-inequality/580528/
I wonder what will happen to some of these parents and kids when they realize that there just aren’t enough good jobs for everyone and not everyone can go to a top-flight university and become an affluent professional. I am predicting a lot of disappointment in the future but as Dr. Berman points out, this is the system most Americans want.
Hola los Waferes,
ReplyDelete@millenial realist - your comments re: Tejas 100% correct.I lived in Austin 1974 -1979 and got married there to a divorcee Dallas cheerleader...last week I just blew around it on the toll roads...thanks again to Owl, Ky Hote, Rog and Julianne, all of that once cool city,for coming over to Houston and helping me out with their music at the funeral service...
@miles deli - Houston IS a nightmare, in a swamp that will never be drained. However, the hotel bartender, Danny, was an ex-Rhodes suitcase 73 keyboardist, (wow, that tied me back to the wife's past!)and Regina was friendly, too; so they got a personal concert of a few songs via guitar and voice. The next day he told my mother: "he's really good at that". Danny also reminisced about knowing Billy Preston, a Houston native, back in the day.That got him Don't Let Me Down. Living where I do, I hardly ever see black folks, much less entertain them.
You've really got to look out for and then grab life's hidden gem moments in amerika.Some times they are revealed...
Being a WWII geek and growing up on a (sort of) farm, I greatly enjoyed this BBC series:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUsU5s0ofYo&list=PL59GlH-H0rGGl7RUe5T7XzT4_ToqqNL5R
Gave a neighbor WAF book to read (I know, I know). 12mo later there it sat on a lamp table (with some dust on the front cover). Asked her if she read the bk?
ReplyDeleteShe stated she could not. I asked why. She said, it's like getting a huge credit card bill in the mail. You just don't wanna open it up. Esp when you're in such debt, I rather not focus on things that get me down.
I said reality is refreshing and cleansing. She stated that she prefers to be happy and hope.
Happy and hope. Shit in one hand, hope in the other. usa, usa.
Trump appears to have "caved," at least temporarily, on his beloved wall. Too bad, I was getting to really like how traffic around here in NoVa has been reduced to about half of normal these past couple of weeks. It's pretty obvious that Trump is worried that the economy is in the process of doing a belly flop and the shutdown will be blamed even though there are much larger factors at work. As financial blogger Wolf Street pointed out: We’re Flying with Eyes Partially Closed into Turbulent Markets & Economy. His point is that with the Commerce department being closed, some very important economic statistics that appeared to be heading into significant negative territory aren't being calculated and investors have no way of know what's really happening (I know--cry me a river).
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the prog douchebags at the Daily Kos have take to calling Tulsi a "Pro Dictator Democrat" and are demanding her ouster from CONgress. No word on their position regarding Penny, but they'd probably be better off if she were running the place.
But there's good news on the Venezuela front: Pompeo Maximus has hamed convicted criminal and open defender of death squads Eliot Abrams of Iran-Contra fame as Special Envoy. I'm sure that Abrams will turn that beleaguered nation into a democratic paradise in no time.
Tulsi Gabbard is a loon who doesn't have a chance.
ReplyDeleteHe forgot one crucial question: "Am I a douchebag?"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/bill-gates-says-you-should-ask-4-crucial-questions-to-assess-quality-of-your-life-1-is-from-warren-buffett.html
Kanye
Please ignore that I am linking to a David Brooks NYT column. But cheers to him for writing on Josiah Royce (1855-1916), William James's rival for title of 1st great US philosopher: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/opinion/josiah-royce-loyalty.html … Wish he had also noted that in 1886 Royce wrote 1st history of US West that accurately described what happened in the 19thC as "conquest."
ReplyDeleteProfessor Berman -
ReplyDeleteNoam Chomsky and John Pilger join over 70 scholars to condemn US-backed coup in Venezuela
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/24/open-letter-united-states-stop-interfering-venezuelas-internal-politics
My friend Peter is devout to the writings of Noam Chomsky. While visiting I was looking thru Pete's bookshelves, commenting that he would benefit a lot from reading your political trilogy, as well as the socio/psychological stuff, that Pete would find a more comprehensive view from Chomsky's b&w positions. He's curious if you have ever interacted with Chomsky, if you ever corresponded. Have to admit I'm curious too.
Noah
I thought WAFers would enjoy this gem from our favorite NYTimes:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/business/against-hustle-culture-rise-and-grind-tgim.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage
O&D--
Brian
As if WAFers needed more evidence...
ReplyDelete“Facebook orchestrated a multiyear effort that duped children and their parents out of money, in some cases hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and then often refused to give the money back, according to court documents unsealed tonight in response to [Center for Investigative Reporting’s ] “Reveal” legal action.
The records are part of a class-action lawsuit focused on how Facebook targeted children in an effort to expand revenue for online games, such as Angry Birds, PetVille and Ninja Saga.” Facebook encouraged game developers to let children spend money without their parents’ permission – something the social media giant called “friendly fraud” – in an effort to maximize revenues, according to a document detailing the company’s game strategy.
The more than 135 pages of unsealed documents, which include internal Facebook memos, secret strategies and employee emails, paint a troubling picture of how the social media giant conducted business.”
https://www.revealnews.org/article/facebook-knowingly-duped-game-playing-kids-and-their-parents-out-of-money/
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteDid anyone catch Bill Maher's show last night? If this guy can be said to be in any way representative of US progs, then any criticism of them is justified. He somehow managed to make Ann Coulter sound like Friedrich Engels. I've despised Coulter for 20 years, yet here she was, sensibly dismissing that "Russiagate" nonsense, championing the plight of the working classes and calling for a tax on the rich, while Maher, his prog guests, and the audience were hooting in favour of Manifest Destiny in Venezuela, while portraying Julian Assange and Wikileaks as the new Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in being heinous traitors to truth, justice, and the American Way®.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/general-strikes-explained
ReplyDeleteTeen vogue brings the heat again.
Jesus.
Brian-
ReplyDeleteApparently America's youth are true Americans. Also clueless douche bags.
Alex-
True. But give us some evidence, yes?
mean-
Hola A los Waferes, por favor.
Thank you all for yr posts. Not clear why the rest of the country is unaware that we are rapidly sinking into the shit, with no prospect of climbing out. Oh, right: they're dumb. I keep forgetting.
Meanwhile, I'm developing a new therapy, which consists of embracing your inner Snoots.
mb
ps: "friendship" in America:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/21/how-mlms-are-hurting-female-friendships/?utm_term=.8a5c8f94dbba
David Foster Wallace would approve this 4.5 minute item about life in the modern world.
ReplyDeleteOne recalls that Tawney's 1920 "The Acquisitive Society" had the original title of
"The Sickness of the Acquisitive Society," but this was not allowed in the US edition.
When one hears about the increase in consumer spending, what is really said is that more
people are trapped into larger debts. Happily, soon the US national debt will hit
$22 trillion, and drinks and nachos will be served for the party. Robert Reich informed
me about the national debt clock, which is filled with all the dreary numbers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlMAKpxN8N0&feature=youtu.be
Steven PinkerDouche’s FAKE Enlightenment....
ReplyDeletehttps://www.salon.com/2019/01/26/steven-pinkers-fake-enlightenment-his-book-is-full-of-misleading-claims-and-false-assertions/
MB and Wafers: Building on al-Qa'bong's comments.... Every time I see or hear Ann Coulter I’m reminded of a woman I dated in college, forty years ago. Like Coulter, she was tall, blond, attractive, and dressed provocatively. Like Coulter, she grew up privileged, with a domineering father. Like Coulter, she was always itching for a fight, always goading others, always on the attack, always interrupting. What made her that way? I found out after a few dates: She was frigid. Her inability to climax made her a frustrated and tormented person. To vent that frustration, she lashed out at anyone she could. I suspect a similar dark secret has shaped the personality of Coulter. And probably Trumputin as well. This might be a good time to buy some nuclear flash eye protection.
ReplyDelete@Russian spy - ty for the Ozarko quote, nice blog (of course nary as great as this one☮). I can no longer watch nature shows like Blue Planet, it's just too heartbreaking to see what we've done to our garden of eden. Most people, including nearly all therapists I've seen insist on treating 'wholeness and healing' measured by increased wealth and consumption, the 'I was ill and now I'm well - see my great new job and stylish new car?' What a crock of shit! I have never been able to buy into it, and as MB has said if you don't you will pay a very high price, mine was paid in depression.
ReplyDeleteCame across a Chomsky quote where he talks about how Americans recite complicated sports statistics but are mystified by economics and gov't. So true, they can recite how many pubic hairs Tom Brady had when he won his first Super Bowl but are dumbfounded if you ask what a tripartite gov't is. Just call a spade a spade - 'the strong' are afraid of truth.
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeletemean-
Great story! I love Billy Preston's music. His "Encouraging Words" album is wonderful. Here's a funny anecdote: During the recording of the "Get Back" sessions, John Lennon proposed the idea of having Preston permanently join the Beatles, to become the so-called "Fifth Beatle." Paul nixed the idea, saying something to the effect of: it's difficult enough with four, how's it gonna work with five? Gotta luv McCartney's wit, yes?
MB, Wafers-
Thoughts on Roger Stone:
How much havoc has this gutter-grifting creep wrought since he stepped onto the stage of Republican Party politics nearly 50 yrs ago? Stone's claim to fame was being the personal jester for Nixon. Imagine that, a life dedicated to pernicious political trickery and deceit in the service of sub-cretinous jerkopaths like Nixon and Trumpo. It doesn't get any sadder than this: "Hi, I'm Roger Stone, one of the principal architects of the DC swamp. Some life, eh?
Miles,
And on a lighter note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCtzkaL2t_Y
The shaved orangutan's announcement reopening the government was nothing less than the apogee of American oratory. I will be devastated if Trumpi's followers don't succeed in demanding that this breathtaking speech be carved onto the side of Mt. Rushmore.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm back at work on Monday, at least for three weeks. That's enough time to get back pay before they shut it down again.
ReplyDeleteSending 20 million to Venezuela, while the Coast Guard was visiting food banks to eat was something even a bozo or USanian would question. Stones 4 am arrest is "sending a message" and Venezuela is a new (old) market opportunity (not to mention the oil). My guess is that fracking is about to go belly up. No mysteries here, imho.
Penny Lane, many thanks for the 33 Myths of the System ... I've been riveted for days.
I'm also grieving. It's been a wonderful 5 weeks, first with loved ones and then learning and sadness and mostly thinking (about what to do about it all). The post by Deb Ozarka was just what was needed. One thing I know for sure is that when the shit hits the fan, I don't want to be in the D.C. area. Not necessarily for safety, exactly, but really it's about getting away from the local "religion." And the traffic, for sure.
Dr. B and others, Wafers are truthfully #1. Here is why. What Wafers do that others do not is that they take different parts and interrelate them together. Let's use a clock as an analogy. One group of dolts wants to talk about gears and debate which materials the gears should be made of, how long the threads should be or how much space should be between threads. Or, the pulleys or hands, the paint, etc, should the body be made of wood or metal, etc. Everyone has their own thinking on what each should look like and perform but here is the thing. No one talks about how everything should work together. Even if people are good at what they do and they're good in their domain no one is able to put it together to see if it would work well as a whole. It's the same with exercise. An exercise could be good for your heart but not for your joints. And, that's one of the main issues with our modern medicine.
ReplyDelete@alex carter--agreed about Tulsi. Anyone who would WANT to be president of this armed madhouse HAS to be a loon. And the fact that she nevertheless has a smidgen more sense than the rest of them is the reason why she has no chance.
ReplyDeleteBesides, we have a far superior loon I'm sure all of us Wafers can rally behind. And the fact that the Dumbocrats are said to be worried about the former CEO of Starbucks running as an independent "throwing" the election to Trump just shows that they know what shit candidates front runners Harris, Biden and Booker are.
@al-Q--I'll confess that back during the Bush years I was a huge fan of Maher, whose constant skewering of Chimpy and his minions seemed passionate and genuine. But just as the Iraq War revealed most prominent conservatives to be evil shitheads, the election of the Trumpenfuhrer has done the same for most prominent liberals. The real problem, of course, is that they are all loony Americans, but it took me a long time to accept that.
But hey, we've all see polls showing that a "majority" of Americans see climate change as a real and a threat--so no doubt Americans are willing to make big sacrifices to help prevent it from happening, right? Not if it were to cost them even $10 a month they don't. Yeah, only a real loon would want to be in charge of these shit-for-brains jackasses.
https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/01/washington-redskins-dan-snyder-yacht-superyacht-imax-photos-video
ReplyDeleteDan Snyder put an IMAX movie screen on his $100M boat
@ al-Qa'bong--
ReplyDeleteThe progressives have turned into this. I quit watching him a couple of years ago when he launched his attacks on Islam that were so biased and hateful he could have easily gotten a radio slot after Rush Limbaugh. I'm not Islamic but I do believe tarring everyone with the same brush is wrong. And Ann Coulter's arguments for building the wall are all dismissed as "you hate Mexicans" ! I don't know that a wall is the best or only solution to illegal immigration but I do believe it has to be stopped. The homeless numbers are growing, we're facing an ongoing & escalating medical crisis and public schools are in decline. We don't have the resources to absorb more impoverished people.
And now Venezuala will be the next object of our affection. It's astonishing that America thinks it can declare the "winner" of the election the actual loser and hold a fake inauguration! It's like China deciding Hillary won and proclaiming her president. It's bizarre.
Just wondering if a name change is in order?
ReplyDeleteFrom say Trump Tower to Spulunker Tower.
Kind of has a nice ring and great branding
potential don’t you think?
News from the Davos, Switzerland World Economic Forum, where the elite meet to decide how much longer you have before you’re salting fries at Mickie D’s. And they’re working on automating that too. People are so unreliable. And don’t get them started on senior-citizen trainees.
ReplyDelete“DAVOS, Switzerland — They’ll never admit it in public, but many of your bosses want machines to replace you as soon as possible.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/technology/automation-davos-world-economic-forum.html
https://www.policeone.com/active-shooter/articles/482759006-La-shooting-leaves-5-dead-suspect-at-large/
ReplyDeleteSome fascinating statements by folks with usa "university" "education"---"Something is really wrong." "We must do something." "That's why the nation needs to built that wall, protect the border." "That's really sad." and of course, sad face graphics.
That's american intellect--400yrs+ of ?
Unknown-
ReplyDeleteSorry, I don't post Unknowns.
Mike-
Check out Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life."
Tim-
For future ref, this is a blog where (for the most part) participants argue a pt of view regarding some specific issue, and present evidence for it. Altho personal testimony related to collapse of empire is fine.
Susan-
Evidence for the uselessness of the wall is quite extensive; it will not stop folks from slipping across the border. The whole issue is basically political theater (e.g., many economists have pointed out that undocumented Latinos form the "shadow economy" for 5 states, and that without them, the states wd collapse financially). And Coulter is certainly a hate-filled chica: it was her, I read, who provided Trump with fuel such as "murderers" and "rapists."
cube-
See my comment to Tim.
mb
ps: Americans are wonderful:
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/27/us/alaskan-father-and-son-bear-killings-trnd/index.html
MB & Wafers,
ReplyDelete@Penny Lane - I second @Puss's thanks, love "33 Myths of the System" - phenomenal!
Venezuela - we are watching this disaster unfold, seeing the hands of John Bolton and Pompeo behind Trumpi. How the entire population can support this blatantly illegal move by the US to unilaterally overthrow a popularly elected President so we can steal their oil, while still whining about "Russia bought some facebook ads and messed in our election" shows that 'Muricans can't put together 2 thoughts. They could be led off a cliff with no problem.
On a final note - we have signed a contract for the sale of our US house - closing on 5 April. The plan to escape is moving forward!!
Recommended documentary for Wafers on Zuckerschmuck and Sheryl Doucheberg: PBS Frontline's "The Facebook Dilemma"
ReplyDeleteOne has to wonder about MLK when comparing him to Malcolm X, who let his anger go
ReplyDeletewhere it belonged rather than checking in like a good Christian. Had he lived, one
has to wonder if MLK would have given more thought to how economics enslaves both
whites and blacks. Here is his one-minute talk before the march on DC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLV5y4utPKI
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/books/review/edith-hall-aristotles-way.html
ReplyDeleteNice review of "Aristotle's Way"
Meghan a Prima Donna? Nooo...say it ain’t so....The reason is quite clear.....It’s because boorish and entitled behavior is totally ingrained in Americans.
ReplyDeletehttps://pagesix.com/2019/01/26/how-meghan-markles-ambitious-attitude-is-affecting-prince-harry/
The *real* reason the shutdown ended-- it was finally starting to hurt the corporations: "What we witnessed over the past 35 days were not checks and balances, we were treated to the ongoing implosion of an empire that is in a tailspin. Pelosi and Trump, two septuagenarians with the sagacity of Nero, put on performances that make Spongebob SquarePants look like the second coming of Plato."
ReplyDeleteOne killed, two wounded in FUNERAL shooting. Someone is doing it backwards.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem criticized for advocating shooting more coyotes so more people can have fur coats like the one a state senator owns. Judging by the picture, it looks like one really hideous coat. Example number infinity of why electing more women won't do shit to turn America around.
Example number infinity plus one: Kamala Harris enlists ex-Hillary Clinton team members for 2020 campaign. I'm tellin' ya, all Harris needs is some Botox injections and you'll swear she and the Chappaqua Queen were separated at birth!
Here is what Tom Brokaw had to say on NBC : Also, I hear, when I push people a little harder, ‘Well, I don’t know whether I want brown grandbabies,’ he said. I mean, that’s also a part of it. It’s the intermarriage that is going on and the cultures that are conflicting with each other. He broke off to offer his own commentary. ‘I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation,’ he said. That’s one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time. You know, they ought not to be just codified in their communities but make sure that all their kids are learning to speak English, and that they feel comfortable in the communities. And that’s going to take outreach on both sides, frankly.
ReplyDeleteSo basically what racists mean by assimilation is that “learn English, do cheap labor and don’t integrate/move in to our neighbourhoods cause there will be inter racial marriages and brown babies”. Just basically be slaves for us and die so that whites could still be a majority. Why don’t whites just start picking up their own trash if this is what they want ? And what is this obsession with English. It’s like anytime someone is not conversing in English, Amrikans are afraid they might be talking about bombing them or raping their women. And as if their parents/grandparents never spoke German,Italian etc.
Medal of stupidity should be awarded to Amrikans, each will have multiple medals a year. Starting with this stupid cop : St. Louis Officer Charged in Fatal Russian Roulette Shooting of Another Officer, Authorities Say
Debating over coffee with my wife, that Freud is basically the Aristotle of psychology. Her notion is that he was a towering intellectual but was wrong about nearly everything and set the psychoanalytic/psychological field back @least 50 yrs. To her Nietzsche & the romantics said it better much earlier.
ReplyDeleteMe to her: most people who will agree with this have read scant of either.
The Scientific Legacy of Sigmund Freud
Toward a Psychodynamically Informed Psychological Science
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-11174-003
I admire both Freud and Aristotle. The REAL question for WAFers -- Who is the Diogenes of Psychology?
Note to Tim-
ReplyDeleteWhy lurk when you can live?
Teri-
This blog has a half-page-max rule. Pls compress and re-send. Thanks.
jj-
She's a turkette, and her shoes need urine.
Vic-
MLK's change of viewpt and political analysis just before he died has been discussed a number of times on this blog. I've also referred to it more than once in articles posted here.
Italiana-
Well, they were led off the cliff regarding Vietnam, and more recently Iraq. The avg American's understanding of US foreign policy is at the level of a 7 yr old.
mb
Neurotic Beauty Department:
ReplyDeleteHayao Miyazaki doc: An analog animation master finds new technical challenges. "Hayao Miyazaki: Never-Ending Man" is a loving, behind-the-scenes tribute for long-time fans. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/hayao-miyazaki-doc-an-analog-animation-master-finds-new-technical-challenges/
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteBecause it worked so well the first time:
https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/national/hillary-clinton-tells-friends-shes-leaving-2020-door-open
George Carlin-
Check out "Not Fit For Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America" by Peter Schrag. The US, for a number of reasons, is basically a nation of immigration restrictionists. Here's a review:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-peter-schrag-20100613-story.html
Miles
usa-er foreign policy understanding:
ReplyDeletecommunism is bad, capitalism is great, socialism is yucky. muslims are evil. Anglo Saxons are superior. spreading freedom/democracy to brown savages, speaking american means you're our 'allies', us troops are heros, we are zeros.
Anything contrarian to this is usually met with ferocious rage.
usa. usa.
Not only is an obsession with human population growth a fantastic way of blaming the disparaged for the consequences of the wealthy. It might also be based on a fundamentally mistaken premise.
ReplyDeleteGood stats here
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/27/what-goes-up-population-crisis-wrong-fertility-rates-decline
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/u-treasury-set-borrow-1-050001810.html
ReplyDeleteYes, the miracle of Reagan returns. "What has the future ever done for me?
NADA, so pass the bills on to our children." If consumerism is based on
plastic, then why shouldn't the whole country do the same? Rumor has it
that yearly ONE MILLION defaults on student loans is normal. Think
of the job creation for lawyers and the courts.
http://bostonreview.net/forum/paul-bloom-lure-luxury
ReplyDeleteThe Lure of Luxury
A fascinating essay on runaway consumerism by yale psychologist Paul Bloom
A couple of books for the WAFer bookshelf:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/02/07/imperial-exceptionalism/
"Hendrickson thinks American disregard for international law helps explain the incoherence of contemporary strategic thought. According to exceptionalist ideology, the US is the primary guardian of international law, on which global stability depends. Yet Hendrickson (like Bulmer-Thomas) makes clear that more often than not, the putative rule-maker has in fact broken rules and acted in ways that it would not tolerate from any other nation."
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteIs the Huawei/Meng Wanzhou story receiving much coverage in the USA?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/meng-huawei-charges-fraud-1.4995848
From what I can tell, the US is leaning on Canada to extradite her to the US so they can retaliate against China for defying the US Empire's sanctions against Iran.
China's response to Canada has been to arrest Canadians visiting China. In one case, a Canadian who was busted for drug smuggling had his relatively light sentence changed to the death penalty a couple of weeks ago.
USA! USA!
Headline: According to the FBI, 18-month-old recovered in Baton Rouge in national sex trafficking sweep. Reality: some poor woman was so hard up for child care she was bringing her toddler along while engaging in adult prostitution and there was no actual "sex trafficking" going on. That's our FBI, always coming up with new and creative ways to demonize poor people and cover itself with glory.
ReplyDeleteMillions of Americans Flood Into Mexico for Health Care — the Human Caravan You Haven’t Heard About. Maybe Mexico SHOULD consider paying for the wall.
State of emergency declared in US measles outbreak. The disease had been declared eliminated in 2000, but has come roaring back thanks to the antivaxxers.
SELFICIDE: The Dangerous new addiction. Let's hope it spreads like wildfire.
And finally--Burrito pummeling: Man, 49, Arrested For Attacking Wife With A Taco Bell Burrito.
[Don’t worry, be happy. An academic from the University of London calls bullshit on Gates in the Guardian.]
ReplyDeleteBefore the just-concluded Davos World Economic Forum, Bill Gates tweeted several graphs to his 46 million followers that show that the world has been getting better and better.
One of the six graphs he tweeted shows that the proportion of people living in poverty has declined from 94 percent in 1820 to only 10 percent today. Joining Gates in the Hallelujah Chorus, the professor writes, have been such worthies as Steven Pinker and Nick Kristof, along with the Davos set more generally. The article’s author notes that Pinker and Gates have gone even further in celebration, “saying we shouldn’t complain about rising inequality when the very forces that deliver such immense wealth to the richest are also eradicating poverty before our very eyes.”
Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wronghttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
"How language began--a notorious mystery? Read Dan Dennett’s FROM BACTERIA TO BACH & BACK for audacious theory of meme selection. Words are star exemplars of memes. Language could have evolved first for benefit of words not people! Meme-gene coevolution followed & brain adapted."
ReplyDelete- Richard Dawkins
Just finishing Dennett's weighty book myself. Found it highly reductionistic and myopic tbh. But he puts the arguments on paper very clearly. @ Dawkins - I guess just bc you can use language well doesn't mean u know where it comes from!
There have also been more insightful thinkers on the evolution than Dawkins or Dennett. Check out this tvolmag interview featuring Brian Boyd and Daniel Dor on Dor's book "The Instruction of Imagination".
https://evolution-institute.org/challenging-chomsky-and-his-challengers-brian-boyd-interviews-daniel-dor/
And a better review of Dennett than I did here from the eminent philosopher Thomas Nagel
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/03/09/is-consciousness-an-illusion-dennett-evolution/
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteThought you might like to read how the Western tendency for bellicosity and fraudulent deal-making (hucksterism), both American characteristics, come together rather clumsily in Donald Trump. Sydney Plotkin describes this using the ideas of Thorstein Veblen - and of course pushing his new book - why not.
https://www.salon.com/2019/01/29/how-progressive-era-radical-thorstein-veblen-helps-explain-donald-trump/
Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes
ReplyDelete"A Q+A with the computer scientist about his new book Digital Minimalism, why future workplaces may go email-free, and why tech backlash is about to go mainstream."
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Minimalism-Choosing-Focused-Noisy/dp/0525536515
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
------------------
Talk about a dual process model!
Jon-
ReplyDeleteNewport believes tech is neutral. It's not.
mb
ps: Terrific film: "The Children Act."
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteA response from Steve Pinker to Salon’s hit piece on “Enlightenment Now”...
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/29/a-response-from-steve-pinker-to-salons-hit-piece-on-enlightenment-now/amp/
@Russian Spy: thanks for the Deb Ozarko shout out. Her post was insightful & I'm glad to have discovered her.
ReplyDeleteRead this & wanted to vomit: Filming in the Most Depressing City on Earth - Jakarta. It's the end game of capitalism & authoritarian religion. Between your books, MB (enjoying them immensely, BTW), and articles like this, I have vastly ramped up my plan/skills development to exit this sick culture/way of living. I also wonder if this is how large swaths of U.S. will end up, given the propensity to elect GOP fundy types.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/eric-trump-miffed-media-reported-205114322.html
ReplyDeleteHow can Trump's base have any faith in him? Here he is taking low-paid jobs from
patriots and giving them to his favorite target, illegal immigrants. Only great
desperation will drive his supporters into believing that they are part of something
bigger trying to save America short of civil war.
Can't say enough good things about 2 books both written in 1985 - Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and White Noise by Don DeLillo. They show two unmistakeable aspects of American culture or lack of - love of violence and consumerism in ways that only great fiction can show. Must reading for Wafers IMO wanting to understand some of the underlying causes of American behaviour.
ReplyDeleteIf America could be anthropomorphized...
ReplyDeleteIt would be be a 22 year old overweight college dropout tearing through his inheritance on shitty cocaine and round-the-clock Pizza Hut deliveries. He occasionally hops on Xbox Live to rant about how he's not allowed to use "The N Word" and that it's NOT FAIR that rappers get to use it.
Once his blood sugar stabilizes, he retires to his computer for the evening to post YouTube comments supporting Dr. Jordan Peterson's efforts to rebuild American masculinity (which was stolen by gay Mexicans).
The evening ends with a nightcap of Doritos and Mountain Dew as our hero slips into a food coma while listening to "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood.
Existgential Threat Department, where is the Doomsday Clock this year
ReplyDeletehttps://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/
"In 2017...we argued that world leaders not only failed to deal adequately with nuclear & climate threats [but] increased them thru a variety of provocative statements and actions, including careless rhetoric about use of nuclear weapons & wanton defiance of scientific truths...
....Two years later, it has become even clearer that 'the intentional corruption of the information ecosystem' threatens to undermine the rational discourse needed to address such challenges"
Hola A los Waferes,
ReplyDelete@Miles Deli - Thanks for the link to the Beatles videos. I had never seen them. As an aside, producer George Martin is regarded by many fans as "the fifth Beatle". See his book "All You Need is Ears".
Two Waferish essays of note by Jonathan Franzen in "To The End of the End of the Earth": essay "Capitalism In Hyperdrive" - "She's (Sherry Turkle) addressing a middle class in which she herself grew up, invoking a depth of human potential that used to be widespread. But the middle, as we know, is disappearing." Surely a Wafer theme, on digital technology.
In the title essay, which mirrors my life experiences - "It's true that the most effective single action that most human beings can take, not only to combat climate change, but to preserve a world of diversity, is to not have children."
Recently, on DAA blog, a Wafer posted a link to the Oregon man behind the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Are Franzen and this guy acquainted?
In my day to day many amerikans are blissfully, happily, unaware; some just plainly resigned to the decline...as a Wafer, one might conclude that "there is no hope."
O&D!
Is Children spelt children or Childrn? My gosh, your book tour stops are frightening and funny ... (PS love the Guillaum Duffay link). Not directly related to wafer, but I'm composing a fair bit and have been reading about different composers' thought-processes. Any thoughts on how involuntary memory etc contribute to writing process? Apparently Saint-Saens is incorporated into A le recherce du temps perdu ..
ReplyDelete@al-Q--not quite sure. I'm following it pretty closely, but I don't know how much play it's getting in the electronic media. One commentator I read stated that it would be as if Jeff Bozos's kid were the CFO of Amazon and Vietnam had arrested him on China's orders for doing something not even against the law in China.
ReplyDeleteIan Welsh (who is Canadian, incidentally) also just ran an excellent essay about why this fight shows just how badly the American empire has already fallen: The Problem with Banning Huawei 5G Tech. "If this is a strategic matter, then the US has fallen down completely. If an industry is strategic, a country must make sure it, or a trusted ally, stays in the lead. Not only did the US not do that, but US policies from the 80s onwards effectively off-shored this sort of production and research, as a deliberate policy choice. Now they cry?"
Welsh continues: "One of the key tenets of neoliberal economic policy is that it doesn’t matter where something is manufactured, or done. Let the cheapest domicile do it, and everyone will benefit. This is bullshit, and always was. Making and designing new things is where economic strength, the good life and military power all come from. Nations which forget this wind up in the dustbin."
Neil-
ReplyDeleteAlways, always, capitalize Wafer. Proust experts claim that "Vinteuil" was Saint-Saens in real life. Note also: A la recherche...
mean-
a, lower case: a los Waferes. I capitalized it only for emphasis. Don't worry, you'll get there. I think Franzen characterized cell fones as "capitalism on steroids."
mb
https://amp.greenvilleonline.com/amp/2457838002
ReplyDelete"Extremely important, impressive journalism here: The Greenville News & Anderson Independent Mail examined every court case involving civil asset forfeiture in South Carolina from 2014-2016."
TAKEN: How police departments make millions by seizing property
Literal highway robbery...by police!
"Asset forfeiture" @ work. Legal police robbery is a big sign of a disintegrating society.
I guess a culture where so many worship the original zombie, Jesus, would dredge up a vampire like this guy from the past-
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/26/elliott-abrams-venezuela-us-special-envoy
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/washingtons-favorite-literal-war-criminal-isnt-done-in-venezuela/
There is still time for one last curtain call by Henry Kissinger before it all collapses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQtI5t8i5Vo&fbclid=IwAR2xGU27v9_ULG-Hlnjn4pD4uiNyH93v-daOVEZEDzQHH-mFYiyAS-w_QVI
ReplyDeleteShow the gang where you live. Did you spot your residence? With 21 million people,
must be bigger than even LA. I bet real estate will be cheap when they all sneak
into the USA because no wall got built.
https://greece.greekreporter.com/2019/01/26/british-museum-director-says-greece-is-not-legal-owner-of-parthenon-marbles/
ReplyDeleteO the (in)humanities!
‘We stole them fair and square,’ said Nigel.
Thanks Dr Berman, I speak French so I should have noticed that faux-pas! Found this link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinteuil_Sonata which talks about involuntary memory.
ReplyDeletehttps://medium.com/s/2069/how-long-will-we-live-in-2069-f03e698f6de2
ReplyDelete"Naked mole rats, the Church of Perpetual Life, and the intersection between science (living to 115) & science fiction (living to 500) when forecasting the future of human aging: my new piece in Medium"
- Seth Mnookin
Creepy piece! The *Disenchantment* of the World, if you will.
and now the PC Mob is coming after Seinfeld:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spiked-online.com/2019/01/31/now-the-pc-bores-are-coming-for-seinfeld/
New project for NMIs around the world: write down jokes before they're considered a crime!
Kanye
Following on from Bill Hicks.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for all living-breathing organisms on this planet none of the usual blather re the much hyped 5G ever mentions the possible all-encompassing dangers of the electo-magnetic spectrum in which it operates, or the necessary density of the transmission towers which facilitate its use, or the distinct possibility according to one scenario that thousands of satellites will encircle the planet to ensure that every square inch of the planet is thus covered.
Do a search on the topic The Truth About 5G or try this website for starters:
www.5g.org.nz
MB & Wafers,
ReplyDeleteGreetings from a very cold Italy! Snowing outside now, and it snowed last week as well. Unusual for here. We're kind of stuck on our mountaintop until it melts a bit!
The following is a piece by John Whitehead (of the Rutherford Institute) commenting on the further drift into police state tactics in the US. Combined with the "Constitution Free Zone" of 100 miles from every border, sorry state of affairs. Pretty grim:
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/jackboots_in_the_morning_no_one_is_spared_from_this_american_nightmare
Paul Craig Roberts also highlighted this. Shows where we're going as a country. And note that there isn't a peep about it from the populace!!
New essay by WAFer favorite Lionel Shriver in Harpers (might be behind a paywall):
ReplyDeletehttps://harpers.org/archive/2019/02/cruel-and-unusual-punishment-2/
@Frederick--you misunderstand. Personally, I don't care about 5G and I'd be a technodouchebag if I did. However, it IS a vitally important technology from a strategic standpoint and that's what appears to be driving this feud between the USG and Huwaei (it certainly isn't because the Pentagon cares about the health of its citizens). From what I understand, U.S. policy stupidly allowed tech companies to basically give away the components that have allowed the development of 5G, just like it allowed big business to ship much of our manufacturing base (which also isn't terribly good for the health of living things), over to China all in the interest of greater short term profits. And now all of the sudden, the idiots who run the country are belatedly recognizing that they basically handed our biggest geopolitical rivals the technology to defeat us just so a few billionaires could get even richer--which is exactly the kind of thing dying empires do.
ReplyDeleteI may have mentioned this here once before, but back during the Obama years the Pentagon was having problems with its missiles flying off course and determined that the problem was faulty computer chips. The chips were made--guess where--yet a CONgressional inquiry headed by a Democratic Senator exonerated everyone involved in the fiasco from any blame. Of course, no one thought to question how it could possibly make sense to purchase chips from a potential "enemy" we were paying trillions of dollars to "defend" ourselves against. But that's neoliberalism for you--maximum profit is the only thing that matters.
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteIn this essay, Jimmy Wu starts with the anxiety and stress found especially in the US and basically puts the blame on capitalism - which is where it belongs but also belongs to everyone who goes along with the daily demands of 'business as usual' and family and peer expectations. He says capitalism must end but so must many societal norms which I realize will not change unless the US and Western situation gets even worse and ultimately collapses.
https://medium.com/reason-in-revolt/capitalism-is-dangerous-for-your-mental-health-b02fd8f56dfe
@Kanye Cyrus,
ReplyDeleteI still watch Seinfeld reruns and I sometimes can’t believe that the show is even aired these days. I also enjoy reruns of Married... with Children and I really cannot believe that they still air reruns because it was considered controversial even in the 1980s and 1990s. Interestingly in the past the humorless scolds were probably more likely to be conservatives like Terry Rakolta who tried to boycott Married... with Children.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Rakolta
Today the so-called “woke” Left seems to be the group that is humorless, moralistic and determined on fighting crusades against art and artists they find to be offensive and problematic. With religious belief in decline I wonder if the woke Left is now filling a gap in American culture that used to be occupied by the Christian Right.
Most careful study of the impacts of European conquest of the Americas I've yet seen concluding: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261
ReplyDelete1) "55 mil indigenous people died" = ~10% of world pop
2) "abandonment and secondary succession of 56 million hectares" = area bigger than Spain
3) abandonment supercharged plant regrowth, which removed "additional 7.4 Pg C" from air 4) removal of CO2 was primary factor in ~0.15∘C global temperature decline in 16th c = ~.3∘F
Authors Simon L Lewis and Prof Mark Maslin et al think this is the beginning of the Anthropocene. I'd say it's the beginning of *The Modern World*. And it's hard to imagine a bloodier, more calamitous birth. FIN
CC-
ReplyDeleteAlso check this out:
https://www.amazon.com/Indigenous-Peoples-History-ReVisioning-American/dp/0807057835/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548956890&sr=1-1&keywords=dunbar-ortiz
Tom, Kanye, et al.:
Political correctness is the death of the human spirit. An important factor in our collapse, I'm guessing.
mb
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652
ReplyDeleteThe Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money Hardcover – January 30, 2018
by Bryan Caplan (Author)
This was my reading last month. Wow, I didn't want to believe it, but our education system is symbolic of the system of the entire country: A waste of time!
Strange as it may seem I think Steve Bannon might b proto-Wafer he's the only one that gets what's happening imho. Paraphrasing here but he says Trump is an historical transformative figure that we'll b dealing with 30 yrs from now whether we like it or not.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/427604-bannon-says-he-was-doing-the-lords-work-in-white-house%3famp
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteI luv it dept.:
Dovie Nickels, 26, arrested for a public pleasure session. Dovie continued to pleasure herself while handcuffed (?) sitting in a squad car after her arrest.
https://www.statesman.com/news/20190130/woman-exposed-herself-at-two-street-patios-in-downtown-austin-police-say
Miles
Trip report: Just returned from a lovely 10-day stay in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico. La Paz is still a real Mexican town, especially once you get away from the tourist strip along the bay. The locals are very friendly (even to gringos like me speaking only medium Spanish), and everything is wonderfully simple, low-tech, and real. Saw the emerging smartphone addiction, however, but at this point it exists to a much lesser extent than here in the US. There is much to like about this place, although there are a few negatives. The one that perhaps troubled me the most was the amount of litter in the city and on the highways -- mostly detritus from US or US-inspired junk food -- beverage containers, plastic bags, wrappers, etc. I am wondering why there was so much litter -- it was really ugly, and it made me wonder what is going on with the people. I saw a few random anti-littering signs ("No tire basura"), but obviously nobody took that seriously. Anybody with experience in Mexico (especially Dr. B) know what the (non-) ethic about littering is?
ReplyDeleteDavid-
ReplyDeleteMexico is not esp. environmentally conscious, which is a pity; altho we recycle in Mex City, and are required to separate organic from inorganic garbage. The crucial problem is the deluge of junk from the US, as you point out; including a junk life.
Jeff-
Dovie: my kinda gal. Altho P. Snoots remains No. 1.
Jeff W.-
It's a fractal kinda thing: what's wrong with education is wrong with health ins. is wrong with the legal system is wrong with the military...This is known as systemic failure.
mb
Speaking of Agent Orange, Steve Bannon, spirituality and the christian right Bannon produced an unspeakably awful "christian" movie titled The Torchbearer.
ReplyDeleteThere is a new book titled The Faith of Donald Trump:A Spiritual Biography by David Brody. In an interview with him Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated that "god" obviously put Agent Orange in the White House.
The book features a foreword by Eric Metaxas who is described here:
americanloons.blogspot.com/2018/04/1995-eric-metaxas
Bill Hicks, I didnt misunderstand your posting re 5G. I should have phrased or introduced my posting differently.
I hope everyone has been keeping warm. Frigid temps the last few days here.
ReplyDeleteThe following is a nice roundup of white collar crime in the good ole USA. Not that doing something about it will ever occur! Everything is for sale in 'Murica, including the shuttered Trump Foundation. The article talks about the "loose regulatory environment" of today, true enough, but the Orange One has been playing tricks for years (Atlantic City comes to mind).
"“Zero tolerance” and “broken windows” policies are terms frequently used by law enforcement in discussing low-level crime. But American law enforcement appears to avoid the penthouses."
https://theconversation.com/theres-a-wider-scandal-suggested-by-the-trump-investigations-109203
MB & Wafers,
ReplyDeleteI recommend yet another wonderful Linh Dinh article, this time about a separate group, the Rade, who live in the hill in Vietnam. They still have the community that the neoliberal order is trying so hard to stamp out, and don't need all the fancy stuff we all have.
http://www.unz.com/ldinh/royal-decrees-must-yield-to-village-norms/
Re 5G - I agree with @Bill Hicks that, for a profit for the elites, we've farmed out all of our critical manufacturing - how stupid is that?? Hustling regardless of the consequences.
I also agree with @Frederick - from what I've read about the danger to both animal & plant life from this technology, the moment the earth is blanketed with it and we are all involuntarily exposed to it, however useful it is to other technologies, it will join with general pollution, global warming, and chemical toxins to continue disturbing our natural environment. Here's an article from Dr Mercola: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/04/03/5th-generation-wireless-network.aspx
Cardi B, whoever the hell that is, is exploring a run for President!!
ReplyDeleteCardi B invited to speak to influential Democratic group in Iowa...
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/cardi-b-invited-speak-influential-democratic-group-iowa-n965526
jj-
ReplyDeleteCardi B. and Tulsi, flanked by Lorenzo Riggins and P. Snoop! Now *that's* an election!
mb
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18206261/foxconn-wisconsin-factory-government-subsidies-investments
ReplyDeleteYes, US late capitalism in action. US corporations are overflowing with cash mostly
used to buy back their own outstanding stock while investing zero in US to create
mythical high paying jobs for un- and semi-skilled workers. Foxxconn knows the truth
of cheap labor in Asia and that they will probably use Asian scientists and technicians
while receiving subsidies. You simply cannot beat welfare for the corporations to
keep alive the spirit of free enterprise.
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteI'm now worried abt 2020. Has Trumpi so seriously fucked up this govt shutdown/wall business so as to discredit himself, even with his base? Has he opened the door to Tulsi, or Liz Warren, or even Botox Face? What say you?
mb
A good one from the Guardian:
ReplyDelete"Everyone, it seemed, was performing, and the basic idea was to do as much performing as possible."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/31/how-facebook-robbed-us-of-our-sense-of-self
Kanye
GSWH:
ReplyDeleteIf the things Trump has said and done since taking office have been insufficient to alienate his base and cause otherwise rational adults in the party to abandon him and oppose his “policies”—I use the term very loosely—then I can’t imagine what would unseat him.
And as one Democrat after another steps forward to wedge his way into the DNC candidate clown car, I see no opposition figure who might offer an impediment to a second Trump term.
Of course, for those wishing for an accelerated decline—presumptively the present company—Trump should be our man. And we should head immediatly to the site “shop.donaldjtrump.com.” All major credit cards accepted.
Hola a los Waferes
ReplyDelete@MB - muchas gracias for the continuing counsel re: my meager attempts at correct Spanish.
Let's not worry unnecessarily about 2020. The declinist understanding dictates that the next one will be as bad as the last one. Possibly better. IMO, trumpet could disappear up his own rectal orifice and it would only improve things.(As long as he pulled the rest of his organization in with himself.)
Music is the universal language. I know it better than English. The quartet of Catelonians I met last summer were easily the best audience I have ever had in this dead zone of intelligence. Their English and plain relational skills were outstanding. I was sorry to see them pedal off. They, as all people do, understood this lyric:
Michelle, ma belle.
Sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble,
tres bien ensemble.
I love you, I love you, I love you,
that's all I want to say. - Paul McCartney
MB -- The return of Botox Fave would probably help Trump in 2020, but I think it's more likely that former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz would be a greater guarantee.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, Trump is heavily weighing in on declaring a national emergency, so don't give up hope too soon:https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-good-chance-hell-declare-national-emergency/story?id=60779657
And then there's Ann Coulter pouring more gasoline on the fire, which should ignite Trump's rage: https://thehill.com/homenews/news/428108-coulter-slams-lazy-and-incompetent-trump-says-he-could-face-primary-challenger
Like Orangeman said he cld shoot people and not lose a vote. Could Venezuela be the Suez moment, or Vietnam, or will it 'heal' the divide?
ReplyDeleteWas driving in denver yesterday got behind a delivery van, he was trying to turn left onto a busy street. No one wld let him in so finally when he got a hole he went out halfway and demanded to let him. You'd of thought it was fucking Armegedon, multiple road rages on disgusting display. Bitch had to stop and watched her melt down in yells and screams. Fer fuck's sake man she lost a whole 20 seconds outta her life, and reacted like it was a goddamn cancer diagnosis. I tell ya MB when one opens their eyes it's obvious these people are emotionally as tight as a fiddle string. It won't take much for it to snap.
I would argue that while Trump may have made himself look like a fool, I think the Democrats will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The corporate Democrats will get their milquetoast social justice/fiscally conservative candidate as President who IF he/she wins will change nothing. Might give a bunch of turkey's hope as they fall to their deaths but other than that, this shithole is getting cleaned up in a long time.
ReplyDeleteI found my old yearbook and my picture is w a silly but fun quote from Roger Zelazny's 'Lord of Light', which is about far-future humans culturally appropriating the Hindu & Buddhist pantheons. Won the Hugo Award. Interesting scifi recommendation for a Wafer.
ReplyDeleteMB-
ReplyDeletePersonally, I will continue to support President Trump because he loves America, and wants to take America back from the grip of radical Islamic terrorists. He makes us feel safe inside this great country. Additionally, we have too many domestic enemies here. It's time for Trump to just line them up against a wall and execute them wholesale. And speaking of a Wall, well, it makes a helluva lotta sense because we need to put an end to the influx of illegals who come in here. So, I wouldn't worry too much about Tulsi, Liz, Bernie, or P. Snoots for that matter; they all come out of the old hippie culture that nearly destroyed our country 50 yrs ago. As a born-again Christian, a conservative, and a businessman it's great we have such a God-fearing president who understands so well how the business world operates. I've long thought that we can operate government just like a business. This is exactly what Trump is doing. He's just as common as you and me. He has a huge heart, he's humble, and very respectful of people who want start businesses and stuff like that. I tell ya, I just love the guy because, even though he's a billionaire, he's a blue-collar billionaire who tells it like it is.
Keep America Great!
Miles J. Trumpola
And don' even get me stated about political correctness! It's completely run amok and approaching lunacy in the US.
@MB--keep an eye on the stock market. Think of the DJIA as the Trump Reelection Chances Index. A lot of people I've talked to the past couple of years (all upper middle class types) have been focused on "how much money Trump has made them." That's why he leaned on the Fed until it caved on continuing to raise interest rates. As it stands, Sanders is the only *real* threat to Trump's reelection, and the Dumbocrats are once again going to do everything they can to deny him the nomination.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the Howard Schultz fiasco has been very enjoyable to watch. Yeah--just what the country needs, another "billionaire asshole" in the White House. Maybe we'll get REALLY lucky and the stupid prog call to boycott Starfucks will kill off half of their horrid blights on the landscape.
Anyway, I'm holding out hope that the Dumbs will nominate this guy, who clearly never got the #MeToo memo, and who would literally do to America what has been done to it figuratively for decades: Meet Nathan Sutherland: Nurse Who Allegedly Impregnated A Vegetative Patient. "Sutherland was part of a Christian rap duo with his sister, Toisi under the name SLS or Sleeplessouljaz. Their first album was titled, “Certified Fake Face” and was released in 2009." Possible slogan: Make America Great--Vote NATE
Nah. The election is nearly 2 years away, and Americans are stupid. Down the memory hole by then.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'll be voting for Riggins. He is a strong candidate who will continue Trump's precedent of celebrating meaningless sports competitions with Big Macs and Whoppers.
No worries. I think we are still toast. https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/22/the-double-bind-of-human-senescence/
ReplyDeleteMB. No need to worry when there are idiots like Bill Maher around
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzzfcDx_TQc
MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteI agree with the "don't worry, be happy" group. The Dems are incredibly stupid, routinely shooting themselves in the foot. The Botox Chief in Name Only will ensure that no one, other than herself or someone she chooses, will get the nomination; said person will subsequently do something incredibly stupid, and Orange in Chief (or his designee) will prevail.
The only difference between the two parties, near as I can tell, is that the Refubs are (currently) making fewer stupid mistakes. Dumb and Dumber. We could build a meter, or an index, to indicate which side of the aisle is currently making the most/fewest mistakes.
Cheers! O&D, my pretties. (@Miles, very funny! @Italiana, it's an incredible book.)
DSW, MB: this review will please your point. Also read John Gray's most recent book criticizing modern atheism. Nothing New in it. More like Old Hat Atheism
ReplyDeletehttps://theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/31/four-horsemen-review-what-happened-to-new-atheism-dawkins-hitchens
Book of the day
The Four Horsemen review - whatever happened to ‘New Atheism’?
Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris ... were the apostles of atheism as fearless as they thought?
Steven Poole
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FahUwr01U8Y&feature=youtu.be
ReplyDeleteThis very rare direct, pithy, and correct video in a mere 26 seconds
could easily be the basis for a college course, assuming, of course,
that any Joe College would understand much of it.
The decay of nuclear arms control systems, climate change and disruptive technologies like social media that replace reason with emotional manipulation. Man, the future is looking bright.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/02/havent-enough-keep-awake-night-try-doomsday-clock-truthful-state-union.html
TOP HEADLINE NEWS!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteBow Wow Arrested....
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2019/02/02/bow-wow-arrested-atlanta-charged-battery-following-fight/2754307002/
6ix9ine Pleads Guilty....
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6658651/amp/Rapper-6ix9ine-admits-gang-membership-pleads-guilty.html
WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE!?!?!?And WHY DOES ANYONE CARE!?!?!?
Greetings from the Old Dominion, where our illustrious, beloved Dumbocratic Governor, he of the unfortunate Christian name Ralph (as in puke), and believe it or not in college by the nickname "Coonman," thought it was just dandy to don a KKK outfit (or wear blackface? He hasn't definitively admitted which racist shitbag is in fact him) for the yearbook. Mind you this happened in 1984, well after the civil rights era. Mind too that he won the gubbner-ship in the first place because the Republicans are the mean old nasty racists, while the Dumbs are all full of virtue, gumdrops and lollipops. Mind three that the yearbook was for VMI, our grand military college where young racist shitbags are taught how to be full blown killer shitbags. But don't worry, old Ralph is sorry. Boy is he so very, very VERY sorry...that he got caught.
ReplyDeleteBeyond the hilarious press conference given by Governor Coonman, in which he tried to claim that he wore blackface as part of a Michael Jackson dance contest--which he claimed he won! I saw a blogpost today by a crusty old VMI grad who was shocked, just shocked! that Governor Coonman would so besmirch that august institution. However, a review of the whole yearbook found numerous blackface photos of various illustrious VMI alum.
Apparently, a reporter at his press conference asked him if he would moonwalk, and he looked like he was actually considering it before his wife waved him off. Ol' Ralph just moved to the top of my list of 2020 Dumbocratic hopefuls. We need his bold moonwalking abilities in the Oval Orifice.
An interesting article you might want to read. Michael Hudson is an economist and has written several books about debt & the destruction of empires. From the article:
ReplyDelete"The end of America’s unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected, thanks to the very same Neocons who gave the world the Iraq, Syria and the dirty wars in Latin America. Just as the Vietnam War drove the United States off gold by 1971, its violent regime change warfare against Venezuela and Syria – and threatening other countries with sanctions if they do not join this crusade – is driving European and other nations to create their alternative financial institutions.
This break has been building for quite some time, and was bound to occur. But who would have thought that Donald Trump would become the catalytic agent? No left-wing party, no socialist, anarchist or foreign nationalist leader anywhere in the world could have achieved what he is doing to break up the American Empire."
The article -
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/01/trumps-brilliant-strategy-to-dismember-u-s-dollar-hegemony/
I guess by ousting the Virginia guv democrats are making the case that each and every person carrying the banner must be as clean as the driven (snow?), no wait bad analogy, their record must be (lily?) white. Oh fuck it, the skeletons in the closet just have to b impenetrable, lookin' @ you Al Franken.
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean the MSM could eventually catch up to what Wafers have known all along?:
ReplyDeleteWhy are Americans in so much pain?
Mikaela Conley
Yahoo News
January 30, 2019
https://news.yahoo.com/americans-much-pain-141918964.html
Many keen insights in this article, some of them hinting at Americans’ own outrageous and putrid lack of character. And along with that, just the barest outline of the ‘’elephant in the room”: that it’s this society that’s killing us. Something that this blog has consistently pointed out.
Roberto-
ReplyDeleteHalf-page max on this blog.
Trumpi in 2020, Wafers!
mb
Maybe it's just me, but these Dems like Booker and Harris with their let's all wprk together BS but not really do anything structurally significant sounds and feels alot like Obama hope and change. Which means if one of them ever were to become president it will create yet another predictable backlash worse than Trump. Another question - is every two bit ex-mayor or senate canditate or governer who is a democrat gonna run for president? Do any of them understand simple cost benefit analysis?
ReplyDeleteJJ & James & Rowman
ReplyDeleteIn response to the Pinker/Gates argument articles
https://truthout.org/articles/the-case-of-the-brutal-savage-poirot-or-clouseau-or-why-steven-pinker-like-jared-diamond-is-wrong/
&
https://patternsofmeaning.com/2018/05/17/steven-pinkers-ideas-about-progress-are-fatally-flawed-these-eight-graphs-show-why/
And then finally, I think Monbiot's is the finest worded riposte
"I am broadly sympathetic to his worldview. I agree with him that scientific knowledge is a moral imperative, and that we must use it to enhance human welfare. Like him, I’m enthusiastic about technologies that horrify other people, such as fourth-generation nuclear reactors and artificial meat. So I began reading his new book Enlightenment Now with excitement.I expected something bracing, original, well-sourced and well-reasoned. Instead, in the area I know best – environmental issues – I found an astonishing mishmash of factoids, mistakes and outright myths. The alarm began to sound for me when he characterised “the mainstream environmental movement” as “laced with misanthropy, including an indifference to starvation, an indulgence in ghoulish fantasies of a depopulated planet, and Nazi-like comparisons of human beings to vermin, pathogens and cancer.”
https://www.monbiot.com/2018/03/09/contrary-to-reason/
Question for you three, MB, and all Wafers -- are there any works, texts, documentaries (larger than an article's length) that catalog a contradicting supposition to Pinky's?
“It is particularly important to get to know your weaknesses. They are the main tools of those who try to hack you. Computers are hacked through pre-existing faulty code lines. Humans are hacked through pre-existing fears, hatreds, biases and cravings.” Yuval Noah Harari: the myth of freedom - "to survive, we must accept that humans are hackable animals. Governments and corporations will soon know you better than you know yourself. Belief in the idea of ‘free will’ has become dangerous"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/14/yuval-noah-harari-the-new-threat-to-liberal-democracy
---------------------
“In a move of such audacity that it bears comparison to the enclosure of the commons or colonial conquests, the tech giants unilaterally declared that these previously untapped resources were theirs for the taking, and brushed aside every objection .... While insisting their technology is too complex to be legislated, [they] have poured billions into lobbying against oversight, and while building empires on publicly funded data...have repeatedly rejected established norms of societal responsibility and accountability .... The extraction is so grotesque, so creepy, it is almost impossible to see how anyone who really thinks about it lives with it – yet we do. There’s something about its opacity, its insidiousness, that makes it hard to think about, just as it’s hard to think about climate change”
The Attention Trap - Caspar Henderson
https://perspectivainsideout.com/2019/01/30/digital-minimalism/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArfGyo6HQ_E&feature=youtu.be
ReplyDeleteCertainly you have wondered about whatever happened to the Moonies.
America, a land of charming contrasts, finds them well armed and
ready to defend themselves. Just dip into the first two or three
minutes and wonder about The Decline of It All.
Darwin says! :
ReplyDelete"Authorities said a pregnant Washington state woman was shot in the face on Saturday by her four-year-old son, after the boy found a loaded and unsecured gun under a mattress.
The King county sheriff’s office said the 27-year-old woman, who is eight months pregnant, was taken to Harborview medical center with life-threatening injuries."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/03/four-year-old-shoots-mother-face-gun-mattress
If that doesn't kill her, then the medical bills she's about to receive will.
Herman Daley on immigration. Worth a read.
ReplyDeletehttps://steadystate.org/a-country-of-immigrants/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DalyNews+%28Daly+News%29
Yuck!
ReplyDeleteIs Jordan Peterson's all-beef diet really healthy?
https://bigthink.com/is-jordan-petersons-all-beef-diet-really-healthy-2627714268.amp.html
I came across in interesting phrase from the writings of William Blake yesterday.
ReplyDeleteIt is "the TRUMP of the last doom", or "seeking the TRUMP of the last doom".
Coincidence or prophetic?
Doing a search I then came across his work Europe A Prophecy.
At one stage Blake was dismissed as a quaint odd ball, which he of course was by the standards of his time and place. But that began to change a teensy bit with the appearance of Kathleen Raine's monumental William Blake and Traditional Mythology, and Laura de Witt James's William Blake and the Tree of Life.
He is still mostly ignored too.
US arms sold to Saudi Arabia and UAE end up in wrong hands
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/02/middleeast/yemen-lost-us-arms/
Read: Al Qaeda's!
On a brighter side, When We Were Kings is a 1996 Academy Award winning documentary film directed by Leon Gast about the famous "Rumble in the Jungle" heavyweight championship match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The fight was held in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) on October 30, 1974.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_We_Were_Kings
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteChris Hedges' next article may insist on resisting what is happening in US-world relations but he seems see the dismantling of the US empire by Trump and doesn't mention any possibility of stopping it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51045.htm
Vic-
ReplyDeleteOnly 1 post every 24 hrs, thanks.
Michael-
Once in a while, Mr. Hedges departs from his proletarian revolution scenario.
Toni-
Pls be sure to keep yr posts to within half a page length. Thank you.
mb
JJ,James,Rowman,Toni
ReplyDeletehttps://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty
A LETTER TO STEVEN PINKER (AND BILL GATES, FOR THAT MATTER) ABOUT GLOBAL POVERTY
February 4, 2019
"Here I elaborate on the argument I made in the Guardian about global poverty, adding the detail and nuance that I was unable to include earlier, while responding to a critique (such as it is) that Pinker posted."
I haven't posted for a while as I've been really sick. But I've been reading faithfully and enjoying all the comments.
ReplyDeleteThere was a recent article about how Trump voters are finally realizing they're getting screwed as they're doing their tax returns.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/trusted-trump-voters-seethe-realizing-theyre-getting-screwed-gops-tax-plan/
Amazing how none of the wars or horrible treatment of refugees or the coup in Venezuela upsets them. No the marks get upset when they realize they've been hustled.
As many have said America can't go down quick enough.
Hey, MB, here's your "dual process" sprouting!
ReplyDeleteKQED Forum: Bottom Up Governance
quote:
"I guess we'll just have to do it ourselves." That's a growing sentiment in many communities where individuals are tired of waiting for government to act. In this hour, live from the Night of Ideas festival in San Francisco, we'll talk about new models for communities to offer affordable housing, healthier food and more efficient and equitable use of tax dollars. Some of these ideas call for reclaiming the urban commons and come out of the "sharing cities" movement. We'll hear about some real-world examples of participatory governance in the Bay Area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6D8K1MY0lo&feature=youtu.be
ReplyDeleteThey walk among us. One could be your neighbor or sitting next
to you on public transit. All of them get away without having to pay
their share of income tax.
Some favorite people updates:
ReplyDelete1. Release date for Shaneka Torres as yet unknown.
2. Sentencing date for Laquisha Jones, Feb. 28.
3. Lorenzo Riggins walks the streets, a free man; as does, apparently, P. Snoots.
mb
@MB--gotta a few more American heros for you. Allow me to present:
ReplyDeleteChristie Caratini-Mendoza: arrested for pummeling a fellow stripper.
Michael Mack: Angry Trucker Runs an Ambulance off the Road, Battles Cops for Five Hours with a Machete.
William Lee Hill Jr: Man found in Smokies died of meth overdose before being eaten by bear.
Meanwhile, as America's empire creaks, its infrastructure crumbles: Concrete from an overpass on I-75 in Detroit smashed through Local 4 anchor Evrod Cassimy's sunroof when he was driving home from work Monday.
And the cops in South Carolina readily admit they wouldn't bother with pursuing drug cases if they couldn't keep seized assets for themselves--whether or not the suspect is actually guilty of a crime: SC cops defend keeping cash they seize: 'What's the incentive' otherwise?
Hola a los Waferes,
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of favorite people updates - How are you doing with the surgery recovery process Professor Berman? We're all pulling for you.
I join you in suggesting that no attention be paid to tonight's state of the dys-union address. We have already informed ourselves, so "hello! what?"
I'm in the home stretch with the conclusion of Timothy Snyder's epic history "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" - "Humanity". Something we discuss a lot in depth on the World's Greatest Blog, DAA. A notable read.
Re: Reading "An Indigenous People's History of the United States" I had a good conversation today with a Crow/Apache man I am acquainted with here. More on that later.
O&D!
Here is a link to a podcast I ran across that reviews the so called neo-liberal optimism industry headed by Bill Gates and his favorite Panglossian pet faux-intellectual stooge Steven Pinker. Enjoy.
ReplyDeletehttps://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-58-the-neoliberal-optimism-industry?fbclid=IwAR2cIhzJXbdQDvSY9Z21Q_ZhP6kyM9M7Eq5rAdrv0G0Rif28B1yj3y_-MX8
Too bad you didn't die during surgery, you racist kike
ReplyDeleteMB and Wafers: One can be a declinist without being a defeatist, as this summary shows. https://thebaffler.com/latest/fresh-hell-poo-flip
ReplyDeleteReaction to TrumPutin?
ReplyDeleteCivil War. It just looks like Civil War.
Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/Our-Towns-000-Mile-Journey-America/dp/1101871849
Interesting book by James Farrow.
This is a good one. Reviving cities like Cleveland, Youngstown, St. Louis, etc., as well as uncountable small cities most people haven't heard of, is still a more important task than making San Francisco more affordable et al. An interesting example of your Dual Process, MB.
Frank Sinatra department:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.universetoday.com/141408/elon-musks-new-plan-is-to-get-to-the-moon-as-fast-as-possible/
Kanye
living still and quietly ... boring isn't really boring
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/opinion/sunday/children-bored.html
Let Children Get Bored Again
'Boredom teaches us that life isn’t a parade of amusements. More important, it spawns creativity and self-sufficiency.'
John Gray review Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History by Richard J Evans:
ReplyDeletehttps://literaryreview.co.uk/contributors/john-gray
Economonic Hitmen: Right now, think of Venezuela.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=96&v=37Dvt2EqXF4
Has anyone else noticed the conflagration in Virginia state politics? It's like a political correctness apocalypse.
ReplyDeleteCNN: The complete and utter collapse of Virginia's Democratic Party
Filthy-
ReplyDeleteHa ha, tough luck, you poor shmuck. My surgeon said it was the fastest recuperation he'd ever seen. I'm tough as a stallion and eat little anti-Semites like you for breakfast. I'm 75 this year and intend to make it to 101 (too bad for you! I'll be dancing on yr grave!). Writing hate mail: *this* is how you spend yr time, you douche bag? Well, don' let me get in the way of you pissing yr life away. Pathetic little turkey; who cd love you? Jesus, think, for 2 seconds, abt what yr life amounts to. Brr.
John-
All these folks are stooges: Gates, Pinker, Zuckershmuck, Musk, Jobs--little more than techno-buffoons. And Americans worship them, because they too are stooges.
mean-
As I told our anti-Semitic friend (see above), I'm recovering quite well. My orthopedist said I cd even return to tennis, but wd not be able to serve. I continue to do my daily exercises at home, phys. therapy, and did a yoga class a few days ago. I will never recover full range of motion, but 90%, he said; hey, I'll take it. Meanwhile, I haven't read the Snyder bk, but I took a lot of flak on this blog a few yrs ago for recommending an essay he wrote on the Ukranian situation. I may have been wrong; I really don't know.
Bill-
Yeah...whatever happened to 'protect and serve'? Anyway, these are good data; keep 'em coming!
Bach-
Gd stuff, but how are we going to replace all the *people* in those towns?(!)
mb
Greetings again from the Old Dominion, stomping grounds of good ol' Governor Coonman, his alleged sexual predator deputy and his blackface wearing Attorney General. What a fucking outstanding slate of douchebags the Dumbocrats put up to run my beloved commonwealth, yet there are liberals here who really believe that we'll be worse off if Ralph (as in puke) and his two cohorts have to resign and (horrors) the Rethuglican who is 4th in line of succession takes over.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, during Trumpolini's State of the Empire address many top Dumbocrats showed their "resistance" (barf) to Teflon Don by warmly applauding him for attacking both socialism and Venezuela. Chants of USA! USA! could be heard as some of our douchebag CONgresidiots started literally dancing in the aisles. In case you were keeping track at home Orange Julius received a total of 78 standing ovations during his 90 minute address.
Ultimately, the truth came out in polling that showed 76% of shit-for-brains Americans approved of Trumpadump's speech, including 97% of Rethuglicans and even 30% of Dumbocrats. And as if Trump couldn't get any luckier, the day after his speech Liz "Pocahontas" Warren was found to have claimed American Indian status as early as the mid-1980s. So don't fret, MB, all this looks like the basis for Trump being able to sweep to reelection in 2020.
Bill-
ReplyDeleteAs the saying goes, if any of this shit were in a novel, people wd regard it as inferior writing, an impossible scenario. Myself, I find it all heartwarming. Rome redux, without question. And Pocahontas my tuchus.
mb
Dr. B and WAFERS:
ReplyDeleteI apologize for not writing in for so long. I have been a daily lurker, however. I have been battling some health demons and staying somewhat amused by all the "health" personnel trying to figure out how to extract the maximum dollars from me and my insurance company. I wonder if anyone in America ever receives truly excellent healthcare, given that the prime objective is always mo' money. That could be the subject of many blog entries.
I ran across this book and am wondering if any WAFERS might have read it:
https://www.amazon.com/Heartland-Memoir-Working-Richest-Country/dp/1501133098/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1549555420&sr=1-1&keywords=smarsh+heartland
It's called Heartland by Sarah Smarsh. I read a review, and it seems to describe the decline of the American heartland, but the last thing I would want to read about is some feel-good solution at the end of the book. I recall a book called Hillbilly Elegy that did just that. WAFERS know the solution - complete and total collapse.
Bill Hicks, I thought I had a patent on TRUMPADUMP, but you used the term in your last blog post. I guess great minds think alike. My favorite bumper sticker slogan at the moment would be: WHEN I TAKE A DUMP, I LIKE TO TRUMPADUMP!
Mike-
ReplyDeleteHope yr feeling better. Remember to send messages to most recent post. Looking for'd to seeing you in NY in April for what promises to be the greatest meeting of any kind in the history of the world. If you cd only see the letters from non-blog participants, begging to attend, and the offers of planes, boats, houses, and gold bars. All for naught. Only the crème get to attend, altho I wd entertain P. Snoots as an honored guest.
mb
Hello this is penny Snoots THE penny Snoots I was drugged and sexually e
ReplyDeleteassaulted by a creep using his office in the st pete fire dept to victimize me any further info see my atty. Summer Goldman
this is the penny snoots so where's my invitation
ReplyDelete