September 14, 2020
405
Well, as many of your posts suggest, we continue to go to hell in a basket. The election is only a few weeks away; either way, it will change nothing. Except that Trump will make things even worse, should he be reelected. The bubbas are armed; the progs have their heads rammed deeply in their buttocks, and roll around like donuts. You do the math.
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Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned the Bubbas and the Progs. However, you forgot to mention the Karens! These tough gals could be the deciding swing votes that decide if Don the Con gets reelected.
And speaking of rolling around like donuts, how about these two “Ultimate” Karens? One is in the super heavyweight class; the other wants everyone to see her butt rolling around as they tough it out. LOL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgSYx2mROKQ
To add to the annals of the decrepit New York Times, a family paid for a death notice for Nicholas Sturgeon, a philospohy professor at Cornell. The notice ended with a note on donations or such:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.legacy.com/obituaries/theithacajournal/obituary.aspx?n=nicholas-l-sturgeon&pid=196750324
"...between now and November 3rd, write postcards, make calls, send texts, donate cash, and otherwise dedicate themselves to achieving Nick's dearest wish: flipping the Senate, soundly defeating the incumbent of the White House, and rescuing our democracy from fascism."
The New York Times refused to print the text 'from fascism.' "My apologies as we are not able to mention in the last line of the death notice "from fascism". I did remove that copy from the notice as it doesn't meet our acceptability standards."
https://twitter.com/JoshClarkDavis/status/1304442171014213634
This is the newspaper who brought you Judith Miller and Tom Cotten.
On a lighter note, Major League Baseball is filling the stands with cardboard cutouts-
https://techgeeked.com/mlb-fan-cutouts-are-beyond-creepy/
-- Wafer David mentioned Americans not being able to accept grim reality and how they have optimism in their DNA. This reminded me of James Baldwin's contemplation that Americans have no "sense of tragedy". From Suzy Hansen's spectacular book Notes on a Foreign Country: "Baldwin meant that [Americans] couldn't grasp that life itself was a risk, that there was no such thing as safety, that eventually we all suffer and die, and that the acceptance of this fact is precisely what empowers us to struggle and endure".
ReplyDelete-- In Arabic, I love that that in written dialog, the person talking comes before their speech. In English it's: "Are you from around here?", asked David. Sometimes it's confusing, esp. when it's a long quote and the context is ambiguous. In Arabic it's: David asked, "Are you from around here?". Makes much more sense. Also Arabic speech is pretty direct and mostly devoid of the hesitant, weak hedging we always use: not uncommon, you might want to, if i were you i would, etc.
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteDaja Tucker, 24, is headed to jail after attacking three McDonald's employees for not receiving her cookie:
https://truecrimedaily.com/2020/09/10/ohio-woman-gets-jail-for-attacking-mcdonalds-employees-over-missing-cookie/
Miles
The fires have brought out the best in the Bubbas. Most of Oregon's Bubbas live out in forested hinterlands of the state so they have had more than their share of exposure to the tragic fires burning everywhere. But despite the threat posed by the fast moving fires and apocalyptic air quality they seem to be mostly concerned with urban youth sneaking out to the woods and stealing their stuff. Make sure you go to the part of this article with photos of the signs the Bubbas have put up to warn off the looters.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/09/fear-of-looters-amid-wildfire-evacuations-drives-clackamas-county-residents-to-post-signs-threatening-to-shoot-kill-intruders.html
Mike Duncan on twelve reasons the US is heading for revolution:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVtfM0Fk-Y0
Duncan is a USian who lives in France. He saw the way the wind was blowing and got the hell outta Dodge.
Dr. B-
ReplyDeleteNew book available: "How the South Won the Civil War," by Heather Cox Richardson.
Here's a review-
https://civilwarmonitor.com/blog/richardson-how-the-south-won-the-civil-war-2020
Turkeys cant get enough wrestling! Now facing $10,000 in fines.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.centredaily.com/news/local/community/article245721505.html
Biden signs in many of the lawns around me but there's always a few Trump supporters sprinkled in. I even saw a Qanon bumper sticker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon
Stupidity levels through the roof. Trumpi could pull another upset!
Getting a little verklempt (teary eyed) Dr. Berman and Wafers, this is what the US was about. A US-ian police officer does a "wellness check" on an obviously mentally ill man, and then beat the shit out of him and of course, tasers him.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.azfamily.com/video/raw_video/raw-graphic-video-glendale-pd-officer-uses-stun-gun-hits-unarmed-man-on-head/video_cb088e6d-d3bf-5710-9f09-060b32b18207.html
How's that Black Lives Matter trendy thing doing, is it like Occupy Wall Street and the Brett Cavanaugh shows?
usa, usa!
‘Like an Experimental Concentration Camp’: Whistleblower Complaint Alleges Mass Hysterectomies at ICE Detention Center
ReplyDeleteLiteral crimes against humanity.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/like-an-experimental-concentration-camp-whistleblower-complaint-alleges-mass-hysterectomies-at-ice-detention-center/
For the first time ever, I think this election might actually change something; not due to who eventually is elected (selected?) president, but rather the process itself, which could be so disruptive it destabilizes the political environment even more seriously than anyone is currently predicting. Will we even have a clear winner by January?
ReplyDeleteAs presidential elections get close, people, even relatively smart and skeptical people, start to fall in line with "my guy has to win!" thinking (less so every 4 years, but it still happens). It blinds people to the underlying problem that the wild swings and general craziness are becoming more intense. I see no reason to think 2021 will be any less wild than this year, which may end up being historic in how textbooks chart the collapse of the US empire.
I made a post office run today. It was like it is a week before Xmas. People and packages everywhere. Someone with a cart full of Priority Mail flat-rate boxes ranting something about how they're "legally required" to open a side door for him. Delivery chute was jammed. I grabbed a USPS "boat" box and put my packages in it, went around to the back loading docks and dropped my packages off there - it's perfectly OK and encouraged for large loads actually. They'll get used to seeing me and my bike/trailer going in and out of the back docks I guess.
ReplyDeleteNext stop FedEx. Commented about the situation at the Post Office - "Oh yeah, they shut down half their conveyor belts" the friendly guy said.
This P.O. is a major hub for Silicon Valley. It's not some little hole in the wall.
So, nothing profound or political, just a snapshot of the fuckery on this fine (cough cough "red" air) September 14th ...
Jack Rasmus argues that unemployment in the United States is much higher than the official figure. Instead of the official figure of 8.4%, Rasmus argues that US unemployment is 25%, or about the same as the worst years of the Great Depression.
ReplyDeletehttps://jackrasmus.com/2020/09/09/americas-current-jobs-great-depression/
Even if Rasmus is overstating the unemployment rate I suspect that he is right that it is worse than official figures suggest.
<< And now here we are. There’s a sense in which last week was historic. When was the last time—50 years ago? 100? 150?—that within a span of five days, Americans on both sides of a political divide were killed by Americans on the other side? Now the hope is that we can keep last week from becoming really historic—remembered by historians as a gateway to something way worse. >>
ReplyDeleteTips on Avoiding a Civil War
https://nonzero.org/post/avoiding-civil-war
All I can say is that things can fall apart a lot faster than anyone has anticipated. Few anticipated the swiftness of USSR collapse. No matter how election goes, it is clear that most, whether on the side of Biden or Trump will not accept results of the election. USA denied freedom to choose to others, and now chickens have come to roost. Well I am with you Mr. Berman on this: Bad is good. Lets get through it, we will have to eventually. Can I suggest an interesting book? "The Upside of Down" by Thomas Homer Dixon. I am not sure you heard of the book. Take care!
ReplyDeleteAnon-
ReplyDeleteSorry, I don't post Anons. Please pick a real handle. Thank you.
Andalus-
The bk was publ. in 2008. Homer-Dixon is a sharp guy.
Tom-
We've discussed this b4: there are ways that the stats of unemployment can be 'legitimately' rigged. 8.4% is b.s.
Sean-
In the 1960 election, we didn't have the official ruling on JFK's win until Jan. 1961.
Jeff-
I guess she joins the Shaneka Torres hall of fame. In the US, there is no upper limit to the # of morons. Some go to McDonald's; many to this blog.
Joe-
1000 apologies. I love the Karens.
mb
“It would be some consolation for the feebleness of ourselves and our works, if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
ReplyDeleteAs far along & dangerous as social, political, cultural & institutional collapse are a much deadlier threat is screaming in the humans faces &... la la la we're not listening.
“It’s going to get A LOT worse,” Georgia Tech climate scientist Kim Cobb said Wednesday.“ - “A year like 2020 could have been the subject of a marvelous science fiction film in 2000,” Cobb said. “Now we have to watch and digest real-time disaster after disaster after disaster, on top of a pandemic. The outlook could not be any more grim. It’s just a horrifying prospect.” --- https://apnews.com/3570f775ee3007888cd651d37fcbd465
Just think of the scene, Tulsi marching ahead on her mission to save America. Molten down Karens following her in full strength. What else can define these times?
ReplyDeleteThree headlines:
World fails to meet a single target to stop destruction of nature – UN report
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/15/every-global-target-to-stem-destruction-of-nature-by-2020-missed-un-report-aoe
Hurricane Sally is crawling toward the Gulf Coast, and that could mean heavy flooding and lengthy, punishing storm surge
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/15/weather/hurricane-sally-tuesday/index.html
22 people are missing in the West Coast wildfires, but it's too dangerous to search for them
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/15/us/west-coast-wildfires-tuesday/index.html
Yet, we think an election here and there are the biggest events that will determine our life and death. The frogs still believe Biden and his ilk will fight climate change that Trump isn't doing.
"We took a 4 billion year old planet, disrupted its climate with a 250 year old social system dependent on carbon then, on realising the problem, decided a 25 year old ideology must be the only solution - the free market..." https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/why-capitalism-cant-deliver-sustainability-b710de234a36
ReplyDeletethe anthropologist who says it’s westerners who are the weirdos
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/joseph-henrich-interview-the-anthropologist-who-says-its-westerners-who-are-the-weirdos-9xcj57zk8
I think I need to read this book!
In all 13 countries surveyed by Pew global this summer, people see America's response to COVID-19 more negatively than they see the response of their own country, the WHO and the EU. Everywhere except Japan, they also rate it worse than China's response. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/15/us-image-plummets-internationally-as-most-say-country-has-handled-coronavirus-badly/
ReplyDeleteMr Belman is on the Radar ''McMindfulness Who Moved My Cheese
ReplyDeleteMorris Berman wrote, Why America Failed, and Are We There Yet, and Dark Ages America. He recently appeared on the podcast: Nature Bats Last''. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA1sJg5Jp1w thanks @ cormorant for link. Also Piketty's new book is brilliant
https://www.amazon.com.au/Capital-Ideology-Thomas-Piketty/dp/0674980824/ref=asc_df_0674980824/?tag=googleshopdsk-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=393949963587&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1901775768550055181&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9071429&hvtargid=pla-884697595422&psc=1
I don't know what to make out if this
ReplyDeletehttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientific-american-endorses-joe-biden/
From mine-resistant vehicles to robots to semi-automatic weapons, a new CostsOfWar study documents the insane post-9/11 militarization of American police, and truly just the latest example of how our wars have come home.
ReplyDeleteAny thoughts from Paul Krugman?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/cops-are-using-over-dollar1-billion-in-post-911-military-gear?ref=author
This is what organized crime looks like:
ReplyDeletehttps://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
"Like many of the virus’s hardest hit victims, the United States went into the COVID-19 pandemic wracked by preexisting conditions. A fraying public health infrastructure, inadequate medical supplies, an employer-based health insurance system perversely unsuited to the moment—these and other afflictions are surely contributing to the death toll. But in addressing the causes and consequences of this pandemic—and its cruelly uneven impact—the elephant in the room is extreme income inequality.
"How big is this elephant? A staggering $50 trillion. That is how much the upward redistribution of income has cost American workers over the past several decades.
"This is not some back-of-the-napkin approximation. According to a groundbreaking new working paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation, had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP—enough to more than double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year...."
As George has taught us, “we got some dumbass motherfuckers floatin’ around this country”:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/Nv0kf0ad2P0
Evidence:
“Almost two-thirds of young American adults do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and more than one in 10 believe Jews caused the Holocaust, a new survey has found, revealing shocking levels of ignorance about the greatest crime of the 20th century. According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48%) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/holocaust-us-adults-study?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
And here, an essay focused on Lord Peter Wimsey novelist Dorothy Parker’s views on the value of a classical education. Parker’s father, the Reverend Henry Parker, began teaching her Latin at age 6.
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/09/dorothy-sayers-classical-education-raymond-dokupil.html?mc_cid=5ae023689d&mc_eid=4666289051
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteInteresting report on a RAND Corporation study on the increasing inequality of incomes of Americans over the decades. The report makes some very interesting but not surprising claims. The author of this report includes critics who provide the following reasons for the increasing inequality of incomes (including links supporting the reasons):
"But [Nick] Hanauer and [David] Rolf had no hesitation singling out culprits.
They say the blame lies, in large measure, with decades of failed federal policy decisions—allowing the minimum wage to deteriorate, overtime coverage to dwindle, and the effectiveness of labor law to decline, undermining union power. They also cite a shift in corporate culture that has elevated the interests of shareholders over those of workers, an ethos that took root 50 years ago this week with the publication of an essay by University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman."
https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-study-uncovers-massive-income-shift-to-the-top-1
Another reason not considered above is that with many Americans trying to hustle a fortune for themselves, why even pay attention to such changes if you see yourself joining the 1%?
"Can America SURVIVE Election Day?" on YouTube
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/Q0gN_oRVya0
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/holocaust-us-adults-study
ReplyDeleteNearly two-thirds of US young adults unaware 6m Jews killed in the Holocaust
American Bloodlands....
ReplyDeletehttps://scheerpost.com/2020/09/08/chris-hedges-american-bloodlands/
Tidal-
ReplyDeleteHell, they don't even know what WW2 was. And 50% of Americans think that our enemy in WW2 was Russia.
Neil-
I cdn't find any ref to who moved my cheese...
mb
How Bolivia embraced toxic bleach as a COVID-19 miracle cure - Business Insider
ReplyDeletehttps://www.businessinsider.com/bolivia-bleach-coronavirus-embraced-misinformation-2020-9
How awful....
Chris Rock: "Put it this way: Republicans tell outright lies. Democrats leave out key pieces of the truth that would lead to a more nuanced argument. In a sense, it’s all fake news." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/arts/television/chris-rock-fargo.html
ReplyDeletemb - "Who moved my cheese?" is the kind of book you find in office supply stores, along with titles like "Sudoku On The John" and "MORE Soduku On The John"
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F
The stats on ignorance on the Holocaust in the US amaze me. To put it frankly, I grew up on the Holocaust. It was on TV-movies, it was in books, etc. The only fundamental change to my mental furniture on this has been that genocides are not "the" Holocaust but happen pretty much all the time. Rwanda. Yugoslavia. First Nations here in the US.
Even with the recent spate of WWII movies, how can the avg. US'ian be so ignorant? Oh, yeah, we live in Dumbfuckistan.
"GPS tracking service" is kind of vague doesn't say how they cld activate lights or disable the engine, also face of America pic
ReplyDeletehttps://www.kktv.com/2020/09/17/suspected-stolen-car-prompts-high-speed-chase-ends-with-suspect-crashing-into-pueblo-property/
Orca,
ReplyDeleteI used to read Krugman quite regularly for many years, and I don't recall even one time when he criticized American military spending. I don't recall him even bringing up the topic. It was as if military spending has had no effect on the economy, let alone a negative one and on many levels at that. Military spending is apparently Krugman's "elephant in the room." He complains about Trump and the Republicans spending on questionable endeavors, but not on military spending, even under Trump. I don't think one has to be an economist to realize that US military spending has an oversized effect on the national economy. Well, I realized a long time ago that Paul Krugman was nothing more than a shill for the Democratic Party establishment. Of course that's why he gets to write for the New York Times.
Grotesque stuff - In Flint, Michigan of all places. Investing $20M of needed taxpayer funds into new cages for children as young as 10....
ReplyDeletehttps://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2020/09/genesee-county-breaks-ground-on-new-20-million-juvenile-detention-facility.html
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteDuring a class discussion today about how the media distort the way we receive the news, I mentioned the example of the Kuwaiti Incubator Babies and how a PR firm invented the whole story. Your news doesn't get any more fake than that.
Nobody had ever heard of them. What's worse, they didn't seem at all curious about what happened.
We must save our democracy from fascism by removing democratic choices from the ballot!
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/AdyBarkan/status/1305650366931824641?fbclid=IwAR1DevXT3GIsXcyOsY4CpkYapa093OWA5F6qQJGocSoliybFta8baYcHwyM
^^This sums up progre$$ive brain rot all in one tweet. The irony and lack of self awareness is breathtaking. You have the DemoRATS whining and complaining over Trumpi/Rethuglican voter suppression tactics, while simultaneously using said tactics to suppress another party. All in the name of saving our "democracy" from fascism. Incredible. The Green Party isn't much better. Their heads are also rammed up their butt by thinking they actually have a snowball's chance in hell of saving this country.
For further reading: "Wisconsin Supreme Court rules Green Party presidential ticket is ineligible for state ballot"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/wisconsin-court-green-party/2020/09/14/cc0fd7fc-f685-11ea-be57-d00bb9bc632d_story.html
But have no fear. Karen will save us!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgSYx2mROKQ
Dr. B-
ReplyDeleteKunstler's column today alerted me to this- it seems that the recent letter from Princeton's president has caught the attention of the DOE in DC-
https://www.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/documents/2020/09/Princeton-Letter-9-16-20-Signed.pdf
Princeton's reply-
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/09/17/university-statement-us-department-education-letter-regarding-nondiscrimination
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
alex-
ReplyDeleteYes, I know the bk. I thought Neil was quoting from an article by that name.
Wafers-
Gd documentation here of our collapse. Perhaps Chinese historians will find the blog records 50 yrs from now.
mb
Chile revisited-
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/18/silence-us-backed-coup-evo-morales-bolivia-american-states
How is it we can't seem to learn *anything*?
This is also nice:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/18/us-wars-iraq-george-w-bush
@ Realist: "The Green Party isn't much better. Their heads are also rammed up their butt by thinking they actually have a snowball's chance in hell of saving this country."
ReplyDeleteTweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee meet Tweedle Three. Don't expect salvation from any Green iteration currently in existence, look to other countries for case studies. The Irish Greens are back in govt. a second time, with our versions of the GOP and DEMs (a 3 party coalition from hell). And like the last time in power they'll do what they were elected to do: represent the interests of the middle to upper middle classes. Keep capitalism going by bolting a few solar panels and windmills onto it. They want to pass on the burden of 'green' policies to the proles, but leave big capital relatively untouched.
The Irish GP (like many I suspect) is split about 3:1 between 'realos' and 'fundies', the fundies being actual environmentalists. The GP leader Eamon Ryan recently fell asleep in Parliament and had to be woken up to vote down an opposition bill to protect workers rights. As one wag pointed out, he'd have been awake if the vote had been about adding bicycle lanes in posh parts of Dublin.
They are not your friends.
Another excellent Dmitry Orlov interview. His point that in his five stages of collapse, he's assumed that cultural collapse would be the final stage, but in the US it's been the first stage, is interesting. Enjoy!
ReplyDeletehttp://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2020/09/interview-on-radio-voice-america.html#more
ReplyDeleteHello:
https://therightstuff.biz/2020/09/13/ftn-341-amerikkkan-gothic/
ccg
ReplyDeleteIf there is a sacred cow in America it is the military. Criticizing its role in the world,
the horrendous expenditures for "defense" and its ever tightening grip on our society is sacrilegious. The nation would rather go bankrupt than question its military mantra. After all you are dealing with the strongest military in the world (USA! USA!.....) and every sitting President will not let you forget that in their State of the Union.
Mitch McConnell vows US Senate will push on with Trump's pick to replace Ginsburg
ReplyDeleteJust imagine Ted Cruz (whom Trump himself used to call "lying Ted") replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg... I would prefer Tom Cotton, who, no doubt, would re-legalize slavery, but the goal of the supreme court consisting exclusively of charlatans, snake oil salesmen and clowns will be achieved nonetheless. I'll avoid the platitudes about Montesquieu and the separation of powers but no republic can function like this for long, can't it?
Note to Unknown-
ReplyDeleteI don't post Unknowns. You need a real handle. Thank you.
dermot-
Links? Evidence?
mb
The latest from my hometown:
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/19/us/rochester-shooting-saturday/index.html
These massacres are practically daily fare now.
mb
Well this is a splendid reminder of the disintegrating state of affairs-
ReplyDeleteTrumpaloni says we need MORE patriotism in public education (as if there wasn’t already enough flag-pledging as there is). Critical analysis of America’s problems is “toxic propaganda” seeking to “bully Americans into abandoning their values, their heritage, their very way of life.” If anyone here hasn’t secured their copies of WAF by now, they might become a little hard to come by in the future.
https://time.com/5889907/trump-patriotic-education/
Marshall McLuhan's prediction in 1964: "The classified ads (and stock-market quotations) are the bedrock of the press. Should an alternative source of easy access to such diverse daily information be found, the press will fold."
ReplyDeleteThe Post-Objectivity Era
Summary of "Hate Inc: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another"
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era-00f
More evidence of American decline. “Suicides among children and young people aged 10 to 24 rose 57% from 2007 to 2018, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
ReplyDeletehttps://www.webmd.com/depression/news/20200911/suicide-rate-keeps-rising-among-young-americans#1
Links ahoy! Jacobin: Ireland's greens will never confront the powerful:
ReplyDeletehttps://jacobinmag.com/2020/02/irelands-greens-climate-change-environment-election
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/05/ireland-green-party-leo-varadkar-sinn-fein-fine-gael
Irish GP leader falls asleep in parliament:
https://www.irishpost.com/news/green-party-leader-eamon-ryan-falls-fast-asleep-in-dail-and-has-to-be-woken-up-189319
One GP fundi quit over the coalition (there were others, but most are going along for the moment):
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/ex-election-candidate-saoirse-mchugh-quits-greens-saying-electoral-politics-alone-doesn-t-work-1.4311677
US fundi/realo split seems to be formaised between two separate orgs (at least when you vote Green in the US you know you're getting realos, i.e., little real change):
https://web.archive.org/web/20140523095726/http://www.greenparty.org/why.php
A paper on the fundi/realo split, which is across al major European GPs:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09644019208414010?journalCode=fenp20
It's why it makes me sad to see americans expend so much 'hope' on 'a third party'. Unless said third parties really want to change the system, they change nothing.
Every day the Denver Post has at least two articles who got shot where, an accepted way of life the beginning of a brutish end. I live on a busy urban street when I look out my second floor window I would not be surprised at all to watch someone shot down in the back, it would be like watching another YouTube video....
ReplyDeletehttps://www.denverpost.com/2020/09/18/lakewood-police-shooting-walmart-wadsworth/
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteRochester? This may be of no interest to anyone here, but there's a description of the site of "the great city of Rochester" in one of the earliest works of Canadian literature, Roughing it in the Bush, by Susanna Moodie.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4389/4389-h/4389-h.htm#link2HCH0007
CHAPTER VII — UNCLE JOE AND HIS FAMILY
The Rise of the modern American HITLER!
ReplyDeleteThis is worth watching just to see and understand where these Neo-Nazi White Nationalists are coming from...and although it doesn’t sound like a lot in the audience, there really are a lot of them out there in Trump land, and they are going to continue to rise up and take more and more aggressive actions.
Correct me if I’m wrong Morris, but I think this group of people are very much like those in Italy after WWI, which gave rise to Mussolini and his Nationalists and Fascists.
https://youtu.be/d_sHlPnp8XU
Hi MB and Wafers Worldwide:
ReplyDeleteAnother sign of American decline. County governments are having to beg money from Zuckerschmuck to hold elections. Onward and downward.
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/capital-tonight/2020/09/15/onondaga-county-elections-commissioner---we-will-overturn-every-rock-that-we-can-#
Happy Karen Sunday, everyone. Featured today on Season 1, Episode 9, are: a self-entitled Zsa Zsa Gabor wannabe; proving that old age doesn’t necessarily mellow people, a granny Karen; a typical trailer park/“all-American” pugnacious white trash Karen; and, since today is a day of worship for many in the United States—especially for all those far right evangelical Don Trump supporters—we have a Karen giving some of that “Christian love”. LOL! Enjoy!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLl_jgztJn0&t=19s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fquqoGzV51k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUi1Dl4-UJo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEPEZxeBFnI
Big-assed shoulders?
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/i/status/1307428598173896704
dg-
ReplyDeleteOnce again, cutting-edge social change.
mb
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteI'm going to accentuate the positive, dg, and suggest that even obnoxious, stupid people can support a just cause. By the way, imagine if that guy were female, and a male protester made comments about how her big butt compensated for her small breasts. The woke twitterers would have mass aneurysms.
Although reported a few months ago, US-ians appear to bring the 'show' on the road. Where ever they go, there they are.
ReplyDeletehttps://nypost.com/2020/07/27/nyc-man-charged-in-dismemberment-death-of-wife-in-french-home/
https://truthout.org/articles/life-in-the-us-has-the-hallmarks-of-a-low-grade-war-zone/ good link here.
ReplyDeletemb - I finished the Japan book. Well worth the price even on my small budget. Didn't exorcise any demons; returning "home" where I'm a member of a hated minority is not helped by understanding the oppressor better. But it's a great book. And I should mention that the situation in Hawaii is as much the fault of PC bullshit whites brought on themselves (mainly to keep lower-income whites down) as the fault of the oppressor ethnicity there. Ain't goin' back.
The ending part, about how Japan will be able to shift back to a zero-growth society, I think is spot on.
American ignorance is on display again with the passing of RBG. Americans (at least the progs) are acting like a president can't nominame a Supreme Court justice during an election year. It has happened many times before:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/filling-a-supreme-court-seat-in-an-election-year-happens-more-often-than-you-think
The same thing happens when a presidential candidate loses the popular vote but wins the electoral college - confusion and outrage from the losing side. The sad fact is a majority of Americans don't know how their own government works. According the article below, only 25% of Americans can name the three branches of the US government.
https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-knowledge-of-the-branches-of-government-is-declining/
alex-
ReplyDeleteGlad u liked the bk. I only said, however, that Japan *might* be able to shift to zero-growth; it's hardly in the bag. Time will tell.
Johnny-
Cdn't run it (half-page rule). Pls compress and re-send.
Dr. Shit-
I see it with the gringos down here. You can take the man outta the country, but you can't take the country outta the man.
mb
A good laugh here. An empty stadium, an empty game, so you need fake boos. Talk about the Sound and the Fury... I think the US will be in full collapse by Super Bowl Sunday. This is feeling more and more like an accelerating USSR-type situation.
ReplyDelete"There are no fans in attendance at the Rams-Eagles game in Philadelphia but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any “boos” Following an over throw on third down from Carson Wentz, the Eagles sound crew pumped in boos as the Eagles offense walked off the field."
https://dailysnark.com/2020/09/20/eagles-sound-crew-pump-in-boos-after-a-bad-throw-from-carson-wentz/
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
A preview of the shit tornado (turdnado?) coming in November: Krystal Ball: Can America SURVIVE Election Day?
ReplyDeleteNow seriously, please Wafers still in the US, do stock up on baked beans, bottled water and toilet paper.
Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteBy the way I don't quit agree with the zero growth pov (nor with the cancerous capitalist vision of growth). I believe there is a way for economic development that combines growth, degrowth and stagnation, a concept I've borrowed from biology (mainly from Jacques Monod and Henri Atlan) where the organisme grows through the growth, death and regeneration of its cells and tissues and within its enviromental constraints. I believe this dialectical (dialogical?) principle of organisation and growth created by nature is quit universal and could be applied in economics too.
I could be wrong too as I can't find any economic literature that explores this idea, except for a book called 'La voie' by Edgar Morin which is not a book on economics.
American Empire Collapse: It's About To Get Much Worse.
ReplyDeleteChris Hedges Interview
https://youtu.be/em2aWT2T4E0
Dear All, I was revisiting the formidable book Reenchantment of the world. I'd like to ask for some help to find literature which had criticised the main Berman’s epistemological arguments and proposals ofthis book, which I fell are very valid in the current anthropocene discussion. I’m of course interested in knowing if professor Berman itself had developed these ideas further on, which is not evident looking at his published book of the last years. Best regards
ReplyDeleteOn Sunday 25 Philadelphians died from Covid. However, the CDC admitted only 6% die directly from Covid or, in other words, 3 people out of 2 million died from Covid yesterday. For those 3 we continue to prevent people from attending sporting events, seeing a play, going to school, while thousands have lost their jobs and are soon to being evicted. Could this country be any more of a joke?
ReplyDeleteParaphrasing: "This is what civil war looks like - not when people run around with guns, but when people start dying" https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-dying-russians?utm_source=pocket-newtab
ReplyDeleteUSA *should* be depopulating except for immigration. As I've noted before, people outside the USA seem to have an image of the place that's decades out of date. I honestly came to the mainland USA from O'ahu and thought my bench tech job was going to provide me a house and that dream of every islander: a white Toyota truck. When the potential immigrants realize how awful the US is, the flow will slow to a trickle. Hopefully late news stories are cluing them in.
@Jason.
ReplyDeleteThe argument is not that this (filling a Supreme Court vacancy during an election year) has never happened before. The argument is that the Senate Republicans endlessly proclaimed that a vacancy should *not* be filled during an election year and, using that argument, they held up Merrick Garland’s (the finest Justice we never had) confirmation for TEN MONTHS. As Lindsay Graham said at the time, “If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say, 'Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination."
Here’s an excellent article with all of their quotes at the time: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mitch-mcconnell-supreme-court-vacancy-election-year-senate/
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/09/21/bodycam-shows-salt-lake/
ReplyDeleteBodycam shows Salt Lake City police shooting 13-year-old boy with autism
Tell me how sane human beings support the police
Dr. B-
ReplyDeleteAndre Vltchek passed away at age 57-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-probes-death-of-american-journalist-andre-vltchek/2020/09/22/3dc4b910-fcc8-11ea-b0e4-350e4e60cc91_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/22/covid-funds-pentagon/
ReplyDeletePentagon used taxpayer money meant for masks and swabs to make jet engine parts and body armor
Shortly after Congress passed the Cares Act, the Pentagon began directing pandemic-related money to defense contractors.
Rodrigo-
ReplyDeleteThere were a few critiques of ROW at the time, but if I remember correctly, more motivated by emotion (repulsion) than any sober academic analysis. As for further development: the bk was #1 in a trilogy. For follow up, check out CTOS and WG.
Orca-
Links don't exist?
Wafers-
Some interesting quotes.
From V.S. Naipaul, on India, 1967: "the only hope lies in further swift decay." Sounds like the US situation in 2020.
From Irving Louis Horowitz, 1994: "Every disparity between ghetto and suburb is proof that capitalism is sick. Every statistic concerning increases in homicide and suicide demonstrates the decadence of America, or, better, resistance to America."
mb
Andrew Hales is a youtuber who does real and harmless pranks. His videos are pretty funny. One of them is called Confessing Things to People Mid-Conversation, where he strikes up conversations with strangers then "confesses" random things. Good stuff and you'll get a laugh out of it, but at the same time I couldn't help but feel sad at how distant and uncaring people have become. He's saying things like "I have depression" and "I haven't talked to my parents in years" and people don't even bother to acknowledge that. Either they genuinely don't care about others or they care but have no clue how to take part in normal human interactions (i.e. to be sympathetic when someone seems to be crying out for help).
ReplyDeleteMB, That is pretty much the Indian scenario in 2020 as well. Well, Naipaul and his ilk has a problem seeing much positive in India. But India did achieve significant things between 1967 and 2020 (or 2014-15 I woould say). Now everything is being actively dismantled brick by brick. Soon what will be left is again an enormous mass of people, ruthlessly suppressed by their rulers, slaving it out for the corporates, who will be propping up the rulers with all the suppport they can provide as long as the bottomlines are maintained. Frankly, a did not foresee such a dire situation a deade ago.
ReplyDeleteHere we come a-cancelling
ReplyDeleteAmong the leaves so green...”
For your Cancellation Compilation journal, these from Virginia Commonwealth University, just decided:
RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - The VCU Board of Visitors voted to de-commemorate several buildings on campus due to the namesakes' ties to the Confederacy. The vote comes following a recommendation from the university’s president. The buildings that will be changed include McGuire Hall, Baruch Auditorium, the Ginter House, the Jefferson Davis Memorial Chapel, the Tompkins-McCaw Library and the Wood Memorial Building.
Should you be interested in learning who three of these despicable humans were: (1). Hunter Holmes McGuire MD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_McGuire); (2). Simon Baruch, father of Bernard Baruch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Baruch; and (3). Sally Louisa Tompkins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Louisa_Tompkins).
Cursèd be their names, yea verily unto the 100th generation.
https://www.nbc12.com/2020/09/18/vcu-board-votes-remove-building-names-with-confederate-ties/
A little food for thought here Wafers.
ReplyDelete"The European materialist tradition of despiritualizing the universe is very similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another person. And who seems most expert at dehumanizing other people? And why? Soldiers who have seen a lot of combat learn to do this to the enemy before going back into combat. Murderers do it before going out to commit murder. Nazi SS guards did it to concentration camp inmates. Cops do it. Corporation leaders do it to the workers they send into uranium mines and steel mills. Politicians do it to everyone in sight. And what the process has in common for each group doing the dehumanizing is that it makes it all right to kill and otherwise destroy other people. One of the Christian commandments says, "Thou shalt not kill," at least not humans, so the trick is to mentally convert the victims into nonhumans. Then you can proclaim violation of your own commandment as a virtue."
https://www.filmsforaction.org/news/revolution-and-american-indians-marxism-is-as-alien-to-my-culture-as-capitalism/
MB, for evening entertainment check out ToxHillary''s new podcast
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/politics/hillary-clinton-podcast/index.html
ReplyDeleteNoam Chomsky: The world is at the most dangerous moment in human history
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2020/09/noam-chomsky-world-most-dangerous-moment-human-history
Progressive and Sander Surrogate Nina Turner is creating a lobbyist group that will work with the PR Firm Mercury, who's associates spied on Walmart Warehouse workers.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/ZaidJilani/status/1308603084055162880
https://www.republicreport.org/2012/walmart-sends-fake-reporter-spy-warehouse-workers/
@Jjarden Scary stuff with the Neo-nazis. This is why I think people should pay attention to the Woke. Their Anti-white stance and want of "diversification" of the elite and PMCs, while crapping on workers and Racializing everything is going to help those Fascists rise.
Here is the World Socialist Web saying what the 1619 project is really about.
"The 1619 Project was never about historical clarification. As the WSWS warned in September 2019, the “1619 Project is one component of a deliberate effort to inject racial politics into the heart of the 2020 elections and foment divisions among the working class.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/22/1619-s22.html
Dr. Berman
ReplyDeleteThe main idea is presented in the book La voie by Edgar Morin (https://www.amazon.com/Voie-lavenir-lHumanit%C3%A9-Essais-French-ebook/dp/B00NJE7IGI/). from chapter 9:
"Abandonment of the idea of indefinite growth:
This idea stems from an economic-political madness not yet diagnosed as such; it will be replaced by a complex concept comprising growth, degrowth and stabilizations, and this variously for the North and the South, according to the specific conditions, the nations and the regions."
His main contribution is what he calls complex thought (the next resources are in english):
https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0610049
https://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Advances-Systems-Theory-Sciences/dp/1572738014
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260603130_Edgar_Morin_and_Complex_Thought
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMGucd5vjfY&ab_channel=emcsr
the author is quit popular in latin america and the maghreb countries, the multiversidad mundo real in sonora mexico gives masters and doctorat degrees in complex though: https://multiversidadreal.edu.mx/
the work of Georgescu-Roegen is also a good read on the subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Georgescu-Roegen
More evidence of an upside down Murica that would make Orwell proud
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dailykos.com/story/2020/9/18/1978432/-Dallas-school-district-apologizes-for-assignment-that-included-Kyle-Rittenhouse-on-hero-list
The progressive idea of social change:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/fight-against-words-sound-like-are-not-slurs/616404/
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteI think Rittenhouse is murderous scum, but I don't have a problem with the writing assignment. It would be a rhetorical challenge to argue that he is a hero, and thus as a topic, he would be far more interesting than some high school kid's writing about the importance of "world peace" or equal rights, or some other easy subject.
I'm not sure what the Orwell angle is here. Where I do see Orwell is in the cancelling of historical names from buildings. One feature of Winston Smith's life is that he didn't know the original names of any of the buildings in his own city. The past was erased in Airstrip One.
Plum Village Shares an Update on Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh | Buddhistdoor
ReplyDeletehttps://www.buddhistdoor.net/news/plum-village-shares-an-update-on-zen-master-thich-nhat-hanh
Thich Nhat Hanh is approaching death. What a life he's led!
https://www.amazon.com/Real-Change-Mindfulness-Ourselves-World/dp/1250310571/ref=sr_1_1?crid=MQY11GOPZGR4&dchild=1&keywords=real+change+sharon+salzberg&qid=1600876053&s=books&sprefix=real+change%2Cstripbooks%2C154&sr=1-1
ReplyDeleteReal Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World Hardcover – Deckle Edge, September 1, 2020
by Sharon Salzberg
"In this age of anxiety, grief, and strife, Sharon Salzberg, a leading authority on loving-kindness meditation, offers exactly the wisdom we need: the mindfulness to take action. This is not the mindfulness of navel-gazing on a mountaintop. Salzberg knows what it’s like to grieve and to heal; to fight and to reconcile; to fear and to find courage. She is the guide we’ve been looking for ― and not a moment too soon." – Susan Cain
Looks like a good dual process guide
The Election That Could Break America
ReplyDeleteIf the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him? Fallen voting booth with red emergency light
Story by Barton Gellman
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/
"Trump may test this. According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires."
It's hard to differentiate T.D.S. from accurate and corporeal news lately, but this seems like valid prognosis to consider. And then he dismantles term limits!
deadthoreau - That Russell Means article is a killer, thanks for that. Well worth reading! What got me is his observation that Marxism is just as much about consuming the earth physically and "consuming" people spiritually, by homogenizing them into science-worshipping, cultureless, cogs, as capitalism is. And potentially even more effective at it. There's no "back to the garden" under either system.
ReplyDeleteWe are already living in a dystopian world that is getting even more dystopian, if there is such a thing, by the day. Everyone can see what is happening around, yet no one has the ability or the will to stop our descent into chaos and destruction. One had to live in the 21st century to see man at his stupidest, and meanest.
ReplyDelete1. No one killed Breyonna Taylor.
2. China has already built 380 internment camps for the Uyghurs: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/china-has-built-380-internment-camps-in-xinjiang-study-finds Make no mistake, India is building such things for its 'non-citizens'.
3. Trump won't leave office, no matter what is the outcome. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/23/donald-trump-press-conference-us-elections-breonna-taylor So what is the difference between Egypt and Mali and America?
https://apnews.com/article/paris-notre-dame-cathedral-europe-archive-france-74b239b6a5d647f5c92e7170243276ea
ReplyDeleteCarpenters wow public with medieval techniques at Notre Dame
This is the spirit! When the Progs and Modernists think you cannot possibly compete by using medieval methods: just show 'em! And what a crowd pleaser it is too. Low Tech!
alex-
ReplyDeleteFor a sane alternative to communism and capitalism, check out ch. 2 of "The Heart of the Matter."
Cosmo-
What is TDS? Also, maybe Trumpi cd hire goons to round up any non-bubbas after Nov. 3, put them in detention camps. Why not, really?
mb
Dr. B, how is (was) Mexico City? Hopefully more sane than up here in Amerikkka! I for one am dreading the Civil War to come after the election ... see Cosmo's post above.
ReplyDeleteTrump has NO intention of leaving office...
ReplyDeleteTrump's comments send a signal to his supporters about how to react if Biden prevails...
CIVIL WAR 2.0 STRAIGHT AHEAD!!
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/24/politics/donald-trump-election-democracy/index.html
The US is using the Guardian to justify jailing Assange for life. Why is the paper so silent?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silent-assange-trial/
Nancy Pelosi will save us during these dark times. If you or a loved one died from COVID or police brutality or are being evicted from your home, she'll take a few seconds out of her day to "pray" for you:
ReplyDeletehttps://thehill.com/homenews/house/517647-pelosi-holds-moment-of-silence-for-200000-who-died-of-coronavirus
You may have waited in a long line at the food pantry, but Nancy kept you in her thoughts as she showcased her expensive freezer full of high end ice cream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgfumenJbXE&t=1s
https://www.3newsnow.com/news/investigations/food-pantry-lines-get-longer-amid-pandemic
And if you're worried about losing our democracy, her colleague in the Senate, Mitch "Grim Reaper" McConnell, has reassured us it will be a peaceful transition if Trump loses: https://www.businessinsider.com/mcconnell-dismisses-concern-over-trump-not-committing-to-peaceful-transition-2020-9?IR=T
If you're still not convinced these two compassionate public servants won't be able to fend off the Orange monster, we have a highly mobilized and energetic movement of Karens to the rescue: "Karen Gets News Of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Death" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiPZBPBEREU
And finally, why didn't they just shoot her? https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/517991-woman-tased-arrested-for-not-wearing-mask-at-ohio-football-game
Whatever Nov 3rd brings its gonna be a rush to live through
ReplyDeleteT-Shirt Idea:
“Stupidity
My American Birthright”
More evidence of growing inequality in America. Middle-aged Americans are reporting more pain than elderly Americans, but the increase in pain is concentrated among Americans without college degrees. The study team “suspects the causes may be related to a host of social factors affecting younger generations of Americans who lack a college degree: falling wages, job instability, fewer social connections, less marriage and more divorce.”
ReplyDeletehttps://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-09-21/middle-aged-americans-report-more-pain-than-seniors
Mexico’s drug war leaves 39,000 unidentified bodies in its morgues
ReplyDeletehttps://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/22/mexicos-drug-war-leaves-39000-unidentified-bodies-in-its-morgues
SM
https://mobile.twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1308902276187262978
ReplyDeletePersonally I believe it's just Trump saying he is confident of him being reelected, the refusal to leave office is just a misunderstanding (not innocent I believe). Whatever the outcome of the elections, a big portion of the population will hate it and things may get nasty.
America's descent continues. The evil buffoon Trump gloats about how cops shot MSNBC journalist Ali Velshi with a rubber bullet and cheers on violence against protestors, who he says should be treated more roughly. 'Please don't be too nice' to 'thugs' says Trump, the aspiring authoritarian who is openly trying to limit the amounts of votes cast in the upcoming presidential election.
ReplyDeleteAmerica's police heed his (many) calls, attacking anti-police-brutality protestors left and right in demonstrations throughout the US. In the most recent incident, a cop in Seattle was captured on video running over a protestor's head.
But then again, are recent incidents a sign of decline or just a continuation of America's history? Is Trump merely being more honest and open about the role of the US government, and how it relies on violence to gain power and sustain itself? It could be said that in some ways, little has changed since the days of the Kent State shootings in 1970, with the top leader in the USA now openly promoting and advocating for violence against dissidents.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/24/us/seattle-protester-bike-police-trnd/index.html
In today's peregrinations I walked by this: https://cranialsacraltherapycenter.com/ cranial? sacral? Really? I can't tell if the place is to help you pull your head out of your ass or put it there ... what intrigued me is the actual building looks like something out of a 1930s Dorothea Lange album, as so many pockets of Silicon Valley do.
ReplyDeleteOrdinary Indian - The going joke if you can call it one, is that the cop was only punished for shooting the walls of adjoining apartments, because the walls were white...
Attorney General William Barr sees himself on a biblical mission to re-elect Donald Trump. And has control over the means to make certain it happens.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/25/bill-barr-donald-trump-election-steal-fears?utm_term=82abbc5e55166c9868d1630e37917410&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUS_email
Seriously, there will not be a Super Bowl next year. Not because of Covid-19, but because the US as we know it now will not be.
MB & COSMO:
ReplyDeleteTDS is Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Magni-
ReplyDeleteCheck out the Gramsci chapter in "Genio," on hegemony vs. coercion.
Cel-
Mex City is a huge and complex animal. I live in a quiet part, nr the Trotsky house where Leon was murdered with an ice pick by Ramon Mercader (Stalin's agent). When the trollfoons come for me, history might repeat itself. :-(
mb
Ain't 'Murica grand?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.twincities.com/2020/09/25/mn-cdc-coronavirus-covid-testers-pulled-racist-hostile-encounters/
Yet another delusion of the progs is their isolation in their little city bubbles, it is a very different county only 30 miles in any direction, yet somehow the outstaters are somehow magically going to vote for Biden Schmeiden just because you are?
Cal-Roy - I don't think Trump's redneck, truck-driving, rifle-toting followers have the courage or the desire to fight in a bloody civil war. They're nothing more than weekend warriors who enjoy riding in the backs of pickim up trucks and shooting protesters with paint guns. Then they go back home and watch TV and drink beer. Not exactly serious soldier material. More like soldier-pretenders. Soldier-playing on the weekends.
ReplyDeletewww.livemint.com/market/commodities/wall-street-is-set-to-start-trading-in-a-new-commodity-water/amp-11600405068065.html
ReplyDelete'Wall Street is set to start trading in a new commodity: Water'
"Almost two-thirds of the world’s population is expected to face water shortages by 2025, according to the CME"
Pure. evil.
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteThat Conor Friedersdorf article in The Atlantic on the subject of taking offence at sound-alikes is encouraging. Sanity may be fighting back. I was nevertheless dismayed to see the use of the term "woke left" in the article. I don't see wokeness as a trait of the left at all. To me it seems like a symptom of Lockean hyper-individualism practiced by liberal narcissists who want to draw attention to their beautiful selves.
Has anyone used the term "Anti-Trump Derangement Syndrome" yet? I came here from looking in on buzzflash.com where articles such as this are common fare:
Clinton Beat Trump by 3 Million Votes. GOP Senators Represent 15 Million Fewer Americans Than Dems. This Is Like Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Minority Rule Over Shiites.
https://buzzflash.com/articles/clinton-beat-trump-by-3-millon-votes-gop-senators-represent-15-million-fewer-americans-this-is-like-saddam-hussein-minority-sunni-rule-over-shites
So, if Saddam was Hitler, and Trump is Saddam...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=bs3HK3pxVAY
ReplyDeleteI never saw this full 3 hour interview w/ Carl Jung in 1957 before, have only seen small excerpts of it!
Dr. Berman, I used to work with a lady named Sally Grodsky. She was an old-fashioned leftist. She told me that her brother was one of Trotsky's bodyguards. On the day he was murdered he gave his bodyquards the day off to go shopping for groceries. when they came back, well, he was dead. Brother, a true lefty, later opened a furniture store in Detroit. True story!
ReplyDeleteMB, how does one make sense of this? Is it simply honoring a treaty, or is there more to it?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/25/mexico-water-debts-us-farmers
In the meantime, Modi has opened up Indian farm sector to the big guys, something that no govt in the past dared to touch. But then, for those who follow politics, he is their man. The farmers are out on the streets protesting. This has the potential to change India like no other policy decision in the recent past. And the policy blueprint is borrowed from what was implemented in the US in the last century:
https://thewire.in/agriculture/farm-bills-small-farmers-and-chasing-the-agri-dollar-dream
Now it will be a field day for all the agri-business corporates, and, to repeat what I wrote earlier, the farmers will be left to their mercy.
Hello WAFers,
ReplyDeleteCame across a documentary "Childhood 2.0" on the dangers of digital devices and social media with younger generations:
https://youtu.be/He3IJJhFy-I
It's pretty horrifying to see what's happening with it, and even more horrifying to think it's only getting worse as kids are exposed to it at increasingly younger ages.
One has to marvel at how profoundly all this stuff is negatively impacting the culture and amplifying the collapse.
(In typical fashion, the documentary tries to end on a positive note, but it's a pretty feeble attempt, and provides only a whiff of optimism)
Today in ICE:
ReplyDelete15 y/o girl. In US since an infant. Underwent gall-bladder surgery. Customs & Border Patrol guarded the girl's hospital room. After the surgery, she was w/o an accompanying adult family member. Taken into custody. Designated an unaccompanied migrant child. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/15-year-old-girl-who-spent-her-life-in-the-u-s-facing-deportation-after-hospital-arrest/
15-year-old girl who spent her life in the U.S. facing deportation after hospital arrest
Democrats and Republicans seem to be united on one thing - western civilization is doomed https://unherd.com/thepost/americans-are-worried-about-the-future-of-the-west-maybe-thats-a-good-thing/
ReplyDeleteDr Berman,
ReplyDeleteMost Americans are a very ignorant people. However, how much of this is because working full time they simply do not have time to research and learn what they would need to change some of their social values versus truly being just mean, dumb, and cruel people?
re: Water & Wall Street, here’s an investment opportunity a pipeline for glacier fresh Canadian water:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/us-thirsts-for-canadian-water
how long b4 the US tells Canada, “I drink you’re milkshake!” like Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood?
https://youtu.be/s_hFTR6qyEo
They think things are bad now...Just wait until Dec & January!!!
ReplyDeleteI’ve been a Celibate Wafer Monk (NMI) for at least five years now..I only leave my house to replenish my food, and when I do I buy at least two months worth....and I’m surrounded by paintings and prints on my walls which I contemplate and enjoy...I read at least 8 hours a day from my 3,000 volume library...and I listen to classical music...and periodically I’ll sit out in my backyard and smoke one of my pipes as I contemplate the Universe...I’ve given up women after my divorce 7 years ago after a 20 year marriage...I’m just like Harry Haller in Steppenwolf...or Joseph Knecht in the Glass Bead Game...Or Schopenhauer and Nietzsche living solitary lives...and I’m simply going to cook some popcorn and sit in my leather recliner and watch the civil war 2.0 begin and unfold.
https://www.axios.com/breonna-taylor-protest-louisville-oregon-trump-0a116bfc-f0c4-40e2-adc7-695fb88b097f.html
Not sure if it isn't kind of lazy to simply post Reddit conversations, but the WAF is strong in this one ... https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/j063b9/i_lived_through_collapse_america_is_already_there/
ReplyDeleteDr. Berman & Wafers,
ReplyDeleteLet’s get a good laugh at the Karens in their airborne travels. Our Karens shown here certainly are “flying high” in their arrogance, tempers, and vulgarity! LOL!
So enjoy Season 1, Episode 10, today on Karen Sunday titled “Karen at the Airport”. Let’s follow Karen from the departing terminal to the concourse gates to the airport lounge to the boarding area/airplane tunnel to the flight itself. LOL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8djwvkua4E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPN7HdACPJg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiIVpfNIzoc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2X_SDTSqpk
BH-
ReplyDeleteCheck this out: Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," ca. 1960.
mb
Please find a site which features the very best of the Japanese aesthetic, and that of other cultures too - the Miho Art Gallery
ReplyDeletewww.miho.jp/en
Gunnar, if y'all want our water, you'll have to pry our cold dead hands off the tap. We ain't scared of bloated incompetents.
ReplyDelete"So here are five straightforward lessons -- none acceptable in what passes for discussion and debate in this country -- that could be drawn from that last half century of every kind of American warfare:
1. No matter how you define American-style war or its goals, it doesn’t work. Ever.
2. No matter how you pose the problems of our world, it doesn’t solve them. Never.
3. No matter how often you cite the use of military force to “stabilize” or “protect” or “liberate” countries or regions, it is a destabilizing force.
4. No matter how regularly you praise the American way of war and its “warriors,” the U.S. military is incapable of winning its wars.
5. No matter how often American presidents claim that the U.S. military is “the finest fighting force in history,” the evidence is in: it isn’t. -- https://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175854/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_a_record_of_unparalleled_failure/
We have our own war history that Americans are clueless of because there are no movies about it - https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-forgotten-ferocity-of-canadas-soldiers-in-the-great-war
jjarden, you are living my dream. Once upon a time I wanted the wife, the house, the career & the kids but now all I want is a wizard's tower, a fortess, a bulwark against a decadent society I no longer understand or even want to understand. What I have at the moment is a tiny trailer with no water, a tablet full of ebooks, & classical music via YouTube but I'm a movin' on up. Even with all that you have lost, you should still consider yourself a winner if you have a home full of books, music & art.
ReplyDeleteThe Guardian has a series of articles on the deplorable state of the American water supply system.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/americas-water-crisis
I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There.
ReplyDeletehttps://medium.com/indica/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-already-there-ba1e4b54c5fc
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp-video/mmvo92513349738
ReplyDeleteFor historical parallels to Trump, look to Mussolini: historian
"As Jimmy Carter got rid of most of assets during his campaign, his income dropped from $136,926 in 1975 to $54,934 in 1976. Because of lingering investment credits, and $4,507 in charitable contributions, he owed $0 in taxes. Carter sent the federal government $6,000 anyway."
ReplyDeleteDifferent strokes....
Dr. B:
ReplyDeleteHere's an OpEd on American Christianity from today-
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/09/28/how-christian-nationalism-us-legislates-evil-and-punishes-poor
The author is an ordained Presbyterian Minister-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Theoharis
This is not a good look ... https://www.insider.com/hysterectomies-georgia-detention-site-part-of-horror-show-lawmakers-2020-9
ReplyDeleteI am reminded of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot1Mp9SVdOs BTW I can't believe this movie was done in 1978, like 2001: A Space Odyssey it feels modern. One of the best WWII movies made I think, and it's best watched keeping in mind that these days the role the USA would play is that of the Germans.
The Democrat Party has become the (Socialist Identity Party) and promise Progressive fantasies, (The Carrot), i.e. Bernie's unsustainable Socialist programs to further their evolving Marxist/Maoist ideology (The Stick). Maoist methods (Cancel Culture) are used to erase America's Customs, Religion, History, and Established Ideas in their strategy to destroy America's current form of government based on the Founding Father's Constitutional blueprint. Their ultimate goal is to install a Totalitarian atheistic government that starts out as a form of corrupt and unworkable Socialism.
ReplyDeleteAmerica endured 8 years of Obama's criminal political assault and his failed coup called (RussiaGate) to overthrow President Trump. RussiaGate was a conspiracy to overthrow a sitting president (Impeachment Sham) carried out by a coordinated effort of high-ranking government employees across many agencies, who knew exactly what they were doing. Americans are starting to understand how the Obama administration weaponized the DOJ, FBI, CIA and IRS to go after his political opponents, and in doing so, he trampled the Constitution and fueled the violent overthrow of cultural norms. America, in her glorious history, has never experienced anything in politics as corrupt as Obama's RussiaGate. Nixon's WaterGate political crimes look like an overdue library book by comparison.
Read "The Permanent Coup", by: Lee Smith to fully understand the depth of Obama's RussiaGate crimes.
MB,
ReplyDelete"Genio" looks like a fascinating book and I've added it to my list of books to buy.
Your point about Gramsci's theory of hegemony is well-taken. Many Americans have consented to their ongoing decline and to the use of brutality by their leaders, and there's no real movement in America to change things in a systemic way. Hyper-individualism, greed, selfishness, extreme inequality, a winner-takes-all casino economy where the rich get richer while the poor live lives of precarity and financial instability, unaccountable police that have to be cheered on and unquestioned even when they kill innocent people, because we need to 'Back the Blue' - all of this has been accepted and come to seen as normal by millions of Americans.
What the Kent State shootings and the recent incidents in which many police officers attacked anti-police-brutality protestors and journalists and protected White supremacist vigilante groups (like Proud Boys) is they show how in the US, when the public no longer consents to the way that they're being ruled and seek significant change, the ruling power reveals its true face and police use unprovoked violence against non-violent protestors to try to suppress dissent.
While I can appreciate what the author is saying in the medium.com article, I believe real collapse happens when the petro dollar collapses.
ReplyDeleteA Sri Lankan makes clear- US collapse isn't about to happen. It is happening, now.
ReplyDeletehttps://gen.medium.com/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-already-there-ba1e4b54c5fc
@soma, agreed the US military is a paper tiger, for most it’s the social safety net that coulda been.
ReplyDeletehttps://time.com/5893855/military-suicides-coronavirus/
this from the magazine Trump tried to shut down
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/pentagon-reports-of-sexual-assault-harassment-in-the-military-have-increased-1.627966
Big-
ReplyDeleteI guess a lot of Americans believe this sorta nonsense. Honestly, I dunno what to say. In any case, I have no interest in changing your mind. Best of luck.
mb
https://www.boston.com/news/national-news-2/2020/09/26/ebay-stalking-scandal
ReplyDeleteThe proud face of corporate America!
Idiot people doing idiot deeds for a living to serve the vanity of corporations!
Until the heading “We had no idea,” the following report on JP Morgan agreeing to pay 920 million dollars to settle US authorities’ claims of illegal market manipulation over the course of eight years.
ReplyDeleteFifteen traders at the biggest US bank had engaged in a practice called “spoofing,” in which a trader submits many orders to either purchase or sell a market instrument called a derivative without actually intending to execute the purchase (or sale). This has the effect of driving the market for that instrument in a particular direction desired by the trader(s), to his benefit. In this case, the illegal behavior by the Morgan traders caused other traders in derivatives (metals and Treasury bonds) in other institutions to lose some $300 million.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-29/jpmorgan-pays-920-million-admits-misconduct-in-spoofing-probe
I’m curious if my Fellow WAFER’S watched the first Presidential Debate, and what you all thought of it?
ReplyDeletehttps://news.trust.org/item/20200930020436-bydxs
Hi Dr. Berman & Wafers.
ReplyDeleteHere is a special small weekday edition of Karen Sunday. The best Karen is the first one. The suspense shall be waiting for our good Doctor. Will she pee on the floor? LOL.
Forget about laughing at the buffoon Don Trump during last night’s debate. The further disintegration of this country, as shown in these videos of the American public, is a unique comedy show in itself. LOL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CqBNbSVjLQ
Marching orders: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/proud-boys-celebrate-after-trump-s-debate-call-out-n1241512
ReplyDeleteI sure wish I'd found a way to leave 20 years ago. The next best time to leave is now, if I can.
Edit: MB's blog getting harder to find on Google, and Google may or may not let me post this. Got one "error" already, wish me luck!
JJ. No way did I watch that crap, I don't think my fragile emotional state could have handled it. Watched the new NOVA "A to Z: The First Alphabet" online. Pretty interesting stuff!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteHere is an interesting essay by Indi Samarajiva who echoes the hope shared by most (including me) on this blog that Trump gets a second term. He points out that instead of starting new foreign wars, Trump is intensifying the war on Americans on behalf of the elites and he notes, people are still in favor of him. Who knows, maybe this author follows this blog?! Apologies if this webpage is restricted or has a paywall.
https://medium.com/indica/how-trump-has-been-an-improvement-for-the-world-c948db777da9
jjarden,
ReplyDeleteThe first Presidential Debate was a complete clown show. Trump barely let Biden get a word in and was his usual, obnoxious, arrogant and lying self. Instead of a debate about alternative policies, thanks to the wannabe-tyrant Trump, it devolved into a circus where Trump took cheap shots at Biden ("socialist!") and unleashed his usual tirade of verbal diarrhea and lies. The entire performance was another aspect of Trump's undermining of norms, as in the past, presidential candidates would at least let each other talk and articulate their positions instead of constantly talking over others and letting the debate devolve into an insult-slinging mud fight.
The low point of the evening was watching Trump give a wink and a nod to white supremacists, Neo-Nazis and vigilantes, as he said he told the Proud Boys to "stand by", made a sarcastic comment about what groups he should condemn and sent his goons to polling stations on election day.
More than anything, the debate underscored how incompetent and stupid the buffoon running the White House is. Everything is about him and how great he is, the best human being on Earth, and all he can do is use cheap tricks and lies about his enemies to distract from his failures while more than 200,000 people have died from Covid, largely due to his stupidity. That an ignoramus like Trump would even be on the debate stage and is supported by millions of "patriotic" Americans is a sign of how far America has fallen.
jarden - Trump's meltdown is expected in a country swirling down the toilet into oblivion. As MB says so our leaders confirm - the collapse is inevitable so, for the sake of Wafers and the rest of the world, it cannot come soon enough. Fortunately, last night's performance supports the argument that collapse is gaining speed and it shouldn't be too long now. And there is no one coming to save us. It's adios, baby. Goodbye and good riddance.
ReplyDeleteMr. Hedges, please take note. These US-ians may help w/ the 'we should/we ought to/we can do better'- "revolution" and "rising-up" yammer and other aspirational calls to 'action.'
ReplyDeletehttps://viewfromthewing.com/woman-jumps-american-airlines-counter-when-agent-wont-let-her-board-without-shoes/
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteAmerica was a waste of time:
https://politics.theonion.com/post-debate-poll-finds-majority-of-viewers-agree-americ-1845229788
Sean Metcalf, arrested for slapping girlfriend w/a slice of pizza:
https://nbc-2.com/news/local/2020/09/25/port-charlotte-man-arrested-for-slapping-girlfriend-with-slice-of-pizza/
Miles
>I’m curious if my Fellow WAFER’S watched the first Presidential Debate, and what you all thought of it?
ReplyDeleteWhat an embarrassment for every American. I was embarrassed to see our President being scolded and disciplined by a journalist. I was even more embarrassed by the fact that the behavior of our President required such correction if the proceedings were to, well, proceed. The irony of someone so shamelessly trampling over rules to which he had agreed going on to declare his devotion to law and order was painful.
If Mao was correct in his aphorism that a fish rots from the head down, we need wonder no more why so little civility remains in our streets. I'd better make sure my passport is in order.
Marshall McLuhan argued that TV's low resolution and home setting subconsciously insists on "a convulsive sensuous participation that is profoundly kinetic and tactile." Hence it's so effective at reality TV and presidential combat, as well as affecting drama and sitcoms.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=ZF8jej3j5vA
Jeff-
ReplyDelete1. Take a look at Sean's face. This IS America!
2. With that in mind: Yes, America was a large mistake.
3. Thanks for yr kind Amazon review of "The Heart of the Matter." Glad u enjoyed it.
Alogon, jj-
Trumpi came off like a horse's ass--but not to his base. They probably saw him as being forceful and dynamic. Doubtful that Schmiden seduced 1 vote away from the Trumpites.
Michael-
The more he hurts them, the more they love him. No small achievement. He certainly deserves a 2nd term.
Riffe-
I'm counting on Tulsi to intervene at the last minute.
Some commentators said that the 'debate' was a shit-show. They forgot to add that America is a shit-show.
mb
ps: This is nice:
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/30/us/breonna-taylor-officer-retire-fundraiser-trnd/index.html
Someone call a priest! I laughed at this the first time I watched but corrected myself, this woman is obviously having "a moment ." Getting sicker by the day.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/dqZPlBtaEqQ
The debate didn't disappoint but I would have liked it if Jerry Springer had been chosen to moderate rather than who's it. If I had been there I would have thrown a metal chair onto the stage & started chanting "JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!"
ReplyDeleteOh well, plenty of 'debates' to go until the election.
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteWe recently crossed the 5 million mark in terms of hits on the blog (since its inception in April 2006); in Sept., more than 85,000 people tuned in.
Of course, most of these folks are just observers, or lurkers; I sometimes wonder what they are thinking. Are they horrified, that we are pulling for Trumpaloni to get reelected? I mean, what cd be more obvious, than the fact that the guy is a piece of trash? Calling him garbage is an insult to garbage. Agreed. The problem is that the country turned into garbage long b4 Trumpi came on the scene, and in that sense, it is just getting what it deserves. In addition, who better to lead the nation to its ultimate demise? If yr a declinist, you can easily see that a Schmiden presidency wd be Obama Lite (and Jesus, was Obama lite!)--just treading water, as Obama did for 8 useless yrs. What wd be the pt of that? Sure, that 1st presidential debate was a horror show; it was also hysterically funny, from a declinist pt of view. And in terms of decline, we need a vile buffoon at the helm. I doubt we need to just limp along, slowly drifting toward oblivion, pretending that the inevitable can somehow be avoided. Well, just one month to go!
mb
Dr. B-
ReplyDeleteOpEd from today-
"A Few Thoughts on Identity, Morality, Politics and Liberals"
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/gary-olson/93104/a-few-thoughts-on-identity-morality-politics-and-liberals
Quote from article- "The danger of peering too deeply, especially in mid-life or beyond, is the prospect of discovering that one has lived a trivial, insubstantial life that hasn’t been the prelude or harbinger of anything meaningful."
Alex & WAFers,
ReplyDeleteI'm having the same problem accessing this blog lately. I had to get in through a "back door" on Google. Could they be shadow-banning it?
Link below to another installment of "This week in culture". This youtube channel is pro-Trump but it clearly displays the rot permeating the entire culture:
https://youtu.be/v-FCiYmewe0
There was more talk about political policy between my son and me while we were playing with his playdoh last night than in that debate. On the other hand - it did give me great faith in the pharmaceutical industry. Whatever drugs they are pumping into these guys to give them so much get-up-and-go at a combined age of 500 is really something to behold.
ReplyDeleteBirn-
ReplyDeleteHmm...sounds like the life of most Americans!
vso-
Asked how many Americans have contracted covid, one woman said '1 billion people'. Does it get dumber than that?
mb
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDelete"America's Dark Side in the Age of Trump" by William Astore ends with this opinion on how to deal with criticisms of America's behavior towards other countries, "A decade and a half ago, Pinter threw down a challenge, and even if you disagreed with him, or maybe especially if you did so, you need the intellectual tools and command of the facts to grapple with that critique. It should never be enough simply to shout “USA! USA!” in an ever-louder fashion and hope it will drown out not only critics and dissenters but reality itself -- and perhaps even your own secret doubts."
I think most here will agree that the above suggested response just isn't very likely in today's America. USA! USA! is probably the height to which most people are capable of - if they care to at all. There are some good links supporting Astore's critical statements in the essay. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176756/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_america%27s_dark_side_in_the_age_of_trump_/#more
Starfish: I hope you're right about the laziness of the bubbas, but then there's this:
ReplyDeletehttps://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/65448-a-pro-trump-militant-group-has-recruited-thousands-of-police-soldiers-and-veterans
Cel-
ReplyDeleteO dem bubbas! They have the rt idea: "Don't dump Trump; dump America!" Government By Thugs (GBT) might be just around the corner.
mb
This reminded me of Marx's quote (which is often referenced here): “first as tragedy, second as farce”
ReplyDeleteWorld reacts to the farce of Trump's debate performance - in the same way that professional wrestling is a performance. fake and not to be taken seriously. I wouldn't take a circus clown seriously.
Foreign observers were “aghast,” according to an AP report; Kenyan commentator Patrick Gathara wrote: “This debate would be sheer comedy if it wasn’t such a pitiful and tragic advertisement for U.S. dysfunction.”
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-virus-outbreak-donald-trump-japanese-yen-68ee6e1d6d3ae065afb37968fca52f6b
riffe-
ReplyDeleteIt's possible that this debate, and the Nov. 3 election (assuming Trumpi wins), is our 2nd domestic Suez Moment (the 1st being his election in 2016). Of course, it cd slide into an external Suez Moment, if US dysfunction is the global perception of the country. ("Hey, they're not great; they're buffoons!"). Increasingly, other nations are discounting the US and going their own way.
mb
Reading this classic for the first time, "TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information" by Erik Davis:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/TechGnosis-Myth-Magic-Mysticism-Information/dp/1583949305
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteMB-
You're welcome. I enjoyed the book very much.
MB, Wafers-
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and offer a prediction:
Trumpo will never, under any circumstances, concede or cooperate w/a peaceful transfer of power. Trumpo is capable of using the power of the presidency to raise doubts (he's already doing this) as to the winner or the loser in the upcoming election. We're heading into a full-blown constitutional crisis, and it *will* happen w/in days of the November election. My evidence for this is Trumpo's behavior and rhetoric.
Michel Miles de Deli Nostredame
vsoguy - Typing "morris berman blog" into Google used to bring the latest entry right up top. Now you get something from a few years ago and have to know to click on it, then on the masthead, to get the current stuff.
ReplyDeleteall - I know we've all seen lots of these but I watched this last night and it gives a clearer accounting of the reasoning behind it than other docu's I've seen. "A combination of Darwin and Henry Ford" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaHBB7b1VCU
33% of Democrats and 36% of Republicans support violence against their political rivals.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/01/political-violence-424157
I missed this useful piece in Nature a couple of weeks back: how national exceptionalism seems a pretty good predictor of a poor Covid-19 response.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02596-8
That explains a lot.
alex-
ReplyDeleteTry morrisberman.blogspot.com.
Millard-
Relevant to this topic are WAF ch. 3, and the Reenchantment bk.
mb
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteI just googled "waf berman," and this blog was the first hit. Oddly enough, a Google search of "waf belman" didn't reveal the blog until the third page. Damned Illuminati.
I didn't watch the debate, but I chanced upon a bit of the post-debate commentary on KTLA (The CW) while I waited for "Whose Line is it Anyway." I was so disgusted by the vacuous discussion by the talking heads that I changed channels after about 20-30 seconds. The pretentious, yet empty language emitted by these pompous jackasses was incredible. I wish I had taken notes. I can't cite an example from memory, but their use of bloated noun phrases where a simple verb would have worked was enough to give a gopher the heartburn.
I almost feel sorry for the gringo voters who had to endure the debate, and then be subjected to this "analysis." Their intelligence must have been doubly insulted.
al-
ReplyDeleteJust call me WAF. I suffered thru the pre-debate commentary myself; it was absurd. When I think of these supposedly hi-IQ dummies, I just wish I had license to slap them for 30 mins. each. The country is a parade of buffoons. As for the 'debate' itself, it was hard to hold back the vomit. But as I said above, the more the country is (correctly) perceived around the world as a bad joke, the faster our collapse will ensue. When a civilization collapses, it's fair to say it has very little of value left in it.
mb
Good afternoon Dr Berman and Wafers
ReplyDeleteSomething to keep in mind perhaps as everyone
is focused on November 3 voting day. There is a saying
in golf (Trump might agree) that you drive for show and putt for dough. The drive for show is voting on November 3 and the putt for dough would be January 6, 2021 when the electoral college votes. The college puts the president into office not the popular vote of November 3. You would have to think Trump is already working that channel.
Constitutional and electoral protocol be damned. Biden
wins the popular vote but the college puts Trump back in.
This is nice:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/01/san-jose-officer-charged-assault/
mb
Hi Wafers,
ReplyDeleteNewly released internal documents show Trump officials were instructed to make public comments supporting the vigilante murderer Kyle Rittenhouse. In related news, the Oath Keepers, one of many pro-Trump heavily armed vigilante groups, is preparing for the breakout of civil war. They have recruited thousands of police, soldiers and veterans.
The only saving grace of the Trump administration is how incompetent and stupid Trump is, which limits his ability to carry out his racist and authoritarian schemes. Trump is in quarantine now after his top aide Hope Hicks tested positive for coronavirus, after he spent months mocking mask-wearing and holding large events. Stupidity has a price.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/internal-document-shows-trump-officials-were-told-make-comments-sympathetic-n1241581
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/right-wing-militias-civil-war/616473/
Trump tested positive for Covid-19. That's the price of not being serious about it ever.
ReplyDeletehttps://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1311892190680014849
The November elections looks more exciting now with these unexpected turns.
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteSo Trumpi has covid. This cd be the nail in his political coffin. He mocks Biden for wearing a mask; then he himself comes down w/the virus. It's possible that many Trumpites will now see him as a douche bag; which is true, of course. And then, suddenly, he condemned the Proud Boys, shortly after extolling them. WTF? Make up yr mind, man.
2nd debate is scheduled for Oct. 15. Will it take place?
mb
Alas, I disagree MB and others, Trumpi having covid is terrible news. I see 3 things happening now. First, he gets re-tested in a few days and gets a negative and says testing is BS. Second, he survives and says covid is BS, look I survived just fine. Third, he dies and we have a Pencian theocracy. Could be wrong, but I'm guessing the first option is most likely right now from seeing all the athletes testing positive, then two or three days later testing negative. We'll see.
ReplyDeleteGreetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteI just wanna say that my thoughts and prayers are w/coronavirus at this critical time.
Miles
Agree Wafer Chopped Liver. Please oh please let Trumpo recover. We need you. We love you!
ReplyDeleteYou are the US, (Schmiden does a slightly 'better' job of hiding what the US empire really was). You are its' populace-dumber than stale dog shit and damn proud of it!
Testing "positive" does not mean much. Many have tested "positive," then test negative, and/or recover just fine w/o any symptoms unless one is elderly and/or has an immuno-compromised state. Personally, know several folks who tested pos and did just fine, back to work, status quo. They have been exposed which can mean immunity. But most US-ians don't believe in science, so what can ya say?
ReplyDeleteYes, this is a novel virus, however, the US "news" "media" corporations will love the ratings ($), the hyped BS and endlessly slamming Trump while elevating Creepy Schmo.
It could greatly back fire......
Miles,
ReplyDeleteI love almost all Wafer comments, but rarely do I belly-laugh when I read one. My thoughts and prayers are for some more humorous comments!
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteThis COVID news is great. Imagine how the Rassler-in-Chief will be able to present himself to his adoring fans after showing how he put that ol' virus in a choke hold and crushed it with a double suplex off the top turnbuckle.
Hoooo weee!
Schmiden is in for a whole lotta hurt if'n he thinks he can take the presidential belt away from The Don of Queens!
Happiness Museum opens in Denmark
ReplyDeletehttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/worlds-first-happiness-museum-opens-denmark-180975960/
Check it out:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/02/amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court-business-cronyism
mb
Keep your fingers crossed and PRAY!!
ReplyDeletePresident Trump being taken to Walter Reed Military Medical Center as a 'precautionary measure'
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/02/president-trump-being-taken-to-walter-reed-military-medical-center-as-a-precautionary-measure.html?__source=iosappshare%7Ccom.apple.UIKit.activity.CopyToPasteboard