perhaps john dewey will take the job

so...refresh my memory...are secretaries-of-state diplomats or politicians? or some weird hybird of the two? colin powell certtainly lied like a politician about weapons of mass destruction in iraq at the u n in 2003...and now hillary has called bashir al-assad a "reformer"...one wonders how much distance her aides put between themselves and the podium at that press conference from fear of wrathful lightening bolts ( my conversion from apostacy will be instantaneous with those thunderbolts or the longed for lake of fire)...meanwhile moammar qadaffi is still a delusional sociopath who kills his own people...you have to surmise about just what iunput our saudi and israeli friends had in that particualr howler...bashir is a paragon of arab statesmanship because syria is way too close for either of those two parties to sanction libyan style chaos...bashir=stability...syrian revolt=who knows what kind of exteremist arab yahoo rednecks in control...a mass of actions conflicting with espoused ideals...goals-in-view and situational ethics triumphing over reality...a superb utilization of pragmatic naturalism...as old john meant it to be used...i mean when did armed rebels become "civillians" who needed to be protected and tactically aided by nato jets? fortunate for those "civillians" that their immediate aims fall into line with goals-in-view ( one has to assume that diplomacy is utterly deontological)...unfortunately for the syrians bashir is free to act like dad did when somebody crossed him...fuck these people

interventionism

"what would you do if you found them controlling american cities with the power of weapons?"
col. qaddafi in a letter to obamaland 3-19-2011

1) i do NOT condone the killing of civilian populations ANYWHERE, ANY TIME.
2) i am deeply skeptical of col. qaddafi's claim that he is fighting al qaeda and instead believe he is resisting an attempt by the libyan people to take control of their own political future.
that said the question is still valid. what would the government of the united states do if a sizable prtion of its population rose in an armed rebellion and took control of significant portions of the country? call it an expression of "the people's longing for political freedom", fold up the national bagnio, and call for elections and a new constitution? not bloody likely...there is a preceident...honest abe declared war on a significant portion of the population of the united states who were naive enough to believe jeffersonian rhetoric about the right to self-determination and rebellion against an "unjust" government...old abe killed citizens of this country for four years until they said "enough" and then he forgave them...they did not, and have not, forgiven him ( and there is an interesting facet of the dialectic...unless they are all killed, the losers of any conflict do not disappear and have a considerable, if officially unrecognized, impact on later events...no-one ever realy gets their way.. read " the culture of defeat" by wolfgang shivelbush) the rebel's position was compromised by the ethical albatross of slavery...but abe didn't really care about slavery...he used it as a political tool to keep the brits from interevening... he would have let the "peculiar institution" survivie to restore the antebellum status quo...our involvment in the arab world is a direct result of the need to control energy supplies...the rest is rhetoric a marginally intelligent three year old could see through...the empire is stetched thin so the french may bear the brunt of this...but we are all western allies, no? all with the same end goal in view...moe has to go because his fall has become a tool that can be used to expand western influence in oil producing areas...and obamaland would kill me as quickly as anyone if it saw me as a real threat to its power...or you for that matter...don't let them confuse you...this is all about preserving their positions and prerogatives.

hour II

it has been a mere eighteen weeks since the low rent whores in congress and the swine at the chamber of commerce gave me back my hour and now they've taken it again...i didn't sleep in, but i got out of bed an hour later...a lost weekend rolled into an hour...de quincey's " disgusting tendancies towards vernal apperances" are rampant and now there will be extended periods of daylight after the working day....ostensibly instituted to save energy ( a bold-face lie...it does so litle towards saving energy that it borders on useless) the venal sods at the chamber love it because it allows more daylight for consumption of goods and services...they need a reality check to as the depression grinds on and the smoke and mirrors recovery doesn't allow for expanded consumption...and it isn't what we should be doing anyway...but the moral cripples at the chamber are so utterly boxed in philosophically by their profit imperative that their thinking is utterly skewed...there are many rooms in the addictive mansion and some are better defined (mostly because they are the ones that cost the holy gdp in terms of medical insurance claims and lost production) than others...a pecuniary addiction goes undefined and untreated because it adds to the gdp...it warps characters and destroys families but tragically is allowed to continue...captalism as enabler...the market as the pusher and wealth as the drug...day traders and stock-jobbers will morph into snarling facsists ready to kill rather than suffer the withdrawl that comes with the loss of the money drug that accompanies a crash...mull over the body of literature attached to the pursuit of wealth and the horror stories of failure and loss...if they worked i'd suggest a twelve-step program...daylight savings time is a symptom of that addiction...it's time we confronted this national tragedy and develped a serious treatment program that can contribute its share to the gdp.

calling all unionists...

my international has sent me a letter urging me to join in "the fight" to save unionism from the "distasteful assault" and "evil agenda"...i am no fan of capitalism,or the ultra greedyglobalization...period...extortionist...expropriative...corrupt...venal...all apply with equal force...capitalists will always hate unions...period...because they represent a form of collective action which does not agrandize the wealth or power of capital...shopping at wall-mart or driving your vehicle from the suburbs to the city...or buying a house you cannot really afford and then using it as an atm...or watching television (evil manipulator...ANY entertainment value nonwithstanding)...or participating in or watching sports...all of that reults in a transference of wealth from you to them and that is what they want...unions' attempts to reverse that flow...no matter how trifling...is unacceptable in their eyes and must be quashed before the masses begin to perceive the consumerist utopia for the vast ponzi scheme, never delivering on its promises of fulfillment, that it is...i can accept mike's take on that because , while i am no doubt more outspoken about it, he and i are on the same page there....unions are a target of capital and the hired whores they keep on retainer in the state and federal bagnios...you can dispute that but you'd give yourself away as engaging in class warfare in the intersts of wealth and i can readily discount you...where mike and i part ways is when he contends that "an injury to one of us ia an injury to all of us" and that "i welcome this fight and i will be fighting with you." he may indeed be fighting...but he'd rather not....and he may be "fighting" along side me but i cannot help but think that we are fighting for fundamentally different reasons and that if the reasons he is fighting for are resolved in a fashion staisfactory to him and the continued existence of his organization he will quit the fight and leave me to fend for mayself as best i can...to borrow a kantian concept, mike is fighting "in accordance with duty" not "from duty"...it is an appearance only...if he can salvage his union ( and by extention his job ) without expending any union resources ( "mail this check to our office at the above address")he will do so and it will be in line with the entire craft union philosophy of non-advocacy if there is any possibility it may cost the union funds...so the dilemma is mine...i cetainly empathize with anyone struggling to make ends meet is a depressed ( oh my god! he said it martha!)economy and anyone anywhere who questions my categorical loathing of the degenerate bastards that constitute the political class in this hamiltonian extravaganza will have to meet me on the field of honor at dawn...and yet i have an infinitely difficult time accepting that the organization that purports to represent me is acting from amything but its own interests which mostly do not coincide with mine...some call me paranoid which is a glib way of dismissing unpleasant arguments...like sticking your fingers in your ears and saying la-la-la very loudly...blocks it out...but doesn't explain or change a damned thing...the point is there are real choices to be made about whom to side with ( it is an era that demmands taking sides ) and no-one seems to be trustworthy...what would bill haywood do?

you can take wisconsin out of the whores but you can't take the whores out of wisconsin

"i applaud the legislature's action today to stand up to the status quo and take a step in the right direction to balance the budget and reform government."
scott "gimmie the pensions" walker. chief whore of wisconsin.

"in thirty minutes, eighteen senators undid fifty years of civil rights in wisconsin."
mark miller. demoratic state minority leader

http://kristenemery.com/2011/02/23/does-governor-scott-walker-have-a-smoking-gun-buried-in-the-budget-bill/

in a backroom move that comes as no surprise the sleazy whores in the wisconsin legislature ratified the haniltonian system of government by special interest ( and you can read wealth there) and told anyone who works for a living to go get fucked...it is what they were hired for in these tough economic times...to defend the prerogatives of the rich at the expense of the rest...and they proved they were worth every dime it cost to buy them as the subverted even the pretense of democratic principles that they so often remind us they stand for...it's alot like pelosi aying she's defending the "street"...tell me another one... i love it when you low-life degenerate scum lie to me...especially since you are so inept at it that it is laughable...you are so deep in denial about having sold your miserable souls to the highest bidder that you believe your own propaganda...you are, i think, the only ones...once again the loving diety fails me...a politician specific plauge of ebola virus and guinea worm...a swarm of flesh eating locusts with the odd scorpion thrown in...or the longed for lake of fire...are all it would take to restore joyous belief to the apostate fugitive...a more muscular apostacy is the only alternative...ceratinly my cynicism and categorical distain for the second republic's institutionalized class war is justified....welcome to the kulturkampf...the empire will not outlive it.


more good news
http://www.nelp.org/page/-/Justice/2011/UnbalancedGrowthFeb2011.pdf?nocdn=1

reclaimation and reconstruction
3-20-2011
"the action today will help insure that wisconsin has a business climate that will allow the private sector to create 259,000 new jobs ."
scott "gimme the pensions"walker

"the business of america is buisness"
"smilin' " cal coolidge

that the constituttion is an economic document designed to strengthen and expand the position of economic dominance of wealth is a fact that is pretty well established with anyone with any sort of mental acuity...read the federalist papers if you have any doubt...the oligarchs who wrote it didn't want anything to do with the yeoman farmers they used to toss out a foreign born aristocracy so they could exploit the vaccuum after the fact....they wrote in some ammendments supplying the masses some idological bubble-gum called the bill of rights as an afterthought in a vain effort to cover their mendacity and their economic intenet ( that's why there's high school civics...to perpetuate the illusion)but the main thrust was a legal justification for greed...the inherent boom and bust cycles endemic to the capitalist system generated some large-scale economic crises and the one previous to the 2008 collapse of venality led to some intellectual adjustments fostered by some british economist and elitist named john maynard keynes and adopted by a generation of political hacks whose worldview was informed by thier patrician savior franklin dealno roosevelt...the next generation of political operator were smitten with the social darwinism of richard nixon and the ever maleable ronnie reagan and have decided that the minimal prpotections that the keynsian system provided to the masses were an unacceptable deterent to the upward redistribution of wealth and had to go...the cronyism and disregard for common sense that this atmosphere created resulted in the latest bust and now, in need of a scapegoat, they have turned on the few remaining workers who make a living wage...seeking to perpetuate the upward redistribution by destroying their economic security and replaceing jobs that pay with jobs that don't...for a system that relies on the continued material consumption of goods and services by those same workers this is maifestly insane....even fucking thorsten veblen would have trouble with it...welcome to the mercantile oligarchy...its collapse will be painful but deeply entertaining.

who's interests are we looking after?

mailcall feeds my cynicism...whether it's loan offers seeking to erode my equity....cable deals i simply cannot afford to pass up...tracts...rent-to-own circulars...or the ever specious political mailings they all reinforce my world view in a way that most other media ( except, perhaps a column by that ass friedman) can't even approach...so blatantly based and manipulative that i am contnually astonished at how foolish the senders think i am...they are mistaken, of course...most of us are more than capable of penetrating their transparent motives...that's why it's called junk mail... the organization that i pay on a monthly basis to represent me in work related matters has sent me an urgent postcard announcing that it has uncovered a movement to marginalize workers and to liquidate middle america as a class...stunning in its obviousness...where were these guys during the reagan/bush years ( or the clinton years for that matter...i had always thought that carter was the most republican of democratic presidents...he is the one who started the whole "deregualtion" ball rolling...a sort of populist nixon...but then came the bubba from little rock who sold us nafta and gave h ross perot the ammunition to destroy third party politics in america for another few generations...and they impeached him over the intern business?) where they were was doing alright and so unconcerned about the the future...well...the future is here and they are as fucked as any of the rest of us...the economy is facing a number of serious dilemmas ( as opposed to problems...you can listen to politicians whistle in the dark as they pass the empires open grave but they are fooling you as well as themselves with the bullshit talk about "recovery"...the combined weight of climate change, energy shortages, water shortages, spiraling food prices, and foolish stop-gap measures will eventually crush the degenerate bastards where they stand and i will not mourn their passing) and their phony jobs are on the line...they need help to get their point across and since they have done so much for me as a worker it's time for me to step up and make my voice heard in the lair of the beast...(they don't need everybody's help though as the fine print disclaimer at the bottom discloses...it is a craft union after all and contracts are sacrosanct...the representaives are "business agents" ...nothing so undignified as "steward" or the even more proletarian "griever"...they are patricians of labor...and they have a responsibility to uphold the honorable traditions they inherited from samuel l gompers)...good luck guys...i have a mid-term in linguistic anthropology on thursday...i have my own priorities.

unionists recast as politicians?

"mr. walker's proposal contemplates significant changes to most public sector unions, limiting collective bargaining to matters of wages only and limiting raises to the consumer price list unless the public approves higher raises in a referendum. he would require most unions to hold votes annually to determine whether or not most workers wish to be mebers. and he would end the state's collection of union dues from paychecks."
n y times 3-5-2011

unless there's been a radical change in federal labor law collective bargaining is still applicable to both terms and conditions of work...the terms are not seperable and things like safety issues and where the vending machines and break rooms are located and wat times they can be used are still legal items of negotiation...of course the federal government is in a bad odor at the moment and the goebbels effect has seriously deformed the public's view of working people who were once "the backbone of the nation"...but that is all subject to change as the crypto-fascists who think they have control of the nations purse strings may soon find out as the bottom falls out of the economy again because of energy and food costs ( and 192,000 jobs isn't shit in the cosmic scheme of things...wall street is delusional as usual and the media as a leisure service of wealth is misleading everyone...if oil prices stay at current levels until the end of the month the dow won't hold 10,000 much less move to 14,000) the slimy little rat-bag governor of wisconsin does have a plan to shift the onus of convincing membership of the benefits of union membership to the unions...a decertification election every year will force them to run the style of campaign devloped by the members of the u s house of representatives bulked up on steroids...that could distract them form the more existential issue of ending dues checkoff, which also neatly burdens unions with the administrative costs...you have to admire hamiltonian scum when they're on the ball...of course if the economy disimproves on their watch (double plus ungood) the new brooms of wisconsin and the social darwinist right-wing tea-party nazis may find themselves burdened with the need to explain to a roused and vindictive electorate just who's bright idea all these referendums were and why the long-suffering taxpayers who elected these bozos to clean house should have to pay for them...politics is built on the quicksand of public opinion in this decrepit empire...what sells today is in the dumpster tomorrow...the seasoned pols know this and that's why they all sound alike in their efforts not to be pinned down to a position...these people have taken sides and that is awfully risky...especially when it becomes glaringly apparent that the side they picked is just another version of the same old ponzi scheme that is the second republic.

perhaps i gave the hamiltonian scum too much credit...
2:28 p m 3-5-2011
i've been thinking this over a bit ( one of the hazards of sitting down at the keyboard in the first flush of indignation at a whore being a whore is that reflection takes a hike...not that i am recanting anything i have said about slimeball politicians or small-time ideolouges...they are still fools who merit the lake of fire or a palin presidency...but somethings could be said better and others just get lost in the polemic) ending dues check-off may indeed harm public sector unions that haven't been in the union business very long and have always relied on that system to collect their dues...on the other hand, i am represented by a craft union, and while they get my dues through dues check-off the craft side of the local is mostly journeymen who don't work full time for one specific employer...so dues check-off for them isn't possible...they pay their dues "at the window"..by going to the hall and paying there or by simply mailing a check ( who knows if the local is technologically advanced enough to get funds transfers on line...there website looks like the work of sixth graders...or, even worse, something i could do) so there is a long history of administering dues payments and processing the per capita tax and dealing with the health and welfare fund ( i told you these people run the union like a business...they can administer money...it's advocacy that might cause them to spend some of the said moeny that frightens them)...the loss of dues check-off wouldn't tax the union's administrative abillities more than it would dump the onus of keeping my dues current on me and the other members...which in the end might cause some stumbles but would hardly merit the label of exisitential crisis i tagged it with originally...the political whores and hacks with their crypto-fascist allies and the miserbale class warriors at the wall street journal may find unions more resilliant than their cold litle hearts desire

alienated labor

the party of lincoln is resurgent and desperately trying to co-opt an insurgent movement that has curiously rendered the party of union into a secessionist hot-bed of anti-government, anti-tax hot heads far more radical than anyone i ever hung out with while the empire concerned itself with south-east asia as opposed to their adventurism in the world of islam...along the way they have indulged themselves in some of their domestic biases and somehow, in a classic example of double-think that even orwell would have hesitated to publish, have labled union workers as "elitist"...imagine an elite opting to pull on its coveralls and descend into some of the most alienatingly un-natural environments you'd care to imagine...physically and psychologically ugly, as well as dangerous, shrouded in night, they take in an even more ghastly cast in something as natural as sunlight...don't believe me? seek out a local mill-rat ( if you can find one) and ask about sunrise over the slag heaps, graphite coated ground, stunted trees, rats, cats, supervisors, and all the other debased things when the sunshine hits them after a midnight turn...the only thing that makes it bearable is the fact that the shift is over, not beginning...day turns are an entirely different world.