bad habits

in 2018 my internet provider began...

an "internet upgrade project"...which has provided the throttled inconvenience they so thoughtfully apologized for in advance and which was clearly the very first step towards taking full advantage of the corrupt and kleptocratic...let's say criminal...trump adminstration's destruction of net neutrality in an effort to mitigate that corporate malaise...greed...so today i got an email from the fine folks at frontier pretty much asking me how i like they way they have throttled my connection...

( i could not snip it out in its entirety so here it is in two parts ) telling me if i want a faster connection it is going to cost me...time for decisions...hindsight is startling in its clarity...there are those times when i rue going back to indiana university in 2007...it then that i found i could not actually attend that august institution without an internet connection and that was the impetus to procure a computer which was something i had resisted in a serious fashion to that point...what was deemed a necessity has turned into a bad habit ( there are doubtlessly those who consider this activity to be one of my worst..."shut the fuck up already"...those who know me realize that this is unlikely...it's a link...not a fucking demand...you clicked on it ) including the deviltry of social media which is something less than aboveboard in what it does and how it operates...buyer's remorse in corporeal form...so..will i stop using the internet? probably not...too much of life is centered there..banking...paying bills...arguing with bureaucrats...and i do keep in touch with some far flung people who are important to me through this medium...so i doubt i will vanish...then again i do have an extensive tool kit to apply to changing habitual behaviors...i am the meanest bastard in the valley in that respect...at least once i identify the habit...that is most of the challenge..i will not be houdini and escape..i will be fred and take a conscious interest in how i use this infernal machine..i do turn it off...i still read...i still think...the time seems to have come to give thought to this...and have i said that donald trump is an self-entitled self-absorbed emotional pre-teen with absolutely no concept of how to be a human being of any consequence or worth today? i meant to...once a rat fuck always a rat fuck...have i also pointed out that a surprising number of andy jackson's contemporaries felt the same way about him during his presidential tenure? there is nothing new here..it's just the first glaringly obvious example of the true soul of american politics you've seen personally...a confluence of whores sums up its history.

the chinese built a wall

from today's n y times: "he [ trumpie ] again mentioned 'other alternatives' that he could turn to if he did not secure wall funding from congress, presumably an emergency declaration that could allow him to shift funds from the military or the army corps of engineers...house democrats were circulating proposals for a 'smart wall' with drones, senors, and some additional fencing, but no edifice from the pacific to the gulf of mexico."___________________________________________the chinese built the great wall...presumably as a demarcation of where civilization ended...a point of exile...rather than something designed to keep "barbarians" out...if the latter were the purpose it failed miserably...doubtlessly the nativist, racist, yahoo base that der furhair enjoys considers the southern border the end of anything civilized ( which disturbs me because, for the most part, we are talking about texas ) and as a hard line to be defended against the hordes from the south whose main aim is something of a better life that they now enjoy and demographic relocation would only coincidentally match the lost northwestern provinces of old mexico annexed in 1845 in, i believe, the treaty of guadalupe-hidalgo...a wall serves no real purpose...human migration has a long history and is relentless...if it were not we would not be here...at least not in our present forms...i am a second-generation scion of immigrants...i knew the "old country" people and i liked them...it was their kids that were fucked up...but that is another rant and best left alone...there is a need here to recognize human universals which is, lamentably, being submerged in a bath of politically expedient fear and hate by a seriously ignorant and self-absorbed faction of the population to the benefit of an arrogant specimen of what wealth is really like at home when the guests have gone...emergency declaration...emergency decree...close...so let's float the idea that "the wall" is the reichstag fire and that the 2020 elections will be suspended and trumpie crowned "president for life"..this would effectively neutralize congress and, at the same time, quash any meuller indictments of der furhair and his miserable family...implausible? probably...his approval rating in the military is slipping and military support would have to be the basis for anything of the sort...we aren't dealing with any sort of "normalcy" here however...we have an ego big enough to block out anything resembling reality in terms of what may or may not be done...the odds are stacked against success...that doesn't mean the attempt isn't an option on the table...and while we are talking tables benjamin cardin, a democratic senator from maryland has hilariously stated that congress has put their "reputations as legislators" "on the table" with a stopgap proposal to fund the government for three weeks while members of congress "come up with a successful conclusion on the border security issue"...letting the whole "reputation" issue slide ( for now ) the only "successful conclusion" trumpie will accept is getting his way...congress can puke out all the verbiage it wants on "bi-partisan compromise" but the issue is not designed for compromise...it is designed to stroke egos and deliver political advantage...compromise is not "on the table".

civility in american politics: a primer

today's new york times is bemoaning the state of personal relationships in whoretown today...calling it a "sandbox" and calling for politicians who are "squabbling like 7-year-olds" to be given a "timeout"...there is something to be said for being in the moment...we do tend to let past error and terrors of the future run away with us at times and we need to get a firm footing in the "now" to catch our breath..we can flip out all too easily over basically nothing...one drawback of being immersed in the moment is it tends to put a distinct chill on perspective...history is a rotten place to look for what to do next since it is replete with the error of others...however it does inform us of how we got to where we are and there is some value in knowing that...so...american politics has always been a nasty game ( at least after washington left the job of president and the operative formed political parties to further their handlers' interests )...low opinion has been held and frequently expressed..both in public and in private..a private example to start...in a letter to benjamin rush, john adams held that alexander hamilton's ambition might be attributed to ," a superabundance of secretions which he could not find whores enough to draw off."..a clear statement of disapproval from the former president and vice-president...his son john quincey publicly called thomas jefferson "a slur on the moral government of the world"...the unflinching andrew jackson said, "i have two regrets: i did not shoot henry clay, and i did not hang john c. calhoun."...no equivocation there...the redoubtable teddy roosevelt, when he was under-secretary of the navy during mckinley's tenure that the boss had, "no more backbone than a chocolate eclair."..and, more recently, barney frank said, "people might cite george bush as proof you can be totally impervious to the effects of harvard and yale education."...a sample...there are manifold assertions of drunkenness, questionable parentage, perverted practices, class betrayal, and the doings of that "damned ass hamilton" spanning the history of american politics since, at least, 1796...and i am prepared to think the precedents are regressable to a much earlier time...but we are dealing with presidents and presidential candidates here...the only real whores there are.

star

i had to renew my indiana state drivers license by my last birthday ( a gift from the state...bureaucracy and another year...i went in early to deny them the satisfaction of being disruptive ) and, as usual when dealing with an authoritarian bureaucracy ( the "democratic system" is something of a sham...it is highly limited...i have no civil rights at work for instance...there is no due process..only unilateral action..i am "an at-will employees subject to discharge, with or without cause, with no prior notice"...bureaucrats are not elected officials and they are in possession of greater power than i am in practical terms ) i was told that my documents, while still valid in the short term, would become useless in terms of air travel by january first 2020...now the odds of me emplaning in all but the most dire of life or death situations stand at just about nil..i am a creature of the earth ( read the garden blog ) and fully intend to remain so...fucking rooted...however that infinitesimal possibility exists and in an effort to meet unforeseen contingencies i went ahead with the desired upgrade of my identification papers...not without some hurdles being placed in my path...as usual i needed more paper to prove my identity before i could get a license to prove my identity and air worthiness...

a multiplicity of documents to choose from the verify my address and that i was who i claimed to be on my previously issued state document i was holding in my hand...as a slight digression, when i replaced my social security card ( a soon to be useless document if mcconell and the rest of the congressional swine have their way...have i said "fuck these people' today? probably ) the only document the federal government agency was interested in seeing was..my state issued drivers license...laxity seems related to the rung on the bureaucratic ladder one occupies...or the feds have implicit faith in state governments...back to the narrative...i procured the necessary documents and went back about a week later to upgrade my documentation...surprisingly i was not told i need "one more" piece of paper and they took my particulars, had me stand in front of a screen, take off my glasses, and photographed me..they never had me take off my glasses before...in fact since i have to wear them to drive i think they wanted a photo of me in them...not this time..it struck me as odd but i didn't put much thought into it at the time...about ten days later my shiny new license came in the mail and this was on the mailing...

the single difference between the appearance of my outdated license and the new one was that star..beyond that, and the glassesless photo they were identical...like all humans my hindsight is impeccable and it wasn't until later that i realized the reason they wanted my glasses off was i was being scanned into a facial recognition data base...( are glasses that disruptive? if so i am home free...all i have to do is wear them in public )...so big brother has utilized a social necessity along with a threat of limited mobility to induce me to do something i might not under other circumstances...they system is oligarchic, pyramidal, top-down authoritarian and it wants to know what you are doing, thinking, and why...it wants to instill a herd mentality ( politicians love rallies...no one hardly thinks independently when they're attending one ( look at video of trumptards sometime or hitler's...check out "triumph of the will" sometime and compare it to what's on the news ) and it needs to snuff out private thought to do that...knowing who is where is part of that process..i have taken to putting my cell phone in a faraday bag as i drive around just to be disruptive...i can drive legally with my spiffy new id.

inclined to parse rather than carefully review

i went to the white house web site this morning and sent a non threatening, two sentence message ( "no wall with my tax dollars. open the government." ) to the trumptard...or, at least, some drone in an executive office building somewhere in whoretown...some time later i received the message above and i am inclined to have a closer look at it...in ideal times and in a naive high school civics version of the government the phrase "carefully reviewing your message" would conjure up a vision of someone intently trying to read the mood of the nation's correspondents and relay those desires to the seat of government...this is, of course, an enduring fantasy for some of the more indoctrinated but actually nothing like the inner workings of power...in an administration with as an authoritarian bent as this lulu i would think they would be looking for sedition ( in fact one supposes that this clown would view the mere act of disagreement as treason...well...fuck him )...all politicians are liars...it goes along with the perceived need to pander to a constituency while placating a larger public...vagueness and the ability to lie through your teeth with a straight face are political essentials...the american people's "willingness to stay informed" has been seriously compromised by a truly orwellian outburst of double think, fake news, and alternate truth that has sought to undermine fact ( we will leave the wholly subjective concept of "truth" out of this discussion please...it does not exist in any pure form ) and alter appearance to fit some bizarre egomaniac's vision of reality...as far as my willingness to "get involved", this blog has been a wholly unilateral expression of personal repugnance for the system which this moron is a symptom, not the cause...that goes back a bit further and has a goodly number of authors..i don't need this yahoo's appreciation either..what i desire is his exit...on his own...with the help of congress ( although i have such little faith in those liars that i think this questionable...but remember who you are dealing with here...still, i notice the heated rhetoric of recent days has simmered own a bit...someone got told to mind their manners...fortunately nancy pelosi exercise no such constraint here )...or, as last resort, in 2020 with an expression of the "will of the people" provided this bozo doesn't suspend the constitution and declare himself "president for life" ( go ahead..laugh...it is not out of the realm of the possible...he has the arrogance and ego..and have a close look at how his approval numbers in the military run )...have i said"fuck these people" recently? it is a mantra.

a short manifesto on taxation

every taxpayer subject to federal income tax should file an extension thus denying the federal government tax monies until the fifteenth of october...perhaps that would send a message...addenda 7 january 2019...i am told by a better informed source that this does not defer payment, only paperwork...which renders the whole i de a mot if not pointless...we will rethink.

impeach the motherfucker

"complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." james madison federalist X_______madison ( along with hamilton and jay ) was writing in the wake of a series of events in the state of massachucetts that had made serious inroads into the position of the established powers ( read wealth ) of that state...the "minor party" he was talking of defending from the "interested and overbearing majority" was not the common man...there is some possibility that the framers of the constitution intended the federal government to be a neutral umpire in conflicts between special interests...money and the formation of political parties took care of that neutrality as it placed the government in the hands of the special interests it was supposed to referee...the degradation of "democracy" has a long history and did not begin in 2016...presidents and lesser politicians have lied cheated stolen smeared repressed dissent and whatever else they felt was necessary since there has been a presidency...the early republic dogfights involving hamilton adams and jefferson should be instructive...it has always been a foul abrasive vitriolic process that stemmed from the clash of partisan politicians and interests...the institutions created by the constitution are weighted towards wealth because wealth framed the constitution...and they were purposefully made exceptionally difficult to change because change is predicated on the consent of the warring interests...only when one faction or another holds an unchallenged two-thirds majority has nay change been successfully enacted...not impossible...but the last amendment i can think of had to do with presidential succession in the wake of kennedy's assassination...not an especially controversial topic...smooth succession in the halls of power is less disruptive to say...the stock market...and the system as a whole...if you look at it closely, while the faces have changed and there have been some emergencies that vacated the "business as usual" approach ( the civil war...the great depression...the second world war are a few )...for the most part there has been a continuity of rule by wealth with some lip service being paid to heavily propagandized "voters" who are so balkanized into disputing groups that a coherent opposition to the apparatus of rule is not in evidence..which brings me round to the header of this post...admittedly trump is an unsavory, self-absorbed, entitled nitwit who should never have been elected..there have been others who should not have been as well but they are in the past and lack the immediacy of this particular bozo..so by all mean impeach him...whether the senate would convict relies heavily on the grounds for impeachment and is not assured but impeach away..remove trump...pence will be president and that is not a step up...he may be less publicly unstable but he is no less malevolent in his views...and if you remove him nancy pelosi would be the first woman president...unelected but that is a minor matter..i would point out that nancy is a millionaire..the likelihood of her supporting substantive changes to the current institutions and aims of the government are relatively ( in my opinion mind ) slim...she can tell me she's "for the street" but i believe she is playing politics when she does...change from within is deeply unlikely..the framers aimed for continuity in the protection of the prerogatives of wealth...so far they have succeeded..and find me the last president who retired to poverty..or even an "average" income.

we all have different priorities

i have been reading recently about urban efforts to undo some of the damages that over-paving and destruction of native wetlands have done to both water retention and quality and how those efforts can be for virtually nothing if climate change so remakes the weather that the rains, particularly in the southwest of the united states stop...this triggered a digression of thought in the state of drought in the united states and how a significant shift in weather patterns and rainfall could generate a very large number of climate refugees within the borders of this county...internally displaced people looking for survival...and how that migration might affect relations among citizens ( it brings to mind the reception that "okies" and other internally displaced people, be it from weather or economic hardship, received as the wandered the country in search of sustenance and stability...there are stories of succor and welcome...there are an equal number of stories of rejection and violence )...looking for some information i clicked on the bookmark i have for the national oceanic and atmospheric administration's drought portal to peruse the current and forecast drought maps and i found this...

the portal is shutdown as part of the trumptard's tantrum over a useless wall and so i am without any input on conditions that have the possibility of creating a migration that will have as much social impact as any migration from the south...i am very nearly speechless at the irony and i am thinking new thoughts about methodologies governments can employ for controlling information.