counterintuitive or rigged game?

i collected yesterday's mail from the mailbox this afternoon when i got home...magazines, and the usual junk mail...and some stuff from the auto insurance people...among the junk was an envelope from "bernie 2020" soliciting funds for "us"...i scanned it and found the usual appeals to liberal sentiments ( why they confuse me with a liberal is a mystery to me...hubert humphrey was a liberal...why would i crawl into that behavioral sump? we are all more complicated than the hegemonic culture realizes...labels are misleading shortcuts )...it wasn't very persuasive...or even entertaining for that matter...

however the disclaimer at the bottom of the last page caught my interest and it holds some insights...

that corporations active in politics ( and since all politics is an extension of economics, find me one that is not..if not publicly , then surreptitiously ) might choose not to donate to sanders is more than understandable...the ideologies are in conflict...at least for public consumption...but prohibited? it is in keeping with the war on unions that unions would be prohibited...the desire is to bankrupt them and drive them out of any position that would allow the amelioration of capital's abuses of workers...from wages to terms and conditions of work which are increasingly authoritarian and thoroughly contravening of constitutionally guaranteed civil rights...but corporations are far more powerful than the government...they own it...i actually qualify to be a donor for old bernie...a lamentable loophole in campaign finance law that will inevitably be closed because i am nothing if not a member of the rabble and a proletarian at that...no good can come of allowing me too much political latitude...ask old alex hamilton about that...or his buddy john jay...or their philosophical godfather john locke...read the fundamental constitutions of carolina locke authored in 1669..it will explain a lot...anyway...i can give bernie up to $2800 a year ( this is unlikely )...however if i give him only $200 they have to report my name, address, occupation, and my fucking employer to the feds? so a quiet letter can be sent to my employer ( who reserves the right to terminate me with or without cause [see what i mean about authoritarian and civil rights?] at any time ) can say "get your sorry socialist commie ass out of here"...and corporations whine about "regulation"...have i said fuck these people today? where is the lake of fire?

how much?

the puking buddah and i have been perusing the friday new york times...because we have a day off and some time to kill and the times is always instructive in the contradictory ways of the elite...or, at least, the daily confirmation that we can only perceive a slice of reality at a time because the totality is too complex for limited human cognition and so are completely vulnerable to contradicting ourselves without realizing it until it is far too late...for example...

this is the lede for an article that is to appear in print in the sunday magazine but is all over the website today...for me personally the lancets suggestion that zero alcohol is the safe level of ingestion would be eminently true...i am not everyone nor are they me and that may not hold exactly true for a lot of people...the times may sense this empirically and so feel completely at ease running advertisements like this...

"today and tonight only" you can have a glass of wine or get shitfaced while aiding the reconstruction of a remnant of a medieval institution based on a bronze age cult doing business in the present world...numb yourself to the exigencies and angst of these trumpist times while aiding the splendor that is france...i wonder...would this worthy endeavor make the wine sacramental?

and just so we don't lose sight of the rtime's elitist leanings here is the southeby's international real estate ad ( "your best life begins with a home that inspires you" ) for today's paper with this lising provising $39,500,00 worth of inspiration...the cheapest? $1,750,000...let me hasten to add that there is one "price upon request" listing for a home in harbour island, bahamas that would likely dwarf the cost of the "spectacular terraces overlooking park avenue"...i am, however, disinclined to inquire...it is enough to know such places exist and that there is a class of basically unwarranted wealth out there that inhabits them...frankly we have lost our way as a species...or, conversely, our path as a species has always tended to lead us to self-destructive behaviors and beliefs...either way.

some sunday observations

my ad blockers and anti-tracking add ons through mozilla firefox have vanished and there are ads everywhere they didn't used to be ( except yahoo whom i pay to keep them off )...when i try to download them again the "corrupt file please check your connection" notification comes up...my connection is fine...frontier has cut a deal with the slime at google to force me to accept their miserable ads...i have been clicking on "block this advertiser" on every ad...one wonders if i can exhaust them...net neutrality is dead and the hyenas are at hand...

the luxury condos advertised on pages two, five, seven, and nine of today's n y times magazine have an average starting price of $3998750 ( low $1,655 million, high $3.65 million ) and an average top end of $9916666 ( low $7 million, high $12 million...the one on page seven has no "high" figure..if you have to ask you can't afford it...and "penthouse information on request" )...clearly the times is still the paper of "truth"...they crow about their pursuit of it all the times...whose truth? a look at the ads will sort out who their real target audience is...state run...corporate run...their interests still stand fairly in opposition to mine.