"the new class"

Terrorist- noun & adjective. A person who uses violent and intimidating methods in the pursuit of political aims. Oxford English Dicionary____________ "an eye for an eye" andy biggs, repuublican representative from arizona___________________________________ "i have a message tonight for merrick garland and jack smith and joe biden and the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one is for you. If you want to get to president trump you are going to have to go through me , and you are going to have to go through 75 million americans just like me. and i am going to tell you , most of us are card carrying memebers of the n.r.a....that's not a threat, it's a public service announcement." kari lake, failed republican arizona gubenatorial aspirant________________ no keri, that is a definite threat...and so congress and the republican party become terrorist organizations ( with the full approval of the "sinners in the hands of an angry god" set andy was pandering to ) utilizing both implied and explicit threats of violence in defence of donny and their vision of what the country should be...and what might that look like? like any authoritatian state you might look into...an arrogant and doctinare elite bloating itself on wealth extorted from the mass of the polity in return for their shouldering of the onerous burdens of power with a middling group of "politically reliable" cadres to do the clerical work...and another strata of politically motivated denouncers fingering their neighbors lack of orthodoxy for a cut of their neighbor's goods ( a useful mechanism for keeping the masses at war with themselves...diverting their energy and initiative away from questioning why things are the way they are...a stasi state where distrust undermines dissent...and, no doubt, the majority of any confiscated property will be absorbed by "the state" which is, of course, that doctrinaire elite )...a thomas more like utopia where all behaviors are public ( surveiled ) and no private loyalties are sanctioned and where your facial fetures should be set in orwell's "expression of quiet optimism" just to be sure no one becomes suspicious...so is this rhetoric or are 75 million people just like keri ready to act ( and where does that leave the other 259,859,856 remainder of the country's population? )...some are, no doubt, they already have...how many is an open question and where does the comandant of the marine corps stand on all this? i have no idea...i would wager keri probbaly does not either even if she would not admit it ( she won't admit she lost an election so why would she be any less in denial about a lack of knowledge about the motivations of the polity at large? )...if it is rhetoric it is intended to unsettle ( and recall tacitus, "men's minds, once unsettled, are prepared to believe anything." don't let them confuse you ) the opposition and self-reassure the trumpists...if it is a call to action it could be actionable...whatever it is it is set in purely trumpist vocabulary...i have been compiling a list of words and phrases utterly debased by all this rhetoric just so i know who is who.

someone giving away the playbook?

everything old is new again...

"The Nazi members of the Reichstag conducted themselves as a storm troop unit. Whenever representatives of the government or the democratic parties spoke, the Nazi members marched out in a body in studied contempt of the speaker, or entered in a body to interrupt the speaker, thus making it physically impossible for the Reichstag President to maintain order. In the case of speakers of opposition parties, the Nazi members constantly interrupted, often resorting to lengthy and spurious parliamentary maneuvers, with the result that the schedule of the session was thrown out of order." from "means used by the nazi conspirators in gaining contol of the german state" university of south florida_______________________________________________________________________clearly desantis is remiss in allowing a state university to give away the playbook like this...he should be more careful about what he lets floridian intellectuals get up to...that said, am i accusing the staunch public servants of the house freedom caucus of being nazis? probably not...i would say they are doctrinaire ideolouges concerned only in having things entirely their way with a decidedly authoritarian premise and they have stolen a page out of the totlalitarian handbook so carefully crafted over the centuries and honed to a sharp edge in the previous one...they may be out of touch with any number of the polity...then again they do not care about the polity or their needs/interests...they care about being in control and, without doubt, taking everything they can in the way of wealth from those the clearly consider the "lesser kind"...rapcious rule-crazy control freaks...have i said "fuck these people" today?

somewhat diminished exposure

being aged and working part time at "a retail giant" ( which is not sounding quite so "giant" per the last earnings report...however that is just an economists "tool" and so may be disregarded as an "external"...irrelevant to what this is about ) just to keep moving provides a few things besides pin money...observation for instance...coming from indistrial manufacturing i was suffering from a severe case of culture shock in the beginning...this has abated and been replaced, for the most part, by stunned disbelief at how tremendously inefficient and wasteful retail is...no fucking wonder they are in trouble...additionally it has been an education in the ways of manipulation they use to render the discretionary into the necessary...they will jump on any bandwagon if it could possibly mean even a few hundredths of a precentage point in market share gain...so they celebrate a lot of "months" and this month is LGBQT+ month if i am not mistaken ( and let me disclaim here that this is in no way an indictment or criticism of anyone's orientation...we are what we are...we may not understand...we need to live and let live...and that extends well beyond orientation ) and retailers are avidly persuing that market share...however...

when we compare the signage from last june...

with what i found today ( and the month is not over quite yet...this could change...i am wagering it will not ) we can clearly see the message, while still clear, is considerably muted...

one could be forgiven for surmising that the bud light blowback has tempered the vision of the admen and made executives nervoulsy leery of too explicit a disply of market niche pursuit...we will look around..we are not sanguine about finding anything quite as eyecatching as last year's graphics

debt, default, and the doctrinaire ( with accent on debt )

the media have announced that the great compormise has been reached...

and , no doubt, the doctrinairians in the house freedom caucus and the congressional progressive caucus are whining, if not plotting procedural sabotage of something that doesn't meet their stringent, dogmatic standards...given the conservative tilt in goverment these days ( where, one wonders, is the new "tail gunner joe"? ) the thoughts of sabotage are likely more prevelant in the freedom caucus..and why? the few detail i have about this compromise entail more stringent work standards for those receiving food stamps and aid under the assitance for needy families program...ah..targeting the already underprivileged...nothing new in swamptown about that...yes, defense, social security , and medicare are shielded...no conservative is going to cut military spending and, say what you like, the whores still fear the boomers as voters and rightly so...i am a boomer and the neocons can go pound sand...social security is not a handout...i paid for it all my working life ( and am still paying into it ) and medicare is not free either ( and , yes i am ranting but this is a fucking rant blog and i did not force you to come here so shut the fuck up or leave )...however social spending is the target...throw in cuts to the irs budget which biden expanded, allegedly, to go after wealthy tax cheats...a fine idea..i pay taxes, so should they...and the "streamlining" ( read rubber stamping ) of the permitting process for "major" ( define Major ) energy projects and you can see that the burden of the "compromiise" is going to be shifted onto the less economicaly advantaged...why? i said "with accent on debt" in the header for a reason...and let's start small and work up...the "major retailer"i work for ( and we could get off on a whole seperate rant about the retail world and the second law of thermodynamics ) relentlessly sweats its salespeople to flog its pricey credit card...why? they want people to incur debt and, hopefully ( for them ) to carry a balance and service the interest...prefferably making the "minimum payment" to extend the indebtedness in perpetuity because interest on debt is the only thing that creates "new money" all the other financial shenanigans simply move wealth around...and retail is so sloppy it needs all the money it can get..now extrapolate that out to the great "compromise" and ponder if that will ease or exacerbate the debt of the "lesser kind"...i continue to come back to debt as the national political agenda in a congress ( and, by extension, an entire political system ) dominated ( or wholly owned ) by capital...debt penury in perpetuity for as much of the polity as possible because greed drives the machine and congress is owned by the top tier of greed...to borrow one from chamfort "it's easier to make something legal than to make it legitimate"...whatever these people do it is not done in your interest or mine...old samuel langhorn clemens had it right.

can you say "irrelevant"?

if you cannot, the times can do it for you...

one wonders ( and wonders at ) who, aside from the east coast elite, would be all that concerned about a "tablescape"

gail collins is in a snit

“political or military commentators, like astrologers. can survive almost any mistake because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts, but for stimulation of…loyalties.” george orwell form “notes on nationalism”______________________________________

well gail, so am i…it is true that third parties have never fared well in this country…mostly because they were an expression of a minority opinion…however they did once serve to alert the major parties to significant discontents among a fair number of the polity which they could choose to address ( or not , being politicians )…that said i must admit that since, say, h. ross perot they have been mostly expressions of megalomania ( except for the randist stench emanating from the libertarians )…still, i refuse to heed gail’s call to suck it up and vote for biden because he is the lesser of two evils…one wearies of the continuing political necessity of making a negative choice…that. However, is a result of the ruling elite’s lack of concern for the needs and/or desires of the mass of the polity…they represent wealth and power and present the interests of their donors ( owners…handlers…take your pick ) as the interests of the polity at large and that is patent falsehood…there needs to be an expression of dissent external to the two wings of the political status quo…in today’s column gail goes off on a rant about third party voters costing hillary Clinton electoral votes in pennslyvania, michigan, and Wisconsin…well gail I live in a winner take all state and even the half bright governor knew don was going to kick hill to the curb and my vote ( providing i did not vote for don ) was negated…disenfranchised by law…what about that? and i am not remotely convinced that hill would have been any less venal than don…they are both of the elite…

both self- interested narcissists ( as are politicians as a class )…from here she goes off on a rant about “no labels” and lieberman and his poor debating prowess...who cares about a washed-up political hack gail? not me…if I find a third-party candidate that even remotely reflects my needs and/or interests guess where my vote is going? This state will go trump in ’24 and there isn’t much any opposed voter is going to be able to do about that, much less gail collins…orwell was correct…gail and her column and the new york times and the rest of the biased media will survive no matter what the electoral outcome is…

okay, so i voted...

"both parties require a good deal of watching...there is not prodigious difference between the moral characters of the one and the other." james thompson callender. richmond recorder 1 novenber 1802.__________________________william safire maintained that callender was slime because he put paid to an idealized, consensus vsion of the "founding fathers" while callander said he was doing "whatever was in my power to give a candid account of what went on in that place." ( specifically he was writing there of his tenure as a stenographer in the house of representatives...however his political reportage went well beyond the house )...well...safire was a nixonite speechwriter so i feel justified in calling him slime and the "founding fathers" were trysting long before there was a swamptown if you actually look into it...power hates those who present it with its less than noble actions so callender has been maligned and marginalized for reporting what he saw...politics in this country has always been a sleazy business and no less so on this election day...admittedly a local primary election with virtually no interest to virtually anyone given the turnout i witnessed this morning at the poll...

of little interest or not i have made an effort to vote in every election i am eligible to cast a ballot in since the above mentioned nixon stomped george mcgovern flat in 1972 ( and we all know what that led to, right? )...so i wandered down to the polling place this morning where i was completely outnumbered by poll workers, much less the shills, sycophants, and actual political hacks that were outside bombarding me with literature,screaming names, or, like one aged hack, creatively openeing his coat to flash a "vote for____: ( i am not going to shill for this bozo ) in gold letters on a red tshirt...perhaps the "committee to elect_____" was desperately short of cash this political season...who knows? moreover who cares? my main motivation in voting is that politicans don't like a turnout...it makes them nervous...if more people voted they just might have to pay a bit more attention to the polity's needs rather than serving their owners ( did i write "owners" instead of "donors"? or did i just think it? )...gerrymandering ( ah...elbridge gerry...one of those "founding fathers" ) is, after all, simply an attempt to make elections more predictable by selective disenfranchisement of those whose needs the political machinery wants to marginalize or completely ignore...as usual it was a negative choice...i went to vote ( past discomfiting the pols ) to make an effort to keep one specific dingus off the autumn ballot ( which entailed actually declaring a party allegiance...if politicans can be deceitful so can i ) and so off the city council...the municpality has enough trouble functioning as it stands...they don't need to complicate matters with someone who wouldn't make a good dogcatcher...and in doing so i ensured my name would remain on the roll of registered voters so i can, at least, try to make them think about what they're doing come november...possibly a forelorn hope but, to borrow one from alexander dubcek, hope dies last.