Advice For Anarchists

In my day we had to 'phone them in. (And those were the days: A crank call from a 'phone booth was virtually anonymous; even calls from one's own number were safe as long as one didn't annoy someone to the point of calling Telco or the police, who'd then have Telco put a mechanical trace on the annoyed's line, yada ...) But tin cans w/ string or iNternet, when making a bomb threat ('Though it appears threats to shoot your fucking school up are more popular these days; explosives can be work-intensive.) or a threat of whatever nature, at school, work or just to a beloved relative or irksome neighbor

remember that the more information you provide, the more likely you are to be taken seriously. A specific time & location, if nothing else, gives them a place for a lockdown. (Obviously, if you're really locked, loaded & ready to kill, don't give them any warning. Your chief weapon is surprise!)

Nostalgia Corner: Remember when "lockdowns" only occurred in prisons? Now every place everywhere is a prison. You want to understand the militarized society, look at the view from my cell:

Someone above me likes to heave things out the window.
Those are tortillas, admittedly an improvement over the
cans & bottles that used to drop from the sky, but c'mon,
how could a jury convict me?

Yada

MON 20 NOV 1939
U.S. freighter Excambion is detained at Gibraltar by British authorities (see 27 November).

Still Wednes.

Wednesday

(Not So) Big Sky Country

Never Read The Comments

It's to be expected, the chorus of congratulatory comments for telling the terrible truth & not being politically correct & all that sort of thing when it's a "not a racist, but ..." type doing the hate-&-fear typing at Free Republic, Red State or wherever, but when a neo-mugwump like Matt K. Lewis types a compare & contrast (using NYT columnists Kristof & Brooks, ha ha ha) noting some vague similarities between what Communism did to Eastern Euros or their societies & cultures blah-di-de-yada & what a few centuries of slavery did to the people now known as African-Americans, is he prepared for the many-minute hate that, his piece being in the Daily Caller, followed like birds follow spring?

Probably so; you can't say he doesn't know the audience Tucker Carlson & his backers have gathered for their little operation from survivalist camps, gated enclaves, hick communities & snake-handling cults across this great nation. Lewis made a half-hearted attempt at pre-empting them,

Like Brooks, Kristof acknowledges the need for future generations to take personal responsibility
as one part of this story.

but he was just waving something in front of a load of bullshit that could not wait to express itself.

This one isn't new but we don't really hear as much of it as we should. Bet Rand Paul kinda likes it.

What the author ALSO forgets is the lasting damage wrought by a vindictive federal government on the south and those states which seceded. If we are going to blame the plight of blacks in the south on slavery lets fill in all of the factors in that formula!

Of course, you know who's doing the real whining & excuse-mongering. (Hint: Not those still bitching about Reconstruction 140 yrs. later.):

Obama is a liar as we all know, and his "hurt" is fake as his ties to slavery--and are non existent--unless of course he wants to admit he is Frank Marshall Davis's son.

I have no guilt about something I had anything to do with, nor something that no one in my entire family ever had to do with. I am beyond sick of hearing excuses from blacks because they are abject failures at life.

It's time to separate them from modern civilization and reintegrate them back into an environment where they can be happy and function at their level. It's called the back to Africa idea that has been tried before and must be completed now.

And what to do about it!

P.S.: Did you know? Racism in America stopped the very day the slaves were freed.

P.P.S.: Sorry about your faith in humanity. One less illusion to bear, really.

Study Guide

To the item two down. (No, two. The one w/ the rat picture. Now do you see it?)

Piling On Texas

More from that thing we mentioned:

- Republican support grew deeper in 2014, not broader. For example, new Texas Governor Greg Abbott won a whopping victory in the Republic of Baptistan. That’s great, but that’s a race no one ever thought would be competitive and hardly anyone showed up to vote in. Texas not only had the lowest voter turnout in the country (less than 30%), a position it has consistently held across decades, but that electorate is more militantly out of step with every national trend then any other major Republican bloc. Texas now holds a tenth of the GOP majority in the House.

- Keep an eye on oil prices. Texas, which is at the core of GOP dysfunction, is a petro-state with an economy roughly as diverse and modern as Nigeria, Iran or Venezuela. It was relatively untouched by the economic collapse because it is relatively dislocated from the US economy in general. Watch what happens if the decline in oil prices lasts more than a year.

Heh in-fucking-deed. Remember, typed by a Texan. (Who apparently had to move to Chicago for work. Bitter, pal? Bitterly cold up there, innit?) Just can't wait for the miracle industries of fracking & elderly care to fall apart.

Rats In A Cage Report

Daily life in contemporary North America.

Americans 64 Times More Likely to
Be Murdered than to Die by Terrorism

I'll be out walking a deadline &/or writing an inane book that'll be bought in bulk & given away as an enticement for cretins to subscribe to right-wing disinformation sites; might a reader break the above stat down & determine the likelihood of a Yankee being plugged by a sworn ossifer of the law (as opposed to the typical American death by armed relative/friend) instead of having his head chopped off by D.J. Johnny Jihad?

Fifty+ Yrs. Ago In Show Biz

Spotted this myself, but probably a mere 20 or so yrs. back in a re-run, rather than as a pre-pubescent militarist. Actually, I couldn't have seen it on first run; there was no telebision in the Bouffant household in March '64.
However, the eagle eyes did spot this deliberate oddity 50-ish yrs. ago.

Bitter Clinger Swan Song

Via all over the iNterfestation, a "G.O.P. Lifer" spells out the Elephant split so that even bitter clingers ("a declining electoral bloc of aging, white, rural voters") might get it:

This is an age built for Republican solutions. The global economy is undergoing a massive, accelerating transformation that promises massive new wealth and staggering challenges. We need heads-up, intelligent adaptations to capitalize on those challenges. Republicans, with their traditional leadership on commercial issues should be at the leading edge of planning to capitalize on this emerging environment.

Ha ha, funny huh? "Traditional leadership on commercial issues" is esp. good; note that business becomes "commercial interests" as they realize business is a filthy (Literally: Have you "done your business"? Did you wipe?) word & reframe it. "Commerce" just sounds so much more Main Street-y, doesn't it?

Noting the details of Newspeak is fun (& were it not for digression nothing new would ever be conceived) but wandering to the point, the illustration here is that even a glibertarian tax-fearer spouting the greed agenda knows better than to swallow the codswallop.

What are we getting from Republicans? Climate denial, theocracy, thinly veiled racism, paranoia, and Benghazi hearings. Lots and lots of hearings on Benghazi.

It is almost too late for Republicans to participate in shaping the next wave of our economic and political transformation. The opportunities we inherited coming out of the Reagan Era are blinking out of existence one by one while we chase so-called “issues” so stupid, so blindingly disconnected from our emerging needs that our grandchildren will look back on our performance in much the same way that we see the failures of the generation that fought desegregation.

Something, some force, some gathering of sane, rational, authentically concerned human beings generally at peace with reality must emerge in the next four to six years from the right, or our opportunity will be lost for a long generation. Needless to say, Greg Abbott and Jodi Ernst are not that force.

“Winning” this election did not help that force emerge. This was a dark week for Republicans, and for everyone who wants to see America remain the world’s most vibrant, most powerful nation.

Let this reporter know when a party official, office-holder or even a candidate or nominee of the Party of Lincoln (Hear that spinning sound?) makes any statement that reflects sanity, rationality, concern or even the vaguest connection to reality.

Many interesting (& entertainingschadenfreude-y) bullet points (& an electoral map of the hopelessness):

- Almost half of the Republican Congressional delegation now comes from the former Confederacy. Total coincidence, just pointing that out.

- In Congress, there are no more white Democrats from the South. The long flight of the Dixiecrats has concluded.

- Democrats have consolidated their power behind the sections of the country that generate the overwhelming bulk of America’s wealth outside the energy industry. That’s only ironic if you buy into far-right propaganda, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

The fossils in the fossil-fuel industry are the last hold-outs. Come 2020, President Hillarity will have outlawed guns, banned cars & taxed the carbon-polluters out of existence by executive order, right?

Two yrs. of trial & tribulation, comrades, then the New Socialist Dawn!

Tuesday

"Selfie" is such a childish word.

Today's Law-Abiding CitizenKiller Cop

Nice Aryan-looking fellow.

From the U.S. Marshals website: Daniel Hiers "is wanted for the gunshot murder of his wife, and the sexual molestation of a child. He is a former police officer with 11 years of experience and is proficient in police tactics and procedures."

Really. Eleven yrs. on the job but not one of the thin blue line could spot him for a murdering pervert? Fire them all for incompetence & start over!

Monday

Not that any of your sad day of the wk. conceits make the proverbial dime's worth of difference to unemployed for over eight yrs. now (But working like a two-headed dog!) me, but sonuvabitch: Mon. a.m., neither caffeinated coffee nor milk in the bunker (Had to awaken w/ tea w/ an ice cube in it.) the outside world so ugly only the sky (which may not be ugly but certainly is dull) can be observed, nothing in the least notable for hrs. & hrs. of nothing, & (added agony) "winter" is here, requiring pants or turning on the gas (Heat! No oven w/ which to ...) even in the bunker. (No, I don't know how or why I go on either.)

Then, finally, something I could sink my teeth int— uh, wrap my arms around! And a Double Musical Bonus!!

Son Allegedly Chopped 350-Pound Dad Into Pieces, Used Body as a TV Stand

Produced version:

Is That The 'Phone?

Further Mail Theft

FRI 17 NOV 1939
U.S. freighter Black Gull is detained by British authorities.

U.S. freighter Nishmaha, detained at Gibraltar since 11 November, is given option of submitting to further detention or proceeding to Barcelona and thence to Marseilles to unload items seized by British authorities. Nishmaha's's master chooses the latter (see 23 November). On the same day the British allow Nishmaha to clear Gibraltar, however, they detain U.S. freighter Examiner and seize 11 bags of first-class mail (see 4 December). Freighter Black Condor, detained by the British at Weymouth, England, since 5 November, is released after part of her cargo and 126 bags of mail are seized.

Random Radiation NotesFrom All Over The Dial

Can't live w/ it, can't live w/o it.

Via LAObserved, Harvey Kubernik (Pointless disclosure: I may have been introduced to Mr. Kubernik once, or perhaps not; he knew, & may still, the rock crit faction of the Angry Samoans.) wrote a book about the radio. Local Area radio. ("Boss Radio" KHJ is no doubt mentioned therein, not that it ever broke any new acts or was worth hearing. "93 KHJ!" is now owned & operated by Roman Catholics, & programmed accordingly.)

Actual point, if there is one, is that Kubernik was interviewed (And on the radio, yet. Ironic, or wut?) recently, saving us all the trouble of buying/reading the book.

Goobers by whom we have not been unamused, what w/ only listening to the radio when out & about & seldom leaving the bunker prior to mid-afternoon. What, NPR? Radio music? The bourgeois horror of NPR music? Buy an i(diot)Phone?

One more peripherally related to radio & music item for a trifecta of tedium. Wonder how much Brazilian bus magnate Zero F. would pay for the M. Bouffant collection?

Graf Spee Doesn't Sink Ship

THU 16 NOV 1939
U.S. freighter Lafcomo is detained by British authorities at Weymouth, England; freighter West Harshaw is detained by the British at Ramsgate.

German armored ship Admiral Graf Spee stops Dutch freighter Mapia in Indian Ocean but, since the latter is a neutral ship, permits her to proceed unharmed.

Wrapped In The Flag

Past Lives

Guess what it used to be.

Once Ohrbach's cheap dep't. store, now The Petersen Automotive Museum. Watch out for that asbestos!

Then it was a restaurant. The "A" from the County Health Dep't. wasn't enough.

Big Hot Past