Conservative Compensation Report

Would all you nancy-boys & sissies stop obsessing about your "masculinity," new definitions thereof & yada? Fuck.

++especially when we read such an opening line:

David Brooks‘ assertion today that “Obama has displayed a kind of ESPN masculinity” has raised some eyebrows. For example, the DC Examiner’s Byron York, in response, tweeted: “I’m so confused.”

The confusion, I think, is partly because Brooks didn’t really explain his concept* — at least, he didn’t explain what ESPN has to do with Obama’s masculinity or ability to connect. I will attempt to do so (with the caveat that I can’t know exactly what Brooks meant).

Think of the symbolic activities that have defined men in the past. A manly man (where I’m from, at least) might hunt, fish, drink, drive fast cars (sometimes while drinking), play contact sports, etc.

Really, "Matt Lewis & The News," when you're worrying about the definition of masculinity offered by wispy-voiced, chinless pushover Brooks (Not to ignore Byron York's Tweet!) we're already enjoying ourself at your expense; don't aggravate the amusement by using "manly man" in a not-obviously ironic manner.

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*No shit?

Morning Mail

Same Sad Story

Gamer and many others who study the nature of colonial rule offer the best insights into the functioning of our corporate state. We have been, like nations on the periphery of empire, colonized. We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive and enrich themselves at our expense. The mechanisms of control are familiar to those whom the Martinique-born French psychiatrist and writer Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth,” including African-Americans. The colonized are denied job security. Incomes are reduced to subsistence level. The poor are plunged into desperation. Mass movements, such as labor unions, are dismantled. The school system is degraded so only the elites have access to a superior education. Laws are written to legalize corporate plunder and abuse, as well as criminalize dissent. And the ensuing fear and instability—keenly felt this past weekend by the more than 200,000 Americans who lost their unemployment benefits—ensure political passivity by diverting all personal energy toward survival. It is an old, old game.

We'd type something about how screwed you are ourself but there's a ball game on, if not a nap in our future.

Oh look, hope, maybe, of a sort?

In every revolutionary movement I covered in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, the leadership emerged from déclassé intellectuals. The leaders were usually young or middle-aged, educated and always unable to meet their professional and personal aspirations. They were never part of the power elite, although often their parents had been. They were conversant in the language of power as well as the language of oppression. It is the presence of large numbers of déclassé intellectuals that makes the uprisings in Spain, Egypt, Greece and finally the United States threatening to the overlords at Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase. They must face down opponents who understand, in a way the uneducated often do not, the lies disseminated on behalf of corporations by the public relations industry. These déclassé intellectuals, because they are conversant in economics and political theory, grasp that those who hold power, real power, are not the elected mandarins in Washington but the criminal class on Wall Street.

Go ahead, click the last two pp. & let us know, OK?

Always Have Your Soul-Stealing Box

If you don't, you might miss the opportunity to remove all but the vestige of humanity (& most of their clothes) from unsuspecting victims.

Bongo FurySkins!

"Here's the album that young America has been asking for..."Did the Last Poets recite their bits over these tracks?

Northern State University

Jack Bruce 69 today.Or forget those old guys:Entire discs in one fell swoop on YouTube brought to our attention by Sirius Lunacy. Next on the local action playlist,winnowed from the early '70s arena rock/AOR dross. (And Moby.)

See How They Run

Jaime Sabatté The aesthetics of zero waste

Art Damage

From the you-may-hit-a-paywall Los Angeles Times:

Los Angeles homicide detectives were investigating the fatal shooting of one man and the wounding of another early Sunday at a party at the Brewery Lofts in Lincoln Heights.

Investigators sought to determine what prompted the shooting, which occurred at about 1:30 a.m. in the 600 block of Moulton Avenue, and whether it was gang-related, said Sgt. Michael Morisseau of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Division.

A 22-year-old man was pronounced dead at a local hospital; a second man was taken to Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, where he was in stable condition this morning and being treated for a gunshot wound, Morisseau said.

Neither man’s name had been released and other details were not available, he said.

The lofts are part of the Brewery Arts Complex, site of a former Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery where artists now work and live in what were once industrial buildings. The complex’s website describes it as a “uniquely vibrant and creative community.”

Close call; we were arting it up Sat. night (Did not, however, extend to Sun. morn.)

Art link.

Artist & friends, framed by Ellen's & Larry's backs. 

Art hose, artist, art dog. Unvisible art dog on the leash.

Third, jaded art dog.

Venue.

Hot Rails From Dull

And to dull (a/k/a: Pasadena).

Window Of The Soul

Triskaidekaphobia

Mother's/Mothers' Day & Friday the Thirteenth fall on a Sunday this mo.

ICYM Her

Dense w/ madness (literally every sentence) this is worth several listens; no one can absorb it all on the first go-round.Be right back, have to find (5:12) of bed for this. Voilà!Close enough.

Not much later: Transcript.

Young People No Damn Good, Says Young Fart

Today's fascist science from The Daily Caller:

Jonah Goldberg is not a fan of young people.

“It is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity more than youth,” the National Review Online editor said in an interview. “We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young.”

So why all the focus on the youth vote and “millennials” in politics? Goldberg says young people having so much influence in a society is unhealthy.

My view is, they’re going to run the country some day, so we should really explain why they’re so frickin’ stupid about so many things,” he said.

“The fact that young people think socialism is better than capitalism … that’s something that conservatives have to work hard to beat out of them, either literally or figurative, as far as I’m concerned,” he joked.*

Look for the full interview with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas Monday.

We assume that when the full interview is published we'll hear Goldberg's opinion that women shouldn't be voting (or speaking unless spoken to, really) either.

(And no, we aren't necessarily the greatest fans of those young enough to be our children & grandchildren. But beating is not the answer.)

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*Good thing it was made clear that Goldberg was joking. (Except he wasn't.) If Romney could show some long-hair where it's at in 1965, why wouldn't a little educational beating help today's young people as well?

Solar Flares: As Good As An Asteroid/Comet Strike?

Sadly, apparently not.

Romney '68

A preppie gone wrong reminisces:

Every fucking Upper School dipshit/asshole (We didn't have douchebags in those days, kids.) looked like this when we started at the Lakeside School for Boys in 1966, & looked the same in 1968, when this shot of Willard Mitt Romney was taken.

Just Our Imagination?

Not so subliminal.

No longer merely viral; now in the Internet's DNA.

More Mooks

From Wonkette's "Meetup."

Your name in lights.

Bonus: Police terror seen on the way back to the bunker.

Grate American Songbook

Couple damn poets,& the man Zimmerman called the only poet writing songs or something (Does it matter one bit if we do/don't quote exactly? Nope.) 40-some yrs. ago, Smokey.Enough embedded video to gum up if not break the In(ternet)festation yet?

Behind The Horn?

We will not watch anything called "Under the Horn."

You Only Get One Side Of The Marquee