WWH~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: Strategy

PRECIS: Dr. Woody DOESN'T NEED the GOPhux' trite, tired, trivial complaints to nurture my deep, and abiding, distrust and distaste for St. Barry. He gives me plenty of reason to disparage him just in the course of his being a proud, unrepentant CorpoRat tool, every day that he doesn't:

• close Gitmo,
• end the three, bankrupting wars,
• introduce a FEDERAL jobs agenda,
• rein in and prosecute the banksters,
• prosecute the war-criminal Busheviks,
• close Goldman Sucks,
• and/or otherwise act to support the interests of the People.

I/we don't need the GOPhux' mendacious talking points; "ThePrez" betrays his real sentiments, sympathies, and affiliations every goddamn day he does NOTHING to push back against the GOPhux, and then characterizes compromise as victory.
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CERTIFIED: The Release of the Birth Certificate dominated the discourse on Zuckerberg's Folly (and just about everywhere else) and occluded just about everything else on Wednesday, of course. My first response was "Dr. Woody doesn't get it. How is this ANYTHING but a victory for the Birthers? They forced St. Barry to fold (never THAT difficult thing to do). They NEVER cared about the goddam thing--well, mebbe some of the dullards and trogs did--the actual birth certificate. It was a power thing, and St. Barry folded like the fucking empty suit he is. He gains NOTHING from this! They'll just intensify the "muslim" thing." The "Muslim thing," the trope by which the racist bagger/birthers denigrate O'Bama's "stranger" quality, avoiding calling him a "Ni--er," but making the necessary point, was finally made 'public' by Cokie Roberts over-night (see accompanying story, below).

There appears to be a small, but potentially growing possibility that "the Donald's crazy" might, could, maybe actually induce a complete fracturing of the GOPhux, a real schism between the fucknozzle, racist, birther bunch to whom Trump appeals, and the other, not-batshit-crazy, corpoRat jackals and hyenas. So, making 'the Donald' look powerful, letting him pose and posture for THAT part of the GOPhucktard demographic base, and solidifying their support wouldn't be a strategic mistake--for the Dims.

"The Donald" is, it seems to me, the most "legitimate" of ANY of the candidates plying the murky and toxic waters of bitter birther-and-baggerism. Of that bunch--Palin, Bachmann, Gingrich, Huckabee, the four Whores-men--really, only Palin has even an approximation of the kind of name recognition factor "the Donald" possesses. Then there's his fortune--which is the one reason I'd foresee for his NOT officially announcing: because he'd be dinned unendingly to reveal the workings of his financial connections through his tax records, and he'd be resistant to that, one imagines.

The ONLY thing I see of potentially a strategic advantage is that by making 'the Donald' seem influential, and granting 'cred' to the birthers and the baggers, this further exacerbates a possible schism in the ranks of the GOPhux, between the rabid wacktards and the run-of-the-mill CorpoRat jackals and hyenas, which schism actually affects the politics of the election by splitting the GOPhux significantly, at the polls. A 'third party' on the Right, however, seems unlikely, to me.

Also, there is a potential down-side: that by making 'the Donald' look like he forced O'Bama to concede, the GOPhux ALL rally around him, and avoid the schism. Trump could get the nomination and, the way McCain did, suffer because the party didn't really WANT to win.

"The Donald" does have a problem with officially anouncing, because as soon as he does, there are gonna be demands that he release his tax records, and one suspects he'd be VERY reluctant to do that.

Of course, it's pretty much all speculation at this point. I don't think the Dims are that clever, but maybe they don't have to be, discursive formations being what they are. I don't think the GOPhux want the presidency this time, very much, (any more than in 2008) because of they'd rather not have to explain or answer for, or even be associated distantly with, the residues of the clusterfux they inflicted on us between 1980 and 2008.

The Owners'd prefer it that a Dim--especially a Black Dim--was in the WhiteHouse when China's economy officially surpasses that of the USofA (estimated: circa 2015-17), thereby signalling the exact moment of the decline of the "Murkin IM-pahr." Imperial decline and domestic chaos--unemployment, stagflation, poverty, starvation homelessness--may then be blamed in perpetuity on the "(Blank)-loving Democrats."
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EXCEPTIONS: Is This What Makes America Exceptional?

"American Exceptionalism" is the national version of the delusional phenomenon of individual privilege that Molly Ivins recognized in the Chimperor Bush: Born on Third Base, claiming he'd legged out a triple. It's the current version of "Manifest Destiny," only without all the OBVIOUS bellicose racism. These five graphs provide a persuasive definition for "American Exceptionalism."

We "Americans" are who we "are" purely by accident of birth. We did NOTHING to "deserve" the well-springs of plenty which geology, biology and tectonics provided us. "We" are the luckiest fuckers in history, and obstinately, stupidly refuse to acknowledge it, instead attributing our blind "Birth Lotto" good fuuking luck to the beneficences of some distant, absent "God." Chuy jodido!~
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NAMES: Zuckerberg's Follies were jumping Wednesday AM with the news that NPR/ABC (Exxon/Mobil) distaff pundit Cokie Roberts mildly suggested that the reason the rightards/wackloons/fucknozzles are calling St. Barry a "Muslim" is that it lets them pretend they DON'T object to his being (semi) Black.

The ooool' Semiotician interprets: They call him a "Muslim," because the Right has not rolled "political correctness" far back enough, yet, for them to call him a "niqqer," and get it on teevee--though they are working on it. Cokie's a "Looseyana" gal. She knows. The "Muslim" thing is just a surrogate for the peckerwoods back in the piney woods burning a cross and standing around, drinking cheap hooch and shouting "Burn, Niqqer, burn, niqqer, burn niqqer." (Cf: Jena, La.)

WWH ~~Wake'N'Bake 101: Gratuitous

BP last week "committed" a billion dollars to start restoration projects in the Gulf. However, as blogging colleague Glynn Wilson down there in Mississippi, tells it:

No amount of money can bring back all the dead wildlife, rotting at the bottom of the sea. The company can be forced by the government to pay for cleaning a large percentage of the oil and chemical dispersants out of the beach sand in many places. But they can’t restore the lost eggs of hundreds of species nesting and spawning in the marshes and bayous of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Nor can they heal all the sick and dying people along the coast who were exposed to the oil and chemicals in the air and water.

They can pay people, businesses and local governments for lost income for last year, when the largest and worst environmental disaster in U.S. industrial history hit the Gulf of Mexico when BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well blew up on April 20 and spewed crude from the Macondo well-head for nearly three months. But they can’t bring back all the businesses and people who simply closed up shop and fled the Gulf Coast. And no matter how many millions they spend on advertising to try to sell the American public on coming back to visit the coast and to eat the Gulf seafood, it will never convince anywhere near all the people that all is safe.

“BP has come nowhere close to paying the actual cost of the damage done, and they are not going to come anywhere close to paying the actual cost,” says David Underhill of the Mobile Sierra Club, interviewed on Saturday during the Earth Day festivities in Fairhope overlooking Mobile Bay.

A Billion Dollars is CHUMP CHANGE to BP, and should be no more than a down-payment on restoring or re-imbursing the damage done to the Gulf and the people there. It's about one-fourteenth (7.14%) of their $14 BILLION in PROFITS in 2009, alone. And they paid no taxes in 2010 because of losses they incurred as a result of the catastrophe for which they bore/bear the lion's share of responsibility (and if I could just work Exxon in here somehow, I could say something about the lions and tigers and bears, oh my).

So here's what we do: Find a friendly, angry judge to sign an order to seize ALL their fuuking US assets--including the plant down in Texas they own with Dow Chemical (remember Bhopal?) that is burning at this very moment--so we slap a court order on; lock 'em up tight, and then negotiate a "settlement" with some teeth: They've got contracts w/ the Gummint. Suspend 'em til they pay up the debts they owe. If the fuckers EVER wanna see any green-backs again, they'd HAVE to...

Now, of course, Ol' Dr. Woody didn't just topple off the turnip truck last night: There is no politician alive today who has the stones to actually do it. The US "State" is so completely at the command of the CBF--the Capitalist/Business/Finance--cabal that any such act would be unthinkable, unspeakable. But even having somebody with a public forum talk about it, out there, in front of God and everybody, where the rumblings might penetrate the board-room doors, would be something.

Meanwhile, consider:

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Gratuitous: Yesterday, Dr. Woody composed a "Letter to his President." This was/is it:

Dear President Barack H. Obama, Your Excellency, Exalted Poobah, etc:

O, gracious and generous potentate, permit me, a poor peon, but one polite question, sir? It won't take long.

Would you please explain simply, so such an ignorant, meddling, old fool as myself may understand, HOW it happens that you may unapologetically, and probably prejudicially, charge that PFC Manning "committed a crime," prior to his having been even formally charged, much less convicted-- ESPECIALLY in view of your and your henchmen's (I'm thinking of your Chief-of-Staff, William Daly) awkward, cowering, panic-fraught, lily-livered, pusilanimous, temporizing, evasive, and misleadingly chickenshit pronouncements about the Busheviks ADMITTED war crimes, and the Banksters' demonstrable, fraudulent, financial felonies?

I will patiently await your reply...
Y'r Ob'd't S'v't...

Dr. Woody actually knows--or thinks he does--why St. Barry DIDN'T investigate the Busheviks with an eye towards prosecution. Actually there are FOUR very good excuses (though not actually reasons) for that reticence:
The primary, pragmatic, practical, political reason that there will be no "legal" consequences for the Bushevik law-breakers--the torturers (above the rank of Lieutenant), the lawyer-enablers, the propagandizers, law-school scoff-laws, et al-- is that to do so would expose and embarrass the entire 'political' class, and possibly delegitimize--and thereby compromise--it enough to render it just slightly more susceptible to public pressure for reform. This would be intolerable from the Owners' perspective.

The obvious political down-side for the Owners and their political minions notwithstanding, nevertheless Obama has three categories of legitimate excuses to employ to rationalize his (political) reluctance to prosecute the Busheviks without bowing exclusively to the political one, noted above:

1) It would be pretty much entirely unprecedented. That's a HUGE hurdle, just on the practical side. We SHOULD have prosecuted Nixon, criminally, evenj AFTER he tepped aside; the absence of which action is at the core of the current dilemma.

2) By bringing prosecutions, and creating a precedent, St. Barry'd be opening himself to the same treatment by vindictive GOPhux at the end of his own regime (not that he'd be able to avoid it, in any case; they're gonna git him). This is not entirely selfish, because he' also be making that sort of investigation/prosecution, by the opposing party, the almost inevitable consequence for every subsequent presidency.

3) No jury in any venue in the USofA would now or will EVER convict Bush and his gunsels of crimes committed against despised, marginalized, demonized, rabid, foreign 'enemies' ("them fuckin' Hajis") in the stalwart 'DEE-FENCE!' of the country. You'd have to be institutionalizable not to see that.

Do the math: Though 75% of folks reportedly thinks the Busheviks committed war-crimes,25%, presumably, therefore don't thinks so. There are 12 members of a jury. Twenty-five percent of 12 = 3. That is: on average, on any jury panel, three of the jurors will be already predisposed to jury nullification of any conviction that might be accomplished.

So, even if Obama told Holder to go ahead, and Holder courageously ignored the problems and dilemmas posed by doing so (see points 1) and 2) above) and brought some of the malefactors to the Bar for war crimes, there's STILL (probably MORE than) a 25% chance it's all in vain--from the get-go...Utterly futile, because of jury nullification by stalwarts of the regime.

So he loses in court AND sets a pretty terrible (in the hands of the Pukes, let's say) precedent, and all for naught?

Here, let me spell it out again:

Na Ga Ha-apun...
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WWH ~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: Inoculation

Pediatricians To Feds: Protect Kids From Toxic Chemicals read the hed on the NPR piece Monday.

Parents worry about exposing their children to chemicals like BPA, but nobody knows for sure what they do. That's because current law doesn't require that chemicals be tested for safety before hitting the market. The American Academy of Pediatrics wants the EPA to change that.

But Dr. Woody wondered: Really? Protect them? How?

There are "common," natural "chemical" poisons in the atmosphere--formaldehyde, for one, is naturally occurring; there are dozens of others--though normally they're found around volcanoes and such. But in addition to these, There are almost 100 THOUSAND artificial, chemical compounds circulating in our various lifeworlds, more or less. About 75% have been introduced in the last 50 years.

There is not enough regulatory authority in the world to reduce that number by ANY significant amount--there is too much money involved, for one thing--much less any adequate number of regulators to supervise and test the ones being added daily without any particular scrutiny. Only about a DOZEN of the most ubiquitous chemical industrial and agricultural toxins have been tested for long-term human exposure, and all of them have been shown to be "harmful" in one way or another.

There's probably a better chance that you could induce immunity through cautious administration of the toxics: Remember, as the poet Housman reminds us, "Mithradates, he died old." Oh, you never read "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff"? E.g.: @ line 21-22: "And malt does more than Milton can//To justify God’s ways to man...." Well, here's the whole thing:

LXII. Terence, this is stupid stuff
By A.E. Housman, 1896 (From "A Shropshire Lad")

‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

Just FYI, since the old Prof in me champs at the sound of poetry, there are three voices in the poem: In the first stanza, it is Mithradates; in the second, and third, the voice is that of Terence, the poet, friend and advisor to the king; in the last stanza is heard the voice of the poet: "--I tell the tail as I heard told..."

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"Colorful" Language: Words, it seems to me, metaphorically perform similar functions for our emotional and intuitive perceptions of "reality" as the arrangements of photo-sensitive nerves in our eyes do. Those optic nerves actually create for our attention the colors we "see," and color is a primary tool for differentiation between particular phenomena. Those colors aren't "there" unless there are photo-sensors to create them in our consciousness. And they have "meanings," depending on our experiences with the things that manifest those various colors.

Words do the same thing with other aspects of "reality." We "speak the world into existence." Not with selected words, not with our discourses; "reality" is the sum of ALL our words.

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Exceptional: Remember Molly Ivins' famous description of George W. Bush's character flaws flowing from the delusion that, having been born on third base, he'd actually hit a triple and legged it out?

It takes only a moment's honest reflection to realize that this is pretty much spot-on for 'moral' position of the country as a whole, and is the best metaphor I can think of to explain the phenomenon of "American Exceptionalism."

America~~Born on third, believing we'd hit a triple.

American's aren't all that special, but the continent is, and having it in virtually sole possession confers incredible, but unearned advantages. You don't really DESERVE a single family dwelling, a car, and a refrigerator, but you got 'em cuz you're one of the lucky ones.

We ALL resemble the 'wealthy' in this respect: we mistake our incredible good fortune at living here for a reward bestowed by some unnamed benefactor for our (spurious) "national" and/or "personal" virtue.

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Modest: Joshua Holland is perplexed by the apparent seriousness of the GOPhux efforts to revive child labor:

The fact that we're debating the social benefits of child labor laws in the second decade of the 21st century casts the madness that's gripped our right-wing in sharp relief. It took a hard-fought, century-long battle to get compliant kids working for slave-wages out of American workplaces, and that battle was supposedly won 73 years ago during the New Deal.

But there is a sort of Swiftian (and, certainly "feudal") logic to it, if you think about it. Regardez vous:

Labor unions fought HARD to enact child-labor laws, not out of any philanthropic concern for the physical well-being of their off-spring but, instead, mainly to prevent children from undermining the wages paid to adults. One significant upshot of the movement was to make "schools" more important, if for nothing else than for warehousing all these potential workers, and keeping them off the streets.

So by bringing children back into the workforce, the Owners would at a single stroke undo a key piece of union orthodoxy, drive wages down for all workers, AND have the excuse to close schools, or at least drastically reduce the need for educational services. Makes "perfect" (capitalistic/CorpoRat) sense...No, really!
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WWH ~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: Product

Periodically from among my 1200 or so occasional correspondents on the Facebook there will appear paean to the Wonders of Obama along with the implicit complaint that "we" oughta just stop picking on the guy (St. Barry himself has taken this tone on occasion of late). Such was the case Friday morning:

Why Obama? President Obama did not sell America to the corporate oligarchy that ...has destroyed our democracy -- the Republicans did, the lobbyists did and above all the Supreme Court did. President Obama didn't bust the unions -- Reagan did. President Obama didn't declare war on women and minorities and immigration rights, gay rights and working men and women -- the Republicans and religious right did. That's why!See More

Not I, said the Little, Red Hen. Dr. Woody warn'ta buyin' it!:

Why NOT Obama? He's nominally "in charge." We're in THREE international slaughterhouses, mainly it seems to keep up demand for armaments from America's only working industries, "defense" plants.

But just to take your first point, about selling out to the oligarchy: He cannot not have known that Chris Dodd's bill to 'reregulate' the banksters was a transparent fraud designed to earn Dodd a life-time of comfort, and a multi-million dollar reward in a sweet K-Street gig for his troubles. Dodd, just to refresh the collective memory, was/is a powerful Senatorial "Democrat," and chair of the Senate Finance Committee when he got his corpoRAt parachute. Like Dodd, Obama's an aspiring oligarch, a talented member of the coordinator class...

As for Unions: Where's EFCA? Obama and his corpoRat asshole pal Arne Duncan are dead-SET on busting the teachers' unions and opening the schools to further privatization. He didn't declare war on women, but his defense of them has been anything but stalwart or robust. He's not a committed "pro-choice" ally.

There's a terrible, poignant irony in the fact that because Obama's not a "White" president, he cannot act on behalf of the interests of oppressed peoples with whom his own morphological characteristics associate him BECAUSE by doing so--by bestowing any favor at all upon the racial underclass--he would be immediately accused by his detractors of abandoning "All the people" for "his people." Terrible, indeed, is the irony that insists only the Oppressors can aid the Oppressed, innit?

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Product Placement:

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Whilst perusing Krugman's column this morning, as the well-read pundit should, Dr. Woody was again taken with the elegant simplicity of hegemony. The way hegemony works, there's room for one or some few of any persuasion within the amply porous but still sufficiently elastic structure of the dominant ideology. There is so MUCH information that the daily/hourly flood effectively washes out the distinctive qualities. Yet each creates--indeed, claims--their own space: Kucenich, Paul (pere et fils); Krugman, Beck, even Alan Grayson got an amused, cynical spin on the wheel. Krugman's in his own chamber. We are all "lone actors."

But anyway, while I was reading "The Shrill One," on the difference it makes in the world of for-pay health care if you're a consumer or a patient (pig, or pork? the same question, nest paw?), I wished I could discover when the first Senator or Congressperson rose on the floor of the US Congress to address his colleagues and at that crucial juncture when he named the constituency for whom he spoke, instead of the words "American citizen," used the word "American consumer." (One of the most transformative books I read in grad school was "Metaphors we live by" by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Yeah, THAT Lakoff. You link that concept up with the Sapir-Whorf Theory, and that's a passel of explanatory power, in my always humble estimation, anyway.)

That day was the beginning of the end. It probably happened about 1950, but I'm not sure. Words DO matter. It changes thkngs if you think of yourself, or are thought of by your bosses/representatives as a "citizen" versus a "consumer." Once the dominant metaphor changes, changes in 'reality' also occur. What you call some one or something in many important ways shapes and informs your behavior. This, of course, is not a new idea, but one that perhaps needs to be refreshed periodically.
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WWH~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: Snacks

I believe this is a uniquely Santa Fe culinary invention: the Frito Pie. Most "old" Santa Feans believe it was invented at the Woolworths' lunch-counter, on the south side of the Plaza, by a noon-time fry-cook named Betty, sometime in the late 50s. In the day of the 15-cent burger, they sold for about 29 cents, iirc. They were also a staple at the old A&W Root Beer stand at Cerrillos Rd& Baca St, outside the Indian School, when that was about as far south as the Town went--except for the drive-ins, the Yucca and the Pueblo.

The unique feature ot the original (as opposed to a casserole, for example) is that it is totally portable: the little bag in which the individual-sized portions of Fritos comes serves as the bowl. You just slice the bag open vertically, along one edge, then ladle in the chile (meat, red chile, and beans), sauce, and onions, then cover with grated cheddar cheese. Even the STRONGEST constitutions have suffered gaseous distress within a few minutes of consuming one. NOM! The Woolworth's is gone, but the "Frito Pie" is still sold on the site of the old store.

Speaking of culinary inventions, reviews of the new "Atlas Shrugged" movie confirm that Ayn Rand's contributions to philosophy, literature, politics, and now cinema are of exactly the same importance as the contribution of coprophagy to cuisine and nutrition.
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Paid "Trools": There have been reports circulating of folks on 'social media' such as FaceBook and Twitter who are "paid" disrupters/provocateurs whose purpose/job it is to "pirate" threads and recruit potential sympathizers. The following conversation occurred the other morning on Facebook, between a 'friend' of mine and someone who identified themselves as "Fla Politics":

Ursula Bxxxxxx:
I couldn't change my drivers license without my birth certificate but I could buy a gun and walk out of the store using a fishing license as ID... there is something sooooo wrong with that.

Ursula Bxxxxxx:I couldn't change my address on my drivers license without my birth certificate. I meant to say that ha ha ha

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak I'm of the "Second Amendment confers the right for you to maintain a fire-arm...under the supervision of the sergeant at arms of the local armory...you can go vist and fondle it after work, if you wanna. It's yours, you just cannot take it home...Well-regulated militias, etc...

Fla Politics : yeah, I know a guy who becasme President without one either - there IS something so wrong with that , you are so right! :)))

Ursula Bxxxxxx: That isn't my status, no namer. It wasn't political. Why do you always have to make something into a political argument?

Fla Politics: I am not, just agreeing with you and how wrong that is

Ursula Bxxxxxx: I've had my fla drivers license 20 years so why should I have to prove I'm a citizen to change my address?

...
Woody Wiqiliques Konopak: Ursula, its what the koch-sucker/trool gets paid to do. Disregard.

Fla Politics: apparently it is post 9/11 rules -- tougher on all of us --

Fla Politics: Woody - please, we are having a legit, civil conversation...

Ursula Bxxxxxx: I refuse. They can take my license but they can't take my car.

Fla Politics: lol i hear ya!

Ursula Bxxxxxx: Don't you find that absolutely ridiculous?

Fla Politics: : which is oen reason i find the gtovt so baffling - you ahve that issue, but an illegal can get in and do all sorts of things - even vote in some states!?!?!?!? how nuts is that??!?!? and you have to deal with the bs you went thru? wtf with is with this country - especially DMV!

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak: Ursula, pay attention. You're being recruted by a Teabagger. You see how it works? Exploiting some petty annoyance, and then turning it to their desired end: TACTIC: First, gaining your trust by agreeing, then subtly turning what you believe into what they want you to agree with: "fear of/antipathy toward the dirty aliens."
Fuckin' TEXTBOOK!

As I said, I'd heard of this, but this was the first concrete example I've encountered.
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Al Franken has taken on another publicity-rich "challenge" (the only kind he seems to enjoy): Apple "apps," one of which, apparently, tracks and stores the user's location according to GPS co-ordinates. Sen. Franken has sent billionaire Jobs a stern letter:

Why did Apple choose to initiate tracking this data in its iOS 4 operating system?
Why were Apple consumers never affirmatively informed of the collection and retention of their location data in this manner? Why did Apple not seek affirmative consent before doing so?
Does Apple believe this conduct is permissible under the terms of its privacy policy?

.One wonders why Apple would surreptitiously implant code/bugs which recorded/stored the customers' GPS locations, if NOT because 1) they were either induced or instructed to do so by the NatSecState, or 2) they anticipated that such a function would be useful to folks in the NatSecState, and wanted to be ahead of the curve.

Because about the only thing such a device provides retroactively is "evidence": "Well, LaShawn, you say you were home all night, but your cell-phone says you're lying! Now lemme see yer hands and assume the position!"
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If you're not aware already of Glen Ford's sparklingly critical "Black Agenda Report," here's a chance to become acquainted: Obama’s Depraved Indifference.

Ford has been an acerbic O'Bama critic--or, rather, a critic of the obsequious Obamanauts--from the start, unlike other black intellectuals like Cornell West, "Skip" Gates and other notables. From the jump, Ford has known that, despite the implicature of his racial morphology, Shamwow was NOT a "Black" American; would not, and could not, act in defense of blacks and other oppressed minorities in the US, because as soon as he did so, the Rightards/Wackloons would immediately mount a chorus claiming "ThePrez" had "reverted" to "his people," and that he couldn't govern "all" the people (meaning the White folks) cuz his sympathies were with the "negroes."

Ford, with very few others (y'r ob'd't s'v't among them), realized that, even if he actually WANTED to do so (always a problematic assumption for someone so deeply and irredeemably bathed in the holy waters of CorpoRat largesse), ThePrez wouldn't be ABLE, politically, to provide actual assistance to the populations who saw in him the possibility of a powerful public advocate for their causes.

(Image expertly foto-shopped by Forest Taber, Searsport, ME)

WWH: Wake'N'Bake 101: Commandments

Pleasure: An intriguing Hed on Alternet today: "Why Are Conservatives Obsessed With the Sex Lives of College Kids?"

Dr. Woody guesses it's cuz they never had one of their own. Unlike Dr. Woody and his hedonistic, contemporaries in the counter-hegemonic counterculture of the time, who flouted convention, fucked indiscriminately at every chance that presented, took EVERY drug offered, partied continually, and still got good grades when we needed them.

I have a theory that these antediluvian, troglodyte, members of the hover-round conservo-tard cavalry--especially the Teahadists--are the aging, angry (who wouldn't be) "Niedermeyers" of the world. In school, they played by the rules, studied hard (it was hard for them), had NO fun, did NO drugs, married the first girl who laid 'em, and still got fucked by the system in the end, despite their eagerness to sell out to it, and they cannot now figger out where they fucked up/got fucked, but they blame "us." It's "Revenge of the Niedermeyers": they outnumbered the "cool" kids whom DID have all the fun, and now they're gonna make us pay.

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The Decalogue: There is a LOT of furor over the so-called "10 Commandments." They have great ideological standing in some circles (and, sadly, cracker courtrooms, too), despite there being little or no agreement on which of the several versions are being referred to.

These are valorized by the fuckloons and rightards as the Heavenly Source of democratic justice. But even a cursory examination of any of the lists reveals that they only four of the so-called "commandments" have anything to do with stigmatizing or preventing physical/matertial abuses that might disrupt the community: those--their 'numbers' vary according to the source--forbidding lying, killing, theft, and greed/concupiscence. All of those are legitimate social concerns, and any decent social order would probably have to secure the society's right to censure their violation.

ALL the rest, however--six or so, depending on who's counting-- have exclusively to do with prohibitions against violations of the thought-crimes--heresy, blasphemy, apostasy, sacrilege--which constitute not secular good order but 'religious orthodoxy' focused on the "demands" of a particular "god" which wants to be worshipped in these particular ways, accorcing to these rules. Hardly seems fitting fare for a democracy, somehow, innit?

One of the fascinating things that close reading reveals is that, the way it's translated usually, whichever Commandment forbids "lying" doesn't really forbid "lying" at all; at least not all KINDS of it, the way it's usually taught. How I learned it (#8, for the Catholics) is: "Thou shalt not commit false witness against thy neighbor." That does NOT prohibit lying to cover your ass with your wife for a strange number on the cell-fone, claiming the check is in the mail, or denying you ran over the cat. It prohibits "calumny," lying about your neighbor's behavior. You can lie yer butt off to "cya"; but slandering a neighbor is wrong.

Ya prolly don'wanna be tellin' stories on nuestros vecinos, anyway, esse!

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CorpoRats: Dr. Woody "gets" the ire about the ability of the largest corporations/richest individuals to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. It sucks. But he's also a little weary of the constant drum-beat of outrage against the particular CorpoRats seen as the villains of the piece. I typically don't defend them, and I am not now. I want, however, to put the focus where it belongs, and where it could (in a wonderful, dreamy world with flowers and ponies!!!) make a difference: on the Congress, and the shameless, almost glad complicity of both the legislative and the Executive in enabling this "legal larceny."

Seems to me, stamping yer feet loudly and "demanding" the CorpoRats "pay their fair share," and posturing angrily in front of their offices, are pretty much empty, meaningless gestures (unless yer gonna burn 'em out, to emphasize the point, a perspective with which I am both familiar and comfortable).

Who you/we otta REALLY be pissed at are the GOPhux/DIMS who passed the laws which the CorpoRats wrote to relieve themselves from "oppressive" civic responsibilities. Mostly, unless, as I mentioned, you're planning to use your fury at 'em to underwrite a campaign of arson, I think 'blaming' the CorpoRats is a distraction.

The real villains are the sumbitches who use OUR votes to get into position to betray our interests. Them I wanna have suffer terrible things.

WWH ~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: Homework

Select three and expand --Minimum length: 800 words.
Item 1: If one lives under economic conditions such that technology and urbanization have eliminated the possibility of (legal) self-subsistence, but instead require "employment" by some overlord, and that overlord prohibits one from collectively negotiating the conditions of one's employment, I would be hard-pressed to describe the result as anything OTHER than "slavery."

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Item 2: Labor history in this country is almost completely ignored in schools and elsewhere. The record of murder, brutality, intimidation, and collusion between the owners and the State would be a disgrace anywhere, but especially in the country which holds itself aloft as a paragon of freedom, liberty, and all that good shit.

People by the thousands--workers, activists, organizers, men, women and children--were murdered, maaimed, and broken by the Owners' gunsels in the struggle to win collective bargaining rights for Labor. Martin Luther King was killed when he went to Memphis to LEAD a labor action for sanitation (public service) employees to gain collective bargaining rights.

Then were the "incidents" starting in 1851 with the killings of two railroad strikers by the Pinkertons; the Owners, fearful of organized labor, kept the fatal pressure on for another 90 years: at Chicago in 1877, '85- and '86 (Haymarketriots); Bayview (MN) in '86-87; Thibodeaux, LA, 1887; Cripple Creek, CO (1893), the Pullman strike in Chicago (again) in 1894; Leadville, CO, and Lattimer, PA, in 1897; Virden, IL in 1898, and many many more. In 1914, gun-thugs employed by the Mine Owners, barred the doors of a meeting hall in Ludlow, CO, then set fire to the building, killing 19 people, mostly women and children. And I'm just skimming the surface.

I think it only fair that a few of those who want to eliminate those rights should pay the same price, should perish the same way. Let's start with a Koch brother...

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Item 3: In his fiscal planning speech last week, Shitwhistle-in-Chief Obama cleverly planted his marker, staking out his position, directly in the CENTER of the debate. Dumb-fuck! That's where he should have emded AFTER negotiations. Now there's nowhere to go but to the fucking RIGHT.

Ever since the first day of his tenure in office, the skeevy fuck ALWAYS does this: Gives away his strongest card, abandons his strongest position, gives the fucking game AWAY, BEFORE the first card is ever fucking dealt. He gave away the public option before the debate even began; he gave away the possibility of real regulation of the banksters so Chris Dodd could have a nice, K-Street retirement; he gave away the Bushevik tax-cut repeal before the first words were spoken; he already gave away MORE "social spending cuts" (i.e., Social Security and Medicare) to the fucking POSSIBILITY of GOPhux hostage-taking on the debt ceiling...

I really wonder HOW he gained a rep as a community organizer when he give away his strengths before the argument even ever begins!

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Item #4: Our oligarchs do not fear us.

The biggest, most glaring flaw in our whole system is that our "overlords" don't possess, never learned, that genetic fear of the fury of the mob that animates oligarchs in other climes to moderation. They don't have nightmares about tumbrels outside their gated communities, peasants run amok, the flash of the guillotine, the crashing volley of the firing squad. It is the single greatest weakness of our system.

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Item 5 :Dr. Woody's declared from the very START that the Teahadists are the suburban branch of the KKKlan, bedecked in cotton-polyester, floral-print sheets from Wal-Mart and Target, rather then the traditional homespun.

It was OBVIOUS from the first attacks on the health-care issue: they were willing NOT to improve their conditions --to suffer some small discomfort--if by doing so, they could fuck the "niqqers".

It's TEXTBOOK "institutional racism" (which, actually, is the only REAL kind of racism there is: Individual acts of bigotry, bias, or discrimination are not inherenty "racist," but become such when situated in a system which judges citizens "superior" or "inferior" depending on morphological components; i.e., the good ol' USofA!)

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Extra Points:
Woody likes this as an illustration: The image is offensive, objectively. But, it's not really a "racist" act to circulate the image. That's an act of individual bigotry, certainly; but not "racism," per se.

Where "racism" come in is with the system in which the sender does NOT think it wrong to circulate the image then, having been called on it, endeavors to laugh it off afterwards as a "joke." It's NOT a "joke." The "racist" act is not in circulating the image, it is not apologizing for and owning to the act as disparaging and offensive.

WH ~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: Pants

A long time ago there was a sweet little book, the optimistically naive title of which was “All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten” (Fulghum, 1988), which many of you will recall fondly, I’m sure. It’s a whimsical, and slightly lyrical, and an altogether homogenized and sugar-coated vision.

Its charming conceit was that the rules of decorum and interaction which kindergarten–indeed, all “early childhood education”–is meant to inculcate and normalize are sufficient guidance, if applied, for successfully traversing the rest of life. Of course, it’s not true. It’s not “kindergarten” out there. We all know that.

It’s fucking middle school (or, Junior High, if you’re near my age): a cut-throat, mostly unregulated arena of vicious, pointless competition, hormonal chaos, social incompetence, and the raw struggle for power. THAT’S what you needed to learn from in school. That’s how “civilization” really works. One glance at Congress, or the bar of a well-heeled country club, or the corner pub, and you can see: Middle School NEVER ends!

Dr. Woody’s researches into cultural anthropology haven’t so far revealed whether or not there is a distaff equivalent of that most exquisitely humiliating of pre-adolescent, middle school/junior high, male domination rituals–”pantsing.” (If there is, I would like to hear more about it.) Having experienced it both as a pantser and a pantsie, I have clear memories of the experience. So it is with little hesitation that I declare the unfolding drama around St. Barry, the Pale, and the GOPhux/Teahadists to be akin to the big kids pantsing the weakling AND taking his lunch money.

Regard, if you will, ThePrez’ recent, apparently much admired fiscal planning speech. Thom Hartmann, the next day, was fuukin orgasmic with joy and admiration, and the Obamabots were delerious. FaceBook this morning was awash in congratulatory/laudatory ravings about how he’d reawakened the dream, revived hope, dispelled the baleful ghosts of Reaganomics, and on and on and on and…
I’ll grant you, from the standpoint of rhetoric (though his delivery really SUCKS!), composition, talking points, boosterism, ‘reality,’ all that, it was a pretty good address. But we forget, after the Bushevik years, that’s not really all that exceptional. He’s a pro. He “gives good speech.” You expect it, just as you expect a high-priced “escort” to “give good head.” And it was only a speech. He’s given them before, and been lauded by the peanut gallery (extra points: where was the original “peanut gallery?”), only to have the rhetoric and accoutrements amount to nothing in a stew of collapsed (non)promises. I think that must also be the case proceeding from here.

I mean: He’s been pantsed TWICE in six months by the GOPhux, once even before they had a majority in the House. In December, 2010, Shamwow renewed the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest for two additional years, after declaring six months earlier that they would be scrapped. (When the news taht the cuts were expiring was first going around, I tried to start a pool on FB: What percent will be renewed. But everybody in my cnical circle took “100%.” There’s no money that).

Then, they stuck it to him again on the interim budget agreement, forcing him to slather the lipstick of “VICTORAY” and the mascara of “Historic Compromise” on the snarling snout of the one UGLY pig, the BIGGEST DOMESTIC SPENDING CUTS IN HISTORY. About which he actually BRAGGED? On TV, to the nation. Chuy, jodido!

So you can imagine my surprise yesterday, when St. Barry, in his fiscal plan, declared among other things his firm intention NOT to extend the Bushevik cuts any further, and to instead levee stiffer taxes on the rich. This was what was giving the O’bots the vapors this morning. But hey! Really?

How does he propose to put tax INCREASES on the richest people through a Congress that is MORE hostile to his agenda (which is really, really strange, given how much his resembles theirs) when those folks were so easily able to mobilize their pet Congresscritters to beat back his efforts last time, for which he had the backing of MORE Members.

This is vexing to me. Who believes Prez. O’Bama can accomplish this miraculous occurrence should be able at least to explain how–short of divine intervention–he plans to do it.

Extra Points Answer: In vaudeville, the cheap seats, where patrons were in range to toss peanuts in displeasure; in TeeVee, the kiddee seats on the Howdy Doody Show.W

WWH ~~ Wake'N'Bake 101; Biology

Did Cell Phones Unleash Our Inner Rudeness? is the provocative question posed by the hed to this piece on the CNN blog today. Like the blessedly deceased Ronnie Raygun's last underpants, it dependz.

Dr. Woody is not a cell-fone communicant. He basically regards "Tweet" and "Twitter" to be the last, faint cries of our dying rhetorical canaries at the bottom of the technological coal-mine. Once, in the earliest swell of the boom, before all the "apps," and the i-pad, etc., I had a cell-fone. It made fone-calls. And answered them. So, I should best be regarded as a dedicated Luddite in the wonders thereof.

Nor am I a human ecologist*, but after rooting around for some decades in the periphery of the cellular communications revolution, I have a theory: it seems to me that the biggest reason for the success of the cell-fone is rooted in the biology of humans and our anthropoid and simian evolutionary and genetic progenitors.

Field Trip!

Remember the last time you visited a zoo? Did you go to the monkey house/enclosure? If so, you will have noticed that the din, of howl, and hoot, and shriek and cry, is ceaseless. Each and every monkey seems intent upon out-shouting it's neighbor, no matter they're of different species in different cages. The hullaballoo and hub-bub never stops.

I think that's because hollering-out to your species-mates is hard-wired into your hypocampus. For all simians, and their later evolutionary off-shoots, because of their brains and their social organization, there are two things that matter: one's membership in their troop, and one's status therein. Their cries and howls and displays are ways of demonstrating the truth of the former--affiliation--and of soliciting affirmation of the latter--status.

Pay attention to the folks who cannot, it seems, proceed 10 feet without initiating or answering a call. There is something of the hooting chimp about them, much of the time. Their conversations are never soft, but trumpeted through the ether. as if declaring all the immediate space their own personal domains? Humans of the dispensation that created cell-fones are almost uniformly of the opinion that, because it includes them, their species alone has any true significance. And that, of their species, as of here an now, they are the most important members of th species, and need to demonstrate that truth to the lesser mortals in their dominion.

Cell fones provide these poor simian-throwbacks the opportunity for constant reassurance that they are part of their group, and that they are important in that group.

See? Biology...

*Human ecology: See, e.g., Paul Shepard's work; he invented the field.

WWH: Wake"N'Bake ~~ "Capitulation"

You know that great, ol' Dr. John samba/shuffle, "(I was in) The Right Place"? I started hearing it when I was reading Robert Reich on Friday. As usual, Robert Reich is right, but it's about the wrong thing, and he's also therefore wrong about his central prescription:

"...But if the shutdowns contribute to the belief among Americans that government doesn't work, Republicans win over the long term. As with the rise of the Tea Partiers, the initiative shifts to those who essentially want to close it down for good.

That's why it's so important that the President have something more to say to the American people than "I want to cut spending, too, but the Republican cuts go too far." The "going too far" argument is no match for a worldview that says government is the central problem to begin with." (Once again, deepest thanks to the departed Ronald Reagan and the best damn propaganda department in the WORLD! for that delightful memory~~W)

What he's right about is that the entire agenda of the GOP since 1960 has been to privatize the State and to confer upon the CorpoRats that de facto lethal authority hitherto reserved to the elected Government responsible (at least nominally) to the People. Some of us have been saying for at LEAST that long what a bad idea it is to turn Government over to people who want to destroy it. I have yet to meet ANYONE whose instincts I would completely trust absent some controlling authority. "Government" is required for humans to live together in large (multi-hundred-million) numbers. The GOPhux want to turn it ALL over to their (and our) OWNERS, and do away with that messy, expensive, participatory shit, while maintaining the necessary appearances of the much-loved, but soooo-outdated 'democracy' crap.

What Reich's wrong about, in my always humble estimation, is that he appears to think that Pres. Shamwow regards the debate on any different terms than the GOPhux do. He uses their lexicon. He accepts their definitions. He cedes his most important gropund before the argument has even been joined. O'Bama is a CORPORAT! Born and bred, body and soul, top to bottom, and side to side, he's an Organization Man. Get that, and all the rest makes sense.

The furthest thing from Prez. Shamwow's mind is to say "HEY! Not only are the GOPhux WRONG about the AILMENT, they're also and necessarily WRONG about the treatment." O'Bama could no more announce tomorrow that he totally rejected the GOP plan than he could fart diamonds for tiaras for his daughters dancing costumes. He should not be compromising on how MUCH to cut, he should be proposing and introducing programs aimed at actually helping the PEOPLE, as much to regain and rebuild some trust as anything else. He could, if he were a "people's President."

But to think he would do so is ludicrous. HOW could ANY nominally reasonable, normally intelligent people imagine for a single instant that the Owners of the Country--oligarchs, plutocrats, aristos around the globe-- would ever turn management of THEIR "property" (us, btw) or the system of its incredibly profitable administration, over to somebody --to ANYBODY-- who posed even the tiniest, remotest, slightest, slimmest, faintest GLIMMER of a chance of challenging, much less undoing, the least jot or tittle of their immensely profitable, unimaginably powerful status quo? Really?

No. That's preposterous! Who could believe such a thing?

Thus, Pres. Shamwow, already by the time he had ASSUMED his offfice, had satisfactorily and faithfully demonstrated he neither would, nor even particularly wanted to, upset any hegemonic applecarts or otherwise in any way disturb the Owners in their well-earned ease. You don't get there any other way.

Sheer "Poe-etry": DESTROYING An Atheist

WWH: Wake'N'Bake 101 ~~ "Repairs"

Last week, Dr. Woody heard Vt. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thom Hartmann--both really sincere, admirable men--and was again struck by how totally, hopelessly, blindingly, wrenchingly IMPOTENT they seem. They pose exquisitely correct solutions to the most intractable problems whose ONLY flaw is that they must be approved by...

Yeah. Congress.

Hartmann's fix for the national economic difficulties is to return the top marginal tax rate to what it was pre-Reagan--about 70%. I'm not competent to say whether it would fix the problem or not, not being an economist. But I am almost 100% certain we won't find out, because it's not gonna happen. Why? Because any taxation measure to go through Congress must originate in the (now thoroughly Teahadist) House, which wouldn't pass such piece of legislatiuon if you were holding members' families hostage. There's the rub.

Any plausible repairs to the existing system have--MUST, unequivocally--go through both Houses of Congress, a Congress owned by and beholden to the same corpoRat interests which would 'suffer' from any democratizing changes, or which materially shifted the responsibility for funding the State back onto those who benefit most from it. Any member with the temerity to INTRODUCE a measure which, if passed, would lead to the diminishment of the nominal legitimacy of the thievery and bunkum the Owners now run on us poof hicks would find her or himself faced, in the next primary, a well-financed, bomb-throwing Fundie and another waiting in the General.

So those changes so beloved by Hartmann an his cadres--renewing tariff laws, a "national economic/industrial policy," the restoration of the USer industrial infrastructure-- cannot (and I daringly predict WILL NEVER) occur. This is as true for tax increases for the rich as it would be for constitutional amendments to roll back the vile, indefensible Citizen's United decision, as for the mischief the Opus Deists are gonna do with poor Ms. Dukes, et al. The ERA (remember the ERA?) has languished in Amendment limbo for almost 40 years. It still lacks ratification by one or two States. And it NEVER had the opposition that would confront ANY legislation attacking corporate personhood or raising marginal, individual tax rates would engender.

Folks wanna say, the people are waking up.

Mebbe. But if they are, it is only because they were awakened by the Ship of State slamming headlong into the CorpoRat "iceberg." ‎"We" re not going to "take back control" of the vessel or the voyage. That moment, if it ever existed, passed decades ago. The collision has already occurred. We're awakening to the cold realization that it's going down, slowly now, but... That's the sad truth.

The inertia of the existing power arrangements is such that, even if "we" were able to disrupt it, the shock would crash EVERYTHING.

Let me hastily assure you: I am NOT counseling defeatism. Fight Back! Indeed. Definitely. Send very harsh memoranda to your Representatives! Personally, I make stingingly sarcastic phone calls to the offices of both of my Sens and my Rep. I use low-power bulbs. I recycle. I conserve. I sign petitions. I blog like a futhermocker. I try to follow Aurelius: Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

And I do NOT delude myself that it actually accomplishes anything. And, yes, I shall return to the barricades, when the chance of my being shot for being there is closer to random than obvious, cuz I don't move as agilely as once I did...

(*Cartoon by Adam Zyglis / The Buffalo News / Daryl Cagle.)

WWH: Wake'N'Bake 101 ~~ "Zygote"

Dr. Woody'll be 65 in a coupla weeks and the utter undeniability, the intransigent incorrigibility, the chronographical indomitability of this fact--coupled with the arrival of his Medicare card--caused him to pause and consider. These are the fruits of that epiphany:

To the manner born: 4:20 AM, 4/20, '46: I'm an "early Boomer." Indeed, I believe I was conceived about 120 miles north of the Trinity site, on or about the fateful day in July '45 when they created 'trinitite' out of the hot New Mexico sand, thereby to have become one of the FIRST "nuclear zygotes."). I am, also, therefore, about as deeply integrated into the Baby Boomer generation as a person can be. And, since we are all the sum of all we know, it seemed to me that

"You Might Be A "Real Baby Boomer" (RBB) If..."

...You remember the name of the girl/boy you were sleeping with when you heard Neil Armstrong speaking from the Moon...or if you don't...but you remember hearing him...

Or noticed when Stevie Wonder had ceased to be "Little"...

If you remember the Tet Offensive, and LBJ complaining that he'd lost the war cuz he'd lost Cronkite...

Or you enlisted to avoid the draft, or you remember your draft number (hint: 1-365), or burned your draft card, or know what it means to have had a 'deferment...'

If you had sex with someone, in the shower, washing off the tear gas residue from being gassed by the pigs for demonstrating against the invasion of Cambodia, ...

Or you remember the the name of the judge who tried the Chicago Seven, and still know the name of Howdy Doody's cow...

If you cast your first presidential ballot for Nixon cuz you didn't trust Humphrey, and the first campaign you remember had Adlai Stevenson in it...

Or you watched the Watergate hearings and cheered for Sam Ervin and his Constitution...

If you saw LBJ's surgery scar on the nightly news, or saw him lift his beagle by the ears, (or remember his palpable despair...)

Or you remember the Huntley/Brinkley Report...or Tim Buckley...Connie Stevens & Troy Donahue...Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb!...the Edsel...Hoola-Hoops...Hopalong Cassidy...

If you remember civil defense sirens and hiding under your school desk with a book over your head awaiting the inevitable nuclear attack by the Soviet Union,...

Or when Ram Das was still Richard Alpert, and Herb Alpert was HOT,...

If you remember being scared shitless every time a car engine backfired during the Cuban Missile crisis...

Or went out with a date to the drive-in, bought snacks, watched (or not) a minimum of two movies, and got burgers afters, all for less than $5, including gas...

If you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing in school at the very moment you first heard the news that JFK had been assassinated...

Or you watched Ed Sullivan on the three consecutive weekends that the Beatles first appeared on American TV...

If you remember the day Sam Cooke was shot to death in LA (Dec. 11, '64)...

Or you were listening to the radio broadcast from Miami the night Sonny Liston refused to leave his corner for the 8th round of his first fight against "Cassius Clay,"

If you remember the assassination of Malcolm X, even if you weren't sure who he was at the time,...

Or you were or are still able to lie convincingly to anyone at all that you had attended either Woodstock or Altamont...

Feel free to append your own. I make no pretense that this is anything like an exhaustive list.

Wake'N'Bake 101: Conspiracy

Woody wonders: Why does what Rosie O'Donnell thinks about the WTC/9-11 events matter?

A clip of her espousing learned theories about the causes and agents implicated in the events of Sept. 11, 2001, was going around on the "F-Book" this (Saturday) morning. The hed proclaimed "Rosie O'Donnell saying the truth about 9/11."

Well, this got ol' Dr. Woody to speculatin'--that and the furious assault on his reasoning faculties, sanity, and parentage by passionate 'truthers,' which ensued when he raised the question of why Ms. O'Donnell's saying it mattered. Folks of almost any persuasion seem to go all orgasmic when Celebs take up their cause. But, I wondered, what's the point?

Is Rosie O'Donnell a physicist or a chemist or an engineer whose perspective is formed and informed by expert knowledge and rigorous analysis? I am a kinda sorta expert; I don't distrust experts, until they demonstrate they aren't. Is Rosie an expert? In anything?

No? She's just another "half-stellar celebrity?"

A celebrity, I would remind you, is someone whose sole achievement is to have become recognizable. Okay, then; now why should ANYONE care what the vacuous bint thinks?

I mean, really! Whisky Tango Foxtrot! Why does it MATTER?

Why should the 'amateur' contribution of someone who has no first-hand knowledge of, or expertise in, ANY in the relevant fields of study/knowledge be attended to with any more regard than would those of a groundskeeper, or a waiter, or any other menial who happens to have an opinion?

Rosie, sad to say, doesn't know shit, of her own discovery or expertise. She's just parroting what she's heard elsewhere. There is noting in her CV that would lead me to trust or value HER opinions, or the script she's reading, any more than those of a telephone operator.

So, I was asked, why did I posted the thing; and part from the fact that I mainly post things about which I have something to say that I think to be either interesting or entertaingng, I replied:

To illustrate the spuriousness of authority seated in/ceded to "celebrity?

Why does it matter what "Rosie O'Donnell" thinks about it?

Her opinion does not add a jot or a scintilla of illumination. There is ONLY one reason that "Rosie O'Donnell" is the face on this, and that is because she is known as "Rosie O'Donnell," and "Rosie O'Donnell"-qua-celebrity's opinion is as close to irrelevance as human utterance can be. Victoria Jackson thinks the sun orbits earth. Does that enlarge your understanding of the issue any further? I don't accord Elizabeth Hasslebeck's, or Chris Matthews', or Bryan Williams' opinions any more weight. They're just reading cue-cards.

It just doesn't MATTER what she thinks; anymore than, frankly, it matters what I think, without the experience and training necessary to scientifically analyze the competing claims. My degrees are in literature, journalism and education. I am not competent to say one opinion or one analysis is correct and another is flawed. There is NO reason to listen to me should I articulate, or even assemble and present a theory. I command no authority in that community which deals with those matters--tensile strength, nano-particles, thermite (An aside: I was trained to USE thermite, in the USAF, to ignite it and walk hastily away; not to understand it).

(I have an opinion, but it is wrought from available sources, nothing esoteric. I am sure I hold no unique insight, no special knowledge.) I can add nothing to that conversation. So I mainly abstain.

If ya wanna read it, the whole thread's HERE.