Sharpton's Not A "Race Hustler."

In recent broadcasts, the utter, doddering dolts of  #IgnorantFukStix (aka Faux Nooz) have been eager to deflect attention away from the stench of racism which pervades the events in Ferguson, MO.

They have therefore resurrected the "race hustler" canard and tried to smear Rev. Al Sharpton.

In yer ol' Perfesser's humble opinion, unlike Sean Hannity, Falaffel Bill-o, Roger Ailes, The Rupe and the rest at ‪#‎IgnorantFukStix‬, Sharpton actually is a member of an oppressed minority and speaks with some authority on such matters.

He has actual, lived experience with the easy, confident racism of supremacist whites.

He has EARNED to right to comment and be critical about the vicious, ever-present racism of Whites in Murka.

 He gets shit from mainly cracker/redneck/asswhole whites who are made (even unconsciously) uncomfortable by their complicity in the perpetuation of white supremacism.

He is NOT a "race hustler"; he's the despised conscience of the witless, blind, but nevertheless culpable White Majority.

Astro-physicist =/= Plant Biologist...

While stopping short of accusing the illustrious Dr/Prof Tyson of conscious intellectual dishonesty, still--no matter how smart he is--Tyson's in exactly the same position as Reich and Krugman vis a vis economics: they cannot be heard to say that the official orthodoxy is in any way "false," or insufficient or incomplete.

Tyson's got "permission' to be a gadfly, but not to attack the firmament of commercial mythology. He's (possibly unconsciously) bought the party line.

The primary danger of genetically engineered crops is not to the digestive systems of thye consumers, it is to the reduction of the range of plant genetic diversity.

As Upton Sinclair observed 100 years or so ago: It is hard to get a man to see that which his paycheck depends on his being ignorant of.

The salary at that Planetarium is NOT insubstantial...

(P.s.: Bennett's hand is unmistakable, innit?)

The Presidency.

Prez Lowbar is #44.

On 42 previous occasions, 'power' has passed from predecessor to successor, without violence, civil unrest or rebellion--Lincoln's 1860 election being the exception.

We're the envy of the political world, for our constancy, our peaceful--'bloodless' is the term often heard--transitions of power.

But it implies something important to recall: There is an essential constancy in the 'institution' of the Presidency. So far, since 1860, nobody has ever won the office who posed a serious challenge to the bedrock assumptions about the power of the owners and oligarchs. And no future President can be expected turn over the traces, either.

The Presidency is NOT a succession of unique individuals, it is a continuum of like-minded, similarly predisposed, educated, and experienced place-holders, installed to give the appearance of legitimacy to the system which upholds privilege, and weath at the expense of every other attribute of 'culture.'

The apparent ease with which power apparently transfers actually signifies how little of it actually changes hands.