PFTB: Assorted Matters

Debatable?

Much as one admires Hitch, Woody wouldn't "debate" religious people.
Debate is a project by which logic is applied to a factual problem to render a solution. Religious people abjure logic in favor of faith. You cannot 'debate' faith, because there are no "facts" in dispute. Once cannot, therefore, by definition, "debate" religious folks about religious matters. And if they were susceptible to logic, they wouldn't BE religious.

Decision-Point(less), 2012
Decision-point(less) 2012:
Woody's Fearless Equivocation: If the Pukes think St. Barry has absorbed enough of the shit the last 40 years of that THEIR criminal conspiracy has unleashed, so that their asses are covered--that is, if Barry & the Dims are blamed for the economic collapse, the destruction of social security, the wars, the loss of freedoms, and the first evident signs of the fall of the Murkin Empire overseas, so that NO Dim and no "novelty" (non-white) candidate can ever win nomination again--then Jebbie's--or mebbe John Thune--the guy.
If they need to give St. Barry another term to do their dirty work, they'll nominate some miserable, moronic queef, like Huckabee or Palin.

Sunk?
Are Americans finally waking up to the frights and terrors unleashed these last decades upon our Constitution, our freedoms,' our very "way of life?
Mebbe.
But unfortunately, what woke 'em (it they are indeed awakening, something of which I am still not certain) was the noise and impact of the ship crashing into the iceberg.
That's too late.

Dream State
Woody figgers, as long as we're dreaming, here: Add this to the "Robin Hood" tax on financial speculation and the deficit'd be solved in 5 years. With money to spare for completely funding universalmedical CARE for all citizens.

Return the top marginal tax rate to what it was in 1980, before Raygun: that'd be a big help, too...And, sheeeeit! I wan' my PONEE, TOO?...

Another problem, apart from the sheer impossibility of EVER getting enough votes to pass it, or a President to sign such measures, is that all such revenue bills HAVE to start in the House, and we know what that means...

But regardless, the "Democratic" hierarchy is in no way committed to anything LIKE "democratic principles." Most of them are no better than opportunists desirous of getting their hands on power and, there being already plenty of wealthy pricks in the GOP, they became "Democrats."

They HATE being "Democrats," because it means they are the representatives of the "lower orders," and they know themselves to be better than that, so their defense of "democratic" and other (lesser) principles is anemic, at best.

PFTB*: Ask Not...

FB pal Ivan Radko wrote:

With ALL due respect to JFK, I think it's time we asked, what our country can do for us.

I replied:

I always thought that was a pretty strange remark to be delivering, only 15 years after the end of the biggest, bloodiest, most fatal war in history, to the people who had fought it, had sacrificed more than any cohort in the population since the Civil War.

The biggest problem the People of America have with America is that the price it extracts to live here--in taxes, indignities, injustices, inequalities, inhumanities, etc.--are not repayed in either the generosity or quantity of the services it provides. Our health care sucks, our infrastructure is decrepit, our public transportation is a fucking disgrace, our food supply is feculent, and our air and water are negotiable chips in a zero-sum game with the plutocrats and autocrats.

It's GOOD thing, for the plutocrats, that fewer than 30% of the people have ever left the country, because they have no standard for comparison, other than what they are told--by the largest, most expensive, most intrusive, most comprehensive, most psychologically sophisticated,official mis- and dis-information system ever to exist anywhere in any place in any time.

PFTB: So Long, N P R...

NPR's gonna go down because some ecec admitted publically that he thought the teabaggers are a bunch of ignorant, unregenerate racist assholes? No, REALLY?

If BOTH Henry Kissinger and Barack O'Bama hadn't been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and forever erased the concept of "irony" from any connection with meaning, I would say it was "ironic" that NPR is hoist, finally, if inadvertently, on the petard of actually speaking the truth. Whooda thunk?

In a couple of comments about the resignation of Vivian Schiller from the top spot at NPR, and in the midst of the now-entirely-MORE-likely prospect that the GOPuke Congress will indeed "zero-out" federal funding for BOTH NPR and PBS (though the fate of the latter is probably not yet sealed), for the "impropriety" of a senior fund-raiser unburdening himself on the racist asswhole who comprise a good 90% of the so-called Tea party, I wrote the following:

Woody's just about certain, now: NPR is gonna lose its federal funding. The rats should soon be visible diving off the sinking ship. There is no doubt, empirically and metphorically, that the primary impetus behind the Tea-bagger agenda, and its main attraction to disaffected White People was and is a deep, abiding racial animus.

The rhetoric which betrays the truest nature of the complaints is that which speaks of "our" money funding "their" (immoral, illegal, immodest, profligate) behavior. It's the same 'logic' which the censorious use to excuse not giving a hand-out to a beggar: "He'd only use it to buy booze," only attached to racial stereotyping instead of poverty stereotyping. They don't want to pay for anything that in any way improve the lots of people whom they regard and detest as inferiors.

The most ardent tea-baggers--and even the lazier hangers-on--were/are people who will endure a minor inconvenience or permit the loss of a small benefit if, by doing so, they can deny those whom they despise any benefit at all and preferably INCREASE their misery. It's text-book racism, a collective assent to injury, rather than an individual bigotry. That's what racism IS!

PFTB: Fashions in Fascism

In one of those inexplicable and irrepeatable coincidents on Facebook "walls," two consecutive posts on my "Most Recent Feed" were susceptible to interpretation by the same comment.

Daniel David Higgins via Joie Szombathelyi-Mendoza:

Whole Foods Market Caves to Monsanto | Center for Media and Democracy
www.prwatch.org

After 12 years of battling to stop Monsanto's genetically-engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's organic farmland, the biggest retailers of "natural" and "organic" foods in the U.S., including Whole Foods Market (WFM), Organic Valley and Stonyfield Farm, have agreed to stop opposing (GMOs)...

2 minutes ago · Like · · Share

Daniel David Higgins:

horrible.
2 minutes ago · Like

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak:

There you have a PERFECT example of what I call the "fascism of the market."

a few seconds ago · Like

Then there followed this shocked and angry missive:

Dorothy Durio Collins:

Here we go again..who is going to own us????? Roll the dice..

Don't Make Us Pay | Congress and the Federal Reserve want to force YOU to pay more to use your debit
www.dontmakeuspay.org
Debit card rewards programs are already being cut by banks and credit unions across the country. This rule could mean that they will be eliminated completely.
2 minutes ago · Like · · Share

Where one can see that the same reply is appropriate: There you have a PERFECT example of what I call the "fascism of the market." Which statement is part an parcel of a theory I conceived: that the "World Wars" of the last Century were a chapter in an epic struggle. Not between Freedom and Fascism, but rather "Which of several contesting versions of Fascism would emerge from the struggle?" Briefly, "ours"--the fascism of the market--won the last match. Its earliest opponents were the nearly exhausted, geographically compact religious and monarchical versions dispatched by WW One. Next, the "classic" totalitarian State models of Nazism, Italian, and Soviet Stalinism fell. The surviving form is that of market/State "capitalism" with which we are all so familiar.

Of course, history never stops, and the once-dominant and apparently indomitable forces of "neo-Liberal capital" are themselves agaain under subtle attack, from the PRC which (in my opinion) has decided to woo its restive populace to peacefully accept that order by promises--not, as in the West, of bourgeois "liberties, but of security and prosperity guaranteed by the Party. And of course, they're winning internationally, and at home.

PFTB: Labor Relations

John L. Lewis V. FDR

United, we bargain; divided, we beg!
Union Workers are NOT the problem. Teachers, police, paramedics, firefighters, road workers etc. are NOT the enemy. If you’re jealous of our benefits, FIGHT FOR YOUR OWN!, not against ours. The rich who created this crisis are putting middle class families against each other. We live here, pay taxes, work hard & try to support our families too. If you support union workers, C&P!

PFTB~~Public Relations: Freudian Slip-Coverings

Four names: Lippmann, Lasswell, Ellul, and Bernays
They're the ones who more or less invented the theory of communications by the modern state with its constituents. Some call it "public relations," some call it "advertizing,"a nd some call it "propaganda," but whatever you call it, it preforms the same function: it portrays an (at best) half-truth as reliable, disinterested information.

Bernays was the one who specifically linked the psychological and psychoanalytical insights into human motivations specifically into his work, because he was Sifgmund Freuds favorite nephew. With the "invention" of "public relations," Bernays invented the language of the CorpoRat State!

Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires. Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar. His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.

If they are any good at it, and they are, then the subjects do not really ever actually suspect they're BEING brainwashed, and reprogrammed. We do it with television and its flickering-screened scions in the phones, and other IT appliances. Americans will alswys reject assertions they have been brainwashed. But if they actually, sincerely, deeply believe there is a difference between Ford and Chevy, or Coors and Bud, or Olive Garden and Red Lobster, well, the facts thereby speak for themselves. There are what Bateson calld "differences that make a difference" between a coal shovel and a cherry orchard. There are no such discernible differences between varieties of industrial malt liquor sludge, or mass produced automobiles.

Here are the next three parts of this extraordinary documentary. It's four hurs, give or take. But it's also the equivalent of a semester-long master's class in the uses of propaganda, in all its guises, as a tool for the manipulation of public sympathy and influence.

PFTB: Huelga Nacional!

In respect to this piece on Alternet, the following (albeit incomplete) discussion transpired:

Woody advises:

The Bosses have anticipated y'all.
Unfortunately, there's an actual LAW which criminalizes "General Strikes." It's part of the PATRIOT ACT, and it defines interference in interstate commerce as "domestic terrorism."
That's "Gitmo" territory....

Lee Burkett:

A general strike, under provisions of The Patriot Act and The Military Commission Act, defines a general strike as "wide spread civil unrest," which opens the door for the declaration of martial law. Homeland Security would then be authorized to close down all commercial transport, public transportation, and to seize all bank accounts. The President would have the authority to disband Congress for a period of up to six months.
I wish I was makin' this up, but I ain't ...

Greg Castelonuvo Tedesco:

If people don't have the money to travel, or in their bank accounts then people have nothing to lose but their lives. Most Americans already feel like their lives are not worth living, they watch 5 hours of TV per day. Only people like me, in the "upper middle" class have a little to loose. That is only about 10% of the population. The lower 90% have very little to loose, as it has almost all been stolen by the elites in the last 30 year of flat wages.

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak:

‎"When you got nuthin, you got nuthin' to lose."

The genius of Murkin CorpoRat propaganda, Greg, izzat it has been able to convince the have-nots that they have too MUCH to risk any of it on dissent.

Marcie Coulter

Got us all by the short hairs and prepared to take us in - see FEMA camps nationwide. Who the fuck you reckon those are for? Illegal immigrants? Nah - theybe for us!

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak:

They don't NEED FEMA camps. The people are "voluntarily" sedated. The reality of what is in store is utterly terrifying. It would be to ANYONE, but especially to a people narcotized by "prosperity," bemused by "exceptionality," and distracted by "celebrity," in the thrall of that flickering, blue light.
"Reality" unfortunately means the end of all that. It makes even ME very nervous, and I'm gonna die an a coupla years (10 or so, likely, given my med history and appetites).