Open Sesame 08/22/15

So I'm reading a local newspaper, and I come upon a letter from an earnest young person, and said letter does begin its beguine in this way:

This food safety issue is perhaps the single most important challenge of our generation.

And I immediately think two things:

First, "single most" should in most, or at least many, instances, be one word: "singlemost." Back in the day, I used to nearly fight actual bloody duels, with stone-minded robotic Chicago Manual Of Style copy-editor retroverts, over this one.

Because the "most" following the "single" flares absolute urgency: there is no "most," other than this "single": the two words are therefore actually sexually yearning, to join together.

But I could rarely make the rock-minded copy-editors understand this.

It has always been my opinion that copy-editors are low-serving mouth-breathing knuckledragging denizens of Hell. Except when I myself have served as copy-editor.

Second, it's pretty much amazing, these days, how many "singlemost important challenges" there are.

For, but hours before encountering the earnest food-safety young person, I had happened upon this fellow, who has volubly ejaculated all over the tubes that Getting The Word Out, about the extraterrestrials among us, and the downpressers in the guv'mint downpressing this info from Us, "is the most important issue in the world."

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eO8dvJ3bEo]

Anyway. The earnest young food-safety person then scattered a couple more sentences, before ululating:

Am I the only one who sees this? Am I the only one who's angry and ready to do something about it? What if Cesar Chavez were here and had the tools we do, like Facebook. What would he do?

Now. I am such an ancient mariner, such a Benjamin of a Wandering Jew, that I was actually alive and kicking, when Cesar Chavez did roam the Earth. And I am still, in these days, in congress with farmworkers. And they do not do Facebook. Nor are they of Twitter. They may watch a televison. They may gaze in amused and loving fondness at their children, as those children, tentatively, on little cat feet, seek to climb aboard a tube. But other than that, they are not of pixels. They are of the actual, real, physical world.

Cesar Chavez was about union-organizing farmworkers. And you do not union-organize farmworkers through 0s and 1s. You do it by pressing their flesh. In the real world. You do it by meeting face-to-face. In the actual, physical, world.

Chavez was about marches. And one cannot march in pixels. Marches involve actually hitting the road. And you do not want your march, there on the road, cabined just to "updates" to whom on Twitter or Facebook is "following" you. You want to lure out the pasty-faced white reporters. With cameras. Especially, in case, as in those days they were wont to do, the Teamsters arrive, to commence The Beating.

Chavez was about hunger strikes. If you so strike, and send out twits all the live-long day, and all of the night, about what you're going through, no one but anyone in your karass will much hear about it. You want to lay suffering, and in silence. Lure in the pasty-faced white reporters. With the cameras. To send into the outer world. Your story.

Also, anyone who has ever fasted knows that after but three days one's mind begins to drift loose of its moorings. The last thing one then wants at hand is some instant-communication device that will send out into the world whatever gibbering bizarreness streaks through your cranium because you fucking need to eat.

If Chavez had had a Twitter tool during his many fasts, by week three we might have received such shivering embarassments as:

@cesarchavez

Fresh bedsheets this morning. They smell so good. Maybe just a little bite?

@cesarchavez

When Yasiel came in today, at first I thought he was a big ham. When I realized he wasn't, I wept.

@cesarchavez

Dolores arrived to talk strategy. Had to cut meeting short. Couldn't concentrate. All I wanted to do was eat her.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYVgvfy89rk]

I'm flipping through the flash-cards of my mind here, trying to settle on some historical figure who'd actually score on Twitter.

I'm coming up empty.

Moses—@burningbush—it wouldn't be enough for him to just twit: "Hey Pharoah! Next time it's frogs!" To make it work, he'd actually have to climb out of the tube and deliver the frogs.

And I don't even want to think about Van Gogh—@starrystarrymind—on Twitter: "Gauguin = merde a la mode. Drinking paint is fun. Decided to cut off my ear."

Let's look, for example, at a twitface Jesus.

In the early years, we'd get something like this:

@therealJesusChrist

Wow. Found out my dad isn't really my dad!

@therealJesusChrist

Went into the desert. Met the Devil. He offered me the world. I said fuck that, keep the thing.

@therealJesusChrist

Gonna bathe with a dude named John. Kinky.

Then, in the time of the Teachings, would come something like this:

@therealJesusChrist

Busy morning. Shoved some demons into pigs; healed a leper, raised a stinking dead guy. Gonna get pizza now.

@therealJesusChrist

Tried to turn some loaves into fish. Didn't work. Kinda mealy.

@therealJesusChrist

Fuckin' disciples got all scared in the storm, so I had to walk on water. Now they're all prune-like, my feet.

@therealJesusChrist

Takin' some down time. Me and Mary goin' to Paradise. (wink-wink)

Then there'd be—"trending"—@TheFinalDays:

@therealJesusChrist

So I was like, "dude, can we leave off the dying part? I mean, Jesus!"

@therealJesusChrist

This trial is BULLSHIT!

@therealJesusChrist

Okay. "Field of Skulls." I've had better gigs.

@therealJesusChrist

You will know I am the Lord your God, because I am fucking tweeting with a big-ass nail hammered through my wrist!

The account then goes silent for three days. After which we get this:

@therealJesusChrist

Hey. Back now. Tried to take pictures in Hell, but they didn't turn out. Sorry!

@therealJesusChrist

Hung with the homies for a couple days. Bored. Going to America now. Fuckin' stoked to eat buffalo jerky and touch Indians! Stay cool.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBW6Zv72GEc]

Of course, twitfeeds would have been a real boon to historians. Say, from the morning of the third day of Gettysburg:

@James"Eeyore"Longstreet

General, for a final time, I implore you: call off this charge. It is a really bad idea!

@therealRobertELee

Fuck you! I am in command! Do what I tell you to do!

@James"Eeyore"Longstreet

But Pickett is drunk again!

@therealRobertELee

So what! Grant's a drunk, and he's taken the whole of the West! Strap Pickett to his horse, like El Cid, and get to it!

Then, also, and from but a mile or two away, but in a secured, private, Twitter bunker:

@maybetherealGeorgeMeade

To all field commanders: the jackasses are discussing battle plans on Twitter again. Disport yourselves accordingly.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UumU9_20pVU]

Twitter was invented by people who will be hung upside down and flayed by history.

It allows expressions of but 140 characters—and a space counts as a character—and there are but two humans I can think of who regularly expressed themselves fully in 140 characters or less. Lao-Tze, and Heraclitus. And those people have been dead for 2500 years.

Oh. And Shakespeare. In full nonsense mode.

Let floods o'erswell, and fiends for food howl on

(Orwell: "Evidently, pieces of resounding nonsense were constantly appearing in Shakespeare's mind of their own accord, and a half-lunatic character had to be invented to use them up.")

I don't even know if Pound's "In A Station Of The Metro" can make the twitterbe grade. Let's see. For I have open, throughout the creation of this piece, a tube that will character-count for me, and thereby let me know, if what I wish, I can twit.

And yes! Pound scores! But 103 characters!

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Problem is, though, that you get no title, or line, divides, when twitting. And thus. all the artistry is lost.

Wait! I remember now the reason I started writing this thing! It was about the GOoPers going to war with one another in twits! I don't actually recall all the ins and outs now, of the twit steel-cage match, and I can't easily retrieve the links, because my Mac was apparently so outraged it refused to bookmark them when I told it to.

But, as I recall, in genesis, a high-powered Republican consultant, Rick Wilson, noted, correctly, that the people—primarily uneducated white men—who would vote for Donald Trump, are like those unfortunate babies who are born with their brains entirely outside their heads.

Then some shit-lips from the Weekly World News-style tabloid-tube Breitbart bansheed over to unload a squishy dump on Wilson.

Then John Podhoretz, from the tight-assed rightist doof-rag Commentary, decreed Breitbart was a fart-hole.

At which time some goon from Breitbart, in twit, referred to Podhoretz as "Son of Someone," basically equating him thereby with the howlingly insane serial-killer Son of Sam.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THh1pPWEoWs]

Then Wilson screeched across the twitosphere that Brietbart people were threatening to rape his daughter.

The sekeletal meth-monkey Ann Coulter then twitted: "Hilarious public meltdown. They're threatening to rape my daughter!"

To which Wilson responded, to Coulter: "Does Trump pay you more for anal?"

I don't know. Say what you will about the Democrats, but they are not—at least not yet—howling publicly about raping one another's daughters, and/or receiving anal treats from Hillary Clinton and/or Bernie Sanders.

And what this dust-up does prove, is that while twits are not fashioned to advance consciousness, they surely are adept in de-evolving it.

That was my hook to get into this piece—"politics"—but probably I should have left it out, because, in the sense of this piece, it's like tying ninety pounds of chain-mail round your waist, before running a race.

So we'll just forget all about it. And go here. To this song, below. Where the only sung lines are the last two, and they—those words—they would fit into a twit.

But it not possible to know those lines, without hearing all of what has come before. And, only once you've heard all of what has come before, will you know what those lines mean. But can never, in words, explain. Which is the highest sort of words of all.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWm4Imd72Kg]

Let's just get rid of the words all together. And go to a concerto composed by a cat.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeoT66v4EHg]

Maybe some people were brought to this music through twits. And, in that, the platform is redeemed.

That music has as its aching soul the same aching soul as the music below. Because—animal, mineral, vegetable, down to the ground, into the great wide open—we are all, aching souls, the same.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXpZsxQVscI]

I have stage fright when I face you.

I do not do this every day.

But I will improve before tomorrow. If I live that long.

The most important problem for me is the continual lack of time. We are always in an awful hurry and still we waste an incredible amount of time, for instance in front of the TV or in a car. While I do like some aspects of our "fast" civilization—I am fascinated with cosmic adventures, trips to the moon or Mars—and we do live in astounding times, still, here, in this music, we have to surrender ourselves to this other dimension of time. We have to slow down. Only then the sonority will be fantastic: the higher the music will go, the more distinctly it will sound. I dream of writing such tranquil music.

I do not want to compose anything that echoes the modern "rush"—the cell phones, the telephones and faxes. It has to be calm.

Life is too beautiful to be wasted in this way, by rushing things so much.

How should I explain it to you? Perhaps you should think about an elevator: you leave behind the basement of everyday life, filled with noises, distractions and anxieties, and you take the elevator up to the tenth floor, or even into the sky of timelessness. When you are in this music, time slows down, it is as if you were in heaven, it is like eternity.

Do you understand what I want to achieve here?

Total calm.

I do not usually engage in conducting and I do not know how to enchant you with my hand movements, but music carries me away and I may at some spots—and please forgive me if I do—make a wrong movement at a certain time.

But you know the score, and could play on.

So then do not look at me, at what I am doing.

But listen to each other.

Listen to what happens around you.

I am sorry for these mistakes.

But I think that we will be able to communicate soon.

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Comments

second cup of coffee read. Thanks, really enjoyed it. I'm an ancient mariner also (literally) but that wasn't the plan, of course - I wanted to be a spaceman:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4hAbdhht6Y]

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Big Al's picture

a coming financial collapse. I even saw some dates thrown out this morning, like Sept 23rd. We see these every year
but this year with the seeming confluence of events that is happening globally those warnings could be getting closer to the
mark. All the talks about bubbles and the world's reserve currency and the derivative "time bomb", as well as the
rigged stock markets appear to be a recipe for disaster. But like war and imperialism, it's all the rich's game. They own
the gameboard and direct the pieces and the rest of us, like in Greece, have to clean up the mess.
The thing that disturbs me is we go along like we have no choice, like this is just the way it is. Every country on earth is
in debt and all that debt is owed to the rich, one way or another. Why the hell should "we" pay back any of this debt? Just
cancel all of it and start over. But that won't happen, they won't destroy their game, their money train. They'll let a catastrophe
happen while scrambling to protect their own and the rest of us will have to suffer for their gain.
Who knows what will happen but the further along all this goes, something has to give. It's just all too corrupt and imbalanced.
It's like a virus that can't be stopped.

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joe shikspack's picture

@therealkarlmarx

hey, is that global capitalism i see over in the corner gnawing on it's arms?

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hecate's picture

@Mikhail"AnarchismUberAlles"Bakunin

Hey @therealkarlmarx: you fucked up! No state, voluntarily, is going to "wither away." Your "dictators": just more of the same ol' dog-dump!

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WSJ

The Dow industrials lost 530.94 points, or 3.1%, to close at 16459.75, putting it in correction territory, as defined by a 10% decline from a recent high. The S&P 500 dropped 64.84 points, or 3.2%, to close at 1970.89. The Nasdaq Composite fell 3.5%, or 171.45 points, to 4706.04.

The Dow’s more than 1,000-point drop this week was the largest weekly drop since the week ended Oct. 10, 2008.

There are a lot of warning signs out there, as I've written about recently.
However, this isn't 2008. At least not yet anyway.

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hecate's picture

just money, which doesn't exist: Real People will be fine.

In my universe, we don't have "financial markets," because they're filthy: avaricious assholes, leaning back on their lardbutts and numbnuts, employing their plump little fingers to extrude profit from the labor of others.

Just gambling, and a forever very sterile form of it, lacking the purity of a game like, say, roulette, where one is in contact, up close and personal, and in real time, with the universe of numbers, and any "money" is not at all the point.

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janis b's picture

I added a jazz piece. Thanks for the riffs.

[video:http://youtu.be/b4RgOoHKw_s]

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joe shikspack's picture

an excellent ramble! now off to breakfast.

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Great post Hecate. Love all the twitter handles. Twitter is expanding DM from 140 to 10,000. Now if they would just grow the twits a bit, it would be nice.

Just had to share this. Is this seriously cute or what?
https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/576008600579104768

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

hecate's picture

That's interesting about the direct-messaging expansion. But the Twit Lords are claiming they still will not allow public twits to feature enough characters to say something meaningful. Said Lords say they named their product "twitter" because "the definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,'" and that's what they wanted. So that's what we got. ; /

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You won't read this on DKos

LAST month, President Obama used his clemency power to reduce the sentences of 46 federal prisoners locked up on drug-related charges. But for the last six years, his administration has worked repeatedly behind the scenes to ensure that tens of thousands of poor people — disproportionately minorities — languish in federal prison on sentences declared by the courts, and even the president himself, to be illegal and unjustifiable.
...
A federal appellate court disagreed, and in June 2010, three judges set Mr. Gilbert free. The judges rejected the administration’s argument as a departure from basic fairness and explained that it simply could not be the law in America that a person had to serve a prison sentence that everyone admitted was illegal. Mr. Gilbert returned home and stayed out of trouble.

Here’s where it gets interesting. There are many people like Mr. Gilbert in America’s federal prisons — people whose sentences are now obviously illegal. Instead of rushing to ensure that all those thousands of men and women illegally imprisoned at taxpayer expense were set free, the Justice Department said that it did not want a rule that allowed other prisoners like Mr. Gilbert to retroactively challenge their now illegal sentences. If the “floodgates” were opened, too many others — mostly poor, mostly black — would have to be released. The Obama administration’s fear of the political ramifications of thousands of poor minority prisoners being released at once around the country, what Justice William J. Brennan Jr. once called “a fear of too much justice,” is the real justification.

In May 2011, the same court, led by a different group of judges, sided with the original judge, saying that the “finality” of sentences was too important a principle to allow prisoners to be released on a second rather than first petition, even if the prison sentence was illegal. A contrary rule would force the courts to hear the complaints of too many other prisoners. Mr. Gilbert was rearrested and sent back to prison to serve out his illegal sentence.

Judge James Hill, then an 87-year-old senior judge on the appellate court in Atlanta, wrote a passionate dissent. Judge Hill, a conservative who served in World War II and was appointed by Richard M. Nixon, called the decision “shocking” and declared that a “judicial system that values finality over justice is morally bankrupt.” Judge Hill wrote that the result was “urged by a department of the United States that calls itself, without a trace of irony, the Department of Justice.”

Judge Hill concluded: “The government hints that there are many others in Gilbert’s position — sitting in prison serving sentences that were illegally imposed. We used to call such systems ‘gulags.’ Now, apparently, we call them the United States.”

Please read the whole article. And an interview with the author.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

…the new site ShadowProof does an outstanding job focusing on the US Criminal Injustice System.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
hecate's picture

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Pluto's Republic's picture

Sadly, I expect the police state to continue to grow explosively in the cowardly US, and become increasingly inhumane and horrorifying. This, after all, is the quintessential American zeitgeist. So, I don't spend too much time there because it is dis-empowering and unutterably sad. It's like watching a live-stream of pets being killed. It breaks my brain.

However, I respect and admire the journalists who keep it real by publishing it.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

link

Nearly 7 million Americans have gone at least a year without making a payment on their federal student loans, a high level of default that suggests a widening swath of households are unable or unwilling to pay back their school debt.

Since most school loans are taxpayer funded these day, that mean the taxpayer is on the hook for tens of billions of dollars in debt that will never be repaid.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

Look how much it costs to pay teachers in public universities:

#coachlivesmatter

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
janis b's picture

It doesn't resemble the division in political preferences at all. It doesn't even relate to sports preferences between democratic and republican leanings. I guess sports preferences have their own unique identity, and maybe even more significance than anything else, unfortunately.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

I really don't know much about it. This is one of those cases where I was wangled by the visual data and I have a place in my brain that indexes that stuff. This one is filed in the mental compartment labeled "You can judge an entire society by what it prioritizes through public spending." Mostly, it screams mindless team sports, tribal warfare, nationalism, thoughtless competitiveness, elitism, and waste and corruption, of course.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
MarilynW's picture

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To thine own self be true.

janis b's picture

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Harbaugh will make a minimum of $40.1 million over the seven years; however, after next season, a deferred compensation package will be determined and figures to add millions more to the contract. Interim athletic director Jim Hackett said during Harbaugh's hiring news conference Dec. 30 that he would take into account market trends when determining deferred compensation. http://www.freep.com/story/sports/college/university-michigan/wolverines...

It ought to be criminal. I am no fan of U of M. While taking our tax dollars, they routinely deny "qualified" Michigan students entry in favor of higher out-of-state/country students. Michigan State University is every bit as good if not better in many areas including sports, but our state is so steeped in UofM awe it's all we hear.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Pluto's Republic's picture

…to Sports Talk Radio. For some reason, it engages me, although I have no idea which sport they are talking about or what kind of ball is used to play it. I'm approaching it like an anthropologist. Humans have been playing will balls since the beginnings of civilization. They love things that roll. There's an argument to be made that both the Mayan and Aztec civilizations existed for the sole purpose of playing with balls. AFAIK, that's the singular reason for human existence.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
hecate's picture

Scottish sheepherders started playing with their balls, and now golf has infected the entire planet like a hideous fungus.

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hecate's picture

occurs to me that sheepherders are responsible for many Great Wrongs. Besides golf, they are to blame for syphilis, because they could not stay out of their sheep, even when they had wives. Also, according to this fellow, they are why there exist horrific mutations like the slavery diaper and the Trump campaign.

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but according to the Good Book, none of us would be here if it wasn't for sheepherders doing a lot of begatting back in the day. Begatting and wars, that was their forte.

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hecate's picture

is all well and fine, but a man porking a sheep is not likely to begat much of anything. Except syphilis.

Then again, there does exist the theory that one of the parents of Rick Perry is a Holstein.

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I think you're on to something there.

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hecate's picture

clearly a farm animal.

He went to those glasses to try to disguise that fact. But it's not working.

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hockey fit into this theory, being played with a flat disc.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Big Al's picture

because all 19 of their Presidential candidates are against the Iran deal and some are openly saying the U.S.
should attack Iran, go to war. If it's so crazy, why aren't the democrats calling out their lies about Iran
wanting to build a nuke weapon. They aren't doing that, they're going with the same false narrative the only
difference being they're for the deal. But if they really wanted to insure there was no war, they'd tell the
truth to the public that Iran is no threat and is not going to build a fucking bomb.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

In this case, the peoples of Iran and the US win either way.

If congress votes against it, the other parties to the agreement just don't care. The agreement, with overwhelming support from members of the UN, is signed and it will still stand. China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and Germany are busy signing lucrative deals with Iran. The oil is flowing. Iran is fulfilling the agreement, allowing the IAEA to inspect its uranium enrichment facilities as it builds its nuclear power plants, which ends the burning of Iranian oil for electricity. (Iran's conventional weapons are not part of the agreement.)

The Petrodollar is dead. Nations are buying and selling oil in any currency they want to.

Dollar hegemony and economic terrorism are dead. The US can go sit in a corner and suck its thumb.

No one cares what the US Congress does. It's completely irrelevant in today's world. Indeed, the US Congress seems to have overlooked the fact that this is not a bilateral US-Iran treaty, which requires Congressional approval, but rather a multi-lateral agreement that has been endorsed by a Security Council vote, which does not require Congressional approval.

The US Congress are mere buffoons, putting on a display of stupid for all the world to see.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
smiley7's picture

Thanks for the wit, big smile here.
Been reading lots of tweets lately, most following politics and in summation, twitter conversations confirm that book from the eighties, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America.

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hecate's picture

There was a Survey, of some 20,000 twits, over a six-hour period, and it found that 40% were "pointless babble," 6% were "self-promotion," and 4% were "spam."

That's 50%.

"Conversation" totaled 38%, "pass-alongs" were 9%, and "news" came in at 3%.

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gulfgal98's picture

I always enjoy your writing hecate. You are so creative, erudite, and a wondrous weaver of words. Very witty today!

I also enjoyed the Catcerto. Biggrin

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

smiley7's picture

read you post about the Sept.meet-up in Asheville. If the creek doesn't rise again I should be in San Sebastian, Spain that weekend. Hate to let randallt and Dave down, they do good work.

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gulfgal98's picture

to hear you are going to miss it. I think I would rather be traveling too. Good I am still not sure if I am going to make it either as we may have company that weekend. Randallt and Dave have done a wonderful job with dkos Asheville.

BTW, I believe you are in this picture of the Asheville group, but I will not tell which one you are. Wink

group.jpg

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

smiley7's picture

pink shirt, above the skull and bones. That was a great meet-up; thanks for the memory, GG.

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Sir John Falstaff in that pic, my friend.

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smiley7's picture

Why, there is it: come sing me a bawdy song; make
me merry. I was as virtuously given as a gentleman
need to be; virtuous enough; swore little; diced not
above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house once
in a quarter--of an hour; paid money that I
borrowed, three of four times; lived well and in
good compass: and now I live out of all order, out
of all compass.

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one of my favorite characters.

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janis b's picture

Shakespeare created a kind of English Bacchus at a time when every kind of fruit or grain that could be made into a beverage was drunk in vast quantities; and sack, which was Falstaff's native element, was both strong and sweet. Falstaff is saved by his humour and his genius; he lies, steals, boasts, and takes to his legs in time of peril, with such superb consistency and in such unfailing good spirits that we are captivated by his vitality. It would be as absurd to apply ethical standards to him as to Silenus or Bacchus; he is a creature of the elemental forces; a personification of the vitality which is in bread and wine; a satyr become human, but moving buoyantly and joyfully in an unmoral world. And yet the touch of the ethical law is on him; he is not a corrupter by intention, and he is without malice; but as old age brings its searching revelation of essential characteristics, his humour broadens into coarseness, his buoyant animalism degenerates into lust; and he is saved from contempt at the end by one of those exquisite touches with which the great-hearted Poet loves to soften and humanize degeneration.

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/henryiv/2kh4charactersfalstaff.html

But what's the dogs name Wink

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gulfgal98's picture

Of course, it is me in the front row with the purple fleece vest. It was a weird day because it was cold and yet I got a sunburn too. Blum 3

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

gulfgal98's picture

You came late and I left early, but dkos Asheville is a very cool bunch of people. I am standing between Joieau and DawnN who is an amazing activist. She was working the Sanders speech in SC as a volunteer.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

hecate's picture

I have a cat who's learning the piano. When he's ready, maybe I'll twit him! ; )

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gulfgal98's picture

Lol

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

hecate's picture

is called Twitter, then what you pump out is a twit. Not a tweet. If it were to be a tweet, then it would be called Tweeter.

Just another facet of the thing that makes me need Medicine. ; /

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hecate's picture

are in a frenzy because Elizabeth Warren dropped by Joe Biden's place. They think this means Joe is gonna run for president. I think Joe and Liz are just gettin' jiggy wit it, and people should leave them alone.

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I would have wanted Hillary. If Warren runs with him, I still won't support him. If she screws Bernie, that will put her character and trustworthiness on a par with Hillary. If Elizabeth would have stepped up, I don't believe for a minute that Bernie would have run. Can he be President? Yes. Does he want to be President? Only if he has to. Trump is out there twitting Biggrin "if Bernie can't defend his mic, how can he defend America?". If BLM screws over him and the best chance we've had in the last 30 years, I will not be happy.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

gulfgal98's picture

Biden is Hillary with a nicer demeanor. If Warren runs with him, she is simply another corporatist.

I am with Bernie all the way. And if he does not win the nomination, then I will probably vote third party. But I know that I will not vote Hilary or Joe. I am done with that.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Pluto's Republic's picture

…and for some reason I thought of you. Maybe because I know you probably would understand his two-page analysis better that I could, since I really have not been engaged in domestic politics. And, you walk the talk.

In any event, Democratic Blues was published at Politico today, and it was filled with electoral stats, which do interest me. It did, however, contain a number of passages that were illuminating to me, especially this one:

Taken as a whole, these six years have been almost historically awful for Democrats. You have to go back to the Great Depression and the Watergate years to find so dramatic a reversal of fortunes for a party. And this time, there’s neither a Great Depression nor a criminal conspiracy in the White House to explain what has happened.

Some of the party’s national erosion may well have been inevitable. The transformation of the South from a one-party Democratic region to a (virtual) one-party Republican region accounts for some of the losses to the Democratic ranks. That 2010 election gave Republicans in nine states control over redistricting, which gave them more seats in the U.S. House and state legislatures four years later. And the dramatic fallout in support from white working-class voters can be explained, in some progressives’ eyes, by a failure to address the plight of what was once the party’s base.

“These voters,” pollster Stan Greenberg wrote recently in the Washington Monthly, “are open to an expansive Democratic economic agenda — to more benefits for child care and higher education, to tax hikes on the wealthy, to investment in infrastructure spending, and to economic policies that lead employers to boost salaries for middle- and working-class Americans, especially women. Yet they are only ready to listen when they think that Democrats understand their deeply held belief that politics has been corrupted and government has failed. Championing reform of government and the political process is the price of admission with these voters.”

Whatever the explanations, there is an unsettling reality for Democrats: While they may warm themselves over presidential prospects—demographic shifts and a Republican Party deeply at war with itself and consumed by a chaotic primary highlighted by the debate earlier this month, starring Donald Trump at the center of the stage—the weather where so much of our politics and policies will be shaped looks distinctly chiller.

“We are fooling ourselves,” says one well-placed Democratic operative, “if we think we can advance a progressive agenda in Washington, if half the Congress and half the states are controlled by a Republican Party enthusiastically working to undo every trace of progressive policy.”

::

Norm Ornstein, who’s been observing Washington from his perch at the American Enterprise Institute for decades adds, “the failure early on to haul at least one banker into court helped to trigger the populist uprising.”

Only Sanders and Trump are running on "complete government reform" — the only issue that will elicit voter turnout.

And, this is likely the Key to the 2016 White House. (That is… the Key in a cosmos where the US government is not corporate-owned, because in that case the final ballot can only read "Bush vs Clinton.")

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

I will vote for Bernie or third party, or I won't vote for office of the President. After Bill and Obama, I'm done.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon