Billmon:
The piglets must assume that no matter how bad the juxtaposition of the two items above may look in June, by November it will just be another half-remembered trivia question
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June 21, 2006
WB: The Wages of Sin
Comments
The juxtaposition of these two events was neither accidental or unavoidable. It was a deliberate act by the elite’s monkeys to be as in your face as possible in order to reinforce the feelings of powerlessness that we see reflected everyday in the opinions and demeanour of amerikans.
The rethugs are safe from any blowback from this wilful smashing of a 4 x 2 across the heads of amerikan voters. I mean it’s not as if the other half of the party, the demopublicans, in an act of solidarity with the nation’s poorest, voted against the pay rise, is it?
Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 21 2006 4:32 utc | 1
One word. Diebold. But it is amazing what they do day in day out. But you got it right with the corporate media. That is definitely their ace in the hole.
Posted by: Howd | Jun 21 2006 4:56 utc | 2
hah! diebold . . as if the outcome of an election could/would/should make difference. Dream on.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 21 2006 5:03 utc | 3
Billmon: “But what it really indicates, I think, is the complete confidence the GOP majority now places in the chronic amnesia of the American voter — and the willingness of the corporate media complex (particularly its broadcast arm) to avoid doing or saying anything that would jog the patient’s memory, at least when doing so might directly damage the interests of a powerful business constituency.”
Billmon hit the nail on the head again. The whole bunch are arrogant little bastards. I would call them whores, but they are worst than whores – whores just sell their bodies, these people sell their souls. Yet Americans keep buying.
Memory is one thing. This ain’t memory. What’s been taken is people’s belief in the government to affect their lives. This news will not be greeted, even by those who see it, with brief outrage to be forgotten by the next shiny object the White House rolls out. Rather, the few who manage to get to page c23 of their newspapers will shrug their shoulders and say “well, duh.”
Does anyone honestly expect a relevant increase in the minumum wage?
Posted by: Rowan | Jun 21 2006 5:31 utc | 5
Amen and a woman Rick Happ, I’ve always been partial to the epithet, Coin-operated Con-gress for quite a while now.
Jon Schwarz has an important lesson about economics that I thought might go well with this picture. It concerns a Harvard professor who was caught stealing horse manure — a Harvard economics professor, which is really too beautiful not to celebrate. The only thing better would be the same tale, except with a University of Chicago economics professor. For chutzpah beyond the call, I’d have to go with a self-made defense contractor exployee, a manager perhaps, lecturing Kevin Carson on the selfishness and inutility of self-reliance.
There are some ad hominems that are just so good, so true, that to let them slide approaches the criminal.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 21 2006 5:36 utc | 6
Uncle $cam ,
Heh, good lesson by Jon there! Thanks for the links. It’s late here so I’ll read the Klassen homesteading one tomorrow.
Rowan | Jun 21, 2006 1:31:21 AM | 5
North Carolina House and Senate just passed a law raising minimum wage. Of course it was only for 1 dollar/hr. and somewhat relevant.
Local governments I can see – San Francisco recently brought its up to $9/hr. I was speaking of the national government.
Posted by: Rowan | Jun 21 2006 6:36 utc | 9
I like the Billmon’s old name for our elected reps, how did it go: Solon of the Peoples’ Deputies? Please refresh. I’ll be home next week and I want to remember the phrase that causes the most consternation.
Posted by: christofay | Jun 21 2006 7:38 utc | 10
What is it called when one sin, covers, nay, obliterates another?
New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC)
In a new approach to telling stories from the front lines of post-Katrina New Orleans, The New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC) is producing a one-hour documentary called The Drive. It’s an extensie driving tour through four of New Orleans’ most devastated neighborhoods supported with maps, interviews and an original score by Emmy nominated composer, Gil Talmi. The full version of segment one is available on You Tube (keyword: NOVACDOC).
via youtube
Sixteen and on the run from home
Found a job in Times Square
Working Live S&M shows
Twenty-five bucks (a fuck)
And John’s a happy man
She wipes the filth away
And it’s back on the streets again
Spreading the disease
Everybody needs
But no one wants to see
Father William saved her from the streets
She drank the lifeblood from the saviour’s feet
She’s Sister Mary now, eyes as cold as ice
He takes her once a week
On the alter like a sacrifice
Spreading the disease
Everybody needs
But no one wants to see
Religion and sex are powerplays
Manipulate the people for the money they pay
Selling skin, selling God
The numbers look the same on their credit cards
Politicians say no to drugs
While we pay for wars in South America
Fighting fire with empty words
While the banks get fat
And the poor stay poor
And the rich get rich
And the cops get paid
To look away
As the one percent rules America
Spreading the disease
Everybody needs
But no one wants to see
The way society
Keeps spreading the disease
~Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 21 2006 10:50 utc | 11
ha. and someone earlier said that they thought the u.s. would never do genocide. 😉
Posted by: b real | Jun 21 2006 14:23 utc | 12
Yep, Diebold.
Regardless, this November I will vote for the obscurest party candidates on the ballot for what good it will do. It’s all I got left to say to them. They don’t pay any attention to my phone calls or letters. And I don’t have the cash required to get their attention.
Posted by: gylangirl | Jun 22 2006 0:07 utc | 13
I hear ya gylangirl, I’m w/mono on this, nothing else matters until the Diebold problem is solved.
(btw where is, Monolycus, Malooga, DM Groucho and others lately?) have they secrectly gotten “National Security” letters?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 22 2006 0:19 utc | 14
i recieved some ‘hey everybody let’s all be hopeful’ message this morning in my in box from the fdl action group, roots project
a lot of dicussion about election reform takes on this weird defeatist dynamic, when we have the tools at our disposal to promote change.
did they ever get an earful from me.” DON’T CALL ME WEIRD MF (ok, i didn’t use the mf or scream) what’s weird is the way we were shut out and called tin hat and no one from our own party came forward to FRIGGIN DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT”
put me down in the colum of ‘most important issue’
Posted by: annie | Jun 22 2006 1:13 utc | 15
“accumulation of misery, corresponding to the accumulation of capital”
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 22 2006 1:30 utc | 16
@Unca
“(btw where is, Monolycus, Malooga, DM Groucho and others lately?) have they secrectly gotten “National Security” letters?”
Been exhausted from work lately, I can’t speak for the others. I’ve been peeking in here every few days to play catch up, but I haven’t had the time or energy to post much.
Thanks for the shout out, though. I take concern as a kindness.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 22 2006 3:22 utc | 17
Oh, and Unca, I don’t want to hijack this thread, but somewhere or other recently you outlined Operation Broken Pipe. I wanted to confirm to you that many of my regular pathways have been 404’d in this past week as well. It wouldn’t seem to be your imagination.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 22 2006 3:41 utc | 18
Maybe I was wrong. Headline on Yahoo News:
GOP-run Senate kills minimum wage increase (AP)
Posted by: Rowan | Jun 22 2006 6:31 utc | 19
@Monolycus – 404 is error code the error code the webserver sends to your browser.
10.4.5 404 Not Found
The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.
It’s not a network problem. To check major network problems one can use the Internet Traffic Report. Seems clean right now and I surf a bit on the net and I haven´t had any recent problems.
@Bernhard
I know, I know, and it serves me right for speaking colloquially. I was using “404” in the hip and fashionable (say, last year) sense (“Dude, that guy is totally 404. Hasn’t got a clue” or “Is there any of that pizza left in the ‘fridge? Sorry, man. We’re 404”). No, strictly speaking, I haven’t received any broken pipe error messages.
Anyway, even if ten per cent or so of my bookmarks have suddenly failed to load, MoA is still coming in loud and clear*.
*Idiomatic speech. I don’t get any sound effects from this page at all. Thankfully.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 22 2006 14:03 utc | 21
Just listening to the show after Democracy Now –which is always damn good– entitled the Morning show on kpfa.org and the hosts are talking about a faction of the rethugs whom are being proactive in sabotaging the up coming voting Rights Act they postponed the vote and are trying to ditch it…. you can listen at kpka.org
The Morning Show is a locally produced public affairs program, covering Bay Area, California, National, and International news, as well as arts and culture.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 22 2006 14:07 utc | 22
b, the Internet Traffic Report. Will not show the Pentagon comprehensive strategy for taking over the internet and controlling the free flow of information.
Lest ye forget: The Pentagon’s War on the Internet
http://cryptome.org/io-roadmap.htm has the declassified doc…
And my mention of this side topic is that Blogger, typepad and others have been curiously “down” and lagging big time on many, many pages I view. Internal sever error’s, freezing, and broken pipes, locked out of archive links, rss feeds broken, server’s timing out, choked banwitdth problems etc…
Also see: Is the NSA spying on U.S. Internet traffic?
I know several webmasters, bloggers and network people that have been begging blogger to respond to no avail.
Too many people fail to recognize that the NAPs are overseen by the USG, so they could be shut down at any time.
P.S. some of my friends haven’t been able to use blogger and others in almost two weeks…
P.s.s. That not even mentioning the Professional trolls*.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 22 2006 14:34 utc | 23
how would the pentagon even be able to contemplate shutting down the internet given the complete integration of the commercial, financial, heck… practically every single industry nowadays, into the electronic marketplace/medium? i just don’t see it happening. even trying to implement draconian restrictions or surcharges, which would inevitably cut into profit margins, would have CEOs on the horn quicker than a quantum switch action.
Posted by: b real | Jun 22 2006 14:56 utc | 24
**NEWS FLASH JUST IN**
President Cheney plans to announce tomorrow the suspension of US mid-term elections in November. Instead the US government will hold an all-day televised extravaganza, wherein Detroit muscle cars driven by Republican Senators, will execute so-called high-speed “drifting” manuevers within a circular concourse, each fantasy car equipped with a stainless cheese grater, and applied by the drifting and dueling mid-term Senators to a mammoth block of USDA surplus cheese substitute.
The accumulated piles of grated cheese will determine who automatically returns to Congress, and who has to ‘face the music’ with their voter district, in a run-off election with themselves.
The mountain of grated cheese will be donated to single-parent families who can’t afford a TV to watch this incredible media extravaganza!
Posted by: Peristroika Shalom | Jun 23 2006 5:23 utc | 25
b real – it be real simple. The NSA is parked in every telephone and cable complex in America today. They are “hot wired” into the phone systems and the Internet. Knowing the ISP’s and IP addresses of every blog site on the Internet, (and every poster for that matter), it would be simple to introduce ‘white noise’, which would subtley affect ‘hand shakes’ in message upload and download, and slow undesirable blogs to a crawl, all without any sign of “deliberate malicious intent”. Hey, it’s just static.
Or … it’s ISS QSO’s!
http://www.southgatearc.org/bands/10metres/june2006/images/iss.gif
I mean, how the heck do we really know what they’re doing up there, looking down on US?
Posted by: White Noys | Jun 23 2006 5:38 utc | 26