The utter hopelessness

Looking around at how power, money, and corporations rule, particularly as they continue to derail and dismantle this medical care legislation process, is depressing.

Somehow, it looks like Mitt Romney got elected President in 2008, and we will soon have a Massachussets-style mandated private insurance system, with only cosmetic “cost controls” which will increase profits for the insurance mega-corporations, and continue to raise costs for citizens to pay, under pain of fine or imprisonment– a captive market.

Power and money always win. There is no hope. Politics, like economics and life in general, is a game in which you cannot win, you cannot break even, and you cannot quit. You can only lose.

Sounds like it needs a community organizer

Fascinating analysis of Afghanistan from a guy who was on the ground toting a rifle there for a couple years:

This is the way you win a counterinsurgency war. One village at a time. It’s fucking hard. The shortest, most glib way to describe it is to say that we want to show the people that we offer a better life than the other guys do.

Wow, sounds like a grassroots political campaign. Interesting strategy, and one that lends itself to a peaceful outcome.

Most of the Afghans I met couldn’t care less who was the president of Afghanistan. It has no bearing on their lives. The level of governance that actually affects people’s lives is at the district and provincial level. That’s where things get done.

Wow, sounds like it needs a community organizer, and someone who knows how to do grassroots, local organizing. Good thing we’ve got one as commander in chief.

Things that make me laugh to tearful incoherence

Without doubt Hot Chicks with Douchebags.

I laugh, I cry, consistently, uncontrollably, every time.

I know not why. I just do. Nothing cracks me up so consistently.

Possibly because I grew up with those douchebags (suburban Noo Yawk, a town that was 90% Italian-American, mostly first-generation).

Possibly because high school was an ordeal of spectacularly gorgeous girls, clinging to spectacular douchebags, just like the website.

And the comments. Lo, the comments are often funnier than the pictures. The wit, the anguish. And the concept of the pictures: the juxtaposition of incredible sexiness and unspeakably disgusting douchiness; it’s like a speedball, an icy/hot.

Although the pictures, just some of these facial expressions, is enough….

I don’t actually know. I love this website. Just love it. Never fails to brighten my day.

Grayson and Franken

I want Alan Grayson as Speaker of the House, and Al Franken as Senate Majority Leader.

That is all.

Failed

I lived in New York when New York City went bankrupt in the late 1970’s. It wasn’t that much of a surprise; the city had been in a steep decline for a long time.

Now I’m living in California as it too becomes bankrupt. Also not much of a surprise.

I’d move elsewhere, but I suspect the whole USA may be going that way too.

Although, who knows, if we get health care reform passed, with a public option, we may be able to pull this one out of the fire, including California too. I’d sure like that.

Umm, no.

Hah hah hah, silly Dropbox.

You want me to run a proprietary, closed-source daemon on my Linux box? Are you high?

No. Fucking. Way. Go to hell and do not come back.

Major late-80’s flashback

Somewhat unintentionally, I produced a blackened fish dish for dinner last night, and had a sudden and very vivid flashback to the late 80’s.

Decorations done with all-black furniture.

Nagel prints!

Ferns!

Blackened everything. Shittake mushrooms. Shitty synth-pop (Phil Collins. George Michael). Trevor Horn and Hugh Pagdham overproductions.

Young Republicans. Bret Easton Ellis.

Skinny ties. Striped shirts with white collars. Suspenders.

Teal.

Bleah.

Odd how a food preparation (which actually didn’t taste bad at all) can invoke a whole era.

Facebook sanity saver

I finally figured out how to hide updates in Facebook (it’s a hidden option, you have to mouse over the right corner of an update to see it!).

Awesome. Now that I can block useless updates from ex-girlfriends, former cow-orkers, and people I hardly know or haven’t seen in 20 years, FB is marginally useful. There are a few work-related posters whose updates provide valuable info from time to time, and now I can find them.

If only there were a way to block every stupid quiz at once, instead of one at a time, that’d be even better.

Double Facepalm

When the fail is so strong, one Facepalm ain’t enough

Via religulous stupidity, of course.

Teabaggers. I love saying that.

Of all the silly trends in politics over the past 30 years that I’ve been paying attention to it, nothing has amused me so reliably and continuously, as the use of the term “teabagging” and “teabaggers” in a political context.

It’s so evocative. It’s so fucking funny. A bunch of wingnuts, waving teabags around and shouting incoherently about something or another. Never fails to put a smile on my face, or pull a chortle from my lips.

Plus, it’s a euphemism for sucking testicles. Hard to top that for pure comedy value.

Best yet, it puts it all in perspective. Without knowing them as “teabaggers”, I’d be furiously angry– they’ve been ruining my country for 30 years–, or absoulutely terrified– a lot of them are armed. But, imaging them dangling teabags around, or dipping them in and out fo their mouths, makes the whole thing comedy gold.

I can’t be angry at the teabaggers, or be afraid of them. They’re teabaggers! OK, next3