brainiac conspiracy

Saturday Night Music Blogging

Because blogging has been exceedingly lame today since I slept in this morning, and spent a couple of hours finishing my taxes in the afternoon. I owe some money to the Feds but I'm not mailing them anything because "freedom" means being able to decide which laws I want to obey.

---Baron V

Vo-Tech Education

I'm old enough to remember when the public-school curriculum here in the Marxist dystopia included vocational training: Drafting, wood shop, metal shop, auto shop, agriculture, etc. It started in middle school (where it was mandatory for boys), and continued through high school, where you could take the courses as electives. My own favorite of these was print shop, where we used to print the school newspaper, and it probably helps to explain---a little---how I ended up working the dead-tree business. I realize that public-school students can never have nice things anymore because Michelle Rhee and her band of privatizing grifters, but it might not be bad idea if policymakers would reconsider. Shop class-related program activities have proven effective elsewhere---they might work here again, too.

---Baron V

Everything's Related

If there's a time that future historians will point to as the moment the American Experiment began its irreversible decline, I am guessing it will probably be around the year that we invaded a sovereign nation under false pretenses, slaughtered tens of thousands of people for no reason whatsoever, instituted a regime of torture on many innocent people, made no attempt to atone for it, and suffered no penalty for it after the fact. I don't want to get too otherworldly here, but it sure seems that ever since Iraq, the nation has been visited by an epidemic of brutality---mass shootings, police beatings, prisoner abuse, etc.---and I don't think that these are entirely unrelated events. I think they speak to a coarsening of the national psyche that has occurred since Iraq, and I fear it is likely to get worse until there is an honest accounting of how we got there, and offer to make amends for our crimes. A thriving liberal democracy cannot endure when a culture of state-sanctioned violence is allowed to metastasize.

---Baron V

Friday Night Music Blogging

Out for the evening doing cool stuff, so back at you in the morning.

---Baron V

Nothing We Won't Do to Help Them

I don't know if this article is true or if it's just another attempt by some horrible people in our foreign-policy establishment to gin up another war in central Asia, but either way, it disabuses us of the notion that the people who govern us are, in the aggregate, anything other than a protection racket for a bunch of incompetently managed banks. Glad we're clear on that.

---Baron V

Keeping Us Safe

The people who govern us never cease to remind us that protecting us against the threat of cyber-terror is Job 1 for them. Notwithstanding all those times when, you know, it isn't.

I am guessing we know where Heartbleed originated, and it wasn't with some hipster in Silicon Beach.

---Baron V

Light Blogging Day

Wrapping up tax matters today. My tab doesn't look too brutal this year.

---Baron V

Demystifying

Our time in a single sentence: A handful of people in this country have too much money, and tens of millions of people have no money at all. You can probably run a civil society this way, but to keep the unwashed masses fearful and meek, it will probably have to be at the point of a gun. We're getting there!

---Baron V

Moral Authority

Riffing off a theme from yesterday, the people who govern us have not only abdicated their moral authority on the global stage by countenancing torture, they have lost any semblance of moral authority they might have once had over the millions of Americans whom they've abandoned to lives of poverty and despair. It's great to talk about raising the minimum wage, but talk doesn't pay the rent!

---Baron V

Thursday Night Music Blogging

Because there is a time to be grumpy and indignant---which we're quite adept at around here---and a time to be serene. So tonight, a change of pace for sanity's sake.

---Baron V

Moral Authority

As long as we keep evading responsibility for this shit, our nation will have none:

[T]he August 2002 Justice Department legal memo authorized sleep deprivation for Abu Zubaydah for 11 consecutive days, but Mitchell kept him awake far longer, the U.S. officials said, citing classified CIA cables. Abu Zubaydah was stripped naked, strapped into a chair and doused with cold water to keep him awake. He was then interrogated and asked what he knew, at which point, his attorney told Al Jazeera, Abu Zubaydah was “psychotic” and would have admitted to anything.

Additionally, the report allegedly says that Abu Zubaydah was stuffed into a pet crate (the type used to transport dogs on airplanes) over the course of two weeks and routinely passed out, was shackled by his wrists to the ceiling of his cell and subjected to an endless loop of loud music. One former interrogator briefed about Abu Zubaydah’s interrogations from May to July 2002 told Al Jazeera that the music used to batter the detainee’s senses was by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

If you had asked me five years ago if the incoming administration would simply turn its back and abjectly ignore the depravities of people who committed horrible crimes in our name, I'd have said you were crazy, that they'd at least make some symbolic gesture towards human decency: a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, perhaps. The fact that they haven't even discussed this and have actively run interference for the torturers is, well, crossing over into "evil" territory, much as it pains me to say it.

---Baron V

Careful What You Wish For

Following up from a few minutes ago, our chickens just might be coming home to roost.

----Baron V

Rooting for a Financial Disaster

It wouldn't be pleasant, but it might buy us a few more years.

What I mean is, if we had a Second Great Depression with 25-percent unemployment, aggregate economic demand would plummet, as would the production of goods and services---and with it, we'd see a steep decline in the demand for fossil fuels. No purpose in drilling for oil if people aren't driving their cars, and there's point in fracking if people can't pay their utility bills. Like I said, not a cheery scenario, but that very well might be what it will take to save the planet, if it can still be saved at all.

---Baron V

General Strikes

I've been lobbying for them for years. Guess the idea's catching on!

To the point, if we can't repatriate all of the wealth the kleptocrats have stolen from us, we can at least refuse to participate in their economy and to withhold what's left of our money from them for as long as humanly possible. This won't be easy but it can be done. Need groceries? Find a local co-op or farmer's market, and fuck Wal-Mart. Need clothes? Hit the thrift store, not the department store. Need to travel? Take the bus or carpool, and leave your car in the garage. Like I said, it can be done, but several millions of wage-earners will need to agree as one that they're going to take, oh I dunno, let's say a month off of work. Again, not easy---and even a bit scary, given high unemployment---but it can be accomplished via strike funds, food banks, etc. This will need to be accompanied by nonviolent mass demonstrations that disrupt the plutocrats' ability to conduct commerce by blocking access to ports and railways, to name only two examples. The oligarchs need us a lot more than they or their benefactors in our government realize, and I suspect we won't see any significant movement toward greater economic equality in this country until we see some socially convulsive mass mobilization that hits them squarely in their most sensitive spot---their wallets. They've taken the power of the ballot from us---what other choice do we have absent violence?

---Baron V

We Need More Snowdens

In the absence of a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, it's the best we can hope for.

Snark aside, this report needs to be released in full before the White House can take a black Sharpie to it. History demands it, and in the name of human morality, we should too. We paid for this shit, after all!

---Baron V

Bad Policy

Also too, bad politics:

Democratic Sens. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Warner of Virginia, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska, who all face tight races this November, signed the letter, which urges Mr. Obama to put in place an explicit timeline to decide on the project and to make a final decision by May 31 [...]

The letter, organized by Ms. Landrieu, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, also included Democratic Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Montana’s Jon Tester and John Walsh.

Your humble blogger is willing to bet dollars to donuts here that every one of these awful people who is up for reelection this year will lose. Run as a Democrat, at least Democrats will vote for you. Run away from Team Democrat, why should anyone vote for you? It's not like we haven't seen this before . . . but thanks for reminding me again why I left the party.

---Baron V

What It Means

Our labor market is broken, and policymakers helped make it that way.

Millions of our fellow citizens have been driven out of full-time work and forced into jobs that come with no benefits and which don't even allow them to support themselves. This is simply unacceptable as a matter of public policy or of basic human morality.

We need a complete and utter paradigm shift in Washington. I invite you to join me in making it happen.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Dear Jeff Bezos,

Can you make sure that Ruth Marcus is only making 77 percent of what E.J. Dionne makes?

Thanks if you can help! Your pal,

---Baron V

Hump Night Music Blogging

Because once again, it's off to the Rodent Room, so see you all tomorrow.

---Baron V

Unpaid Internships Are Also Frequently Illegal

If only there was an agency of government that could curb the most rampant abuses.

---Baron V