As I watched the BBC cover the inauguration live from DC this morning (American TV news makes me want to cut myself), a few clear, cold thoughts came to mind:
1. The national capital/capitol should rotate so that the great largesse of the bureaucrats (here’s one of many articles on the topic of being fat and happy in DC) can be spread around a bit. Why not move the seat of this great government to Stockton one year, Detroit the next, Lubbock the year after that, etc.? Or just pick DC up and move it to LA, where the weather is warm and friends are close.
2. The kindest thing I can think is that people are delusional. The BBC is sending out reporters to do interviews with the common folk, and these people, naturally, place great hope in the plutocratic, oligarchic, narcissistic agenda of the American political elite, the very elite who are encouraged and promoted by the likes of Tomasky and Dionne and Marcus and Robinson…
3. Being a bit cynical and disbelieving is not always the most pleasant thing in the world, but fuck it; extrajudicial everything and Jon Corzine and HSBC are the realities of American power.
4. The Chuck Schumers and Joe Bidens of the world engender something akin to despair in a sensible person.
5. Steeled myself and switched to CNN for the imagery (while muting the halfwits in CNN’s employ). Jimmy Carter looks fucking great for a guy pushing 90.
6. There really is, still, something remarkable about Barack Obama and his being elected twice.
7. Hope springs, if not eternal, from time to time, not unlike the images, horrifying and beautiful, of one’s youth.
8. I can only watch a few minutes of that shit. Would rather discuss Ben Roethlisberger’s greatness with a drunken, overweight Steelers fan who sprays when he talks.
Took one for the team, eh Bim? I didn’t watch any of it or read any of the coverage. Couldn’t give less of a shit. Your #2 up there is a big reason, i’d say.
As for politics these days, i have zero interest in Obama, Democrats, Republicans, congressional wranglings, etc. I find the only things that interest me are local and domestic level issues, sort of like the drug war stuff we’re hassling over on the other thread. I have a post i want to do on that sometime soon if i get my hand out of my butt.
Which reminds me, i think our vote on same-sex marriage goes to the legislature today.
I tried to read a transcript of Obama’s speech, but couldn’t make it all the way through.
I tried to read various pundit’s evaluations of that very speech, but couldn’t make it through those either.
I did make it all the way through that poem written by someone whose name I forget, and was none the more inspired for having done so.
Agree completely about enablers like Dionne and Tomasky, who now seems to have his sights set on being another talking head on the teevee.
Nice (not the right word, but you know what I mean) post, Bim.
From my rather irregular visits to his TDB blog, I get that feeling too.
gryff
Bluth said at one time that he thought that’s what MT had his sights on, but wasn’t really prime tv material. That may have been back in the days of newborn exhaustion. See what happens.
He also may need to find another gig if TDB tanks along with Newsweek.
Same sex marriage bill passed the house comittee here and will be sent to the house to vote on. Expected to pass there, senate a bit iffier. Fingers crossed that they can get at least one thing right here.
http://news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/2013/01/house-committee-sends-same-sex-marriage-bill-to-house-floor.html
Pornstar and gunnison –
Thanks very much!
Yeah, it was painful viewing. And the poem was pretty bad, too. But, in fairness to Blanco, I think the political types got to pick between 2 or 3. Maybe the rejects were less like an inspirational poster you’d find in the room of an 11-year-old. (“I know I’m somebody ’cause God don’t make no junk!!”)
Tomasky’ll do fine. He can go write promotional shit for BP or HSBC if things don’t pan out at the DB.
I love you Bim.
Or then again, he can be a PR guy for the Obama administration DOJ in support of drone strike spin, and jailing potheads in legal weed states.
Hah!
Or lend a helping hand (for remuneration, of course) to Lance Armstrong or the Archdiocese of LA…
Okay, okay, I’ll stop. You shouldn’t encourage me, Amy! (But thank you…)
Food stamp marketing in Canada. They may not have run any ads there yet.
Perhaps he can shill for those fuckwits who are proposing building a $10 billion nuclear reactor to generate the power necessary to extract the oil shale up in Canada.
You read that right, build a nuclear powerplant to extract oil from shale.
Oooh, I know, then let’s use the oil to generate electricity! What could possibly go wrong?
a $10 billion nuclear reactor to generate the power necessary to extract the oil shale up in Canada
Couldn’t make that up. I couldn’t, at least.
Well, maybe, if pressed.
“A federal appeals court Tuesday rejected a petition to reclassify marijuana from its current federal status as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use”.
I couldn’t make that up though – unless I was taking the piss out of an entire community – my creative juices seem to begin to flow when I enter Greenwaldistan.
Maybe that’s why my gran, when she recognized this trait of mine, labeled me a ‘sneaky liddle ding’.
But gunny, that reactor makes perfect sense! The oil companies own the government, so they get the government to get the taxpayers to subsidize the mining of the oil and the stripping it off the sand) in order that the finished product will be cheap enough to sell it to those same taxpayers. If they don’t get the taxpayers to foot the bill for the electricity, then the oil is going to cost too much, and nobody wants that, right?
Besides, we have it on very good authority that mining the tar sands means game over for climate change, and that’s got to be good. Think how much money we can make (I mean save) if we don’t have to worry about climate change. Which, if we go ahead and mine the tar sands, we don’t.
Can’t you guys think straight?
Heh heh
Yeah, that’s right.
I’ve had this discussion a few times before, in the context of “free markets”, with a number of people, tommydog particularly.
Just like right now, of course, we’re paying $3.50 or so at the pump for gasoline, and another godknows how much on the installment plan through taxation to pay the navy to keep the Straits of Hormuz open and all the rest of it.
Privatize the profits, socialize the costs.
Plus ça change, etc, eh?
Well gunny, I picked up this little piece of info (no idea of the veracity) over at HuffPo :
Obama’s Climate Change Promise: Procurement Could Offer Solution
That is a little bit more than “$3.50 or so at the pump”
cheers,
gryff
One symptom of narcissism (also a function of sycophancy) is missing the point of everything. They’ve all read it, talked about it…and wondered what it means for them (the aforementioned journalists and politicians, that is):
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
- William Carlos Williams