Supper

The Lamb began as a whole rack that I trimmed and Frenched, the spuds are Parmesian, and the Corn lime cilantro. I fear that the Lamb is over.

Drive, She Said

Enjoy the weekend:



Many more riding and singing covers over to the youtube.

Bird is The Word

According to some on the internets and elsewhere a photo that may or may not be Trayvon Martin flipping the bird is evidence of his essential thuggery and proof that Zimmerman shot a kid who had it coming. Leaving aside the fact that all Zimmerman knew about Martin was that he was black, here's videographic evidence that of white thuggery:



What exactly does this mean? Not really sure, but one assumes that, at least in part, it proves that immature Americans enjoy flipping people off.

Post Racial

So maybe she might have been white and the hospital and cops would have done the same; however, the fact of the matter is she was black and she was hauled off to die in cell. Not, of course, that Trayvon Martin  was killed because he was black but rather because he was armed with skittles and ice tea.

We could, if the louts would let us, discuss the meaning of and how to fix these disasters because things are only going to get better if we take seriously the underlying problems.

I Have No Idea What They're Saying

The Pogues:



I've no idea what they're saying but McGowan in his yfronts is someting or another:

Chickens Roosting

Read this about The Hunger Games Rue/Thresh contretemps that emphasizes the relationship between white and innocence. Then watch this:



Then spend an hour or so thinking about the world view in which a small 17 year black American armed with Skittles and an ice tea is shot dead because he looked "guilty." Was it, per Geraldo, the hooded sweatshirt? or was it a persistent racist language and culture that values whites and wishes blacks weren't?

Thought For The Day

I've been reading the new edition of some of Count Harry Kessler's diaries, and in it on 30 January, 1869, he made this undeniably true claim after

[s]omeone said that a book dealer had complained recently to him that the people who once bought books now ride bicycles. In realty bicyclists do more for the reawakening and understanding of art than the most diligent book worms in all the libraries put together.

He is, of course, right, although I would replace "book worms" with "anybody" and "of art" with "of everything."

Enjoy the weather.

Missing The Point

Here is a E. Waugh's response to a publicist's enthusiastic call  for blurbs for Catch-22:

6 September 1961

Dear Miss Bourne,

Thank you for sending me Catch 22. I am sorry that the book fascinates you so much. It has many passages quite unsuitable to a lady's reading. It suffers not only from indelicacy but from prolixity. It should be cut by about a half. In particular the activities of "Milo" should be eliminated or greatly reduced.

You are mistaken in calling it a novel. It is a collection of sketches—often repetitious—totally without structure.

Much of the dialogue is funny.

You may quote me as saying: "This exposure of corruption, cowardice and incivility of American officers will outrage all friends of your country (such as myself) and greatly comfort your enemies."

Evelyn Waugh 

The times they were a changin'.

Roll The Tape

The guy in handcuffs supposedly just got his head bashed against a sidewalk several times after being beaten about the head an shoulders while lying on the grass.



To me he looks like someone who didn't just get his head bashed against the sidewalk several times after being beaten about head and shoulders while lying on the grass.

Post Racial Society

Perhaps you've heard of a little book/movie dealio called The Hunger Games? Well, it seems, the some fans "knew" that that Rue was white and consequently found her blackness in the movie version off putting. I think that this is proof positive that the Trayvon Martin murder case has nothing what so and ever to do with anything other than Zimmerman's dislike of stupid goons.

How Things Work

The ACA:

Republicans

hate Baby Jesus, the Bible, Black people, and hats:



What happens when a nun becomes a member of Congress? No Habit for them?

Consider this "cartoon" from the UT Austin student newpaper:

Because that's the proper way frame the debate; particularly appalling is the "colored boy" comment.

What a horrid bunch.

So Crazy It Just Might Work

Comment seems beside the point:



Get it here.

Affordable Health Care

I wonder what percentage of human beings presently living in these United States, long my her mountains remain enpurpled, came into the world without the aid of some kind of medical personal? Surely the fact that the birthing of babies is best achieved under the supervision of doctors or midwives is strong evidence that we all participate in the health care "market" at one point or another by virtue of being born, as it were, free.

Hunger Games

Are one step closer:

Until it was taken off the air last December, one of the most popular television programs in China’s Henan province, which has a population of 100 million, was “Interviews Before Execution.” The presenter was Ding Yu, a pretty young woman, always carefully dressed with colorful scarves and blouses; in each episode, she would interview on camera someone who has been convicted of a capital crime and who is about to face a firing squad or a lethal injection.

Not that such a show could ever happen here, mind.

Rand Paul, Idiot

He argues that

[w]e as a society need to glorify those who make a profit.

Therefore let's hear it for the drug dealers and arms dealers. Hurrah the job creators.  The actual "context" for the quote make clear that if drugs became legal and should the Marlboro Man succeed in selling pcb laced doobies to tweeners, Rand Paul would applaud them.

Supper

This from a couple of days ago, Cornish Game Hens, thick pork chops, and ring sausage:

Very good.

Here In Wisconsin

We have the misfortune to be represented by business man and accountant Ron Johnson who is an idiot. He advised poor and or uninsure3d women who needed contraception to use the google to find free contraception, which as this Think Progress report points out finds a bunch of either useless information or explains the high cost of getting birth control. In the course of making this stupid argument he suggested that anyone who insisted that uninsured women couldn't get contraception were making  "a straw-dog argument."

Perhaps he was trying to tell the truth. Strawdogs is, after all, a brutal investigation of violence in everyday life to say nothing of the treatment of women in the modern world.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ue1zbYIX2E&feature=related

What Is Wrong With The World?

Victor David Hanson. He laments the woeful awfulness of those who seek to use the Treyvon Martin murder for their own ends. Yet he writes that

[w]hile it is natural that African-American activists need answers as to why the armed assailant Mr. Zimmerman was not charged in the shooting

they need to demand the same answers for all the black on black crime or they are hypocrites.

In the  answer to the first we all need answers as to why Zimmerman wasn't arrested after shooting an unarmed kid about whom he knew nothing other than the kid was black.

In answer to the second 1) it's a different issue and 2) really?

This is what is wrong with the world, instead of considering the possibility that shooting an unarmed kid about whom all the shooter knew is that he was black is a sign of mental derangement and that not arresting him is a sign of institutional mental derangement, Hanson wants us to think that thinking that situation is wrong and troubling is a sign of hypocrisy unless we condemn all crimes committed by blacks, that bear no relation to the event under consideration, everywhere.

It's a horrid worldview and one predicated on the notion that only blacks care about injustices concerning blacks.

Hatefilled

There have been a flurry of attempts to paint Treyvon Martin as a thug in an attempt to justify his mindless  murder. Here's one example from the fetid pen of Robert VerBruggen of the NRO. Here's another line of attack from the same horrid little man, Martin was winning a fistfight Zimmerman initiated for no good reason therefore he had to shoot the 17 year-old, about whom who knew nothing other than he was black, kid.

It really is beneath contempt.  Purveyors of the first line of attack seeks to dehumanize Martin by painting him as the kind of criminal we can do without. Advocates of the second would have you believe that a cretinous, authoritarian racist who defied police orders and not only followed but confronted a kid who had done nothing wrong but be black was forced to kill the kid because, as it turns out, cretinous, authoritarian racists aren't, in fact, the Batman nor yet even Robin.

Obviously the VerBruggens of the world aren't interested in making sense of the event or working to avoid it recurrence.  Why? Who really knows.  It may be that they are horrid little men and women bent on making the world less salubrious. Or it could be that they see the tactics deployed by the neoliberals for the past 30 odd years have created a world they want to inhabit, i.e., where violence or its threat is endemic, where inequality reigns, and where opportunity is a function of genealogy -- which is another way of saying the rich get richer and the poor starve.

One thing we can know for a fact is that there is no way to square the current reality with the promise of morning in America.


UPDATE:
It seems that Trayvon Martin called 911; one suspects this ends badly for Zimmerman and the brigade of horrors.

via.

You're Fired

I don't think I've ever read Sherwood Anderson, a situation in need of remedying.

Chicago
June 25, 1918

Dear Barton:

You have a man in your employ that I have thought for a long time should be fired. I refer to Sherwood Anderson. He is a fellow of a good deal of ability, but for a long time I have been convinced that his heart is not in his work.

There is no question but that this man Anderson has in some ways been an ornament to our organization. His hair, for one thing being long and mussy gives an artistic carelessness to his personal appearance that somewhat impresses such men as Frank Lloyd Wright and Mr. Curtenius of Kalamazoo when they come into the office.

But Anderson is not really productive. As I have said his heart is not in his work. I think he should be fired and if you will not do the job I should like permission to fire him myself. I therefore suggest that Anderson be asked to sever his connections with the Company on August 1st. He is a nice fellow. We will let him down easy but let's can him.

Respectfully submitted,

Sherwood Anderson

via

Truth In Advertising

Over to the Think Progress, we learn that

Santorum is under fire from Republicans for suggesting that the GOP might as well re-elect Obama if they nominate Romney. He lashed out at a New York Times reporter this weekend for asking about the issue, calling the question “bullshit.”

Except, of course, that's a gross distortion of the events under consideration. Here's a video:



Santorum, who is both a cad and bounder as well as a nutbar, is in fact making the case that as a standard bearer against Obama Romney is the worst Republican in the country.

Whats actually interesting here is that ranting maniacal manner in which Santorum speaks both during the speech and in his interaction with the reporter. This barely suppressed rage and clear desire to either scream at or punch people with whom he is speaking is an aspect of Santorum's persona that I have seen for quite a while. Why, I wonder, do the press forward an erroneous narrative when the actual one seems to be much more interesting.

Rick Santorum is an angry little twit.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles

begins with a single step. Clearly many of the Right's responses to Trayvon Martin's murder have been repugnant. On the other hand, Paul Krugman's op-ed piece shows one way to use the event to focus energy and attention of ALEC and, ideally, convince the non-crazy among us that the time has come to shut down the neoliberals' privatization of everything in their  relentless attempt to destroy America.