Monday, January 30, 2017
Spooked
But that’s already established beyond any doubt. China’s state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is the largest tenant in Trump Tower. It is also a major lender to Trump. Its rent payments and its loans put Trump in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Every building approval, extension of credit, tax break, subsidy, or waiver of normal rules that Trump’s businesses get from numerous foreign governments, state governments, and the U.S. government define him as quintessentially impeachable.--DS
To question her would be politically incorrect, I'm afraid.
A saner view of things.
TS
Pre-Existing Conditions
Don't resist this.
TS
Big Losses
Oregon has fallen to 13th after Saturday's poor performance and loss to Colorado in Boulder.
The Dylan Brooks flop against Utah was funny at the moment it happened, but it is being overplayed by this writer, among others.
It was a silly moment, a part of the game, like Grayson Allen's antics. Shouldn't have happened, but you can't stop the ridiculous. Time to move on.
TS
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Fighting Oligarchy
Thus, an effective resistance to Trump with an agenda of democracy, equality and justice must work outside the American duopoly and be untethered to the Democratic party, which sustains the corrupt capitalist and imperialist system. In fact, prominent Democrats are currently busy approving Trump’s cabinet appointments and normalizing his administration. No more Clintons, Schumers or Pelosis. These corporate sell-outs, warmongers and sheepdogs have too long served to anesthetize people into passivity, cynicism and selfishness, while colluding with their benefactors to rob public resources.--YL
While many people continue to mourn for Clinton and blame each other for Trump's rise, this writer is among the leftists with an actual, inclusive vision of the future, and an understanding of how we erred post 9/11 by empowering the corporate agendas of neoliberalism and militarism.
A better analysis is sorely needed by the willfully ignorant and/or corrupt elites who support the Dems in Congress. (Check out how the Dems are okaying Trump's ludicrous Cabinet.) Too many sold out and sat by passively as the destructiveness of the "war on terror" made a Trump feasible in the first place.
It's good to see so many fighting back in the streets. About time. Maybe the people can take back Congress while curbing the hypocrisy of today's narrative.
I have heard plenty of illogic in the blame game. While it is true that many intellectuals didn't like HRC and pointed to her flaws, the vast majority voted for her anyway, led by none other than Chomsky and Reich.
Point: All the leftists--I use that word rather than "progressive" because I'm not sure anymore what qualifies as progressive--whom I study couldn't of had a significant impact on the election's outcome. Many are great writers and thinkers, but in the main people don't take them seriously enough to create the ripple effect liberals insist happened. The most disinterested are liberals themselves, for whatever reasons.
Some of them may have voted 3rd Party, but hardly enough to make a difference. "Hillary bashing," as some mainstreamers called the perfectly reasonable debate around Clinton, didn't cost her the election!
To insist as much is a tiresome trope, a false narrative, ridiculous.
TS
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Walden and the Boyz
I've already said this will happen, and as Levine promises a Pence presidency will rock y'all.
It's funny that people thought Trump was the terror when the real problem has been sitting in Congress since 2010.
Here in Oregon, this guy is a real menace to common sense.
His district is pro-Trump, now he must deal with voters as they discover the ACA has some worthy provisions.
Besides, they wanted Obamacare repealed, not their health plan!
TS
Hoops Action
The Kentucky/Kansas showdown starts at 3:30, and I'll certainly watch for the pure pleasure of seeing Kansas kill John Calipari's team.
Tonight, Oregon goes for its 18th straight against Colorado. About this one I'll say, no soccer-like flops please, and no kicking some poor guy in the balls again.
Who do you think you are? Duke?
Speaking of which, how about it Wake Forest? Just underway.
UPDATE: Damn it, Luke Kennard is too good, saved Duke's bacon in the 2nd half and Danny Manning's Deacons fall...
Good news, a couple of others ahead of Oregon fell today. We hope Oregon beats Colorado and moves up a couple of notches, not that it matters as much as the experts would try to make you believe.
If you're a 5 seed in the tourney (Oregon won't be any lower than that no matter what happens) and you win them all you're then the NCAA Champion.
As opposed to college football's phony final-four "playoff," hand-picked by idiots like Condi Rice.
Goddamn: Oregon can't beat Colorado in Boulder, lose by 9 tonight. I blame it on altitude, ha! Seven losses in a row.
Ducks now at 19-3. Home against the Arizonas next week. Better be sharper or things could suck.
TS
Friday, January 27, 2017
Awfulness
Tonight I watched the local news, more like the local weather report and nothingness.
Then listened, for the first time in years, to the national news, haha.
Free trial is over, thank the good vendor Lollipop Inc.
It is no small wonder America is filled with such rife stupidity!
TS
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Good Questions
The election of Donald Trump has sent millions of people pouring out onto the streets to protest a man they think is a racist, misogynist, xenophobic bully who will destroy US democracy in his quest to establish himself as supreme fascist ruler of the country.
Maybe they’re right. Maybe Trump is a fascist who will destroy America. But where were these people when Obama was bombing wedding parties in Kandahar, or training jihadist militants to fight in Syria, or abetting NATO’s destructive onslaught on Libya, or plunging Ukraine into fratricidal warfare, or collecting the phone records of innocent Americans, or deporting hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers, or force-feeding prisoners at Gitmo, or providing bombs and aircraft to the Saudis to continue their genocidal war against Yemen?
Where were they?--MW
I've been wondering the same thing.
I come to it from a slightly different angle here.
TS
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
WTF?
Wow!
UCLA was the darling until just days ago. Now they're 6-3 in conference!
Fell to USC tonight. UCLA has great players who can't defend and shitty coaching.
Not saying they can't still win it all with that roster, but what the hell?
If Brooks gets healthy I like the Ducks.
Bunch of losses in the Top 10 this week, my guys are poised to move up if they beat the Rocky Mt. schools in S. Lake and Boulder.
But who knows? That is what I like about college bball this time of year.
TS
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
In Summation
I've heard the question again and again since Saturday's Women's March: What now?
By most accounts the protests were a rousing success on various levels, but it remains to be seen if their long-term effects carry on or fizzle out.
There are derivations on this theme throughout the leftist media--even bleeding into the mainstream. All are thoughtful, most make cogent points, and several approach my thinking, clarifying, praising the diversity of the moment and offering a path forward in both logistical and philosophical ways.
To my thinking it is not simply essential that the resistance must carry on; how it progresses needs nurturing.
The best commentaries reiterate that the status quo of the Democratic Party, destroyed from the inside, need be drastically altered, shunned, or banished. The corporatists in charge don't get it, and their supporters are oblivious if they expect different results from their bosses or the electoral system as it exists.
The best commentators point out that a movement has not been born as of yet, but cite trace possibilities in the vast size of the undertaking and the jumble of concerns participants carried with them to the protests.
I say protests, because there was more than one--had to be on such a grand scale. I'm not speaking here of the many protests around the world, but rather the protests within the big one. Agreement on how to proceed is likely to never happen--historically it's been hit and miss--but certain criteria need to be addressed as far as overthrowing the duopoly of concentrated power that has stymied and divided the larger segment of the polity. Without meeting such criteria, nothing will change but the weather.
Foremost, the thing that just happened must not be co-opted if it is to maintain meaning. I've written of how that works and how it has worked historically. Stopping co-optation is the most difficult obstacle confronting even the faintest sounds of revolt. That is, co-optation is a fundamental scourge of capitalism, and has been since modern nation-states arose from the struggles of the past.
Identity, though an unavoidable aspect of every life, must be on equal footing with an understanding of how class differentiation drives society and evolves as distinct social causes mount up. At those times identity and our differences become the focus, the struggle for economic equality loses impetus and, finally, power. This is not a presumption; it is an historical imperative.
The overthrow of capitalism will take care of identity by default. Under a new system that can only be built out of a new consensus, a better democracy you might say, equality will be nurtured and expected/expanded, not a divisive tool used to separate people into social stereotypes that they unwittingly embrace and too frequently use to attack others. The rhetoric of exceptionalism, imperialism and consumerism--and worse, their enactments--followed by hasty retreats into individuality doesn't work, indeed hasn't ever worked, in achieving the common good.
History is misery digested and expunged. It is repeated time and again, altered for epochs (and other measures) and exterior circumstances. It is never twice exactly alike. Yet natural and human forces remain constant, the call for good vs.something inferior. Marx was mainly right, yet he is persistently denied, harangued and overturned by inferior logic. Capitalism at this stage is a pure failure in terms of addressing the commons.
I'm 66, and I've given it a lot of thought; there is one reason for where we are. If where we are is bad it is because of greed. I wouldn't be here discussing anything at all if I didn't believe that the paramount concern ought to be the destruction of capitalism as we know it.
Anything less is pissing in the wind. Anything less than achieving a new socialized democracy is allowing capitalists to piss on you.
So march on brothers and sisters.
TS
Monday, January 23, 2017
Dennis Smith Jr.
I knew a kid in high school named Dennis Smith. Good baseball player.
TS
Prose Poem
Resistance
It's working much the way
I thought it would if the fascist
got elected.
I didn't expect he would, but the
silver lining was there as refuge.
The lesser-evil voters wailed at me.
The demigod must be stopped, you're
throwing your vote away, he's wicked,
we must elect this women or else!
Or else what, I said; more of the same,
more war, more death, more poverty?
Haven't we had enough of that already
in all of these years of endless madness?
I said not her, the other one; she should
be the first. No, not Liz, the
Omnipresent faithful Democrat.
The other one who couldn't buy TV time
or impress the mainstream media moguls,
their advertisers, with her visions
of green peace, love, womanly bravery.
But, would the new revolutionaries have
marched in the streets had the status quo
been maintained? No, of course not.
It takes a King. It takes a Tsar.
It takes an Asshole before
the multitude can find a voice.
TS
Serious Stuff
This coup also destroyed the credibility of liberal democracy. Self-identified liberals such as the Clintons and Barack Obama mouthed the words of liberal democratic values while making war on these values in the service of corporate power. The revolt we see rippling across the country is a revolt not only against a corporate system that has betrayed workers, but also, for many, liberal democracy itself. This is very dangerous. It will allow the radical right under a Trump administration to cement into place an Americanized fascism.--CH
Transcript of the lecture Chris Hedges gave Saturday amid the Inauguration Protests in D.C.
Others were there.
TS
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Don't Drink and Drive
Five days after his hiring was officially announced by the Oregon Ducks, co-offensive coordinator David Reaves is in the process of being fired after his arrest early Sunday on charges of DUII, reckless driving and reckless endangerment.--AG
This isn't good.
TS
Word
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump violated some of the sacred tenets of neoliberalism, especially regarding “free trade”. Thus he was disowned by the political establishment of both parties. While his promises of decreased economic inequality will surely prove hollow, that was no reason for swing voters—including white women—to turn to Clinton, whose condescending attitude to the bottom 50% was rightfully perceived as authentic, unlike everything else about her except her warmongering.--DG
The whole truth and noting but the truth.
Seven reasonable things.
TS
The Road Ahead
Ahead lies a trip to the Rockies and games against Utah and Colorado. Oregon's star, Dillon Brooks, may or may not see the floor, but it appears the foot injury he suffered against Cal isn't as serious as first believed.
The Ducks could use him. Without him Oregon could have trouble if things get tight.
TS
Snowden
“I think the focus on Trump is a mistake,” Snowden argues. “Faith in elected leaders to fix our problems is the mistake that we keep repeating.”
“When President Obama was elected to the White House, he said all the right things,” Snowden continues. “If we’re hoping for a champion, if we’re waiting for a hero, we’ll be waiting forever.”--ES
This guy has done more good for the U.S. than people realize. It's time he be pardoned and brought home to live a normal life without harm.
People are silly to believe he is the bad guy when what he did is expose the truth about our spying agencies.
TS
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Revolution?
Ladies of the bourgeois world, gonna take more than you have or are willing to give to stop fascism.
Unless you step up your game of course. You see, it's not enough to have a good professional job where you feel slighted and gather to march one day and then go home. You must address the war machine that keeps on ticking no matter who holds power.
Address the fascists before they kill you, please. 'Cause seriously, elite politicians and their friends could give a fuck.
TS
Trial
Ah ha, I'm giving CBS Access a test on a free trial.
Weekend basketball broadcasts, including the UCLA/Arizona game later today.
Might be a keeper with the bball schedule for the remainder of the season and into March Madness.
At $6 a month this might be more suited to my style and budget than Sling, which I tried earlier.
I'm torn by media options.
Vandy upsets No. 21 Florida. Unfortunately, the next game isn't available. So the trial may fail.
These companies know how to sap you for every damn dime, don't they? One thing will never change.
Good old greed will always be with us.
TS
Friday, January 20, 2017
Thursday, January 19, 2017
CBB
Oregon and Cal tip off at 6 p.m.
Big protests the rest of the week.
I find it hilarious, never mind ironic, that just last year liberals were celebrating this idiot and Trump supporter.
Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but the degree to which liberals strive to elevate identity politics above class is absurd.
All across the world, poor women will be making the motel beds of the participants in the Women's Protests this weekend.
In some critic's eyes my argument that class differences rather than identity is of greater importance will make me a misogynist, or worse, an implicit Trump supporter.
I am neither. I respect women.
But I think everyone ought to strive for and respect economic equality even more. We need to move out of our present consumer, identity, class consciousness.
Women, would you want Emma Goldman or Hillary Clinton in your corner when the chips are down?
Naomi Klein or Samantha Power?
A real feminist or a Wall Street shill, regardless of gender? If you're rich or somehow tied up with wealth, don't answer, you'll expose yourself as a hypocritical fraud no more honest than Trump and Clinton themselves.
TS
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Inaugural Events, I'm Sick
I won't watch them, but not solely because I can't stomach Trump. I wouldn't have watched a Hillary love fest either, and not simply because I can't stomach her either.
In fact, the last time I paid attention to this foul tradition was when Billary Clinton took office. Naturally enough I can't remember what he said in his inaugural address (and I'm not going to look it up).
What I do remember is listening to the music and practically retching at the bullshit pop of Fleetwood Mac, a band much-loved by many a decade or two earlier.
By the time the Clintons moved into the WH Seattle grunge was taking off, and I remember thinking I'd rather listen to Nirvana.
Or Mudhoney.
I seem to have a memory of Bill and Hill trying to dance as well, or maybe that image was from Billary's second tour, just before the Clintons had to be placed in separate bedrooms in the WH because Billary accepted a blowjob from an intern, who talked about it to a friend, who then leaked the story.
I don't know, all of it is kind of sickening to conjure up again, but I would guess that might have been the power couple's last dance for a while. Not to say that Hills was unaware of Billary's habits, but you could say this one probably came with a tad more humiliation and rancor.
You might have bet on that, despite the couple's joint appearance in front of the cameras and a news broadcaster playing an auxiliary role at the time as a marriage counselor.
O.K., now that I'm down the page a few paragraphs it has come back to me. I tuned in to hear more about the national health plan the Clintons wanted to jump start out of the gate. At the time, I like many thought it might happen. Come to think of it, that is probably why I voted for Billary in the first place.
Indeed, I can't think of another reason I might have voted for him at all. At least I voted that year, heh.
Well, the health plan didn't happen because the insurance industry wouldn't have anything to do with it at the time, and Congress was its usual bought and sold regressive bane on good sense. It wouldn't be until years later that Obama, with a nod to Romney's Mass., state-sponsored health plan, figured out a way to balance all the various interests involved and get something rolling.
But back to Billary. A lot of little things began to take hold, and I could see what started out with promise was going to turn bad fairly quickly for the Dems. A little deregulation here and there, war, crime bills, new welfare regs, prison enlargement,etc.
Damn, I'm glad those days are over.
Oh, before I forget. I'm not about to watch the Inaugural Events because I'm like the great Oregon congressman Rep. Peter DeFazio. Like this gracious govrep, I've never been interested in Washington's pomp and circumstance.
TS
Rubbers
(A slightly different version of this piece is up at CounterPunch)
To read and listen to the mainstream media these days you'd think that power and money haven't to this point in U.S. history been connected in even the remotest sense, and Donald Trump’s depth of corruption is unprecedented.
You might believe the U.S. hasn't any history of profiteering in the halls of Congress, or in the office of the presidency itself. Trump represents the fall, the sudden collapse of virtue, and the end of sweet, leveling democratic values as we once knew them.
What has happened to our democracy!? It was so fine until yesterday, wasn’t it?
So goes the ingrained narrative delivered from the mainstream to Main Street in the time of Trump.
Like everything in popular culture the narrative is seized, built up, and torn down for the explicit purpose of making money.
Are we to believe that to this point the system has been kind to everyone, because the playing field was level and uncorrupted until the very moment Trump's greed and ability to manipulate the media made him electable?
Political thieves are legion and they’ve always been with us, and ethics have historically been slow on the uptick. Ethics are like condoms; you use them when you’re concerned something bad might happen if you don’t.
That’s correct; ethics are like prophylactics. Many politicians don’t use them until they need to. Then they’re easy to toss, if messy at times.
We know Trump is not the smartest or subtlest politician to ever seek the golden crown (or, allegedly, a golden shower), but he is far from being alone among the corrupt seeking profit from their offices. He’s just more inclined to go for it right now, transparently and in full-throttle, while most others wait for the best moment to cash in postpartum.
Let us be frank about this and not kid ourselves. Money is power. Power is money. Our so-called democracy is bought and used for the main purpose of protecting dickheads. If the rabble gets anything out of governance it’s usually of lesser value than what the dickheads get.
Some of our more obvious crooked politicians, on too-few glorious days, might end up in jail if they forget to wear their prophylactics while attempting to protect the interests of their elite friends while spewing all over the rest of us.
Even so, the justice app has always stopped short of the executive branch at the national level, where the dickheads are wrapped in the best prophylactics money can buy.
Presidents and their inner circles have historically been too big to fail, discounting Spiro Agnew under Nixon, who was such an enormous dickhead that not even the best prophylactic in the world could protect him.
The near-miss on Nixon himself wasn't good enough to break our insane habit of letting the biggest dickheads squirm away. His prophylactic burst, but he pulled out just in time. Before him Andrew Johnson was impeached but not convicted, because even some rudimentary prototype of the modern prophylactic worked miraculously for him.
Clinton was impeached for accepting a blow job in the Oval Office and then lying about it. With the citizenry’s sense of moral outrage sparked, Clinton was lucky to have friends in the Senate and dodged a conviction. He took his prophylactic off at the wrong time and the truth leaked out.
Clinton was very big, way too big to fail.
But a blow job in the O.V. was small stuff compared to Clinton’s real legacy of viciously regenerating a quiet arms trade in a time of corporate need. Bombs dropped must be repurchased, etc.; that is the only way arms manufacturers, some of the biggest protected dickheads around, can survive.
Fortunately for Clinton, bomb-making is not illegal among powerful nation-states who want to rub out other less-powerful dickheads around the world.
Corruption isn’t all about presidential politics, of course; it’s pervasive throughout the political system. Witness the number of state governors who have failed to use protection in Illinois alone!
Governors are frequently not too big to fail. They sometimes forget to use a prophylactic when they need one the most.
A few legislators here and there have also been put up as an example of our exceptional prophylactic-like judicial system, but mainly for show evidently, because others have fallen through the cracks and escaped jail time—like the prophylactic has magical powers.
The thickest chasm of injustice happens to belong to the Bush administration, led by perhaps the most despicable war profiteer and biggest dick of them all—Dick Cheney.
He was certainly too big to fail, and also too big for his britches, like an over-sized codpiece.
The entire chorus surrounding Bush should have been jailed, but thanks to the great healer Obama, America’s best prophylactic post-Bush, what should have happened didn’t.
No justice needed, he said, because he didn’t want to harm the country, thereby harming reality instead.
The executive branch of the U.S. is one gigantic prophylactic. Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury for instance, before Bush pardoned him, which made Bush himself a condom.
Libby was fined 250K, a drop in the bucket. Money too is a prophylactic.
Cheney is one example of what you can do if you’re smart, evil and properly protected. He used exceptionally crafted propaganda and kept his braggadocio in check, though his libido ran wild, which happens when one gets a hard on for war. He mastered the few ethics rules that exist by creating just enough scare-smoke to obscure the view for the silent and complacent majority.
He used the threat of terrorism as a prophylactic, making his man-love of war ethical; suddenly protected, everyone felt safer and freer than ever.
With the terrorists at the gate and the WMD about to be launched at us at any minute, the Bushies needed to move pronto. Lying and plausible deniability became super-safe prophylactics, necessary to prevent the mushroom cloud from seeding our loins.
As the lie evolved, Cheney was there to save the United States, not to take its treasure for the company, Halliburton, which had been very good to him. He carefully placed condoms around the big dickheads who made him richer than ever.
It’s a proven fact. Hold a high office, play it right, and you will not be forgotten by those counting the beans or creating the speech-making roster in subsequent years.
This is how the Clintons finally achieved their chief goal of becoming rich. The Clinton Foundation is a prophylactic, meeting all the ethics requirements an ex-prez and his failed wife need to live until the happy end.
We'll see what happens next in the coming months.
TS
Stuck in 1963, Or Taking the Cold War Bait
CD says I can be "engaging in a thoughtful way" when I take time off from bashing Hillary.
Thanks, I guess...gee...
Extraordinary, because I haven't bashed her in over a week! There surely must be other reasons why I am so infrequently riveting! (pause) Okay, I can't think of one.
This is not to say I shouldn't have bashed the old fraud a little more since Jan. 7, my last post to mention her by name, because she deserves a good bashing. I'd do it every day if I had the energy, or thought it important enough. What I have done in the main for months is post links to writing that says it better than I can, some hardcore logicians cranking out the good anti-DNC stuff.
True, I've written my own sacred texts in the past, here and here, but they're small potatoes.
The writers I cite are a lot rougher on old Hills than I am, believe me, but I have no idea if anyone who visits me bothers to read them after I go to considerable pains to give my readers what they need to know.
Were such the case, were I a great man, and everyone jumped aboard, it would be edifying for all I'm sure, and no doubt improve our political discourse all around! I know I get a tickle out of what I do, and what I study, and a bonus would be that we would no longer have to put up with candidates who are empty-headed frauds in the first place! Well, in theory...
The dimwit Hillary offered nothing, which is why she lost. It wasn't the Rooskies, it wasn't the deplorables, it wasn't the "vast right-wing conspiracy," it was her own lack of judgment about the union we call the U.S., her preening selfishness and disengagement from the issues facing our citizenry now.
Her hubris. (Cackle, cackle.) She had a lot of help along the way, but not enough and certainly not from me. Thanks CD, you helped give us Trump you bastard!
She couldn't whip a neofascist, and therein lies the rub. They were too much alike as the quacks barked at each other like lapdogs without saying anything in three horrid nationally televised appearances before a series of millionaire broadcasters drunk on their own self-important irrelevancy.
CD fell into the lesser-evil netherworld about the time he started bashing Bernie Sanders in the primary race; he likes Hillary, I don't.
I don't get it, I guess. Am I being blamed for something bad because I dislike a certain politician or two?
I hope not, because that makes as much sense as the moron-elect himself, never mind the bitch wars going on in the media about the role of Russia in undermining an election that was pure bullshit from the beginning.
But let's be reasonable here for a moment. I wrote an entire post without linking once to the greatest bastion of U.S. journalism there is. I won't even look at the headline: Here it is!
Well, what do you know. Somehow I don't think Hillary would approve.
TS
Training?
The coaches are playing a dangerous game with the health of their players.
This nonsense better be resolved quickly, better not happen again, or I'll be forced to do something I've never even considered before--that is call for a coaching change right now.
I've never made the call after a losing season, because I've always watched Oregon play regardless of their talent level year in and year out, and it doesn't matter too much to me how a season goes. Sure, I like to see the wins, but I don't go off the rails if the team loses and has a poor season like the one just finished.
But this is the sort of thing that pisses me off.
Football has enough militarism in it already without this kind of macho posing. Working players until they get sick is beyond the pale.
It's plain as day what happened. The three that ended up hospitalized were not in great shape coming in. Anybody who has ever exercised knows you can't get it back in a day, or even ten. You must build it up slowly until you return to peak levels.
More importantly, the coaches leading those exercises have to be alert to what condition the individual players are in. You can't herd them together and expect everybody to be on the same level, because that never happens. There are way too many variables in the process.
What happened? Under Willie Taggart and the new staff at Oregon the pressure is on to impress, indeed to keep schollies, to "do something." These players were feeling something they shouldn't have, and an escape route needed to be there for them that wasn't a total threat to their careers and educations. Some of the blame may be theirs, of course, but if the lax culture everybody is saying developed under Helfrich was problematic, what good is an adjustment to something plainly more dangerous?
Good lord, the game is dangerous enough as it is.
The strength coach is pushing people. Fine, but Sarg, rein it in before somebody dies for a stupid game, not in a freakish play on the field but in your training facility where you supposedly have control of the proceedings.
I hope these players recover and can return to the team if they want to. If they don't want to, I would expect to hear the taunts of Oregon's worst fans, but as usual I say screw them.
UPDATE: Oregon has suspended the S&C coach and WT has apologized. Knuckleheads all over the internet are upset with the "pussies."
TS
Monday, January 16, 2017
The Blooming of a Radical
The best of MLK.
These are not the ordinary white-liberal, garden-variety quotes that help assuage the guilt created by our ongoing national legacy of white-male supremacy. The image Americans want to keep of King as a gatherer rather than a hunter/revolutionary is strong medicine, the only attribute that allowed him his "national day" of honor.
Racism and imperialism don't go away just because you might wish them away, a difficult thing to imagine for career politicians and elites who thrive on divisiveness and exploitation. (Can you imagine if a vote on a King holiday would come up in Congress today? It wouldn't have a chance.)
I doubt the radical King would have been pleased with Obama, never mind the assorted racists who live at the top elsewhere in the U.S. Government.
In the months before his assassination, MLK was taking risks he knew would likely doom him.
TS
Sunday, January 15, 2017
Replacing the Circus
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced Saturday night that it would hold its final performance in May, a victory for animal rights activists who have battled the show for decades.--CD
It's okay, business wouldn't have survived the coming circus anyway, where the clowns and pigs will steal the show, beginning on Friday.
You can thank big media for giving the asshole carte blanche coverage and a free ticket to the Big Tent.
TS
Ducks Rolling
Oregon is not only winning, it is blowing teams away, thanks to hustle on defense and a kind schedule of home games to start the season.
Last night the Ducks hammered Oregon State, a team playing with its best player sidelined.
Perspective: OSU lost to Savannah State at home in December, a team Oregon brushed aside 128-59 a week earlier.
In other words last night's Civil War in college basketball's oldest rivalry was predictable, and Oregon came out strong, leading 21-0 before OSU scored a basket.
With their winning-streak at 14 in a row, my Oregon Ducks sit at 16-2 and 5-0 in conference, tied with Arizona at the top.
Things are about to get serious.
Cal comes to Eugene Thursday night and an Oregon victory would tie its record for consecutive wins in a season.
Can Oregon keep it going? Cal is a good team, and Stanford, the Ducks' opponent Saturday, is no pushover either.
The Ducks will have some battles on the road, at UCLA and Arizona in particular, and the swing through the Rockies at Utah and Colorado will be tough, but Oregon has a chance to be very good if:
1) They continue to share the ball.
2) Their rebounding and defense holds up against the best bigs still ahead of them.
3) Their overall shooting improves.
The last is a key. Oregon's shooting, from the field and the line, will have to pick up if the Ducks are to challenge the Bruins and Wildcats. I don't know if the consistency will come, especially on the road when the basket looks smaller and the crowds are hostile.
We'll see, I'm excited.
EDIT: I just looked at the Oregon schedule again. The Ducks play the Arizona schools just once this season, and the games are in Eugene! Holy shit. That's a huge item.
TS
IPS
Andrew Levine consistently writes some of the most compelling and involved stuff at CP.
I'm a big fan of the Institute for Policy Studies. Been doing great things for over 50 years now.
TS
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Bingo!
Yep, this is similar to my rundown, fully developed.
So while we're on the pragmatic bus to nowhere, all you old-fashioned fascist-minded neocons destined to be displeased with Trump's brand of fascism before you know it, and all of you moderate neolibs and freshly awakened voters living at the behest of your Republican and Democratic congressmen and women, organize to save yourselves from this wretched human being.
Sane Repubs, if you exist, here is your opportunity. Your movement should be more important than anything the sold-out Democratic Party can offer. You must take it upon yourselves to be good to yourselves and save the nation!
Don't miss this once in a lifetime chance to be heroic. You hold the keys to the clown bus, drive it!
Now I don't have to do it and can get back to watching sports on TV, and you can carry on unobstructed with your plotting against Russia and Iran because, as everyone but the feeble-minded knows, the real money is in war, not tawdry hotels and casinos.
TS
Thursday, January 12, 2017
My Negligent Safeway (Surprise!)
Our snow won't be going away until Sunday and Monday, likely, as a new warming spell arrives over the weekend.
I don't drive, but I walk a lot, as I did today to the Safeway near my pad.
Most understand that it is the civic duty of businesses, indeed the law, to clear and make the sidewalks outside their establishments safe for pedestrians. Businesses handle the sidewalks, the city covers the streets. In theory that is.
Generally, I'd say that enterprises, including apartments, churches, coffee shops, et. al., are doing a decent job in my neighborhood. I'm in the museum district. It's good around the museum proper, for example.
And of course the one business that is not doing its part is the mega-corporation and grocery chain I shop at--our beloved Safeway.
The entire half-block around the store looks like it was cleared halfheartedly right after the snowfall, but hasn't been touched since; indeed, it has become an ice-rink
The city could fine Safeway. But of course it won't, for obvious reasons. One doesn't mess with corporate power if avoidable.
And any person who slips there and falls, like I nearly did numerous times this morning, wouldn't have, shall we say, a snowball's chance in hell of winning a lawsuit against the bums.
I mentioned the sidewalk's conditions to a clerk. She promised to relay my message to someone important.
Haha...
TS
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Trump Will Be Impeached (and Convicted)
Think about that for a moment. On one level, the long-time NPR commentator is right: US policy towards the government in Moscow has been remarkably consistent — and hostile — for 70 years, albeit with a few brief periods of at least relative friendliness, as during the early and mid 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But that gets to the other point: There was, recall, a fundamental change that happened in 1989-90, when the Communist state founded in the Russian Revolution of 1917 collapsed, and the Soviet Union splintered into Russia and a bunch of smaller countries — former Soviets in the old empire — including Byelorussia, Ukraine, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and a bunch of stans in Central Asia. --DL
Spelled out for the hysterical. Cokie Roberts is a moron, NPR is dull.
My take: A Palace coup will give us Pence, and make Bush look liberal, and the mainstream Republican Congress will be pleased as punch. Trump's ego will spur him to a trial rather than resignation, and he will be convicted!
Alas and woe, Pence will then pardon him.
The Dems will fall in line, relieved that the menace is gone, and everything will return to normal. In four years, they'll put up another neoliberal friend of the MIC and the war machine; a love made to last. No phony rightists. No phony leftists. Dead center corporatists on a mission, the final frontier of global conquest with another 800 military installations around the world.
Rinse and repeat. Identity politics and fear fusing in a godawful destruction of sanity.
If a real social democrat (democratic socialist) doesn't emerge, we'll all die laughing under Condi's mushroom cloud. This time it will be very real.
This is a good one from Tuesday.
And another from Wed.
TS
Deep Snow
Foot of snow in Portland...but...but...it never snows in Portland!
First big one in ten years, and a record for amount in 24 hours.
Bad for travel, but good for scenery, until it begins to thaw and melt.
A tree fell on a car in front of my apartment building, smashed it to smithereens (pictured).
Parked right in front of the owner's apartment window. Older car, probably not insured (beyond liability). She drives a lot, loved her car, a good runner despite its age, likely won't anymore.
Unlucky.
BTW, we had three previous and correct snow "alerts" before this one came couched in the same vague warning: "It might snow an inch or two."
Ha, nature wins again.
TS
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Hoops Tonight!
Left out, Kentucky. I'm tired of Kentucky.
Or I could go for Xavier v. Villanova.
Actually, I'm tired of Duke too, but there's always a chance that Grayson Allen will trip someone just for the hell of it, which is entertainment in and of itself.
Good to see Alabama lose last night as well, though Dabo Swinney is sort of a clown character.
UPDATES: Baylor knocked off by WVU. Villanova strong in the 2nd downing X-College. FSU crushes Duke.
If you haven't seen FSU, do so. Leaping Lizards! Could challenge, but this campaign is wide open.
Haven't checked on KY yet, probably won't.
TS
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Whine and Woe
You won't get an argument here. She didn't have the right stuff, and her team was teeming with self-puffed oligarchs and their stooges.
On a better note, Boucher went for 29 tonight after Brooks got booted for maliciously kicking some guy in the balls! Good call, he can be as stupid at times as Grayson Allen.
If you don't know who that is, click on the Huffington Post, read in your safe space, and leave me alone.
TS
Friday, January 6, 2017
Should I Go?
It's too cold.
I might be insane, but I'm contemplating moving to an even colder clime, though I would leave Portland in the late spring or early summer.
TS
Lunacy
So the Russians made me vote for Jill Stein instead of Hillary? I was wondering how that happened.
Now I'm really mad.
All this time I thought it was because I dislike Hillary as much as I dislike Trump.
Folks, Russia and the U.S. are both corrupt propaganda machines, if you haven't noticed by now.
TS
Earle
RP Thomas sent this my direction. Says it "makes Dylan seem like a pop star."
He is right, for this is down and dirty.
TS
Too Slow
Trouble with it all morning.
Could be a virus like the one in my head.
TS
Essay of the Day
Instead of doing the real job of investigative journalism and holding power accountable, the Western media is by far the most sophisticated purveyor of state-sponsored bullshit on the planet. Other nations are making strides in their use of media to disseminate and influence opinion, but the U.S. has been building and fine-tuning its doctrinal system for a century now. Studies by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, as well as relentless documentation by organizations like Fair.org, lay plain the inbuilt bias of Western mainstream media and its subservience to powerful corporate interests. It has now reached the point of pure sycophancy. Our doctrinal system is perversely effective at a) selectively using facts to create a false narrative (spinning Iranian civilian nuclear energy program as a military initiative aimed at the production of warheads); b) omitting facts to support a false narrative (the erasure of the successes of Latin leftist governments in countries such as Venezuela and Argentina, and the omission of Israeli provocations and international law within the Israel-Palestine narrative); and c) promoting whole-cloth falsehoods to create or sustain a false narrative (Iraqi WMDs).--JH
A lot of good arguments in this essay.
TS
Thursday, January 5, 2017
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Flow
On my list.As someone points out in the review section for this book, the title can be misconstrued somewhat. It has a bit of an unnecessary conspiratorial feel to it.
What I gather the book is about is the inevitability of the negative effects money has on the political process, among other obvious points. There isn't anything conspiratorial about that--rather it is simply the way things sit in the present.
I also gather that the author puts a timeline on the shadiness of things, beginning in the aftermath of WW II and the corresponding rise of the Cold War.
Fine, but that seems somewhat arbitrary. One could go farther back, as far as the American Revolution, to find strains that fit into his thesis.
At any rate, I'm looking forward to reading the book once I clear some others off my current list, such as this one by Andrew Cockburn.
Tonight's escapism: Oregon vs. Washington in hoops at 6 p.m.
TS