Happy Weekend!

What are you doing here reading this crap when you could be here reading the stuff that counts?

I'm too tired to have a good weekend, but that shouldn't stop you from having all the fun your incredible shrinking brain is capable of conjuring up.

Seriously, break both legs on your way to the exotic foods specialty shop.

Have fun.


TS

Circus

What exactly is the god damn point of the circus in DC?

The retrograde swine on the judiciary committee are going to pretend to listen before mumbling a few inanities about how they support and respect women, and then tell us that we've all seen a teachable moment, a remarkable thing, but that we (they) must move on.

The halfwit will be seated on the court.

That has been our American reality since Clarence Thomas showed Anita Hill his porn collection.

As Chomsky is fond of pointing out, the Republican Party is the most dangerous terror organization on the planet.

Yet people refuse to believe the truth.


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Fatigue

I feel I may be slowly gaining.

For the past two weeks I've been dog-sick, tired, out of it and generally wiped out by something like the flu.

Tired beyond belief.  Hard-to-walk tired. Tired with mortal fire. Never experienced it before.

Slow comeback?


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Providence Advantage Plus (my ass)

I literally had to tell my new doctor, whom I met for the first time this morning, three or four times that the reason I've seen so many doctors in the past five years is because I regularly went to Good Sam's clinic in Northwest Portland. Residents there are run through on a conveyor belt for educational purposes.  I rarely saw the same doc twice, unless I was being treated for my shingles and subsequent facial neuralgia, or some other malady.

Even then I think I had three or four residents through the long course of step, missteps, etc., in my neuralgia treatment.  Fortunately I had a good nursing assistant who more or less took over the therapeutics and put me on the road to recovery.

None of this impressed the asshole, my new doc.

My new doc acted like I was putting him out.  I was an obtrusive parasite.  Even after I reminded him that my original HMO went out of business and I lost Good Sam in favor of Providence, and the new HMO hasn't been able to hook me up with a PCP, he grumbled on about it.

Then, remarkably, he actually said, "Why didn't you talk to any of them about your health?" meaning the residents at Good Sam.

This is where I turned on the bitch. This is where I almost set him on fire and destroyed his golf game.

Because dumb-ass, this is a sudden new problem.  And because Providence is so inept I've been without a doctor for 4 fucking months. Got it, finally?

Thanks to a dumb-as-rocks Medicare Agent who blundered my first efforts to find a Providence associate. Thanks to the HMO itself, which is better quite honestly at promoting Portland Soccer than providing health care--and can't seem to organize its way out of a wet paper bag.

Stupid fucking fucks.

Everywhere.


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The Race

What a difference a month makes.

In early August Seattle rolled into Houston like a team on a mission.  The Mariners were sitting 5 or 6 back with the A's, both looking up at the Astros, but with a real chance to make a move.

Lo! Seattle took four from Houston and looked like it was making the mother of all moves into real contention in the AL West.

But then, as is the fate of Seattle every season, the fade started. Meanwhile the A's and the Astros kept the pressure on.

The dog days bit Seattle plenty hard.

The Mariners get their last crack at the Astros tonight in Houston, and the scenario is different this time.  Houston is playing to keep Oakland at bay.

Seattle is looking for pitching from its minor league system.


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Orgiastic Weekend

Trump is not the problem. Think of him instead as a summons to address the real problem, which in a nation ostensibly of, by, and for the people is the collective responsibility of the people themselves. For Americans to shirk that responsibility further will almost surely pave the way for more Trumps — or someone worse — to come.--AB

My favorite retired general in the whole wild world does some heavy lifting here.

The regular CP crowd puts it all down here, fat with gem after gem. If you really want to know the truth it's all a little too much for me.  I've already shot my wad three, four times, and it's not even noon yet on Friday!


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Some Like It

A fast-moving thunder storm just moved through Portland and left a boom behind like none I've ever heard before. Sudden and loud, it crept upon us like a mega-IED and made me go to the window and survey the cityscape for hijacked aircraft.

Nothing like it before, it frazzled my nerves.

Earlier today a squall moved in dumping an inch or two of rain in a very short time. Good times.


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Bad Future

Economic austerity, the mantra and clarified butter of the national Democrats, is the claim that the only legitimate expenditures by the Federal government are for unnecessary wars, Wall Street bailouts and prisons. Other expenditures— for housing, education, health care, food and retirement, are burdens on our children and grandchildren. If this reads like the program of the radical right, you might be on to something. And if you don’t understand the implications for bottom-up political reform, please read on.--RU

If you don't understand that Trump is a bad guy by now, you must be one of the "deplorables."

But what comes after him when liberal/centrist Democrats deny progressives and undermine democratic socialists?

Will we understand then that it was a mistake to be preoccupied with a singular monster when so many other monsters are positioned to seize power?

The difference between a racist and a capitalist is less than zero.


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Street of Dreams

How do the “masters of the universe” – the members of the world’s “unelected dictatorship of money” (Edward S. Herman and David Peterson’s excellent phrase) – feel about the dire threats posed to human existence by the system that has generated their outsized opulence and power? Perhaps they fantasize that their fortunes will permit them to somehow escape to other worlds or (less fantastically) to insulate themselves with armed guards and special resource stockpiles on this one.--PS

Mr. Street delves into our present and looming eco-disasters and provides one possible antidote.

But as usual there is much, much more.

Get to work!


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Quote of the Day

"American money has no gender!"--the mad woman of 11th Ave.


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Prisoners

Prisoners, once released, often after decades, commonly suffer from severe mental and physical trauma and other health problems including diabetes (which is an epidemic in prisons because of the poor diet), hepatitis C, tuberculosis, heart disease and HIV. They do not have money or insurance to get treatment for their illnesses when they are released. They have often become alienated from their families and are homeless. Stripped of the right to public assistance, unable to vote, banned from living in public housing, without skills or education and stigmatized by employers, they become members of the vast criminal caste system. Many are burdened with debts because of monetary charges in the criminal justice structure and a predatory system of prison loans. Over 60 percent end up back in prison within five years. This is by design. The lobbyists for the prison-industrial complex make sure the laws and legislation keep the prisons full and recidivism high. This is good for profit. And it is profit, not justice, that is the primary force behind mass incarceration. This system will end only when those profits are wrested from the hands of our modern slaveholders. The only people who can do that are the slaves and the abolitionists who fight alongside them.--CH

Chris Hedges unloads on the prison-industrial-complex.


TS