The Clash

Strummer died in 2002 of a congenital heart defect, but his mates met in 2013 and talked through the great band's career.


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Rift

The old farts are having a tiff.

Can't we all just get along?  Ha.


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The Ray-Guns

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Bingo Bango Bongo

Oregon is the Pac-12 Champion!

Beat USC by 10.






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Action

Not the biggest game of the year, but nonetheless a huge game today in L.A. Oregon/USC tips off at 1 p.m.

An Oregon victory would clinch the PAC outright for the Ducks, who are already guaranteed the No. 1 seed in the conference tourney next week.

A win today and two in the Vegas tourney would likely secure the Ducks a No. 2 seed in the Madness.

Tipoff in 40 min.


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Report

Across the south people were marching and sometimes dying for civil rights, though you didn’t have to march or even reach the age of majority to qualify for murder, as shown by the 1963 bombing deaths of four young African American girls, at church, in Birmingham. After Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson, Democrat of Texas and a son of the hardscrabble south, seized JFK’s cautious civil rights agenda and turned it into a juggernaut. “If you get in my way I’m going to run you down,” he told his old Senate mentor, Richard Russell of Georgia, and it’s surely one of the great mysteries not just of American politics but of human nature in general that Lyndon Johnson, a man born and formed in one of America’s most enduring tar pits of xenophobia, would be the crucial force multiplier for civil rights.

Ben Fountain reports for the Guardian.


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Weekend Assignment

You probably thought you were going to get off easy this weekend, didn't you?

Surprise!  BD has another assignment for you.

You are to go here over the weekend and read the first two essays by Messrs. Levine and Street, annotate them, and submit your work to us by noon Monday.

Your failure to finish this assignment will result in your expulsion from Dooley University.

DU reminds you that your tuition is non-refundable.

If you don't like it, sue him.  But be careful.  He can identify each and every hand-picked member of his faculty.  He's legit.


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The Last Fighter

Delmer Berg, the last known American survivor who fought fascists in 1930s Spain, has died in northern California. He was 100 years old.

The rest of the story.





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76-68

Hot damn!

Oregon grabs at least a share of the PAC title!

Beat UCLA 76-68.

The win gives the undisputed No. 1 seed to Oregon for the PAC tournament in Vegas.

The Ducks will try to win the title outright Sat. against USC.  Last time that happened, 2002.

Whew...


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Hedges

College-educated elites, on behalf of corporations, carried out the savage neoliberal assault on the working poor. Now they are being made to pay. Their duplicity—embodied in politicians such as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—succeeded for decades. These elites, many from East Coast Ivy League schools, spoke the language of values—civility, inclusivity, a condemnation of overt racism and bigotry, a concern for the middle class—while thrusting a knife into the back of the underclass for their corporate masters. This game has ended.

Chris Hedges at Truthdig.


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Tonight's Menu

1. The Ducks come out flat and get creamed by UCLA.

2.  They come out nervous and over energized, miss key shots and lose a close one.

3.  They pull out a close one with a buzzer beater.

4.  They smoke the Bruins.

I want #4, though I'd settle for #3.


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Legacy

The Tamp Bay Rays will play the Cuban National team in Havana's Estadio Latinoamericano this preseason.

Rumor has it that Obama will take in a game.

It's about time this happened.


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No Denmark

I feel sorry for poor young people out there today who have two choices.  Pay a small fortune to attend college, or forget about it.

Hillary is right.  The U.S. is not Denmark with its 99% literacy rate and free education.

Put another way, it pays to keep Americans in the dark.  It's also a proven method of nurturing the military by providing a pool of aimless youth to exploit and abuse.  It keeps low-income jobs humming.

A full 21% of adults in the U.S. read at a 5th grade level or lower. Fourteen percent can't read at all.

"I happen to think we are exceptional," says Hillary.

Well, how can we even begin to argue with that?


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Defeated and Joyful

Now that my pick for the next President of the Good Old USA has been thoroughly thrashed by the Good Old Former Confederacy, it is past time for me to bow out of the pundits' circle, aka, to stop dreaming.

I have neither interest in nor warm and fuzzy feelings for Chill-ary Hillary, none, zip, nada, zero, zilch, no way. I'm not gonna vote, even if Uncle Bernie says, "Vote for Hills, Dooley!"

Which he inevitably will.  My time on Earth is too short, too precious to take any of this seriously.

A part of me now wants Trump to spank Hills in the GE, should it come to that, and lead our nation to annihilation. Hillary is fully capable of doing as much, but Trump would do it with better laugh lines.

Dooley should have climbed aboard the clown car last summer and shouted, "Benghazi, you Bitch!"

A meaningless retort, obviously, but it's the kind of thing the dumb cherish, witness all the TPers who have crashed Congress.   It would have been endearing to hear Bernie lob a few Molotov word-splatters at the American Queen.

Bernie's message hasn't resounded, mainly because Bernie is a feather-light socialist whose fear is tangible.  He's afraid of black people, AIPAC, terrorists, schoolyard bullies, billionaires, real socialists, and his own shadow.

Not even his love for the 2nd Amendment and the MIC could put him over the hump.

I jest in part, of course.  Americans hate socialists, even the phony ones. Ironically, blacks appear to hate them the most.

It is clear that Americans are not ready to confront deep-rooted economic inequality and the rigged system--unless you count Trumpism as an antidote, a dubious argument. Bernie is boring people to death, and try as he might to reduce theoretical socialism to its lowest common denominator, he simply can't manage it.

Who could?  It's academic, and nobody--and I mean no one--is interested in theory.

Single-payer and free education have been stabbed to death by the broke and the ignorant, helped along by a deadly dose of "No We Can't" by the NYT, et al., for the consumption of the herd. Humanism?  Be damned!

Too many Americans think they're going to strike it rich tomorrow, placing their billion-dollar dreams ahead of reality.

As Wall Street celebrates--the choice between Clinton and Trump is too juicy--the South can happily declare itself far removed from any movement toward betterment.

Same old story.

Trump is that much closer to the presidency, for he can flit around the South for any number of days ahead and shore things up by bellowing, "Stupid people love me, and I love them.  I love the South!"

And his subjects shall laugh.  They shall laugh raucously.

Trump can be a Good Old Boy if he wants to be.  He's that good.

Bernie didn't blow it.  The truth is Bernie never had a chance.

I'm off to join the other circus.  I don't have time now for this shit.

Come on Donald, kick her ass and then give this cesspool what it deserves.


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Visitors

This chart shows the dispersement of viewers RBP has gathered since the advent of this blog in April, 2010.  Most of my visitors are from the U.S., but Russia is a close second, followed by China, Canada, India, and several locales in the E.U.

I'm a little surprised So. America doesn't show anything here because I have regular visitors from Brazil and Argentina and, less frequently, Colombia and Chile.

There is a tiny shading in West Africa, probably centered on Ivory Coast.  My visitors from Australia and New Zealand, the Philippines and Malaysia don't show here, but they're out there, the faithful, the dedicated, the hardcore Detritus fans.

Hi, everybody.  Thanks for stopping by.

In case any of you are wondering, I'm no fan of Donald Trump, the next President of the U.S.A.  I know you, as decent, learned and soulful people would like to know--WTF?

I wish I could tell you...


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