Beyond the Obvious

I find it sad and sickening that most Americans, and the corporate media that shapes them, are more concerned about the effects of Russian “meddling” on our “democracy” than they are about our own home-grown oligarchs, who are not only meddling, but have bought Congress and turned this wonderful democracy we’ve been told we have into a joke—an anti-democratic cesspool.--TS

My latest at CounterPunch.  This one will piss off all the Democrats who go on and on about Trump because he's the worst of the worst, which is true, but no cause for the vast majority of them to bury their heads in the sand and forget, ignore and misrepresent how we got here.

If we are products of our history, it's time we start taking history seriously, which means nuking the idea that the ruination of America commenced with Trump.

It's become an annoying trope, the kind of garbage that keeps intellectually-moribund mainstream outlets like the Huffington Post in business.


TS

Last Chance to Dance?

Seattle is at Houston tonight, set to begin another crucial series, as the Mariners are now more or less battling themselves to earn a Wildcard entry into the AL playoffs.

Seattle is eight-games behind the Astros, and three behind second-place Oakland in the AL West.

Mariners are still in it, but last I watched Felix "King" Hernandez was jostled around like a rubber bone in the jaws of an overly-playful Rottweiler.

Pitching wins championships, or so some baseball experts claim, and right now the Mariners need to find some.


TS

Thoughts on Stupidity

Often wondered about his myself.









TS

Threat

"Both well-meaning and more illicit-minded intelligence professionals basically realize [exposures of the inner workings of power] can't go on," Barrett Brown, a publisher and journalist who has been targeted by the FBI, tells "On Contact" host Chris Hedges in a conversation about attacks on WikiLeaks and other organizations.--Truthdig

The hackers go to jail, but so do the journalists who simply report what is open-sourced new information emerging from the secretive collusion between corporations and their government toadies.

It ain't right.  Say it ain't so, Joe...


TS

Not Funny

But hilarious.











(pic from last summer's gorge fire in Oregon)


TS

Read!

Find a good book and read it.









TS

Nixon Was Better Than Trump/Kissinger Approves

Just weeks after the coup, the US ambassador in Chile sent a memo to Henry Kissinger noting that "the military government of Chile requires adviser assistance of a person qualified in establishing a detention centre for the detainees ... adviser must have knowledge in the establishment and operation of a detention centre".

Even when the full extent of the torture and executions in Chile were well known, the US government sought to integrate the Pinochet regime into international business circles.--The Guardian

A reporter reminded the Patriot Prayer member (above) that Pinochet was a murderer.

The dictator's victims were "communists weren't they?" was his reply. Justified, apparently, if even remotely true.

The game story.


TS

Who's Cackling Now?

This is how I put it down a little over eight years ago in the early days of my blogging career.

By July 26, 2010 I'd had enough of Barack Obama's lies and deception.  Two years into his presidency it was clear.  The first black American president was a fraud.

I took him to task, as did many others on the left, for his duplicity.

Yet today he is still revered in most Democrats' eyes, in a deeply disturbing nostalgic way.

The Dems had a problem back then, and they refused to deal with it, perhaps because of their corporate myopia and pathetic search for the golden urinal.

This piece is a good intro for the centrist mob that still mourns for Hillary and the stupidity surrounding her '16 run for the top job.

America was cheated out of a presidential race that year, via corporate-groomed subterfuge, and what we got is exactly what we deserved.

As much as I'd love to blame the Russians, it ain't gonna happen.  Comrades, it is the fault of the American oligarchy--not Russia's.


TS

Reality: It Begins

And so it begins again, another campaign.

Not the political variety, which are increasingly stupid in American society (witness the two swine who ran for Prez in '16), but the one that matters.

Good old American college football.

I'm so pumped up I could be on steroids or something.  I feel like knocking the shit out of somebody.

The opportunity could present itself at tomorrow's guaranteed downtown riot.


TS

Capitalism: Class No Class

The election of Donald Trump fractured the American Left. The abandonment of class analysis in response to Mr. Trump’s racialized nationalism left identity politics to fill the void. This has facilitated the rise of neoliberal nationalism, an embrace of the national security state combined with neoliberal economic analysis put forward as a liberal / Left response to Mr. Trump’s program. The result has been profoundly reactionary.--RU

Rob Urie analyzes why class issues always get swept under the rug when the duopoly picks sides in its recurring mud fights.

Andrew Levine slaps Russophobia silly in the essay of the day.

The weekend's whole enchilada.


TS

Voice/Face

Dave Sims,one of the Seattle Mariners' lead television announcers, sounds just like the actor Woody Harrelson.  It's kind of eerie.

Sims and Mike Blowers have an interesting give and take in their work, sharing play-by-play and analyses in a seamless order.  Kinda different.

And this old Pirate, Bones Ely, looks just like a kid I once worked with in the restaurant biz.

Thought you should know this info, though I would be stressed to explain why.


TS

Amy and Noam

In case you missed it.

And an important partial transcript.


TS

Assholes

Fiendish swine.


TS

Noteworthy

If you like David Foster Wallace, which I do in essay form--I haven't read "Infinite Jest"--you might dig this reportage on the annual "DFDub" Conference in Normal.

I'm still having trouble with "Ulysses," but maybe I can get to "IJ" before my time expires.



TS

Protecting the Rich

Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer was placed on paid administrative leave Wednesday as the school announced it is investigating Courtney Smith's claims that several people close to the coach knew of a 2015 allegation of domestic violence against her ex-husband, former Ohio State assistant football coach Zach Smith, who was fired in July.--ESPN

With the college football kickoff about a month out, this is hella deal.

Corrupt, who said anything about corrupt?  As with the Joe Paterno/Penn State fiasco a few year back, it is simply unrealistic that the head coach, through the top-down guys to the ball boys, didn't know what was going on in a situation like this.

The universities protect their multi-millionaire coaches until they can't from a PR perspective.  Many heads rolled at Penn State; hopefully they will here too.

But I won't be surprised if they don't. It would mean everyone was satisfactorily purchased to avoid the main mess.


TS