Midsummer Intra-Traumatic Dance Disorder

Ladaniva - Shakar

Celia Cruz & Johnny Pacheco - Quimbara

Fcukers - UMPA

Gang of Four - I Found That Essence Rare

Jun Miyake - Lilies of the Valley

Atarashii Gakko! - Candy

Hayk (apricota) & Arni Rock ft. Sone Silver - Taran Taran

Mike Kelley - Tijuana Hayride (from Day is Done - ft Tricia Ridgway)

Jermaine Stewart - We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off

Pascuala Ilabaca y Fauna - El Baile del Kkoyaruna (Dance of the Miner)

Oliver Tree - Swing and a Miss

Angela Autumn - Dancer

Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble - Chollima on the Wing

Cloth - Polaroid

Imani Coppola - Legend of a Cowgirl

Suburban Lawns - Flavor Crystals

The Yardbirds - Over Under Sideways Down

Ian Dury and the Blockheads - Wake Up and Make Love with Me (Live)

Mahala Rai Banda - Mahalageasca (Live)

Strategery

Before:

After: 

They knew what they did.*

~~~~~~~

* See here for an instance of the pot calling the kettle black: 

[Eric] Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” ... Limited in intellectual ability, lacking any moral compass, grossly incompetent and filled with rage at established elites who they see as having slighted and rejected them, they remake the world into a playground for grifters, con artists and megalomaniacs.

They knew not what they did

I've seen a few too many videos lately of leftists barely able to contain their delight over the plights of formerly ardent Trump supporters and voters in the last election who "f'd around and found out,"  a dismayingly large number of whom are immigrants who never dreamed that Trump's campaign promise to deport millions and revoke the citizenship of "criminals" in the process could be made good on themselves or their loved ones.  Several of these made TikToks or social media posts mocking the notion that Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric could have anything to do with the "good ones" like themselves and their extended families.  The priority for these voters was terminating Bidenomics and replacing it with an America made great again by Donald Trump.  

Then there are the teachers and school administrators in Red States who voted for Donald Trump because that's who they are, but who are now shamefully faced with the fact that Trump's delivery on his promises to cut waste in government including elimination of Federal funding from the Department of Education in the service of fulfilling the long term Republican dream to do away with free public education for all threatens their livelihoods and their lives' work.

Lastly there are the laid off government employees and those whose work was funded (or produce purchased) by USAID money.  Again, the priorities they pushed to the fore in making their decision in November were the result of calculations that did not include their own vulnerability to Trump's fulfillment of his promises to his billionaire enablers.

Still to come, those Trump voters suddenly finding themselves dropped from the rolls of Medicaid or finding themselves up shit creek with the Social Security Admin without a paddle or void forbid being inconvenienced along with the rest of us by the impending termination of the US Postal Service.

There's no question that some of these voters were never going to vote for anyone but Trump for all of the reasons that leftists and liberals detest-- right along with the immigrants who needed to believe Trump was talking about other immigrants were farmers and teachers now facing their own unforeseen difficulties as a  result of voting to give ejecting millions of immigrants the try they thought it deserved if it meant a restoration of an America that may never have existed to begin with.   I can understand enjoying a bit of schadenfreude at their compulsive conservatism coming back to bite them on the ass.  

But I derive absolutely no pleasure from the horrified regret of the millions who voted for Trump out of a desperate need to believe that it had to be better than repeating the Presidential politics that they surely thought lay behind the misery of their lives in the 2020's.  For their votes I blame the Democrats for not prioritizing the needs of their immiserated electorate, and I blame the media for having its thumb stuck up its ass (as usual), as much as I blame the self-serving deceitful seduction of the Republicans who are masters at amassing enough votes to get within range of winning for their suppression tactics to succeed and remorseless in punishing the saps who were duped into voting for them with the power they needed their votes to get.  I blame those who let Joe Biden run again unchallenged in spite of his ongoing deterioration (never mind the myopic lunacy of letting him run at all in 2020 in his already decrepit state).  I blame the finality of Election Day.  I blame the founding fathers for devising such a fucked up system and misnaming it Democracy.  

The Democrats assumed the modest infrastructure spending and stabilizing of the domestic economy would help the public to forgive the administration's priorities in foreign affairs characterized by its spending of billions to enable conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.  Foreign wars aside, whatever good Biden did domestically was cancelled out by his eagerness to restore things to the way they were before COVID-- as though prematurely cancelling the relief instigated in the early Trumpian days of the pandemic that accidentally exposed the ability of the Federal government to marshal the resources to make people's lives easier, keep them housed and out of debt would be greeted with gratitude.  Biden thought he was doing a good thing bringing things back to how they were before the pandemic, but people's lived experience belied the rosy news in the business pages and on Wall Street.*

I don't blame low information voters who pinned their hopes for better times on a change in the White House.  I don't blame those so turned off by the process that they didn't vote.  I still have a hard time forgiving those who knew well enough that a second Trump term would be bad news but who withheld their votes from Kamala Harris anyway.  They knew what we were in for with Trump's re-election, but take none of the blame for letting it happen because they are satisfied with what it accomplished: punishing the Democrats.  As if being a democrat isn't enough punishment.

Is anybody happy?  Does misery at least still love company?

~~~~~

* According to a University of Chicago study, a good economy is always good for Republicans.  But who is the economy good for?  More jobs don't necessarily mean better jobs.  When in the last 40 years has the average American experienced anything like the relief from hard times that they got during the COVID crisis that the elite were so eager to bring to a close?

From Blakullafarden to Akbank Bunka

Halsing Suite No. 1 for Guitar: IV. Ganglat "Blakullafarden" A traditional Swedish folk "walking song" from the Hälsingland region arranged for guitar and performed by Jakob Lindberg:

 From the same Suite of Suites of Swedish folk tunes this time from Dalecarlia,  here is Dalecarlian Suite No. 1 for Lute: I. Preludium:

Lindberg's younger brother is Christian Lindberg, a premier trombonist, conductor, and composer of some wildly different music.  Here for instance is Lindberg performing his own Elvis in Memoriam from his Asa Suite with the Australian Chamber Orchestra:

Lastly, here is Turk Jazz, the 3rd movement of Lindberg the Younger's Akbank Bunka suite, performed by Pacho Flores on trumpet with the Arctic Philharmonic based in Tromsø and Bodø, Norway:

Bonus: While we're talking Swedish folktunes, here's one from the region of a quarter of my ancestors, Skåne.  The tune is one of my favorites, Lönsbodapolkan performed by Tvåtakt:

Gimme

Some questions we know the answer to immediately.   Others we have to think about.  There's a class of question that due to the circumstances in which you encounter it demands an instant response but that always gives me pause.  This is a question I encounter more and more at the payment card pad at the retail establishment checkout.  

The first time I remember seeing it was at a PetSmart.   I had swiped my debit card and before I was asked for my PIN I got an unexpected insertion: How much did I want to contribute to homeless pets?  There were an assortment of choices, ranging from nothing to $5, with possibly an option for Other for those finding themselves in a superlatively generous mood.  My reflexive response was "Why does PetSmart want to know?"  It grated at my sense of injustice that some faceless big box store, a black hole of wealth and finance masquerading as a pet shop having opened up my wallet for the purchase of essentials had found some way to coax me to voluntarily open it further ostensibly for the benefit of unseen, merely evoked immiserated animals-- but who knew what actually for?  At best I could imagine PetSmart was shaking me down for their own glory-- cajoling me into funding what some suit fancied to be a PR coup for the company.  At worst, they were performatively seeing how much extra cash they could trick their customer base into coughing up for nothing at the register. I reflexively refused the first several times I encountered the option.

I don't remember when or why I gave in, but I now pretty regularly give the dollar every time.  My working theory is that what happened was COVID-- somehow the knowledge of an increase in homelessness among pets due to the COVID deaths of their owners or other misfortunes related to the upheaval of the disease may have done some work on me and inspired me to use the occasion of the cash register question as an opportunity to satisfy myself that I was in a some small way contributing to the solution of a crisis.  Once I had experienced the ease of giving a buck on top of the hundreds of dollars I was spending each month on my pets, it soon became habit.  Occasionally it occurred to me to question whether my acquiescence to the pleading was serving anybody but the corporation, but it was always after the fact, when I was walking out the door with my purchases and never when I could actually do anything to get to the bottom of the problem.  In fact, it wasn't until just now when I googled "Who benefits from PetSmart's cash register charity?" that I learned that the recipient of PetSmart's customer's spontaneous cash register largesse is "PetSmart Charities LLP."

According to its homepage, 90 cents on every dollar collected at the cash register goes toward the care of homeless pets. But why take PetSmart Charities' word for it?  It takes some digging, but of course there's dirt if you look for it.  Knowing what I now know, I'm sympathetic to my gut resentment at a corporation for expecting me to just hand over money to let them do as they see fit with it with no accountability, no accounting of how it's spent, no input from me in what is done with it.  I don't doubt PetSmart owes a debt to the society we share that lets them grow unfettered-- but I'm uncomfortable with leaving the repayment strictly up to the corporation.  Will it cause me to break the habit of donating?  Probably not.

PetSmart is of course not the only establishment wheedling money out of its customers as long as they have their credit cards engaged.  Drugstores, restaurants and supermarkets among others as I'm sure you're aware also engage in periodic campaigns of fundraising.  My usual supermarket has recently initiated a drive to raise money to combat hunger for vets.  I have seen the prompt the last 2 times I've checked out, and confess that much like my initial response to the homeless pet question at PetSmart, I have found myself reflexively refusing.  

I admit I bristle at the easy sleasy "patriotism" of corporations falling over themselves to lead the mandatory chorus of "Thank you for your service" to soldiers and veterans. What service?  Interfering in democratic elections abroad in order to impose crackdowns on popular socialist movements?  Installing dictators of the corporate class's liking where the US might otherwise have difficulty imposing its hegemony?  Killing innocent foreign citizens with bombs?  Killing American citizens with drones? Thwarting peace, threatening war, crushing autonomy, making the world safe for neoliberalism, finance and corporate exploitation and unsafe for freedom for regular people especially if they're dark skinned and poor?  Shaming Americans into thanking the military for its service is a smokescreen for the owner class's responsibility for how unsafe for true freedom worldwide-- including in America-- the US Military's mission has been in my lifetime.  I can't think of a single military operation that hasn't benefited the haves at the expense of the have nots.  Its ever expanding budget taken largely out of American taxpayer's hides* squeezes out spending that would actually make people's lives easier. Our military is deployed on the wrong side of every conflict and never on my behalf.  And its outsized demands for energy and resources is largely responsible for the planetary climate crisis that is fueling conflicts worldwide.

On the other hand, I realize that the pathways to becoming a soldier or a vet are more complicated than my feelings about the military, and it is an injustice that the country that expects young men and women to volunteer† for the overseas adventures of its small but dominant overclass takes such poor care of those who have served that many of them starve or go homeless.  Take better care of your proxies yourselves, you ungrateful bastards!  

In the meantime, now that I've talked it out, I've decided: I will do what I can to help out fellow exploitees of the system at the cash register.  Fuck it!  Solidarity!

~~~~~

* And less and less out of the overstuffed pockets of the tax shirking owner class whose sloppiness and greed and hostility to the rest of the world cause the emergencies that members of the military are then tasked to risk life and limb and mental health to deal with.

† It was considered a victory when the draft ended in the fallout from the American public's disenchantment with Vietnam.  But truthfully, in a more democratic society (one much more democratic that the US), military service that serves the people should be a duty that is shouldered by all citizens.  Perhaps if everybody had an equal chance to be selected for military service, a more democratic congress would be more selective about the engagements that call for military deployment.

The door is open

My brother thirteen is ready for a General Strike.  Laid off from work in the days of COVID, he has lately been participating in more than his share of the many marches and demonstrations that have sprung up in response to the plethora of outrages coming out of the Trump II White House.  Marches have their place- but there is something to be said for the General Strike as an effective weapon against the authoritarianism that is threatening to turn Americans into complicit abettors in TwentyFirst Century Fascism.  

My brother thirteen is all about the General Strike.  He was ready May 1.  In principle I support the idea-- I find the daydream of a work stoppage across the land a tantalizing fantasy, but the May 1 movement my brother informed me about remained a daydream when the day rolled by,  I told thirteen I would gladly  participate in any organized General Strike as long as it wasn't just a Bluesky thing.  It needs to be The Big One-- a voluntary mass stoppage of work and of commerce participated in so broadly that it causes the severe pain in those it is designed to communicate to.  It needs to be a threat that normies take seriously.  I will commit to it the day I overhear my work colleagues discussing it. There is talk of General Strikes if you look for it-- but you have to want to find it.  But until it is a phrase buzzing from late night talk show hosts' lips, and tossed about in the banter that precedes workaday meetings, I don't think I'll be joining.

Taylor Lorenz recently made a video about the "Someone Needs to Do It" Meme.  I can wholeheartedly relate to the sentiment.  A General Strike would be better because it's something we could all pull the trigger on. How satisfying would that be?  But while we wait for a movement to congeal around an act that demonstrates the power and the seriousness of the anti-fascist masses, I concur with Taylor Lorenz that hoping for the vicarious thrill of some anonymous working class hero's taking of matters into his or her own hands is not an unpleasant way to pass the time.  It's just too passive a pastime, and history suggests there are ways for the non-violent among us to spring into action.

I think of G.A. Cohen's parable of the self-imprisoned man from Karl Marx's Theory of History:

A man is in a windowless room whose door he mistakenly thinks is locked. Unlike a man in a locked room, he can leave it. Yet since he does not know he can, he is not likely to try the door. One reason why people sometimes do not exercise their power is their lack of awareness that they have it.

Now is the time for us to collectively walk through that door.  Whenever we agree is Now. 

Not to put too fine a point

Toward the end of a long piece for Spectre Magazine in which socialist writer DK Renton carefully builds a history-based counter-argument to the notion that Trump's second administration is exhibiting signs of fascism, he writes:

Trump isn’t a fascist yet, his party isn’t in its core politics, his voters are largely the Republicans of 2012 and 2008, rather than an army committed to certain outcomes in advance. But the distance between him and fascism has narrowed to such a fine point that it would take very little to cross it. 

As some boob on the internet with no reputation to protect, I have the luxury of not concerning myself with strict formalities.  From my perspective Donald Trump is eagerly embracing the forbidden mantels of fascism and authoritarianism that I'm surprised as someone closer to his age than I'd like to admit (he could be my oldest brother's oldest brother) he did not internalize an antipathy to in the wake of Hitler's defeat in World War II.  Then again, what I am witnessing seems to me to be the apotheosis of the easy sociopathy exhibited so freely by members of his class in the 1960's of my youth. 

I try to get inside his head to understand, but there's no room in there.  The space is completely occupied with "Me".  But in their unfettered lack of self-awareness, he and his loutish accomplices remind me very much of a cross between  a certain type of suburban New Jersey blue blood in whose homes my father, a self-employed poorly compensated floor scraper would often ply his trade and the more successful than he nouveau riche contractors he would frequently work with.  Somehow I experienced both, and though my father never talked about it, my invisibility when he would bring me and my twin brother thirteen, preschoolers, along on rare jobs, felt like a blindness on the part of the blue blooded dames who would casually toss about racism and contempt for the poor, careless of my father's feelings and without filter as though my brother and I in our food-stained little outgrown hand-me-down shirts and shorts with our impressionable little brains weren't there.  The loud and crass contractors who simply ignored us took for granted that my father would have no objection to their racist complaining and liberal sprinkling of the n-word in casual conversation on the job when thanks to their discrimination no black people were anywhere around.  In church we learned and sang that Jesus loved the little children of all colors, but he was exceptional.  Most adults it seemed, especially the comfortable ones -- maybe because change was so much in the air in those days -- were preoccupied with their hatred and satisfied with white society's stinginess toward those who were fighting for fairness with their slice of the pie.  Rich people assume the non-rich hate them because they envy them.  In my case, the hatred comes from my formative experience of them.  Among the worst, most contemptible people I've ever met, and I'm convinced Donald Trump and his posse are the same.  These are the tax shirkers and wealth hoarders and planet rapers who complain about the entitlement of the poor. And Trump and his team are emboldened to be doing something about it.

In their recent article on the subject of End Times Fascism in the Guardian, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor make a distinction between the fascism of 100 years ago, focussed as it was on creating an earthly utopia from the ashes of the world it sought to destroy, and today's kind of illiberal go for broke state sponsored capitalism, utterly and intentionally conscious of the ravages it is wreaking on what's left of the planet it's been destroying with an escape plan reserved strictly for the traitorous oligarchs who are carrying it out.  A small but powerful group using the fragments of state power dutifully servile to it in the person of amoral autocrats such as Trump, Israel's Netanyahu, Hungary's Orbán, India's Modi, etc., in order to shut every one else out.  It's the culmination of a project described in recent works like Richard Seymour's Disaster Nationalism, Douglas Rushkoff's Survival of the Richest and Yanis Varoufakis' Techno-Feudalism.

There are definitions and lists of characteristics of fascism, but I am finding Google's AI list among the most succinct and useful:

Extreme Nationalism: Fascism emphasizes the nation's importance and often includes a strong sense of national pride and a belief in the superiority of the nation. 

Militarism: Fascist regimes often prioritize military strength and glorify war, viewing it as a way to achieve national greatness. 

Cult of Personality: Fascist leaders are often portrayed as charismatic and infallible figures, and their followers are encouraged to worship them. 

Suppression of Dissent:  Dissent and opposition are harshly suppressed, often through violence and intimidation. 

Social Hierarchy: Fascism often features a belief in a natural social hierarchy, with some groups seen as superior to others. 

Control of the Economy: Fascist regimes often exert significant control over the economy, sometimes through state ownership or regulation. 

Racism and Xenophobia:  Many fascist movements have embraced racism and xenophobia, targeting minority groups and promoting national purity. 

Use of Propaganda:  Fascist regimes often use propaganda to manipulate public opinion and create a sense of national unity. 

Rejection of Democracy:  Fascism is typically opposed to democracy and free elections, viewing them as weak and ineffective. 

 The rest I feel emboldened to say is quibbling.

Beautiful Worlds

A timely tune-- Devo's Beautiful World featuring Booji Boy himself in exciting 3-D -- from 1982.

Beautifully covered by the Ooks of Hazard at the Cerritos (CA) Library from the summer of 2011.

Finally a solo cover by Lauren Lusardi performing as PLASMIC.

The Thing That Wouldn't Die

A Kamala abstainer of my acquaintance recently shared as his latest salvo in our ongoing debate about electoral politics a paragraph from a Nation article, The Lost Millions by Kali Holloway, (not online as of this writing):  

The Democrats' takeaway from Trump's victory should be that a party's political priorities must resonate with the identities of its base.  But they have fundamentally misunderstood this assignment, yet again.  

The consequences of that misunderstanding-- or refusal to understand-- were reflected in 2024's turnout, when, by some estimates, a staggering 19 million people who votged for Joe Biden in 2020 stayed home.  It's not that Dem voters became Republican en masse this election.  In fact, in "nearly a third of the top 50 counties that flipped from Democrat to Republican, Trump's vote actually declined from his 2020 numbers," writes Steve Phillips of both the Guardian and this magazine. Trump increased his vote total by just 2.8 million over 2020/. The far bigger problem was Harris's nearly 7 million vote shortfall. 

No argument Harris's campaign disexcited people.  But there was more to it.  Greg Palast, an investigative journalist, discovered millions of people who voted had their votes thrown out due to strategic republican challenging. According to him those votes would have won her the election.   

... Palast claims that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris would have defeated Donald Trump by 1.2 million votes in 2024, if not for widespread voter suppression tactics. According to Palast, the actions of Republican officials, including the purging of Black voters from the rolls and the rejection of ballots, ultimately cost Harris the election.

Palast ... concluded that, if all legal votes had been counted, Harris would have won the popular vote by 3.5 million votes in addition to claiming key battleground states.

“If not for the mass purge of voters of color, the disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, and the new ‘vigilante’ challenges in swing states, Kamala Harris would have won,” Palast said. He cited data from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, which revealed that over 4.7 million voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls.

It’s a combination of factors.  There's enough blame to go all around. Especially on Biden and his team which became Harris's team. But also on the cheaters. And I have a hard time forgiving influencers who pretended or acted ignorant to the threat Trump posed because it inconveniently diluted the opportunity to punish Biden (who was no longer running). Kamala was the sacrificial lamb anyway. Those people won their election but will not take credit for it. 

Not saying it was a deciding factor. Just that I have a hard time forgiving it, I think because I can't escape my perception that the opportunity to avoid Trump was squandered on a performative spoiling of the ballot. My wing of the left and the influencers have an irreconcilable difference probably about the relevance and effectiveness of that protest on that particular unrepeatable date. If I carp on it it’s because I don’t want people to squander opportunities to reduce harms like Trump in the future.  People who voted for Trump are starting to have regrets.  People who consciously and deliberately voted against Kamala will never have to reckon. As I say not the deciding factor but a peeve I can’t seem to get over.  Maybe spelling it out will help. 

I sense a lot of self-satisfaction on the left about the defeat of the Democrats in November and it's causing a change in my viewing habits.  A Marxist intellectual I have been edified by in the past was given space recently to pontificate on the meaning of the chaos we're witnessing as a result of the failure of the neoliberal party to win in November.  He and his interlocutor were not prepared to call the new regime fascist though they felt the chaos was instructive.  The previous day it was Sabby Sabs and Briahna Joy Gray who I deliberately tortured myself with which predictably undermined my mood.  That I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting myself to be annoyed by a certainty that the US/capitalism is going down as though that takes some kind of political genius to discern and also as if the impending end of it alone is something worth wasting your breath on.  I guess we’re supposed to just endure not-Fascism for now while history takes its sweet time. Ok I was already doing that.

Re-reading some correspondence from last year I remembered how no one but me wanted to challenge Joe Biden in the primary, and no one but me wanted to stop Project 2025 from happening and now that it’s happening no one is taking credit for it. 

If hatred of Dems leads to socialism I’m down with it. If it leads to Trump not so much

I reiterate. I hate establishment dum dum Dems too. But in no world would Kamala Harris be dismantling Social Security, Medicaid, USAID, the Department of Education, the Post Office.  In no world would she be stepping up ICE's kidnapping and black holing immigrants and blackmailing and memory-holing civil rights, and terminating juridically established rights and commandeering Universities and cultural institutions, and forcing coercion of law firms and media outlets and threatening to send US born dissidents to foreign gulags.   In no world would she be defying the Supreme Court.  Would her foreign policy be as misguidedly destructive as Biden’s? I hoped not. But it would not be as reckless as Trump's. Too late to merely regret the fuckup of last election. Let’s hope that ultimately, regardless of what we're going through socialists (who seem to be AWOL) win the war without too much socialist or innocent blood shed,  and bucketfuls of evil motherfucker blood spilt. And not the opposite which is what the Project 2025 architects promised. 

I’m selective in my blame for where we are right now.  We have been lied to about electoral politics. Dems take our votes and do whatever the fuck their donors please. Republicans at least do the harm they promise they’ll do which is mistaken for honesty by the ovine electorate rather than as just making good on their threats. So I don’t blame the ovines. I do blame dem strategists for their blindness and ineptitude and asshattery. 

I also want more from my fellow leftists than empty powerless pissing away of votes and futile anger churning nihilism, let the consequences be damned. "None of the above" never wins.  Who does it teach?  What is the lesson?  The Online Left wants to say it teaches the Dems and the lesson is listen or lose my vote but the reality is it teaches powerlessness and nihilism to people vulnerable to both. Who does it serve?   Trump.  It places, too much importance on Election Day without taking the obligation of that day seriously. It’s anger-based not strategic. Understandable anger to be sure. It’s infuriating. But James fucking Carville Carvilles on no matter who wins or how badly Dems lose. 

Sauce For The Gander

"He who saves his country violates no laws" - Donald Trump

Not intended this way , but we would all of us-- and I do mean all-- do well to take that  to heart.  Especially you doers who know exactly what I mean by that.

Trump is not heeding the unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home to Maryland from his bogus deportation and actual imprisonment in El Salvador.  We should take Trump's cue and throw out the law.  This is the country he wants to live in.  Why should he have all the fun? We should take advantage of it now to the fullest extent possible before the civil society that I think most of would prefer is restored.  This could turn out to be a much better opportunity than we thought, this rotting from the head!  Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, eh "Mr President"?  Maybe he's a religious man after all, this macher.

While we're at it, let's abrogate the terms of every friendship and relationship we have in our lives and arrogate better deals for ourselves out of each of them.  And when the backlash starts, let's declare a 90 day pause. 

Let's make promises to get ourselves power and then go back on them once we've achieved the status our promises got us.

There's no one below us to shit on, so let's shit upward.  Together, we can make a hell of a lot more shit for them than what's coming down on us.

Let's manipulate the stock market -- we may not be able to cause a predictable crash that we can then profit from, but I think a rabble of us could actually storm the premises and manipulate the stock market.

They can't arrest all of us.

Let's lie about all of it.  Especially the obvious crimes that have solid proof. 

Let's.  And before we do any of that, let's disappear the few who we feel most deserve it.  It's like a wise man once said (perhaps accidentally), He who saves his country violates no laws.

BOGE

I thought Elon Musk was IT.  Isn't part of the rationale of electing business people rather than technocrats that we want government run like a business?*  No decent business that I know would stomach Musk's willy-nilly implementation of change without a Change Control process.

In IT  (and perhaps in your line of work) we have a little thing called Change Control—an annoying little process you have to go through before you make any change to production systems in order to ensure that the change will not break what it’s supposed to fix or break anything you didn’t take the time to consider would be  impacted.  You’re supposed to have a plan, one which involves understanding the requirements of the change; developing it in an environment isolated from the one people use for their jobs; testing it, debugging it and testing again; developing a test plan for users involving actual use cases from their jobs, socializing the change with others whose impacts you may not have considered and getting buy-in from all before you’re allowed to proceed, communicating the change beforehand to all including a thorough explanation of why the change is being made, what is expected to be impacted, what users are expected to do before, during and after the implentation.  And if the change goes badly you’re supposed to have a plan for rolling it back. And if you're rolling it back as much as you're rolling it out, your process is ass.  Even in the best processes, things are overlooked, someone did not fully understand the impact a change would have and because change sucks, users will still be unhappy with it.  That is supposed to be addressed.  The idea being Do No Harm.  

As much as we hate the change control process, there is something to be said for making the social outcasts who do IT think about other people and what they need and want to get out of a system before they get their gloms on it.  But where are any of the precepts of Change Control in DOGE’s process?  It is the sloppiest fucking change I’ve ever seen.  Unprofessional. Noob. Bogus.  Shameful. Fireable.  And no one whose systems are being mauled by Musk's minions asked for it, least of all the voters who put Musk's figurehead in the White House. Again.  (Probably because they were afraid or unhappy or incurious about the actual unknown change of the alternative.)  

No one likes change.  But there are two kinds of it.  One, the kind that Elon Musk (and as recently seen in the Tariffs fiasco, the entire Trump administration) is not practicing is the end result of a well thought out, intentional, purposeful, carefully executed process that is in place to serve the needs of the users of a system and if thought out and done well, improve it.

The other we call disaster. 

~~~~~

* Those who have bought the truism that the solution to government is to run it like a business forget that ideal government serves the people; ideal business serves only those who own it.  It should be fucking obvious now.

Democrat Derangement Syndrome

Buncha Rich Fuckin' Sociopaths Sittin' Around Talkin' - Howard Lutnick on the All In podcast

"What I've learned at the Federal Reserve is a new language which is called 'Fed-speak'. You soon learn to mumble with great incoherence."  -- Alan Greenspan

As a rule, Democrats suck.*  No question about it.  Once the party of  Franklin Roosevelt, whose bold leadership out of the Great Depression 100 years ago set the stage for an era of reforming presidents of both parties and America's greatest period of prosperity and expanding equality, it is now the party of Third Way donor-fellating technocrats whose wannabe Republicanism-Lite™ in a dark, seemingly unending era of raging inequality and misery is popular only amongst themselves, Never Trumper Republicans and certain 24 hour news channels.  Their heads-up-their-asses approach to politics bears great responsibility for where we have found ourselves in 2025.  Happy?  Now can we talk?

I was watching a segment on Status Coup the other day in which it was promised that Jordan (Chariton) , the founder and main presenter of the Left of Progressive news outlet "GOES NUCLEAR on SLEAZEBALL Trumper Hinting at Sabotaging Social Security".  The occasion for it was remarks that Trump's Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick made on the Venture Capitalism podcast All-In concerning his lack of concern about the controlled chaos inflicted on the Social Security Administration by Elon Musk's DOGE coup:

Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month, my mother-in-law — who's 94 — she wouldn't call and complain.  She'd just think something I messed up and she’d get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining.

Never mind that the Trump administration is busily removing the channels for said complaining by cutting out the SSA's customer service phone number entirely as they prepare to make AI bots the only public face of the Agency.  Do we really have to say that by definition those who need Social Security the most-- for whom the program was conceived as a way of keeping the elderly and unable to work off the streets and able to keep food in the larders as the name implies-- are those who can least afford to miss a single payment?  Chariton did not disappoint, removing his trademark nerd glasses to accurately proclaim Lutnick a "rich fucking sociopath."   Chariton's assessment of the plan that Lutnick was purposely under-representing for his former Wall Street cronies sounds about right: "Pretty clear cut: let's just fuck up this program as much as we can, get the masses so disgruntled, so desperate, and then, hey!  Maybe J.P. Morgan can help us with Social Security.  Maybe McKinsey... the vulture capitalist consultants that Pete Buttigieg [worked for], maybe the private sector can do this better than us since we've fucking taken a chainsaw to it. And that's before they start cutting the benefits-- and I assure you that's coming too-- under waste, fraud and abuse."  All of this in spite of Trump's repeated promise on the campaign trail (to a MAGA constituency that is assuredly heavily dependent on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as Chariton reminded us) that his administration was not going to touch the entitlements.

Of course no Status Coup rant would be complete without a reminder that the Democrats are hardly better.  Chariton reminded us of the tinkering and the threats to tinker with Social Security of the most recent crop of Democratic presidents.  But there was no mention of the inconvenient fact that the most recent, Joe Biden, who as a Senator pioneered third wave Democratic advocacy for ruthless "serious" trimming of entitlements in the name of deficit reduction, seemingly found Jesus as president on Social Security by boosting payments to the Social Security Trust Fund out of which come monies that cover  annual shortfalls between the amount paid into Social Security by those still in the labor force and those paid out to retirees and those on disability, which in 2023 was $41.4 Billion.  The total amount in the Trust Fund is around $2.8 trillion dollars, enough to cover shortfalls of similar magnitude until 2035.  To complete the picture, the money that goes into Social Security via employer's FICA payments on behalf of their employees is a progressive tax on worker's wages which is capped at incomes of $168,600.  Above this, the tax is the same regardless of the income of the contributor: currently $20.9K per year.  Should the Trust Fund deplete, based on annual contributions, Social Security will still pay 85% of benefits; however, as Bernie Sanders has been touring the country pointing out, the shortfall could more easily be filled by removing the cap on incomes for social security contributions.  "Tax the rich"

The Sociopath Lutnick, a former Democratic donor-type skeeve pre-Obama who oozed his skeeviness rightward over supposed unhappiness with Democratic identity politics during the previous Trump admnistration and provided resources for Trump's latest win, epitomizes the counterpart trajectory to Status Coup's guest in the segment, Steve Grumbine, a former Reagan Republican whose exposure to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) supposedly turned him into a progressive; a "Real Progressive" as the non-profit that he founded of that name avers.

Grumbine comes in hot following Chariton's rant to talk about how Bernie saying all we have to do to cover the Social Security shortfall is tax the wealthy is basically feeding into the same message as Lutnick et al—i.e., that there’s a shortfall that needs to be dealt with (contra Bernie by cutting benefits)-- when according to Modern Monetary Theory the government can just print money whenever it wants to, so Social Security is never in true jeopardy, shortfall or not.  In support of Grumbine's assertion, Chariton plays a clip of Alan Greenspan, the libertarian, partisan, Randian, antiregulatory free-market fundamentalist and former Head of the Federal Reserve from the Reagan to Bush Younger administrations (and as administrator of monetary policy arguably the engineer of the 2008 Financial Crisis due to policies that made unregulated exotic speculation consequenceless for the financial masters of the universe).  Responding to questions from Paul Ryan in a congressional hearing about the shortfall, Greenspan, hardly a proponent of MMT, nevertheless magically parrots Grumbine's assertion that it’s not a question of will the money be there because the government can print money whenever it needs to, but rather “the question is, how do you set up a system which assures that the real assets are created which those benefits are employed to purchase?  So it’s not a question of security, it’s a question of the structure of a financial system which assures that the real resources are created for retirement as distinct from the cash.  The cash itself is nice to have but it’s got to be in the context of the real resources being created at the time those benefits are paid “ (video cuts off here.)  All of which Chariton interprets as there is no insolvency issue, we have enough money to pay out social security "into infinity and beyond."  And Grumbine goes further to explain the gobbledygook from Greenspan about what the real question is as consistent with MMT's advocacy of deficit spending;  and avers that the Social Security system as conceived and currently operating is a concession to capitalists in that above a certain income you pay the same as everyone else so it hurts less to pay the more you make over that cap , whereas at the bottom of the scale it’s taking a bite out of your ability to live day to day.  So while Greenspan is matter of factly saying that the real problem of retirement is not coming up with the cash to pay Social Security, it’s coming up with the things that that cash buys—in other words a problem for business—Grumbine is saying the government could not tax anybody for Social Security—and it could still then turn around and pay everyone say $5000 a month regardless of how much you made over the course of your career and then the problem would be ensuring that there were enough resources for folks to spend that money on. 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Trump administration is not about to fix Social Security with Modern Monetary Theory, and furthermore that in the only alternate universe that was possible in the November branch of alternate universes, a Kamala Harris administration would not be dismantling social benefits, laying off Federal employees, wrecking government to give cover to nefarious plans to privatize to Elon Musk every service the government provides with our taxes.  If the Social Security Trust Fund is essentially a spreadsheet as Grumbine says, is it not reasonable to expect that anyone trying to preserve Social Security and prevent the massive social misery we appear to be headed for in this country might as well wring digits to "save" it from the hoarded wealth of billionaires?  Would anyone other than the less than 2000 billionaires in this country complain?  It is far too late to carp on this, but the reflexive "Them Too-ing" of Democrats on the part of the "enlightened left" absolutely contributed to the havoc we are now experiencing, which will only get worse.   We can certainly expect the abstainers of the left, the Third Party purity voters to continue moaning as a way of excusing themselves for shirking from the prevention of Trump's victory.  It certainly will not fix things if any proportion of them suddenly saw the light.  But I wouldn't mind.  

~~~~~

* Though there are exceptions.  And, to my main argument, far more exceptions to the rule in the Democratic caucus than in the GOP.

This is America

Arguably also #2

Trump has revoked the legal status of half a million immigrants from Venezuela, Cuba,  Haiti and Nicaragua who were granted permission to migrate under the auspices of  a sponsorship program introduced by the Biden administration in 2022 as a pathway to citizenship for those seeking asylum from acknowledged crises.  Beneficiaries of the program have been encouraged to self-deport and are  "required" to download a governmental app to inform the administration of their intent to do so.  And there are hints that Ukrainians are next.  Trump's administration is persecuting and seeking to deport or otherwise disappear legal citizens (Mahmoud Khalil most famously) whose opinions they don't like, and have used the pretext of the 1798 Alien Enemies act to round up non-criminal Venezuelans (men and women) for deportation and imprisonment in El Salvador which has agreed to take them-- the act's first invocation by a sitting administration ever in peacetime.  They have also sought to loosen prohibitions on torture and the use of black sites for those designated as enemy combatants, with an ambition to outdo the illegal activities of the Bush administration that at least had the context of the Iraq War to use as a cover for their thuggery.  And without yet waging war they are dropping bombs and killing civilians in Yemen (and coordinating the attacks via IM threads on private 3rd party apps that they accidentally share with journalists).  They are dismantling the Department of Education, cancelling foreign and domestic aid, antagonizing neighbors, infiltrating cultural institutions, hacking the few benefits American workers and taxpayers get from paying taxes and now have their sights on Social Security, Amtrak and the Post Office.

Some have wishfully called the unparalleled fascism that the Trump administration has unleashed on the country in its first two months following the playbook of the supremacist Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 Un-American.  The sad fact is that it could not be more American if it came with baseball cards and apple pie.  The country that brought you chattel slavery, Jim Crow, colonial settler genocide, trickle down economics, global anti-democratic mayhem in the name of the corporate class, planetary imbalance-- an acknowledged inspiration for both Hitler and settler colonial genocidal zionists in Israel-- now brings you Trump.  The empty protestations of impotent Democrats like Biden and Obama to the contrary, Violence and Stupidity is who we are. There is a certain class of lout that America has attracted and exalted and produced in abundance over the years, and comb-over Trump and his implanted South African partner in crime with implants Elon Musk are the apotheosis.

I know this is not what those who invoke American ideals in contrast to what we're witnessing from Washington are talking about when they use the phrase un-American to describe what Trump and Musk and their evil minions are doing.  True enough, there is a strain in American culture, a never realized but often invoked strain, that hints at government of, for and by the people.  A land of the free, a home of the brave and just and good.  Simple folk who believe in doing for yourself and letting your neighbor be but taking care of folks when times is tough or they ain't got the wherewithal to take keer of theirselves.  We don't go in for this here authoritarian stuff, least wise from those we send to Washington.  Shucks, we don't know much about book learning and such, but we'd never think of putting down folks who do.  We're not the kind to shy away from facing the cold hard facts of life if it's what we've got to do to make the world safe and life good for all good people everywhere.  Sure, we have differences, but we don't let them come between us, and we'll fight for your right to disagree with us about anything as long as you're not hurting no one with it.  Why, it takes all kinds to make the world go 'round.   There's plenty of room for everybody!  Burning books and jailing folks for having opinions contrary to our own and blaming people who don't look like us or act like us or believe like us for our problems is for fraidy cats.  That's not us!  That's not who we are!  Right, Neighbor?

Yes and No.

No Daylight, Kid

Trump they wouldn't believe.  Harris they wouldn't disbelieve.  But while Trump has already demonstrated his capacity to do the damage to our society that his most ardent and deeply pocketed supporters said he was going to do, we have recently learned that there was a good explanation for Harris's troubling remonstrations about how different a Harris administration would be from the Biden era that no one was particularly crushed to see about to come to an end.

As reported in the upcoming chronicle of the 2024 election, “FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, as excerpted at The Hill:

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both understood the importance of being seen as the bigger change agent.  For Trump, that meant continuing to promise an antidote to the Biden-Harris years.  For Harris, there was more flexibility to define her brand of change.  ... [Biden] would say publicly that Harris should do what she must to win. But privately, including in conversations with her, he repeated an admonition: let there be no daylight between us. “No daylight” was the phrase he had used as a vice presidential candidate in 2008 to bind Republican nominee John McCain to an unpopular president, George W. Bush.

The day before Harris’s first interview ... [V]eteran Democratic communications strategist Stephanie Cutter launched into a proposed preamble — a list of all the items that made Harris proud of her work with Biden.  “Wait, wait, wait!” said Sean Clegg, a longtime Harris adviser who was regarded with suspicion by the Biden holdovers running the campaign. “Let’s not do this. Let’s not go down memory lane.”   That was the last time he was invited to media prep. 

Whether she won or lost the election, [Biden] thought, she would only harm him by publicly distancing herself from him — especially during a debate that would be watched by millions of Americans. To the extent that she wanted to forge her own path, Biden had no interest in giving her room to do so. He needed just three words to convey how much all of that mattered to him.  “No daylight, kid,” Biden said.

Nothing about this surprises me.  In fact, this was my assumption -- my hope-- going into election day-- that Harris's mannered insistence that nothing would fundamentally change except the face at the top of the ticket was not the truth but a condition of Joe Biden's surrender to the tide that burned to replace him only after it was too late.  It beggared belief that Kamala Harris was Joe Biden's DEI clone.  There was so much to object to about Joe Biden, apart from his deteriorating mind, that the sheer fact of a switch at the top of the ticket practically screamed relief from the collision course that the geezer rematch was guaranteeing us to be heading for.  By the point at which Joe Biden was nudged aside, the election seemed destined for the worst possible by far of two abysmal outcomes.  Of course Kamala Harris represented a fresh start.  I will confess I could not be dissuaded from my optimism about what a Harris win would mean, especially in light of the alternative.  Not even by Harris herself.  And my solitude at the end of the branch of suspended disbelief in the lack of daylight between Harris and the president who reportedly-- his self-serving ministrations about minimizing daylight between them notwithstanding--kept his vice president at arms' length  set the foundation for an especially steep fall and crash when the polls closed.

Is there a lesson in this? 

Yes, both for candidates who want to win and for those who vote as an act of  seeking power for their cause within a very confining charade of democracy, but is it now too late to learn it?

On Being Good

Sam Seder the host of the progressively disposed webcast Majority Report recently went on the Jubilee YouTube channel to participate in an event called Surrounded, in which according to some labyrinthine rules I did not hang around long enough to figure out, he sequentially debated a set of premises of his own construction with a series of conservative Gen Z fashion victims, all of whom in spite of the diverse mix of races, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations seemed united in opposition to Diversity Equity and Inclusion (and sometimes Accessibility) known colloquially as DEI.  DEI was itself one of the topics -- specifically "Trump's attacks on DEI hide his real goal which is to give corporations more power."-- which gave rise to the clip perhaps most widely shared in which a young latino gay gentleman with a man bun confidently asserts incorrectly that government agencies get tax breaks from the government for making DEI hires.  (Spoiler: Government agencies are not taxed by the government that creates and funds them from taxes.)   The young man's certitude and wrongness were  exceptional but emblematic of the caliber of opponent and quality of argument that Seder was up against.

Some of the combatants were better armed.  For instance debating  the proposition that "Unless you're a billionaire,  religious fundamentalist, or xenophobic nationalist, voting for Trump was a mistake.", Seder faced a young fundamentalist who had a point of view about the basis on which morality should be formed. His argument went along the lines of: 

If you don't have a foundation for your beliefs it's not morality, it's a preference.  A humanist foundation which seeks the least harm for the most people is considered consequentialist or utilitarian, not moral.  In that light, to a non fundamentalist, the belief that killing is wrong is merely a preference-- there's no basis for a difference with those who would say killing is right.  If society tomorrow said trans folks don't deserve rights, a moral relativist should be ok with that.  Take relativism to its logical end, however and you have low reproductive birth rates, a reproductive dead end (two men together can't reproduce). Religion prioritizes the nuclear family.   Gay people have no justification for being gay outside of "it just feels good".  Are pedophiles, like gay people, "born that way"?  To prevent them from acting on their urges we create duties.  Religion provides those duties and obligations to behave according to religious morality.  Life isn't about freedom and exercising what you want.  The leftist view  in contrast is only about "It makes me feel good."  

Seder admits that he was slow in cottoning to the argument being put before him, and for this reason feels this may be the one segment that he did not rise to.  (His argument amounted to: Religion having a number of differing viewpoints, no one of them should have the right to corner what god is telling us is right or wrong.   No one has a corner on religious truth.  The reason we have a democracy is because we don't want a king.  Kings came from the idea that their authority comes directly from god.)  Seder ultimately condeded  (to the extent that you can consider  a point that is utterly consistent with the premise being debated a concession) that religious fundamentalism won with Trump.  To which the fundamentalist boasted:  Sorry we're going to have more kids, less abortion, more families, stable family households, better education.  If liberal rights were rolled back, Gay people should be straight anyway.  Women should submit to their husbands. It doesn't mean they're slaves (which has become a bad thing  since the end of the civil war apparently, even to rightwing American Christian fundamentalists).  Seder: I don't want to live under a theocracy,  you on the other hand are at home in the Trump universe.  To which the young fundamentalist could only beam.

I don't want to debate necessarily, but for lack of a better idea, I am a little inspired to try to amplify why what is good for fundamentalists only, and particularly American conservative Christian fundamentalists, is objectively less good-- much much much less good-- than what is good for me and I assume for Sam Seder.  Sam may have hit on this but if he did it was not in any of the segments I could stomach watching.  

The fundamentalist world view is too stunted and provincial to see this, but morality, even their own is a betrayal of preference.  For the fundamentalist, the preference is for dictated standards of behavior.  For whatever reason, the fundamentalist prefers to attribute morality to an authority, and particularly an authority that theoretically metes out consequences for misbehavior.  By and large, the fundamentalist adheres to this morality both in fear of consequences of being found to fall short of adherence to the morality and occasionally due to a shared preference for whatever the authority's perceived preference may be, but the fundamentalist always projects and models his behavior as though he strictly adheres to the morality.  When morality is dictated to you, it is hoped that you will adhere to it, but it is expected that you will broadcast the sincere desire for others-- specifically, those outside the fundamentalist tribe--to be forced to comply with it (which could arguably be the primary motivation of fundamentalists to adopt such a petty and unforgiving world view to begin with).  The preference is to avoid eternal consequences (or short-term social ones) of being discovered by God, or worse, by one's fellow fundamentalists to stray from the dictated code, but especially to be perceived as being faithful to it.  A flawed human being can aver that their morality is from God, but truthfully, their morality is at best a preference to be seen as being faithful to the morality of their God.

Disbelieving in the authority of a pretty distasteful tradition (and I'm speaking in particular of the experience I've had of the American conservative Christian Fundamentalist tradition), it would be immoral of me to "base" my "morality" on the authority of a "god" or even to pretend to respect a tradition so at odds with what I consider to be the rightest to the best of my ability way to behave in this one life I'm given (by parent humans).  For starters, it would be immoral of me to yield my moral sense (to pretend to feel any duty or obligation) to a racist, xenophobic, nationalist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, lookist, ableist, liberty-for-me-bondage-for-thee tribalist selfish asshole of a god.  But it isn't because of a hatred for the god (there is no such entity, thank the heavenly void) but rather a fundamental (pardon the pun) disagreement about the best way for people to behave toward each other and toward the planet we find ourselves on.   Sam Seder's opponent may have been "sorry" about the imposition of his extremely tiny stultified notion of morality on those who rue the victory of his kind in the last election.  If my morality ever wins, it would mean that his kind would have to suffer the agony of universal healthcare and social security for all at every age.  They would need to deal with a state that assists a woman in realizing whatever choice she makes of whether or not and when to reproduce, either through safe and legal abortion if the time is not right or in tools to raise her child when she feels the time is right.  They would have to cope with a society in which work is done as a communal project to meet the needs of everyone,  even the least capable of working, and not for the profit and benefit of a tiny self-selected elite. They would need to deal with a society that lives and lets live, loves and lets love, is and lets be however a person feels they need to be.  True, they might be prevented from ever attaining billions in wealth or dominion over planet raping corporations, but they could very well find consolation as thriving citizens of a world in which needs are met with such little resistance and to such an extent that poverty does not exist, crimes are rare, inequality is not a thing and the best things in life are free.   Never in the history of this capitalism enthralled society has such a morality prevailed, regardless of fundamentalist claims (and blames) to the contrary.  Some day void willing.

Pet Names

On a completely different topic, here’s an interesting bit from the OED:

Dog

I.1.a.

Old English–

A domesticated carnivorous mammal, Canis familiaris (or C. lupus familiaris), which typically has a long snout, an acute sense of smell, non-retractile claws, and a barking, howling, or whining voice*, widely kept as a pet or for hunting, herding livestock, guarding, or other utilitarian purposes.

Etymology: Origin unknown.

The word belongs to a set of words of uncertain or phonologically problematic etymology with a stem-final geminated g in Old English which is not due to West Germanic consonant gemination and therefore does not undergo assibilation. These words form both a morphological and a semantic group, as they are usually Old English weak masculine nouns and denote animals; compare FROG n.1, HOG n.1, PIG n.1, STAG n.1, Old English sugga (see HAYSUGGE n.), Old English wicga (see EARWIG n.), and perhaps TEG n.1 It has been suggested that these words show expressive gemination, perhaps due to their being originally hypocoristic forms. (For discussion see R. M. Hogg†‘Two Geminate Consonants in Old English’ in J. Anderson Lang. Form & Ling. Variation (1982) 187–202.) For some of the words, substratal influence has also been considered (compare PIG n.1). Because attestation of these words in Old English is generally rare and confined to glossaries and onomastic evidence (as in the case of DOG n.1), if they are attested at all, and also because there is often a better-attested synonym (in this case, HOUND n.1), it seems likely that the words were stylistically marked in Old English, i.e. considered non-literary or informal.

It never occurred to me that the origin of "dog" could be a mystery; furthermore, that it might be part of a morphological and semantic group with frog, hog, pig, stag, haysugge (hedge-sparrow), earwig and teg (second year sheep) among who knows how many others. Are these other -g ending critters in the same category?: bug, slug, nag  

The commonality seems to hinge on the non-literary or informal quality they share -- they appear to be less well attested than their counterparts "Hound", "Boar", "Buck", etc.  The terminal "g" that they have in common has a tendency to double in length (geminate) in other forms.  As the evidence for the origin of  words in this class is either scant or associated with proper names in the literature,  the suggestion is that the final g may have been a way of forming informal or pet names for the commonly encountered animals (hypocoristic means having to do with pet names).   If I'm understanding it correctly, the animal may have been a hound, but fondness for it inspired proto-English speakers to dispense with formalities and call it a "doggie" which we inherited as the common English name for it, right?  How cute!

What does it mean?  I don’t know, but it’s interesting, isn't it?  Mind blown for the day.  

~~~~

* "... whining voice..." Rather subjective, is it not?  Cat people, am I right?

† No pun intended?

Quibbles

Francis Bacon

The other day, out of curiosity, I was googling "2024 Vote Regret" and I found 2 vote regretters.  Both of them regretted their votes ...  for Kamala Harris!   To be fair one of the regretters was that jackass on ESPN Stephen A Smith I think his name is and he was basically being a contrary dick on Bill Maher.  The other was Charlamagne Tha God and he was retroactively regretting endorsing Kamala Harris as VP in 2020.  But my point is, there is really no satisfaction to be gotten from seeking regret from anyone who didn’t vote for Harris, because they don’t seem to exist.  There are a few Trump regretters by now to be sure.  But trying to get people to admit that had Harris won we would not be in the position we're in is something like saying the moon would be green if it had grass growing on it.  My conclusion—and I’m not talking about dyed in the wool democrats or dupes but about smart people whose primary goal was avoiding what we’ve got now—we’ll never get the credit we deserve or any gratification for having tried to make the worst outcome of the 2024 election not happen, no matter how hard we seek.  (The silver lining: the whole fucking shithole of a country appears about to be ready to come crashing down around us now.  And I hope it does.  And when we wrest the charred remains from the bloated motherfuckers who are engaged in destroying it for their own superfluous gain right now, let's do it right next time-- for all of us.)  (And Fuck Them!)

***

Black Pill by Elle Reeve presents up close journalism about the sorts of internet denizens that our government's (hence our) violator Elon Musk fancies himself to be-- the edgy troll.  Insightful and adventuresome-- I'll miss reading it when I'm done with it.  Specifically, it concludes things about free speech absolutism that have been on my mind quite a bit lately—namely that it mostly serves nazis and racists who laugh behind the backs of useful idiot free speech advocates on the left.  I don’t know what to do about it, and Elle Reeve hasn’t yet said what to do about it if she has an opinion about that.  It’s sort of a black pilled predicament that the ones whose odious speech is most tenderly catered to are the ones basically advocating for surrender to the racist and misogynist and fascist notions that already hold sway in why things suck.  Meanwhile speech and thought of the left is actively and openly being banned by those aggressively pushing the freedom to be fascist.  Speech has consequences.  It gets people killed.  It undoes centuries of struggle.  Discuss.

###

Talking to a friend in my age range who was laid off a couple of years ago and who, after a futile two year search for someone-- anyone-- willing to take a chance on hiring a 60-something job candidate in his field, is cresting on adopting a stance that he is now permanently involuntarily unemployed, I am definitely of the opinion that even a “good job” is taken out of necessity, not desire.  The work I’m trying to force myself to get back to (yet writing this instead)-- I wouldn’t do it if I wasn't afraid of starving myself and my family.  My friend is not happy about the lack of agency he feels he has in his economic life, but it does not escape either of our attention that he and I are both the age that people not too long ago used to retire at anyway and in spite of everything in this stingy culture that is sending him the contradictory message that his unemployability makes him less than human, being outside the proletariat truly has its perks.  I think my friend, being no longer an exploited value producer is in the natural state.  We’re trained to feel that the natural state is wrong.  But the natural state is the right state to be in if you can get there.  It’s just that the voices that encourage it are few and far between.  Society is set up to thwart the natural state.  Like almost everything about capitalism, the attitude of society to the natural state -- fear!-- is expressed as a lie.  We can’t bring ourselves to say we fear people living in a natural state because that way lies the end of capitalism.  Instead we say the natural state is deficient. Capitalism is deficient.

%%%

Privatization is not just an idea about how to reform the manner in which government provides service to its citizens.  It is the looting of our common treasury without our permission.  It is looting that makes the looting that Fox News is eager to warn us about when well-felt anger manifests itself among the people of the city after the latest outrage of indignity perpetrated on them by the constabulary look like mutual aid.  The object of privatization is to make the purview of government not the provision of a common good from the pool of our collective tribute, but rather to afford scoundrels who by hook or by crook find themselves "elected" to higher office  the opportunity to entitle their already bloated capitalistic patrons and cronies who got and keep them there to abscond with our treasury for their own profit, leaving them to see fit how poorly or even whether the once public now private service they have been gifted dominion over is delivered.  The beneficiaries of privatization are thieves twice over, for they steal not only our treasury-- the money that we who are not the beneficiaries of the wealth protection industry are coerced to supply for it for nothing in return-- but also the money that they then charge us for whatever it is our tax dollars have been granted them to retail or to rent to us. In spite of the clever sounding justifications that think tanks have been bribed to come up with, privatization is not "a cool thing to try", it is a crime committed by both the privatizers and the recipients of these corrupt officials' largesse with our money that should uniquely be punishable by public execution of both the privatizers and their profiteers.  Even murderers can be reformed.   Privatizers and their profiteers are irredeemable.  But seeing that they get their desserts (and we ours) is up to us.

Look closely- It's not an ad for a pickle.  It's dead-scalp Elon Musk.

Non-Alignment Pact

 Happy Valentine's Day from Pere Ubu!

Miss Universe

I know a panic is coming, but right now, today, what I am experiencing as I face the barrage of apocalyptic news coming out of Washington is a rather uneasy calm.  It's not as if I haven't had moments of rage of the kind that makes an elderly couch potato hope that it's not exceptional, but a milder form of what someone who actually does stuff might be feeling.  But maybe thanks to the clean conscience of one of the not nearly enough who actually voted to try to prevent the chaos we're experiencing, I am finding it easy to return to a state of composure about what we're facing. Perhaps it's a parasympathetic response-- the nervous system is shutting off pain to permit my psyche to assimilate and address the trauma.  I have no doubt that what we're witnessing is a coup-- the president has essentially greenlit a raid of the Federal government by his largest donor who happens to be the world's wealthiest person and an invasive citizen from South Africa by way of Canada, who also happens to have attracted through his business practices the unwanted attention of several of the Federal Agencies he and his teenaged minions have been given carte-blanche access to.  The question is why?  Why did the guy who just made a political comeback unleash the forces of his nation's destruction coming right out of the gate?  I can think of several possibilities.

First, Donald Trump is not a terribly well-formed individual.  He has average intelligence and capabilities but has been the beneficiary of outsized advantages and the sort of egregious parenting that fosters at least the outward appearance of baseless, limitless self-regard.  It's an entertaining show that has contributed enormously to his popular appeal.  How else do you explain how someone as fatally flawed, proudly uncurious, and intellectually and behaviorally stunted as he could again be entrusted with the reins of the most perilously consequential office on the planet  especially after he was roundly rejected after his first term?   Even if you believe (as I do) that a good portion of the explanation has to do with corruption, cheating, theft and malfeasance (to say nothing of an electorate under-concerned with the threat of exactly what we're seeing thanks to whatever sleight of hand distracted them on the day their votes were cast), you have to admit that whatever he has going for him has granted him the plausible appearance of legitimate incumbency.  I am saying that it would be reasonable to expect a normal person faced with the responsibility bestowed (a second time!) on this motherfucker would have some concern about the appearance of stewardship and care with the institutions of our shared democracy.  In short, this is happening because Donald Trump is a freak-- a sociopathic monster of privilege and ego who has no regard for history or for the feelings of others.

Second, and this follows from the first, is the question of what motivates a president who clearly gives not a single fuck about the government or the people he is president of.  My sense (and this is not entirely my original idea but I don't recall where I first heard hints of it), is that Donald Trump already got what he wanted.   After losing rather handily to Joe Biden in 2020 thanks in large part to his predictably poor handling of the COVID crisis that came out of nowhere and changed everything that election year,  Trump got what he wanted in November.  He won the election by popular vote.  Trump just wanted the title.  Miss Universe. 

All the more remarkable considering what a disastrous campaign he ran-- not a liability when the competition was the visibly deteriorating and unpopular Joe Biden but a real feat when Biden was replaced at the 11th hour by the eventual runner-up, Kamala Harris.   True, to make it work, Trump had to suppress some of the promises he made to the forces that kept his campaign funded.   He knew Project 2025 was not a winner with voters and so he feigned ignorance of it.  As a gift to Trump, instead of selling herself as a break from the present doldrums of both Biden and Trump, Harris opted to complete Biden's campaign as she found it and assert her intention for her administration to be what the people clearly did not want-- a continuation.  

Having sailed past the concerns of the majority of the voters of that day, Trump is now happy to let Elon be president-- make that happy to let Elon do the work.  What does he care what happens to the government or the people?  He doesn’t have to run again unless he feels like it.   He’s perfectly content handing his credentials, access and “responsibilities” to others as long as he gets to keep the crown.

And not go to jail.  

And maybe actually be a real billionaire.

How convenient for the agenda of the suddenly blossoming Nazism of the invasive South African and his adoptive party.  For the rest of us-- including the electorate that made it possible, absolved though they are for the poor quality of their choice by the political malpractice of the campaign of the opposition-- maybe not so much.