2Truthy's Happy Friday Hour With The Janet Martin Trio: 'Snake Bit'

Turn Up the Volume!


Happy Friday, Loserettes!

2Truthy

A Plague for 'A' Students Who Missed the 'C' Corporate Boat

“The Mayflower was full of C students. Their idea was that, given freedom, responsibility, rule of law and some elbow room, the average, the middling, and the mediocre could create the richest, most powerful country ever.”

-P.J. O'Rourke

This post is addressed to my friend Rob who left a very insightful comment on my post The Politics of Ocean Trash and Educated Middle Class Trash.

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the P.J. O'Rourke article entitled A Plague of 'A' Students Why it’s so irksome being governed by the Obami. Even if he isn't suggesting that ALL 'A' students are a bunch of anal retentive rote learners and arrogant assholes (like the "Obami" people) while ALL 'C' students (like the Tea Party people) are somehow more agile and virtuous, he sure knows how to assign and define the overrated 'A' in arrogant and asshole here:

“The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15 we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail.

Now there’s health care reform—just the kind of thing that would earn an A on a term paper from that twerp of a grad student who teaches Econ 101.

Why are A students so hateful? I’m sure up at Harvard, over at the New York Times, and inside the White House they think we just envy their smarts. Maybe we are resentful clods gawking with bitter incomprehension at the intellectual magnificence of our betters. If so, why are our betters spending so much time nervously insisting that they’re smarter than Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement? They are. You can look it up (if you have a fancy education the way our betters do and know what the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary is).”

If, say 'A' stands for Asshole, then 'C' stands for Corporate Asshole? Faux dichotomy? Why do I find my literary hero's (yes, I'd have SEVERAL beers with P.J.) descent into the polarizing fray of One Big Money Party left/right politics so off-putting? Perhaps I can explain.

I was an avid, major fan of P.J. O'Rourke's writing back in his lefty-leaning National Lampoon days (he was never a Democrat) well before his much deserved success allowed him to crash the gates of “God's heavenly country club” (reference to Parliament of Whores). When I was a college freshman, he and Doug Kenney (one helluva funny writer, too, R.I.P.) gave a speech (hilarious, capital “H”) ) at a Midwestern college campus that challenged us to *think* about how horribly stupid it was for us to give power to politicians who hadn't our best interests at heart by, for example, making outrageously stupid laws against smoking dope (while they lit up a doobie on stage). Always the libertarian, that P.J., to whit, my favorite P.J.ism's:

"Giving money and power to the government is like giving car keys and whisky to teenage boys."
"When politics are used to allocate resources, the resources all end up being allocated to politics."
"Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit.  A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty -- their power and privilege -- to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever.  This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians."
"God has no role to play in politics except to make sure politicians go where they belong.  To hell."

The above sentiment is perfectly fine for those who, like P.J. have already “arrived” and can afford all the necessary socioeconomic survival entrapments such as luxury gated-community homes, beefy Pinkerton protectors, a couple of Teslas and maybe a Fisker in the multiple car garage, great private schools for the kids, all the non-GMO food you can eat, access to the best doctors and finest whiskey, hookers, etc. But for the everyday plebes who are NOT privy to insider stock tips, timely stock option payouts, never-ending book deal royalties, Caymen accounts, dividends and trust fund dipping, not so much.

Contrary to O'Rourke, I would argue that resources end up being “allocated to politics” because they are inevitable for civil societies to function, as is the case for a few necessities like well-funded public schools, a single payer health care system, food and consumer safety commissions, sturdy roads and bridges...all the stuff that makes for good civic and social community infrastructures. But P.J.'s peeps are already set, and can afford the luxury of walling off themselves with moats and private security detail from the public at large. To them, there is no community other than one INSIDE the country club gates. I'd really like to see O'Rourke apply his masterful writing chops instead to the socioeconomic ills of outsourcing/insourcing and the perps who profit from it. But he's a Cato Man, now, and that wouldn't pay for Swiss Alps ski trips and Bora Bora winter swim junkets, now would it?

This is where your Sarah Palin comment comes in and ties neatly with your P.J. article link.

Palin, like O'Rourke, has also found her place at the table of the One Big Money Party movers and shakers inside the gate. Unlike P.J., who IS very, very smart – Palin, IMO, is more like one of those “C” students who sailed over on the Mayflower as described in the above quote. Personally, I admire and typically prefer associating with smart people, as long as they REALLY ARE smart and not faking it and are not insufferable, arrogant, and full of themselves – like so many blowhardy poseurs we see on the left. BTW, I don't hate Sarah Palin or for her not being 'A' class material; I just can't stand the fact that there are millions of very smart and not-so smart women and men in this country who have watched their jobs, health care access and homes pulled away from them by a bipartisan One Party of Money club that pay her to divert attention away from the looting culprits who are redistributing the wealth up and away from the educated middle class. In fact, Palin has an almost charming carelessness about the fact that she isn't ivy 'A' student class material. This is the point O'Rourke drives home in his article. He rightly points out that the ivies are churning out a bunch of arrogant 'A' rote holes incapable of critical thinking. This point is valid. But what he handily OMITS and didn't say is that our corporations are the ones responsible for hiring these creeps in the first place, for to do so would be to violate the Cash Cow of Indian outsourcing and every other cheap labor lobby allegiance that sustains his country club set. Palin and Obama both support offshore drilling. (Whatever your position on offshore drilling, so much for P.J.'s 'A' vs. 'C' student faux dichotomy.) They all dine at the same trough.

Like O'Rourke, Palin is a media/celebrity tool of the One Big Money Party who also never calls out the biggest threat to our local communities which is the neo-frat boy corporate state's (conservative and lefty) agenda or “blueprint” to divide local communities against themselves in their race to the bottom while they destroy our educated middle class by literally giving our jobs to third world imports. (I know you know this.) They too, both know this is where the cash cow lies to keep them and their precious cargo forever in Gucci loafers and handbags until Kingdom Come.

I appreciate and understand your comment about Sarah Palin, but I can't help but view her as anything but the “average” American female just trying to make it in the fu#ked up kleptocracy that this country has become. To the contrary, she is privileged. Maybe she wasn't always, and I certainly do not begrudge her for hitting the high life. That's what America is supposed to be all about. But until she starts calling out the corporations for anti-American worker legalized slavery ala H-1B, rampant age discrimination loopholes that favor corporations and labor arbitrage, she is nothing but another dangerous high profile champion of the have and have not caste system that she will prevail upon. She is a neo-frat boy corporate tool. For example, when was the last time you heard her (or P.J.) say it's time for corporate America to stop outsourcing/insourcing our jobs? When was the last time you heard her advocate a program that would put all displaced, older professionals back to work who had their jobs given away to H-1Bs so that they can afford to pay for the cost-prohibitive, confiscatory mandated health insurance mafia protection money? Nary a peep.  I can not defend her, nor any  politician or media royal who guard that gate.

Palin, like O'Rourke, has a huge media megaphone to get the word out but all they are doing for the most part with it is advancing the agenda of the neo-frat boy corporate state. And it's getting so boring that even the Obami left's Jon Stewart and Colbert are down with the program. For all the “good” they do, put them all on a big, One Big Money Party bipartisan boat down the River Styxx.

Speaking of boats...

About O'Rourke's 'C' student Mayflower pilgrims? Let's get The Straight Dope. Those Mayflower 'C' students were beer drinking jocks and cheerleaders who planned to dock down off the warm coast of Florida but instead landed on the icy shores of Plymouth Rock because they were too shitfaced to navigate the boat. And when it comes to mapping and high seas navigation skills, I want an expert steering my boat. (Nothing against beer, but I never especially liked most jocks and cheerleaders, either, for what it's worth.)

No anal retentive, “brisk apple-polishing” pilgrims and 'A' students on-board that Pilgrim Rock boat, you betcha.

 

-2Truthy

The Battle Between Humans and Baboons and Lost iPhones

 

 (Photo of friendly OTHER Steve)

A baboon tries to work out how to use a stolen cell phone, calls up “Steve Jobs.”

Yo! Steve. I got your iPhone.

You want WHAT?

Fu*k ME?

Fu*k YOU. Send over forty eight Dominoes Sausage Pizzas and maybe I'll think about it.

(Later that day, baboon found dead on crowded sidewalk after lethal fall from balcony.)

Breaking News

Cape Town, South Africa – Much like the United States and elsewhere, as natural habitats disappear in South Africa, baboons and humans are increasingly coming into close contact, and conflict:

“In South Africa's Cape Peninsula there has been a large-scale transformation of wild baboons' natural habitat into land for housing, industry and agriculture, according to the University of Cape Town Baboon Research Unit.”

Clear around the world, inside Silicon Valley's pubby hamlet of a Redwood City German beer hall, rising star Apple engineer Gray Powell experiences a strikingly similar, close encounter with a very angry boss who is more than conflicted over a stolen next generation prototype of a cell phone that Powell lost. Read more here.

-2Truthy

Blood for No Oil: Roll Away the Dew

Phil Lesh Sings Franklin's Tower

Roll away... the dew . . .

God help the child who rings that bell
It may have one good ring left, you can't tell
One watch by night, one watch by day
If you get confused just listen to the music play

Roll away... the dew . . .

Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
if you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind

-Robert Hunter & Jerry Garcia

The Grateful Dead

New Orleans – What a mess. Look at what is happening to the beautiful Gulf of Mexico. Does anyone care? One environmentalist explains:

“Oil spills are extremely harmful to marine life when they occur and often for years or even decades later," said Jacqueline Savitz, a marine scientist and climate campaign director at Oceana, an environmental group. She said spills could coat sea birds and limit their flying ability and damage fisheries by injuring marine organism's systems related to respiration, vision and reproduction.

Savitz said that the Gulf of Mexico is host to four species of endangered sea turtles and bluefin tuna, snapper and grouper. "Each of these can be affected," she said. "Turtles have to come to the surface to breathe and can be coated with oil or may swallow it." And, she added, the Gulf is one of only two nurseries for bluefin tuna, more than 90 percent of which return to their place of birth to spawn.”

Hellllo, Drill Baby Drillers Sarah Palin and Barack Obama...All for the profits of a few:

“The growing spill also threatened to churn political waters as lawmakers weigh what buffer zones to establish between rigs and shorelines in the wake of President Obama's decision to open up new regions to offshore drilling. It could also alter details of a climate bill that three leading senators were trying to restart after postponing plans for a rollout that would have featured leading oil company executives.

The Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean and leased to BP, caught fire April 20 after an explosion and sank. Eleven oil rig workers are missing and presumed dead.”

Cap and trade. Offshore U.S. drilling. Mandated insurance nobody can afford. Legalized U.S. job stealing and slavery. Mandated “ homeowner retrofitting” to sustain a few boars at the IPO trough... Yeah, right. These bills and laws are meant to protect who again? This latest Gulf disaster brings new meaning to the term Blood For No Oil (h/t Greg Palast.) 

 

So much for labor and oil SUSTAINABILITY in the USA.

Screw the sea turtles. And America's middle class. We've got an insufferable One Big Money Party of self-appointed “thought leaders” to sustain!

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

South Park Censorshipgate: Spooky Stuff and Intrigue Surround the Prophet Mo'

(Cartoon credits/special thanks Chris Muir)

 South Park's Censorshipgate

Why did Mo' have to go?  Whose free-speech rights in America risk censorship?

Who are the evil doer fighters behind the scenes of the tightly orchestrated outrage of South Park's Censorshipgate unfolding drama that enlisted a Seattle cartoonist to magically pick up the gauntlet and defend our nation's greatest treasure, free-speech comedy and inspire Everybody Draw Mohammed Day May 20?

Special thanks to Scott Creighton, who explores behind the scenes at American Everyman here.

Of course, lousy ratings over at South Park might be an even more crass explanation for Comedy Central's shocking censorship of Mo'. Nah. Too boring.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

'Everybody Draw Pro Mo' Day'

FLY MO' AIR

Seattle -- A cartoonist has declared 'Everybody Draw Day' in response to the recent fatwa issued against our friends at South Park by a shadowy (yet very approachable, easy to interview)  muslim group based in, of all shadowy places - Brooklyn! As a result, Comedy Central "folded" to the treacherous threat by  blacking out the original "offensive" content.

Faux outrage later ensued, from everyone including the left's Jon Stewart to Michelle Malkin on the right to the dreaded muslim group  in Corporate Comedy Central's ingenious plot to show non-elitist, middle class America they can censor  anybody to ostensibly "protect them" in this war against terra (including their own two high profile, wealthy writers)  while outing the ever elusive religious figure  at the same time! 

And since wealthy muslims are donating to Congress in record numbers faster than you can say pass the Persian and Pakistani peas, please,  this whole  faux outrage censorship show from Comedy Central's paymasters couldn't be more timely. Either that or, there is really is some demented, dangerous extremist muslim group in Brooklyn with an easy going sense of humor (refer to Gawker's Triscuits reference) who really just wants to do deadly harm to Americans. Who knows?

And who is backing this not-so-stealth, Brooklyn muslim group to issue such a high-profile fatwa against the very wealthy, high profile cartoon comedy team? (Maybe Gawker can shine more light on this war against the cracker, haha, until cartoon day rolls around.)

Sharpen your drawing pencils, plebes!

-2Truthy

South Park Censorship: Why Did Mo' Have to Go?

Comedy Central Folds Over South Park Fatwa

Extremely  Breaking News

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Is Comedy Central folding to fear mongering? The shocking news report yesterday about how our favorite bad boys at Comedy Central's "South Park" were issued a “dire warning” from a U.S. based muslim group over a cartoon episode depicting the Prophet Mohammad in a bear outfit has led the network to censor the original content deemed 'offensive”. The move came after the muslim group's website reportedly issued a “warning” to Matt and Trey below:

"We have to warn Matt (Stone) and Trey (Parker) that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show."

"This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them," the muslim group wrote. (The New York Times spoke to one member afterward.) In addition, the website also detailed the location of the creators' Colorado residence.

Last week's episode depicted Jesus watching pornography and the Buddha snorting coke but did not show Mohammad outright, who was instead represented wearing a bear costume which angered the muslim group. As a result, the censored episode featured a black box over the place Mohammad was previously standing. Why the black-out on old Mo'? Why is it NOT considered offensive to satirize Jesus or Buddha or other religious figures but muslims are off-limits? As viewers of South Park know, it is the quintessential LOL cartoon factory for all things irreverent, where nothing – nothing is sacred, including religion, as South Park often has Cartman saying outrageous stuff about Jews, too. And how about the Virgin Mary or the Pope as featured in one of the bad boys' finest episodes evah, Bloody Mary?

Let's take a refresher course in South Park's nothing is sacred history in Bloody Mary below:”

"Kyle, Cartman, Stan and Ike attend karate class while Stan's dad goes for a couple of drinks. After class, an inebriated Randy drives the boys home, but he gets pulled over and arrested for drunk driving. Randy gets his license revoked and is ordered to perform community service and to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, where he is taught that he is powerless to control his drinking and that alcoholism is a disease. It also calls for him to surrender himself to a "Higher Power" in order to get better. Randy, whom Stan describes as a "hypochondriac," then ironically begins to drink more, since he has decided that he is in fact powerless to control it and cannot stop. Around this time, a statue of the Virgin Mary begins to bleed "out its ass" and people begin to flock around it to find a cure for their diseases. Randy believes it can heal him of his disease.

Randy has Stan drive him to the church where the statue is, and—after cutting in line, arguing that his "disease" is worse than that of others—he is drenched in the holy blood. He jumps up and declares that he will not drink anymore (ostensibly because the bleeding statue is his "Higher Power"), and abstains from alcohol for five days.

The new Pope Benedict XVI comes to investigate, and discovers that the blood is not actually coming from the statue's anus, but its vagina.”

I seem to recall that a few Catholics protested that particular content, but to my knowledge none of them 'warned' the show's creators of death threats. With Comedy Central's selective censorship of satirizing the muslim religion and folding to a muslim website 'warning',  it seems they gave away their right to satirize more than just religion but ANYTHING that  extremist groups would declare “offensive” such as philosophical points of view, diverse political expression and culturally divergent ways of life. This brand of highly selective Nanny Statist censorship reminds me why Jon Stewart stopped being funny, with Colbert a close second as clutching tools of the neo-frat boy corporate state's agenda to silence critics of their war against America's (predominately white, non-muslim) middle class.

Comedy Central's censorship of this South Park episode effectively demonizes non-muslims for being “offensive.” Will the direct result of this muslim website's warning be to “incite” or spread fear and escalate racial/religious tensions? What else will our government allow other media channels to censor in the name of divide and conquer?

I am reminded of the (very funny) SNL Rahm Emanuel skit where he says to his staff “What are you, a bunch of fu%king babies?”

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

Did Bill Clinton Fart in Our Face?

FROM THE DESK OF QUINCY

 "I did everything but fart in his face!"

-Former President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton

 Farting Around With Bill Clinton

 "Words matter!" Bill Clinton Says!  He's right. Just because white collar middle class jobs are being flushed down the Tech Lobby's cheap labor toilet, unemployment is kissing 20% and rising, more nuclear plants are being built, home foreclosures are on a roll, the militarization of local police (h/t Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque) and practically everybody can't afford health care in the U.S., nobody has to go around blowing up stuff and packin' heat or passing  off  hot air in the media, either.

Clinton basically says that there are absolute nuts out there who might take what you say the wrong way, and so he is a little worried that everything you say makes people do what you say. People can even take what you say literally as well as figuratively, too. (Just like having somebody fart in your face.) Mostly, he's right except it kind of reminds me of the prominent biblical passage I am not my nutters' keeper. 

Remember when Bill Clinton got all snippy with journalist Bill Greider during his Rolling Stone interview when Greider asked him about the disastrous economic impact of NAFTA on America's working class where Clinton told him  "You are a faulty citizen. You don't mobilize or persuade, because you only worry about being doctrinaire and proud," and lumped him in with "bitchy and cynical" liberals"?  And then when Clinton later told Taylor Branch: "I did everything but fart in his face"? Well, Mr. David Sirota does,  here.

Our general policy at LWOH is not to go all scatological, but without any Adult Supervision around, I  can't help but recall the famous words of a famous former president (who 2Truthy voted for) who is now telling people to watch what they say. Do you think he is being too much like Mary Poppins, you know, like a Nanny Stater to stop free speech? Here is what he said:

"And I am not trying to muzzle anybody. But one of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have."

It's a good thing I don't have any influence, or else I would be muzzled. Yuck. But Clinton has ACTUAL  influence, so what I want to know is why didn't somebody wash his mouth out with soap when he said that? (The last time I saw a horse get muzzled on my old North Carolina Pig farm, he hoofed Farmer Kenny in the nuts with such a wallop that he NEVER ever pulled that on the old mare again.) And just because the former president said he almost farted in Bill Greider's face doesn't mean he actually DID it, only now I am forever left with the image - possibly even more damaging to the whole blogosphere's collective psyche  than his horrible role in selling out U.S. white collar jobs to India. Anyway, in both cases, he should apologize and make every effort to clean up his potty mouth AND give the jobs back to U.S. citizens.

I mean, if some schizzy fat guy in New Jersey decides to pour gasoline on his old Buick and blow it up in his driveway and I wrote something last year about a creepy dream I had where some fat guy in New Jersey blew up his old Buick after pouring gasoline on it in his driveway, that bat-shit whacko's behavior is no reason to slam MY BACON.

OK, I'm going out bowling now with the Crisps. 

Have a great week, everybody!

QUINCY

The Politics of Ocean Trash and Educated Middle Class Trash

                              

“Plastic Soup” Found in Atlantic Ocean, “Plebian Soup” Found Across Middle Class America

 Challenging the Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State's Throwaway Culture

In addition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch discovered a decade ago, researchers have now identified another pile of floating garbage in the Atlantic. Although you can't see these unsightly, harmful plastic threats to ocean and human life from your bedroom window (like Sarah Palin can see Russia), striking similarities to America's educated middle class being tossed over rails on the Good Ship Job Outsourcing/Insourcing abound. How did America, at one time considered the Star of the Sea when it came to protecting environmental and citizens rights – sell out our safety and jobs and how can corporate America be rehabilitated?

First, let's look at the unsustainability of the Plastics Industry and the Politics of Ocean Trash (h/t David Rosenfeld at DC Bureau) as “Big Plastics” continue to wreak damage across the globe's oceans. A researcher explains:

“The debris is harmful for fish, sea mammals - and at the top of the food chain, potentially humans - even though much of the plastic has broken into such tiny pieces they are nearly invisible.

Since there is no realistic way of cleaning the oceans, advocates say the key is to keep more plastic out by raising awareness and, wherever possible, challenging a throwaway culture that uses non-biodegradable materials for disposable products.

"Our job now is to let people know that plastic ocean pollution is a global problem - it unfortunately is not confined to a single patch."

Check. Time to clean up our oceans, develop packaging alternatives/methods and redefine current industries that harm the environment and local human capital pools. I recently purchased a bottle of aspirin and a toothbrush, noting that the aspirin bottle was at least three times the size it needed to be to hold the sixty tablets. How many plastic, unbiodegradable aspirin bottles have I purchased and thrown out in my lifetime? (Personally, I rarely use the stuff but you get the point.) But a return to the days of the Apothecary could go quite the distance in vastly reducing the amount of plastic used to manufacture unnecessary bottles. Instead of using plastic bottles for drugs (both prescription and non-prescription), the pharmacist would dispense the medications into the customer's reusable metal or glass containers with each purchase. But this might be a good sustainable idea – one that would increase the demand and employment opportunities for more pharmacists, too -- but one that would surely throw an anchor on Big Plastic's Good Ship Polluting for Profit. (The toothbrush packaging practically required gardening shears to pry open the excessively thick, heavy plastic tube encasing.) Why is that?

The “Big Plastics” industry must reinvent its business model to explore sustainable packaging delivery systems just as Corporate America's Cheap Labor Junkie Lobby must rehabilitate itself from its unsustainable dependence on cheap imported labor.

Next, let's look at the damage U.S. corporations are doing to our local economies from America's divestment of local human capital resources caused by corporate America's unsustainable H-1B visa hazard (h/t Bill Snyder at InfoWorld) and compare the “Politics of Ocean Trash” to the “Politics of “Outsourced, Educated Middle Class American Trash” that are unsustainable. Over 45 million educated, middle class citizens (who have earned at least one degree from our nation's leading universities) have been tossed over the rails by the Neo Frat Boy Corporate State so that cheap labor can take their jobs (h/t Mayday at NoSlaves) and are now floating along the unemployment lines or are underemployed and uninsured. The same educated middle class citizens, who, like the floating plastic garbage are “hard to spot from the surface and spun together by a vortex of currents” as the media (both MSM and “access” bloggers/wannabes) keep the Cheap Labor Lobby out of view. The similarities are striking, in that both the Plastics Industry Lobby and the Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State's Outsourcing Educated White Collar Jobs Lobby have the same goal: ignore the ills to our environmental and local social ecosystems while a few greedy insiders profit.

To achieve sustainable investment and human labor practices, our democracy must demand the Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State undergo a thorough house cleaning and take both a moral and business model inventory of all the destructive past and current products and solutions responsible for destroying our ecosystem and local socioeconomic infrastructures. In the meantime, we have plastic trash decomposing at Sea and middle class educated trash decomposing on Our Town and a Neo Frat Boy Corporate State that digs it and their bought faux news media outlets that bury it. Who will save the oceans from socially irresponsible corporate “leaders” treating our seas like their own personal toilet? Who will save educated middle class Americans from being thrown away from the workforce like trash?

With all of the protests the media keep hyping, and speaking of Sarah Palin – When was the last time we heard her rally her audience for cleaning up the Cheap Labor Junkie Lobby's addiction to cheap “skilled” labor? Or cleaning up the oceans?

C'mon, Sarah – KRILL, BABY! KRILL!

.

.

.

I hear crickets chirping.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

Rufus Wainwright Opera "Prima Donna" Opens in London

London (Reuters) – This is NOT your daddy's opera.

Prolific singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, son of Loudon and the late Kate McGarrigle, who died in January, dedicated the opera "Prima Donna" to his mother. Wainwright said he wrote much of it for while he spent time with her during her long illness.

“Opera is the new rock 'n' roll, intoned a programme note for the London premiere of Rufus Wainwright's ground-breaking musical drama, "Prima Donna." Enjoying a short run at Sadler's Wells theatre this week, his marathon composition combined the buzz of a rock concert and the glamour of a classical event.”

Read more here.

If you can't make it to London, Wainwright's opera will make its North American debut at Toronto's Luminato arts festival this June.

-2Truthy

UK Backs Immigration Cap Proposal

London Calling
(Click HERE for video)

A powerful UK business lobby has proposed a cap on immigration. Are UK “conservative” business leaders beginning to develop a conscience? In a move to put UK citizens back to work, a proposal to restrict immigration was announced today as a majority of its citizenry figured out that unregulated immigration and labor visa abuses are directly responsible for startling high and rising local unemployment levels amongst their citizenry. They are now backing several business leaders who are promising to “impose an annual limit on the numbers of non-EU economic migrants allowed to work in Britain.” Could U.S. politicians take note come mid-term elections?

Conservative vs. liberal means nothing when it comes to putting Americans back to work. Talk about the Clash...“Power to the People” used to be a slogan exclusive to America's liberal domain. Want to end unemployment and underemployment for U.S. citizens? The left/right, liberal/conservative paradigm is meaningless when it comes to hiring Americans first and building sustainable, local economies in the United States, and both sides need to come together in November to vote the neo-frat boy corporate state's enablers out.

Harry Reid says today that immigration reform is not on the agenda this work period, leaving some to speculate that he will roll it out late summer to rally the Latino voting bloc for it just in time for November's mid-term elections.Maybe the Dems can promote a humane bill by then, one that both addresses human rights concerns and stems corporate  visa abuses responsible for U.S. skyrocketing rates of unemployment.

Hello, Harry! London calling...anybody home?

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

What Is UN-Hip: Robert “Third-World” Reich Propaganda

“There's Only So Much Oil in the Ground”

-Tower of Power

“There's Only So Many Jobs to Go Around”

-2Truthy

“Take a long-term view and most new immigrants to the U.S. will be working for many decades.”

-Robert Reich

Yours truly wrote yesterday of The Unsustainability of Cheap Labor and Cheap Oil. Evidentially, Robert Reich didn't get the memo, as his latest HuffPo manifesto “Why More Immigrants Are an Answer to the Coming Boomer Entitlement Mess” once again takes a pass at restoring civility to American society. Robert “Third World” Reich has outdone himself in his latest propaganda incarnation that gives the middle extended finger high salute to middle class American citizens who have been and continue to be hustled out of their jobs, savings and homes so a few insiders can profit by selling out U.S. jobs to cheap imported labor. What a comfort to know that there are Very Serious People in think-tank mode to cover up the tracks for their corporate/political paymasters to pump up the propaganda to those dreadful, pitiful, pathetic plebes and rally the base who Very Serious People have no use for. In addition to America's love fest with cheap labor, its wicked kissing cousin is cheap oil. Why is Obama Drilling? (h/t Frank Ackerman.)

When it comes to cheap labor, it's all about importing and legitimizing slaves, baby! That's What Is Hip.

True to Reichian form, his commanding propaganda pitch today omits any reference to exporting white collar jobs, but most notable includes the following masterful sentence in all of its glaring simplicity that sums up the very serious economist's determination to hammer the plebes with myths destructive to America's middle class citizenry:

“Take a long-term view and most new immigrants to the U.S. will be working for many decades.”

Ya think? Wow. Is that some deep shit, or what?

Translation: Get over yourselves, middle class Americans. Who cares if we export white collar U.S. jobs? Imported workers (blue and white collar) will be our new slaves and dammit, “they'll be working for many decades” to take any white collar job from you we haven't already exported AND your kids' jobs WHILE we level (downgrade) American middle class incomes to a whopping near-minimum wage, assholes. Here's your civility, suckaz!

Reich uses immigrants as a straw dog to divert attention away from the  economic harm to the middle class caused by the cheap labor lobby's unregulated immigration and unnecessary visa programs. Isn't it even slightly obvious to Reich that the current paradigm of importing workers to the U.S. for decreasing job opportunities and finite, dwindling resources is unsustainable? How many different times and ways can the economist's economist hammer these stupid middle class educated Americans about the economic wonders of importing people to take jobs American citizens can do when they need them? What a fu*#ing brilliant idea! And if Americans aren't smart enough to look back over the past two decades and see how well that whole thing worked out, what good are they?

Robert Reich consistently writes like he is the indomitable One Big Money Party's go-to guy for putting the academic techno-gloss on the Great Labor Shortage Myth pig. Reading Robert Reich's anti-American citizen middle class propaganda output is like wallowing around a medical toxic waste dump, where he presides over a two decade old steaming heap of U.S. job killing, economist-speak garbage that fooled the plebes up until the last bubble where swine from sea to sea cashed in not on innovative output but by killing jobs for educated American citizens. Who pays this guy and how many ready to plumb stock options is he sitting on from Wall Street's venture capital neo-fat boy technocracy portfolio to spew such toxic waste? (When does HuffPo and hangers on pull up to the IPO trough?)

But we'll always have Reich, to head this All Star Caste to Omit Solutions for Getting Americans Back to Work and bash American boomers with bad branding and scornful buzz about entitlement (what the hell do THEY deserve, their social security and Medicare? Who do they think they are?) Why doesn't Reich drag out the hogs who rigged the deregulation and cheap labor lobby levers, continue to stash their cash in the Caymans and other offshore “investments” and rig the stock option payday paper for all this innovate, “green” vaporware and social media “solutions” that produce job nada for U.S. citizens? And how about tapping into the infinite, endless billions of military occupation and war spending to pay for all these whiny boomers who can't possibly afford Obama's mandated, cost-prohibitive insurance mafia plan?

Nah. That would bring sustainability and civility to U.S. local economies and restore America's middle class, when the portfolio class wants to cash out very, very quickly at the trough in what may be Empire's last bubble. What Is Hip.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

The Unsustainability of Cheap Labor and Cheap Oil

 

Time to Put the Brakes on the Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State

(Very Special Thanks to Chris Farley and David Spade in Tommy Boy)

 Defostering Globalization and Embracing Local Civic Sustainability

Corporate America's love fest with cheap oil and cheap Indian labor is like watching a hustling car parts salesman try to sell brake pads to a  disinterested prospect with too much overstock.

Two excellent articles converge today to describe the unsustainability of America's reliance on cheap oil and cheap foreign labor where Emily Spence asks After Peak Oil Are We Heading For Social Collapse? and Rob Sanchez reports  Teacher Assistant Graders Outsourced To Bangalore. Both articles emphasize the crucial need for U.S. citizens to unite and work towards restoring civility and defusing the growing tolerance of the neo-frat boy corporate state's “tyranny of civilized arrogance”. America's reliance on cheap oil and cheap foreign labor must stop in order to preserve and create healthy, local and sustainable energy and ecosystems if America is to avoid social collapse in this 21^st Century. With a surplus of underemployed and unemployed educated Americans, this  shocking report from Sanchez makes the case for an overdue overhaul on America's addiction to cheap Indian labor as the U.S. has  an overstock of U.S. citizens who need jobs.

While the American job killing Hubris Disease has broken out of the blowsy confines of the Beltway and Corporate America and has now squarely hit the halls of America's higher institutions of learning, Rob Sanchez's timely report about the inhumane and uncivil reliance on foreign labor to sell out American student TA's jobs to India by a University of Houston teacher with a corporatist background might beg the following questions: Where is the local commitment and accountability boards to sustainable and socially responsible behavior to U.S. citizen students who need those jobs, much less to Houston's local economy? What motivates corporate citizens to work against the local needs of American students and citizens?

Sanchez explains that the Houston teacher, “who teaches business law and ethics at the University of Houston, is offshoring the job of grading the assignments from her students to India” below:

“Outsourcing teaching assistant (TA) jobs to Asia might seem like a lack of the ethics she is supposedly teaching–until her corporate background is reviewed. She worked at international corporations and Wall Street investment firms such as Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, which might help to explain where she honed her globalist ideologies.

Seven TAs seems like an adequate number of graders for one professor. Since she teaches management, is it not reasonable to expect her to manage the work load of her TAs? These types of jobs are very valuable for students who need a steady paycheck and work experience. Outsourcing these jobs will only serve to hurt students and to further the deterioration of our university system. It makes far more sense to hire a few more TAs than to send the money offshore.”

Indeed, it also makes sense to start concentrating higher education learning subsidies upon university systems dedicated to educating U.S. citizenry if we are to strengthen social responsibility within our local economies.

As Sanchez documents the clearly unsustainable nature of U.S. corporate sponsored social irresponsibility, Emily Spence's article also cites the imperative need for U.S. communities to move away from dependence upon the false fruits of globalization (as in Tom “Flatworlder” Friedman's hoax “globalization is good”) and reinvent local economies of scale that feed and employ educated U.S. citizens. This move towards a new paradigm of local sustainability/social responsibility and away from the false promise of globalization is not only good for America, but for other countries like India which has a vast population dependent upon local agrarian economies harmed by corporate Big Ag schemes, as well. When will the U.S. finally cut this parasitic dependence on cheap Indian labor when the people of this country need to locally focus on “innovation” of their own? It is nothing short of tyrannical for corporate America to continue giving our jobs away. Spence writes:

“Jan Lundberg indicates, in The People Of The Brook Versus Supermarket Splendor, “Social relations are defined today by tolerance of tyranny: of harmful industrial profit schemes, unfair ownership of huge property holdings, and astronomical financial wealth. As soon as the post-peak oil house of cards topples, ‘new’ social structures will be (re)established. There’s a growing number of people already welcoming the end of false wealth’s tyranny and of civilized arrogance.”

But where are the teabaggers (right: “hands off my Medicare/I hate socialism”) and the fleabaggers (left: “progressives”... too-smug to fail and wail”) to unite and protest Indian outsourcing/insourcing? The left/right paradigm of yore as it once applied to their respective bases is old-school, as the war on America's middle class is working out just great with these suckaz taking the bait from the neo-frat boys' divide and conquer propaganda units (left: HuffPo, AlterNet, etc.) and (right: Faux News, Drudge, etc.) to hurl “hater” rhetoric at each other while the neo-frat boys steal their jobs and laugh all the way to the bank.

What motivates the self-indulgent, neo-frat boy corporate state to work against local sustainability and local social responsibility? As LWOH readers know, yours truly has reported on corporate America's U.S. job killing CHEAP LABOR JUNKIES over and over and over again (and then some). By now, EVERYBODY KNOWS America's “best and brightest” corporate thought leaders (as they call themselves) are little more than a greedy, inner circle jerk of narcissistic, hubris soaked insufferables who loathe competition from their educated American neighbors enough to throw them out of the workforce by importing India's dubiously “skilled” workers and exporting our jobs via harmful H-1B, F and L visas. Make no mistake: U.S. corporate boardrooms are filled with petty, jealous frat boys and beady-eyed hos who peddle the “Americans lack of innovation” lie when the only innovation these “in-league” (as they call themselves) frauds know is their way around padded spreadsheets and cooked books to fire American workers and hire cheap Indian labor so that this grubbing subset can profit horde at the expense of U.S. educated citizens. It has to stop. This well-funded, organized American job killing racket is built upon lies about a Great American Labor Shortage supplied by American ivy league sponsored think tanks hired to “innovate” numbers and skewed data for corporate America to “legitimatize” the crime of selling out U.S. jobs by importing India's dreadful caste system to the United States. American jobs are disappearing for American citizens, and for a local college teacher giving one job – even ONE job – to foreign citizens when U.S. citizens need to work is a recipe for social collapse and is as unsustainable as our false reliance upon unlimited, cheap oil.

Spence notes that while other countries protect jobs for their citizens, it is time  the U.S. began doing the same:

“All considered, it is easy to notice that some individuals and countries faring relatively well throughout the ongoing recession are ones whose economic foundations have been largely isolated from worldwide influences. Moreover, the nations mostly immune to the downturn tend to be oriented towards serving the needs of their own populations, have been largely regionalized in focus, and generally have smaller, comparatively simple, manageable economies, as the U.S. and other countries, in my opinion, should aim to duplicate as much as possible.”

Aside from corporate America and Wall Street picking off Main Street, our university system is now aggressively being plundered by neo-frat boys who are selling out U.S. jobs and student work/study slots for educated Americans to India. It's time to divert massive concentrations of U.S. wealth away from counter-productive land-grab wars abroad and neo-frat boy, corporofascist subsidies and bailouts to, as Spence so aptly describes it, “defoster globalization.”

It's high time for America to stop buying this defective, deadly Great Labor Shortage Myth and put the brakes on these dangerous neo-frat boys peddling their unsustainable, destructive bullshit compost.

Spence recognizes that weeding out “unchecked corporate exploitation” (the same kind that may have driven, perhaps, the Texas college teacher), without meaningful regulation towards local sustainability and social responsibility is essential to avoid social collapse:

“Simultaneously, it is apparent that ‘revolving door‘ politics between corporate executives, politicians and bureaucrats with whom global-scale moguls sometimes collude do, in fact, exist and even lead, in some instances to regulatory capture. The overall outcome from such a pattern is unchecked corporate exploitation, deceit and power mongering during which time nations’ general populations become progressively destitute. Meanwhile, the über-class, without meaningful regulatory brakes on free market enterprise, obtain ever greater control over worldwide resources and the financial wherewithal to seize even more control over time.”

And hey, fleabaggers – the next time you want to dump on those teabaggers, try lifting one shoe out of the steaming pile of your so far useless carbon footprint and get out there and make noise. At least the teabaggers try (even if they can't get their fascism vs. socialism facts straight.)

Make them accountable.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

2Truthy's Happy Friday Hour Remembering Alex Chilton

(Very Special Thanks to The Box Tops)

Alex Chilton Died Of No Health Care

The Big Easy – Who wasn't in love with Alex Chilton? Music writer Keith Spera sends up this amazing tribute to Alex Chilton in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and describes the smart, handsome, humble and talented musician's life from his roots in Memphis to his life cut all too short in his adopted home of New Orleans that he loved. 

 

Alex Chilton had no health insurance. Spera talked with his wife, Laura Kersting about his final days below:

“At least twice in the week before his fatal heart attack, Chilton experienced shortness of breath and chills while cutting grass. But he did not seek medical attention, Kersting said, in part because he had no health insurance. On the morning of March 17, she went to work. Chilton called her after suffering another episode; she arrived home before the ambulance, and drove him to the hospital. He lost consciousness a block from the emergency room, after urging Kersting to run the red light.

That week, the health care debate dominated Washington D.C. But Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) took time to memorialize Chilton from the floor of Congress. Chilton, an avid C-SPAN viewer, likely would have appreciated the moment. Lingering damage to his Treme house was an ongoing source of concern for Chilton. Kersting hopes, in the coming months, to raise enough money to repair the home her husband cherished. “He loved this house more than he loved himself,” she said. “He really cared about New Orleans houses and people.

“A lot of people thought he still lived in Memphis. But New Orleans was his home. His heart was here.”

R.I.P. Alex Chilton.

-2Truthy

"Minute-by-Minute, the Qatari Shoe Bomber Who Wasn't": The Atlantic Meets Mel Toast

A “Why Mel Toast Gives a Flying F*#k” About Airline Smoking “Diplomat”

(Mel Toast partial commentary cross-posted here in the Atlantic.)

Why must this writer apologize for this cretinous thug?

If a white, American male from Georgia lit up in blatant and flagrant violation of federal law, you can be sure "Mr. Fisher" would have mercilessly vilified the hapless Southerner. Of course, he would have deserved it, being Christian and being from the South and all.

But this fine, upstanding young "diplomat" from a Muslim country? God (or Allah) forbid that we should offend our future masters as they break and defy our airline safety rules. God forbid that some spineless liberal columnist might finally figure it out, find a pair, and write two words in defense of this country’s attempt to fight a villainous Muslim enemy both domestically and abroad.

But no. It’s our fault. It’s always “our” fault. White, male Americans = Bad. Any other color, any other nationality, any other religion or slice of some obscure ethnic enclave from a 300-year-old cave in Dagestan = Good.

Anyone see that obtuse, overfed and angry Roland Martin on CNN last night trying to depict Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell as a racist because he issued a proclamation honoring Confederate soldiers? His vicious race-baiting nearly induced a stroke. How many Confederate soldiers actually OWNED slaves for cryin’ out loud? (For that matter, how many U.S. PRESIDENTS owned slaves?) But let’s look at another example.

Have you read about this new “play” appearing in Texas this week? Read about it here. The main idea: Jesus is gay. Imagine the uproar over a “Gay Mohammed” play.

Christians (white Christians, of course,) are being asked to roll over and play dead.

I am Christian in name only but give me a Christian, snake-handling Congregationalist any day over some “secular humanist” for they are the ones who are sacrificing their lives and visiting the necessary defenses upon the real Muslim enemy. At least until the Muslim-sympathizing Obama cuts off their oxygen—and their ammunition.

The secular apologists have joined the enemy. They are collaborators. Enablers.
A new book by Paul Berman deals with the contemporary Western liberal assault on one of the finest achievements of liberal European thought—The Enlightenment.


Intellectuals today are afraid. Afraid of losing their jobs or even their lives by telling the truth. They once rallied around Salman Rushdie after Khomeini’s “fatwah” or death sentence against him.

But no such defense is offered to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a courageous and brilliant woman who is being systematically maligned by the Muslim PR machine and their liberal think tank enablers.

Read an excellent review of Berman’s book here. Stem the tide of darkness. Fight the good fight.

Do not allow the “light” to go out of the Enlightenment forever.

Cordially,

Mel Toast