The rain was bucketing down last night, and we have the bucket to prove it.
It rained like a mad bastard here last night, with lightning strikes aplenty and one thunderclap that sounded like the SWAT team triggering a flash-bang before hitting the door.
The cacti got a charge from the evening’s rain.
The weather probably kept the cops and citizens from doing it hand to hand again downtown, as they did on Sunday night. Call me simple, but I don’t see how setting Dumpster fires and trashing the KiMo Theatre advances the Revolution.
Nor do I believe one achieves peace through superior firepower. The Albuquerque Police Department apparently broke out the flash-bangs, tear gas, and rubber bullets in honor of the occasion, saying some miscreant fired on them.
But hey, this is Albuquerque. If you don’t hear gunfire when the sun goes down, that just means everyone’s busy reloading.
The journalism performed in honor of the hullabaloo was so comically inept that it’s hard to get any sense of what actually went down. Much noise, very little signal.
Why, it’s enough to make a fella open up one a’ them whatchamacallits? Social-media accounts! I hear they come with cute kitten videos and everything.
“Boy, this must be a really secure location. It doesn’t look like there’s been a janitorial crew in here since … well, since forever. Smells worse than Pence’s butt-breath in here.”
Inside the White House, the mood was bristling with tension. Hundreds of protesters were gathering outside the gates, shouting curses at President Trump and in some cases throwing bricks and bottles. Nervous for his safety, Secret Service agents abruptly rushed the president to the underground bunker used in the past during terrorist attacks.
After his evening in the bunker, Mr. Trump emerged on Saturday morning to boast that he never felt unsafe and vow to sic “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” on intruders.
Because of course he did. Right after he changed his underwear.
I’ve been wondering when someone in the mainstream media would write something about the potential for increasing union membership and labor strength in the Year(s) of the Plague.
Here’s a start. It’s short, focused largely on the so-called “gig economy,” and written before a Washington Post-Ipsos poll that indicates some laid-off and furloughed workers may be overly optimistic about whether they will be able to return to their old jobs.
How does an activist pitch a union to a worker with no job? Is a patchwork of small, decentralized, tightly focused labor organizations preferable to One Big Union? Are people ready to rethink their notions of who is an “essential” worker? Will stock clerks trump stockholders?
Nick French at Jacobingives us a look at the protests that arose shortly after the Great Depression took hold. He argues that radical groups, among them the Thirties-vintage Communist Party, forged a bond of solidarity between the jobless and those still working that helped make FDR’s New Deal possible.
The conditions are different today, he concedes. But the public-health issue may give workers more leverage this time around. Writes French:
By forcing sick people to come to work, or by unnecessarily exposing people to coworkers or customers who might be infected, employers are hastening the spread of the coronavirus and putting everyone at risk. This means that all workers, employed or unemployed, have a common interest in these workers winning their demands.
Boy howdy. Dead broke is bad enough. I hear dead is worse.
• Addendum: As white-collar types join workers from the restaurant, travel, hospitality, and retail industries on the sidelines, experts say there’s no way to calculate how many jobs might come back as states consider lifting shelter-in-place rules. according to The New York Times.
Many businesses, particularly small ones, may not survive, while others are likely to operate with reduced hours and staff. The job search site Indeed reports that postings are down nearly 40 percent from a year ago.
“We don’t know what normal is going to look like,” said Martha Gimbel, an economist and a labor market expert at Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative.
I asked for impeachment. And now that I’ve gotten it. …
Well, for one, it looked a lot better online.
Two, it seems several sizes too small.
And three, it smells funny, like maybe a turtle dragged it down a toilet.
Nevertheless, here it is. And here we are, striding boldly down the runway wearing yet another fashionable edition of Radio Free Dogpatch.
P L A Y R A D I O F R E E D O G P A T C H
• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with a Shure SM58 microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder, then edited in Apple’s GarageBand on the 13-inch 2014 MacBook Pro. The background music is “Dramatic Climax” from Zapsplat.com. The party chatter comes from dbspin at Freesound.org with an underlay of “Buddy,” an iMovie jingle. And Nick Danger (“All Things Firesign”), Mark Time (“Dear Friends”), and Principal Poop (“Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers”) appear courtesy of The Firesign Theatre, without whom none of this would have been necessary.
“Goddamnit, he wants to ‘drive’ again, which means he just sits there, turning the wheel back and forth, making ‘vroom-vroom’ noises and honking the fucking horn. Later he’ll want us to run over a few homeless dudes panhandling in the median, maybe pick up a few hookers down on Central. Jesus. We’re gonna be out here all day.”
Monday is trash pickup day here in the cul-de-sac.
The good news is, the Mickey D’s on NM 528 is gonna make bank today. Unless he stiffs them, which wouldn’t surprise anyone who’s ever done business with the crooked sonofabitch. One of the SS boys flashes a piece in the drive-thru and that’s that. Another free Happy Meal for ’Is Lardship. So much winning.
The usual protests are planned, of course. Here’s hoping the anarchists stay home, waxing their weasels into their black bandanas and denying the media its both-sides narrative, and that the hippies at Tiguex Park have a couple new chants worked up for the TV cameras. I don’t care how much weed you smoke, that “hey hey, ho ho” shit hit its sell-by date in the Nixon administration.
Mad Blog Media 