• Shiny objects, si; child care, health care, no.
• Flipping burgers is the new black.
• Losing the spirit of May Day.
• Turks defy ban on May Day rallies.
• An uncomradely copyright on Marx and Engels.
• Tim Carpenter’s politics of radical inclusion.
More rabble-rousing as I find it.
“Man plans, God laughs,” goes the Yiddish proverb.
So, naturally, as I was contemplating the intricacies, logistics and amusements of a bicycle tour, Management reminded me that spring is only a word, an arbitrary date on a manmade calendar.
Yesterday I was motoring around Fremont and Custer counties with the windows down, scoping out various back roads between Florence and Weirdcliffe with a Colorado Atlas & Gazetteer in the passenger seat while tugging frequently from a water bottle. Today I awakened to a few inches of heavy, wet snow on the deck, with more on the way.
No complaints here, mind you. Water from on high is water I don’t have to buy from Colorado Springs Utilities. And it sure beats being on fire.
So it looks to be a fine day for hanging around indoors, viewing with alarm. For instance, I notice that the Supremes are trying to make it less onerous for the 1 percent to run the country the way they see fit. And a Colorado judge is intent on making it harder for the 99 percent to catch them at it.
I’m starting to think Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito are deserving of life terms after all. Not on the high court, mind you, but in Leavenworth, making little rocks out of big ones for their crimes against the people.
Herself almost made it home last night, if you will concede that Denver International Airport qualifies as “almost home.”
The weather was moderately evil, and Herself’s flight from Chicago to Bibleburg was rerouted to Denver, a change of schedule about which I was blissfully ignorant until hanging a left off Powers onto the airport road after a very slow drive on icy, snow-covered streets.
“Where are you?” asks Herself, and I figure I’m about to get an earful for being late picking her up.
“Coming up on the airport,” sez I. “Where are you?”
“In Denver,” sez she.
And that’s the way things stayed. I hung out in the cellphone lot for an hour or so, waiting to see if the situation would resolve itself. United was waffling on whether the 15-minute flight was go or no-go, saying the Bibleburg airport was closed (the airport’s website proved useless on the iPhone, The Gazette had nothing about it, and I was feeling cantankerous and forbade myself to investigate in person).
Anyway, long story short, I motored back to Chez Dog to await instructions, United finally canceled that DIA-COS flight altogether, and I arranged a hotel room for Herself, who — having been scheduled to touch down in Bibleburg at 8:03 p.m. Monday — finally hit the hay at two-ish Tuesday in Saudi Aurora. Now she’s due in at 3:15 this afternoon. So it goes.
While awaiting dispatches from the front I learned of Pete Seeger’s passing, and this morning, in his honor, I decided not to go a-tilting at the windmills of customer service. It was late, the weather sucked, and the harried minions who seem like knee-jerk shitheels at first glance are just working stiffs, like us. They probably don’t like being United employees any more than we like being United customers.
Pete, that unreconstructed old commie, would have sung them a song.
• “Pete Seeger: This Man Surrounded Hate and Forced it To Surrender,” John Nichols, The Nation
• “R.I.P., Pete Seeger,” Charles P. Pierce, The Politics Blog
• “Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94,” Jon Pareles, The New York Times
• “I simply wanted him to know that I loved him dearly,” Arlo Guthrie
Herself and I were running down a list of worthy causes the other day, trying to decide which of them would get our limited financial support.
It was no easy task, in part because we are far from wealthy, thanks to our failure to capitalize on my globe-spanning fame. We have work, a roof over our heads and food in the cupboards, but still, damn; so many in need, so few dollars to go around. It was like spreading a pat of butter on a slice of toast the size of Kansas.
While we were crunching our pitiful numbers, the least productive Congress in the history of Congresses was busily fucking off, slinking out of town after having done less to “support and defend the Constitution” than any previous conclave of alleged lawmakers.
In their absence, which is preferable to their presence, 1.3 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits in an economy hamstrung by catastrophic long-term unemployment. That at least three people are seeking work for every job available is a moral failure on the part of the job seeker, says Congress, albeit obliquely. If hungry schoolchildren wish to eat, well, let them become amateur custodians. Plus they’ll be learning a trade! Bonus!
“Millions in subsidies, from the same program that until this year was tied to the food-stamp program for sound political reasons, which is the way we take care of each other in a political commonwealth. But poor children, if they do not work, shall not eat. Not all the big clanging brass ones hang in bell towers this season.”
The Constitution to which these swine swear their oaths begins thusly:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The Union has always been less than perfect, but lately it seems even more so. Where is the Justice, the domestic Tranquility? Who promotes the general Welfare, that the Blessings of Liberty may be secured?
“Fuck you, I’ve got mine, get yours,” doesn’t appear in the Constitution. Trust me. I checked.
So we write our little checks, and we send them off. And we hope. We hope for more than “four more years of things not gettin’ worse.”
Good news for those of us who don’t like Uncle Sammy listening to our phone calls just, ’cause, like, you know, freedom an’ shit — a federal district judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency’s perma-tap is likely an “almost Orwellian” violation of the U.S. Constitution.
According to The New York Times, Judge Richard J. Leon stayed his injunction “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” giving the gummint time to appeal, which could take six months or more.
But the judge said as part of a 68-page ruling that the gummint had failed to cite “a single instance in which analysis of the N.S.A.’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive.”
MoJo’s Kevin Drum notes that “district court judges make lots of rulings that never go anywhere, and this is mostly likely one of them.” But he likes that a judge wants this bullshit to stop, and so do I.
Mad Blog Media 