Saturday, September 17, 2016

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Something a little different. We got our copy of The Complete Trio Collection yesterday.

Published on Sep 11, 2016
Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris promoting new album 'The Complete Trio Collection' | 2016

Thanks to GuestTrace.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Clinton on Life Support
According to Fox News.
Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson Stuns With His Answer, “What is Aleppo?”
His guess "sixth Marx Brother" further fails to impress policy wonks.
FDA: Antibacterial Soap No Better Than Good Old Soap and Water
FDA no better than good old common sense.
??? ~ News Quiz ~ ???

Hillary Clinton has expressed regret for saying half of Trump's supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables,” going on to say that many are “racist, sexist, homo-phobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic.” The truth is...

A ) 50% of Trump supporters view African Americans as more violent and criminal than whites; 40% say blacks more lazy and rude.

B ) 65% believe Obama is a Muslim.

C ) 50% say undocumented immigrants more likely to commit serious crimes than U.S. citizens.

D ) 2/3 of his supporters hold unfavorable view of American Muslims.

E ) 52% still oppose allowing LGBT Americans to marry legally.

F ) All of the above.

Hint: Based on the survey results cited above, Trump's basket of deplorables runneth over.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Fixer's take

I feel the same way.


Since Facebook removed Jim Wright's post about 9/11 for 'violating community standards', I thought I'd say this.

This is the view from my wife's office window on the 44th Floor of the Merrill-Lynch building in the World Financial Center. She took it when they let them back in 6 weeks after 9/11, after they put the windows back in and got most of the debris out, to get any personal effects they left when they had to run.

We've mourned and buried the dead, memorialized them so many places and in so many ways. We've cried ourselves out a long time ago. We counted our blessings that our families were still intact and got closer to those friends who survived. Yet every year, the country has to rip off this scab.

Our grief at losing friends and loved ones, at losing so many police, fire, and civilians was taken and used to justify horrible things against innocent people. It was used to whip the country into a frenzy for revenge. At a time when the entire world was on our side, that goodwill was co-opted to go on missions of imperial conquest. All those who died and survived on September 11th were pawns to promote false patriotism and foment fear so we'd willingly abdicate our rights and our common sense to 'keep us safe'.

My wife and friends who survived that day can't watch the TV or look at Facebook today because it hurts them deeply. How do you think they feel every year on this day when they have to watch as their friends and family were murdered all damn day in constant repetition, having it analyzed and discussed to death, every goddamn year? How do you think they feel knowing that their grief enabled the things their nation has done in the name of freedom? How do you think they feel watching politicians compete to see who can wrap themselves the tightest and thickest with Old Glory.

I always say, Osama bin Laden declared victory on 9/12, America's problem is that we don't know we lost. We've given up rights, we live in fear, and just about everybody else in the world thinks we're a bunch of trigger-happy, ignorant war mongers. The 'War on Terror' was lost before the first boots hit the Afghan sand and every year, we go through the masochistic ritual of reliving our defeat.

I, and many of the people who were directly affected refuse to do it anymore.

Renegade 911

Gleeped verbatim from Stonekettle Station. Thanks, Jim. He had it up at Facebook but they took it down because it didn't meet "community standards". It met mine so I swiped it to save it.

I made a Facebook post about 9-11.

It went viral.

It wasn’t even the first viral post I wrote this week, or the first to often a certain segment of America.

And many people were offended.

Oh, yes, they were offended.

Those who beat their fleshy chests and wave the flag in righteous unending fury and bleat most bitterly about “Freedom” and “Liberty” and “Patriotism” were the most offended.

Because aren’t they always?

Aren’t they?

They attempted to hack my Facebook account.

When that didn’t work, they complained to Facebook in righteous anger, furiously waving their little flags.

Because that’s what you do when you love “Freedom” and “Liberty” and “Patriotism” -- not the real freedom and liberty and patriotism but the jack-booted goose-stepping version where everybody is lined up and made to salute the flag with a gun to the back of their necks. The kind of “Freedom” that’s administered by serious men of pure Aryan descent with death’s heads and lightning bolts on their collars.

Eventually these patriots succeeded in convincing Facebook’s idiot mechanical brain to remove my post for “violation of community standards,” even though nothing I wrote violates Facebook’s community standards in any way.

Now, I’m not particularly vexed by this.

First, because this is the risk you take when you post to Facebook. You don’t own it. You don’t control it. You are entirely at the mercy of poorly coded algorithms and the arbitrary judgement of some 20 year old Frappuccino swilling douchebeard somewhere in the bowls of the Facebook cloud.

Facebook’s interests aren’t yours, even if like me you make them piles of money by pulling in 70,000 people every day. I knew this when I signed up. It irritates me, what they did pulling down my post because a bunch of fascist right-wingers got their delicate little Hitler Under-Roos all in a bunch, but I’m not in anyway surprised by the behavior of either party. It’s right there in the EULA.

Second, Because the people who complained confirm everything I said about them.



And I’d be lying if I said that didn’t amuse me.



By getting my post pulled down they confirm everything I said.

They always do, these patriots, predictable as the next row of goose-stepping Nazis.

And what was it I said that was so terrible?

What was it I said that was deserving of censorship and death threats?

This:

You're expecting some kind of obligatory 9-11 post, aren't you?

Here it is, but you're not gonna like it.

15 years ago today 19 shitheads attacked America.

They killed 3000 of us.

And then ... America got its revenge for 9-11.

Yes we did. Many times over. We killed them. We killed them all. We killed their families. We killed their wives and their kids and all their neighbors. We killed whole nations that weren't even involved just to make goddamned sure. We bombed their cities into rubble. We burned down their countries.

They killed 3000 of us, we killed 300,000 of them or more.

8000 of us came home in body bags, but we got our revenge. Yes we did.

We're still here. They aren't.

We win. USA! USA! USA!

Right?

You goddamned right. We. Win.

Except...

Every year on this day we bathe in the blood of that day yet again. We watch the towers fall over and over. It's been 15 goddamned years, but we just can't get enough. We've just got to watch it again and again.

It's funny how we never show those videos of the bombs falling on Baghdad today. Or the dead in the streets of Afghanistan. We got our revenge, but we never talk about that today. No, we just sit and watch the towers fall yet again.

Somewhere out there on the bottom of the sea are the rotting remains of the evil son of bitch who masterminded the attack. It took a decade, but we hunted him down and put a bullet in his brain. Sure. We got him. Right? That's what we wanted. that's what our leaders promised us, 15 years ago today.

And today those howling the loudest for revenge shrug and say, well, yeah, that. That doesn't matter, because, um, yeah, the guy in the White House, um, see, well, he's not an American, he's the enemy see? He's not doing enough. So, whatever. What about that over there? And that? And...

Yeah.

15 years ago our leaders, left and right, stood on the steps of the Capitol and gave us their solemn promise to work together, to stand as one, for all Americans.

How'd that promise work out?

How much are their words worth? Today, 15 years later?

It's 15 years later and we're STILL afraid. We're still terrorized. Still wallowing in conspiracy theories and peering suspiciously out of our bunkers at our neighbors. Sure we won. Sure we did. We became a nation that tortures our enemies -- and our own citizens for that matter. We're a nation of warrantless wiretaps and rendition and we've gotten used to being strip searched in our own airports. And how is the world a better place for it all?

And now we're talking about more war, more blood.

But, yeah, we won. Sure. You bet.

Frankly, I have had enough of 9-11. Fuck 9-11. I'm not going to watch the shows. I'm not going to any of the memorials. I'm not going to the 9-11 sales at Wal-Mart. I don't want to hear about 9-11. I for damned sure am not interested in watching politicians of either party try to out 9-11 each other. I'm tired of this national 9-11 PTSD. I did my bit for revenge, I went to war, I'll remember the dead in my own time in my own way.

I'm not going to shed a damned tear today.

We got our revenge. Many times over, for whatever good it did us.

I'm going to go to a picnic and enjoy my day. Enjoy this victory we've won.

I suggest you do the same.

Horrible, yes?

How terrible that I should suggest we stop wallowing in this misery, that we stop allowing ourselves to be terrorized by men long dead.

Yes indeed, how terrible.

On Facebook, posts openly calling for the assassination of the president do not violate Facebook’s community standards.

Open racism doesn’t violate Facebook’s community standards.

Sexism and misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, bigotry of every stripe, none of these things violate Facebook’s community standards – or the community standards of supposed Christian Conservatives for that matter.

Posts that directly call for armed insurrection, that call for militias and Sovereign Citizens to march on Washington and burn it to the ground, to hang the government from the nearest light poles, don’t violate community standards.

You can use Facebook to organize Klan rallies and gather Neo-Nazis for Trump, to take over a bird sanctuary in Oregon or even to call down the wrath of your god upon everybody you hate.

You can openly call for the murder of a football player that you don’t think is patriotic enough.

All of these things are fine.

But don’t say you’re not going to celebrate 9-11.

Posted by Jim Wright at 3:24 PM