Monday, February 8, 2016

Happy Chinese Lunar New Year


And the Year of the Monkey too.  Time to burn those shreds of buddhists flags waving in the wind on my back porch.  Intentions scattered to the winds...

Reading The New Yorker online this morning..   All that money for a few slick Super Bowl ads;  embarassing those Super Bowl babies, for them I mean.  Wouldn't you think?  And what kind of a country spends millions on silly, not to say desperate, ads for a ball game when so many have not a pot to piss in, can't see a doctor, have no home, are living on starch courtesy of ADM, are trying to start a life burdened with crushing school debt and lousy pay. It's freakishly Roman.

There's so much going on in the world – plus this is an election year in the US and I'm in the middle of house restoration – I thought that rather than feel obliged to write something original I'd just post items of interest here on the off chance anyone visiting might find them interesting.  You know... rather than just post nothing at all...

There was the Gloria Steinem/ Bill Maher kerfuffle this weekend... Talk about tempest in a teapot. As usual Gloria – poorly understood by those looking to pick a fight over nothing and too full of themselves and impatient to let her finish a sentence – is heaped with disdain by self-righteous, spoiled young feminstas...   but why bother..

When I read the New York Times, which I do almost daily despite their fawningly pro- Hilary position – jeez, you'd think Bernie was an also- ran, and if Ralph is right he may soon be – I am always more impressed with the Comments submitted by readers; their insight, intelligence and honesty so often outshine the content of the articles they're responding to.

Here's a recent  Times commenter whose thoughts struck me as remarkably to the point, or right on, if you will....

"gregrocker l.a. 35 minutes ago
I listened to much of the rise of talk radio during the 80's and 90's where GOP operatives simultaneously dumbed down and organized up the most ignorant third of the country. At the end of a day of Rush, Sean, Michael and [insert local hothead] they tucked the listeners in with an all-night UFO show. It was all the same piece.

It became less funny which their perfect icon George W Bush was elected President off the cover of Mad Magazine, but yet I still listened fascinated because I knew these people, had escaped from the midwest Ozarks and South where ignorance is enforced with guns and nearly weekly terrorist attacks emanate documented for decades by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

And now the convergence of the Fox News willfully ignorant 1/3 with the Entertainment-replaces-Reality Reagan redux which absorbs another third, the master showman and Ringmaster of Circus Bizarro about to pump that majority into another Presidency of flimflam, nonsense, magical thinking, contempt of the whole world. There is no civic involvement, just hordes drawn to the show like bloodthirsty Romans in the Coliseum.

The slim hope falls to the remaining third to create such a movement and roar against such ignorance and for the future that it captures the attention and wakes up some of the others. Doubtful if it would be Hillary that could do this, but Bernie could possibly lead by teaching what real citizenship is, how great nations conduct themselves and invest properly."

Right on, there, gregrocker

Peace.


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