Real Fear, Fake Danger

Burr!  I'm tired of winter. I only think that I like summer. Oppressive heat. Winter is not that cold (not here anyway, not today, thanks anthropocene). It's the dreariness. It's the dead vegetation. Fall is colorful but it only transitional. A splash of color then dreariness. Spring is what wait for. Daily change - buddings, fresh shoots. The yellows. The violets. You can dilly-dally (In the rain if you like with your goulashes one. Yellow ones to boot). I even look forward to getting the mower out (not really, I pay someone to do that). Ah Spring! But first I must get through the next two months. It's all in the mind, you know. And a little self-medication will take care of that.

A real catalyst of change is entering the Whitehouse. Maybe not the change that his supporters hope for. He's promising something better (no that was greater, I think)  We'll get something out of this too, you know. We'll get something better than you'll get, you can be damn sure of that. There's no going back to the old politics.That's all dead.  We've made sure of that. Thanks Mr President for being such a magnificent catalyst. Remember - Make America Better. Say it Loud. Be Proud.

The average per patient cost of a rare disease drug had risen from $84,000 a year in 2010 to $

112,000 in 2014

[There is a] relative absence of modern ‘degenerative’ disease (heart disease, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, bowel disorders) among… hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers – Mark N Cohen – Health and the Rise of Civilization, 1989 p100

Use of GMOs decrease the use of insecticides but increase the usage of herbicides on US farms

The cultural apparatus is responsible for distributing the prevailing ideas [of political, military and economic power] to a mass public – Stanley Aronowitz - Taking it Big, 2012 p233

When watching preschoolers for potential trouble, teachers spend 42% of their time watching black boys; 34% watching white boys; 13% on white girls and 10% on black girls (Yale Child Study Center)

The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become. – Walter Cronkite

Sand is the 2^nd most used natural resource on earth, behind only water 

The only country that has ever used such weaponry [nuclear] will remain on record as ready and willing to do so again without nuclear provocation, an act, it is now believed in Washington, that would create a calmer planet – Tom Engelhardt (The Nation 9/22/16)

Medical billing records more accuracy report a hospital patient’s cause of death than do death certificates which tend to report the initial reason for the patient’s admission and under-report any infection or error that may have happened during their treatment. Actual reporting procedures to the Center for Disease Control are controlled by the state and not the federal government. Death from superbug infections if accurately reported may actually exceed hospital deaths due heart disease or cancer.

To study only the world’s victors keeps thought locked to a narrow reality. Out of defeat emerges ideas, changed people, and new movements – Russell Jacoby – Picture Imperfect: Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age, 2005 p5

Ten African and Asian countries representing just 2.5% of the world’s economy host 56% of the world’s refugees (estimated at 56 million).

Politicians were sold like soft drinks in election campaigns. Even the growth of a new conservatism in the 1980s was not really a mass political movement. It was a sophisticated and largely successful sales effort promoting unfettered markets – Gary S Cross – An All Consuming Century, 2000 p9

The anutal number of humans  (individuals) living longer than 110 years steadily increased for most of the 20^th century but has been decreasing this century in spit of the increasing total number of people now (at this very moment) alive

Forced to chose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the later and ended up with starvation, warfare and tyranny – Jared Diamond

A recent study concludes that if you figure in the CO2 released in the production of ethanol and bio-diesel, the consumption of these so called green fuels actually increases the total CO2 emission resulting from their consumption. A previous study found that the total energy produced by these fuels was less than the total energy used to produce them.

In 1910 the life-expectancy of the average car was about 10,000 miles.

The less educated fear they are being governed by intellectual snobs who know nothing of their lives and experiences. The educated fear their fate may be decided by know-nothings who are ignorant of how the world really works… Elite anxiety about the consequences of political ignorance is nothing new. In the long history of intellectuals worrying about democracy and its failings, two basic fears keep nagging away. The first is that democracy will mean rule by the poor, who will use their power to steal from the rich. The second is that democracy will mean rule by the ignorant, who will use their power to do the dumbest things. Both these worries go back at least as far as Plato. – David Runciman (The Guardian)

The Average American family spends $14,000 a year on automobiles

Well-informed people are likely to have more elaborate and internally consistent worldviews than inattentive people, but that just reflects the fact that their rationalisations are better rehearsed. - Christopher Achen

As soon as I had done it

            I knew it

I had been cutting Jalapenos

And had not washed my hands

            And now here I am peeing

            Oh God, I said to myself

Now I have done it!

I washed my hands with soap

            And hot water, but I knew

Already that it was too late

Maybe not, I hoped

            But in a few minutes

            I would know

Now you’ve gone and done it

Nothing left to do but suffer  

            The consequences

And I do

Nothing you can do

            I had done it before

            And I had survived
God, I hope I never 
            Do this again

Being in love has a very bad effect on men – it seems to addle their wits. Now women are just the opposite – on top of the world, looking radiant and twice as good-looing, as usual. Funny, isn’t it, that it should suit women, and only make a man look like a sick sheep – Agatha Christie – The Pale Horse

The higher one’s income the less proportionally is donated to chariable work

He is now a capitalist—the owner of a taxable asset….  How can Bolshevism flourish in a motorized

Country – Chevrolet advertisement, 1924

80% of millennials have never even tried a Big Mac. 44% of adults between 21 and 27 have never sipped a Budweiser

The only part of our government policy apparatus now capable of planning and with the money and moxie to act on its plans is our armed services - Chas W. Freeman, Jr

For every US soldier killed in action, there will be 150 VA disability claims

There can be no objective measure of social value. - David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011

You can’t eat information nor live on likes

The beginning of the end of the world means that yesterday’s model of prosperity – let’s call it capitalist liberal democracy – has reached its limits. It is like an aging machine that shudders and backfires more violently and regularly, because it is broken. And yet, we are unsure, as a world, where to go next. - Umair Faque

China is building its first ever foreign military post. In Africa. Russia is reopening military bases in Vietnam and Cuba. It has reached an agreement with Egypt for a base there. And now has a permanent air and naval bases in Syria. The US has bases in 74 countries; Great Britain in ten; and France in seven

Journalism deserves a lot more blame for Trump's success as a vulgar self-marketer, because that's what so much of journalism itself has become. -  Jim Sleeper

Enrollment in teacher preparation programs has dropping dramatically, falling 35 percent nationwide in the last five years. The US educational system has an 8% attrition rate. The shortfall of teachers is expected to be at least 100,000 within the next fall.

We work in the present, not for the present – Leon Blum

60% of people in a relationship say they’re not very satisfied with their relationship (National Opinion Research Center)

But even regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized— the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered – Hegel

Green with Blackface Envy

I’m glad they caught up with me several months ago and not now when this artic vortex is at my doorstep knocking. Knock, knock – it's Rita the meter maid. Our records show that no one is living here, she says. Well obviously they’re wrong. You’ll have to take that up with gas company, she replies, or else we’ll cut you off on Wednesday. I was given a number or a green tag that she was about to hang on my door.  What the fuck, I said (to myself – It’s not Rita’s fault afterall, and it’s not my fault either - there never is anyone around to take you anger out on anymore. Good thing the dog was not under my foot just then. He usually races out the door whenever I open it). I looked up my records. She was right I hadn’t paid since May when I was had paid for having them turn the gas on. (stupid, stupid - but I'm not going to rant, I promised myself I wouldn't). I called the number on the green tag.  I get it straightened out. They even told me how to apply for assistance if the bill for the past six months was too much for me to pay. I did get them to admit that it wasn’t my fault. Then the bill finally arrived. It was hardly anything. I guess they did fuck up. At least they didn’t just make up a number. It could’t have been much, only the range, everything else is electric. It’s different now that the furnance is on half the time. They say that El Nino is kicking into effect and we won’t have any more Arctic Vortexs but what do they know with the climate in chaos. The ice from North Dakota is passing by on the river. Best wishes "Water Protectors" (you'll need it with our 45th). I'm picking sides (It wasn't a very difficult decision - I'm with Soule)

Money’s queer. It goes where it’s wanted – Agatha Christie – Endless Night, 1967

If criminal justice were a business it would long ago have gone bankrupt for lack of any financial data

When not persecuted, intellectuals tend to become part of the cultural and political apparatuses as technicians of knowledge… Despite their “love” of the people, intellectuals are congenitally distrustful of the masses. – Stanley Arnowitz – Taking it Big, 2012 p213

The best way to attract the attention of a government’s armed representative is to ignore that that government exists

The sharks I dodged / The tigers I slew / What ate me up / Was the bedbugs - – Bertolt Brecht – Poems p399

Creativity may be spurred on more by idle time and boredom than a desire for wealth

For at least five thousand years, popular movements have centered on struggles over debt… Debt is the most efficient means ever created to take relations that are fundamentally based on violence and violence inequality and to make them seem right and moral to everyone concerned. When the trick no longer works, everything explodes – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p38

Violence is a form of stupidity for which there is no intelligent response

When one is asked to be ‘realistic’ then, the reality one is normally being asked to recognize is not one of natural, material facts; neither is it really some supposed ugly truth about human nature. Normally it’s a recognition of the effect of the systematic threat of violence – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p45

Half the guns in America are owned by 3% of the population. Typical gun owners fit their stereotype: white, male, rural and politically conservative.

Nature is not that inventive when it comes to successful solutions. Once it works it tries it again and again – Antonio Damasio – Looking for Spinoza, 2003

The US is now proudly pioneering “first use” battlefield nuclear weapons

The postmodern epoch, however, renders obsolete the ideologies of the modern age—the orthodoxies of socialism and liberalism, both of which are predicated on the free individual. – Stanley Arnowitz – Taking it Big, 2012 p226

Roughly half of all people killed by law enforcement suffer from at least one mental disorder

So what makes cultural exchange different from cultural appropriation? As with most points of cultural contention, the difference is power. In particular, the power of the privileged to borrow and normalize a cultural element of another group, while the appropriated group is often demonized and excluded because of that very cultural element. - Kovie Biakolo

Healthy – (as used on a food label according to the FDA, I know, I Googled it) – means that the nutrient content of the food contributes to creating a healthy diet and that the label includes nutrition information. I think this means that any food with nutritional informaion on the label can be labled as ‘healthy’. This begs the questions as to whether having ‘healthy’ printed on the lable is itself ‘nutritional information’. And we already now that putting sugar, salt and fat into processed foods makes them taste better, thus contributing to your eating something (anything) in the list of ingredients that is actually ‘healthy’ thus contributing to creating a healthy diet. In other words unhealthy foods can be labled as healty according to the FDA so long as there is at least one ‘healthy’ ingredient listed on the label. Yes, I see. It all makes sense.

Would it not be easier / In that case for the government / To dissolve the people / And elect another? – Bertolt Brecht – Poems of 1913-1956, 1997 p440

The US government counts student loans as 30% of its net worth

Participation in the consumer culture requires wage work, time, and effort, often given without enthusiasm or interest. But this tradeoff seems natural today, an inevitable compromise between freedom and necessity – Gary S Cross – An All-Consuming Century, 2000 p5

Most Americans rarely or never discuss global warming with family or friends. The end of civilization has become boring. Or is it the we have accepted that we are not actually going to do anything about it anyway and have all become apathetic (just waiting around to die).

True, bureaucratic procedure operates as if it were a form of stupidity, in that it invariably means ignoring all the subtleties of real human existence and reducing everything to simple pre-established mechanical or statistical formulae – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p51

In ten states for every dollar of tax collected there is at least 5 cents collected in fines and forfeitures with Louisiana at almost 20 cents having the highest fines-to-tax ratio. Decreasing budgets have forced some police departments and local court systems to find creative ways for self-funding. Hence Ferguson.

Symbols focus experience; meanings organize knowledge – C Wright Mills – “The Cultural Apparatus”

The US national debt now exceeds the gross domestic product. It looks like the trend lines crossed in 2013 when the total amount of debt was $16.7 trillion but the GDP came in at $16.6 trillion. 

Can’t we just drone this guy [Julian Assange]?- Hillary Clinton

For-profit colleges and universities (FPCUs) spend on average only 17 percent of their budgets on instruction and 42 percent on marketing to new students and paying out existing investors.

“Possessive individualism,” that seventeenth-century “vice” of personal acquisition, was a substitute for the more disruptive passions of vengeance, glory, and domination – Gary S Cross – An All Consuming Century, 2000 p9

We must not assume that our public officials are as incompetent as they have lead us to believe – what appears as failure may have been intentional. What we see as failure, may be seen by the elite as a success.

Neither the hard-nosed economist nor the pandering politician nor the cynical intellectual may ultimately have grasped the complexity of popular will and desire. Americans still want more than mere shopping and more stuff. – Gary S Cross – An All Consuming Century, 2000 p12

Roughly 20 to 25 percent of our waking time is spent thinking thoughts that involve using language directed at ourselves. If one did not talk to one’s self how else would one be conscious of what one was thinking?

So Mr. Spoffard says his mother has to have him take care of her quite a lot. Because Mr. Spoffards mothers brains have never really been so strong. Because it seems his mother came from such a very fine old family that even when she was quite a small size child she had to be sent to a school that was a special school for people of very fine old familys who had to have things very easy on their brain. So she still has to have things very easy on her brain, so she has a girl who is called her companion who goes with her everywhere who is called Miss Chapman. Because Mr. Spoffard says that there is always something new going on in the world which they did not get a chance to tell her about at the school. So now Miss Chapman keeps telling her instead. Because how would she know what to think about such a new thing as a radio, for instance, if she did not have Miss Chapman to tell her what it was, for instance. So Dorothy spoke up and Dorothy said, “What a responsibility that girl has got on her shoulders. For instance, what if Miss Chapman told her a radio was something to build a fire in, and she would get cold some day and stuff it full of papers and light it.” But Mr. Spoffard told Dorothy that Miss Chapman would never make such a mistake. Because he said that Miss Chapman came from a very very fine old family herself and she really had a fine brain. So Dorothy said, “If she really has got such a fine brain I bet her fine old family once had an ice man who could not be trusted.” So Mr. Spoffard and I did not pay any more attention to Dorothy because Dorothy really does not know how to hold a conversation. – Anita Loos – Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, 1925

More like Leopold and Loeb than Lincoln and Douglas*

He says, he gets anxious with the approach of time. Well, time is always approaching, yet he is not

always anxious. Although, some times it seems like it. He’s always anxious when he contemplates being late, he says. Not anxious about actually being late, just thinking about being late. Try sometime actually being late, I suggest to him. You’ll find that most of the time there is no repercussion for  being late. I’ve tried that, he says. It doesn’t work. This morning he is anxious about his 8:30 appointment for physical therapy. They won’t even know you are late and besides you still have twenty-five minutes to get there and its only a five minute drive. He is asking if I will drive him there. He can walk back, he says. It won’t take any more time for me to drop you off at home and for you to take your own car, I tell him. Finally he relents. I would have to have driven right by the house anyway to have driven him to his PT. I dropped him at his house. I can’t help it he said, it’s the way my brain works. It drives his girlfriend crazy.

If the indispensible man dies / The world looks around for another mother with milk for her child / If the indispensible man were to come back there wouldn’t be a job for him as a hall-porter – Bertolt Brecht – Poems p399

Flotus

Scotus

Potus

Coitus*

*Man of the US (Motus) might have worked but not First Man -
        Too bad Bill. We could have just called you Mr Coitus
         Certainly My Tweek needs a better hash tag than just 
         Potus

We do not want to be sansculottes, nor simple citizens, nor venal presidents; we want to found a democracy of gods, equal in majesty, in sanctity, and in bliss. You demand simple dress, austere morals, and unspiced pleasures, but we demand nectar, ambrosia, crimson robes, costly perfumes, luxury and splendor, the dancing of laughing nymphs,music and comedies. – Heinrich Heine

The Democrats have proven to be better at making the rich richer than have the Republicans

Intellectual activity that does not have relevance to established money is not likely to be highly valued – C Wright Mills – White Collar p156

75% of US military enlistees claim that educational benefits were a major reason for their decision to enlist. Would providing free (or low cost) higher education hinder the military’s ability to recruit?

Emotions play out in the theater of the body. Feelings play out in the theater of the mind – Antonio Damasio – Looking for Spinoza, 2003 p26

The average credit-card debt owed by an American indebted household is $8,500. The total credit-card debt in the US is expected to surpass $1 trillion by the end of this year

In a society based so largely on illusions and appearances, the ultimate illusions, art and religion, have no future - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p96

Real estate busts nearly always begin in the hottest markets

Commercialization [of sports] has turned has turned play into work, subordinated the athlete’s pleasure to the spectators’ and reduced the spectator himself to a state of vegetative passivity – the very antithesis of the health and vigor sports ideally promotes - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p103

According to a recent Gallup poll only 23% of US employees agree that they can apply their organization’s values to their work every day. Only 27% agree that they ‘believe in’ their organization’s values

Women must defend themselves, and the lie, it becomes a good weapon. But there are three people, to whom a woman should speak the truth. To her Father Confessor, to her hairdresser and to her private detective – Agatha Christie – The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, 1960

45% of Americans claim to have used prescription psychotherapeutic drugs last year. More that 7% of the population self-reported misuse of those drugs. Over half of the drug abusers say they obtained their medications from family or friends.

The New York Times committed the most egregious of the media mistakes. It chided [Gary] Johnson for being wrong, then got it wrong itself. It started by describing Aleppo as the “de facto capital of ISIS.” (That would be Raqqa) - Sophia A. McClennen  (Salon)

People are increasingly pulling out their phone and recording emergency situations rather than providing assistance. Fortunately as of yet they are not recording selfies of themselves next to suffering people as they have done with suffering animals. The Bystander Effect: people are more likely to intervene if there are few or no other witnesses.

Being a muckracking political writer often makes me feel like a custodian in a horse barn, constantly shoveling manure. It’s a messy, stinky job — but on the bright side, the stuff is plentiful, so the work is steady – Jim Hightower

The average family healthcare premium for Americans who receive their healthcare insurance through their employer is $18,412. 83% of US workers have a deductible with an out-of-pocket expense of at least $1,500

Sin’s such a wretched, mean, ignoble little thing. It’s terribly necessary to make it seem grand and important – Agatha Christie – The Pale Horse, 1961

I got into my car

And I drove that car

And now I’m only a speck

            On the horizon

I leave it all behind

Good-bye to all of it

I’m dropping off

            The edge of the earth

I’m packing no baggage

Just put it on my plastic

What I need I can buy

            At Wal-Mart

Headed for the land

            Of milk and honey

Some say you have to die first

But it’s not true

So long as you have

            A hight credit score

Check all three

           

Bureaucracy, however much it serves as the immediate organizer of situations of power and structural blindness, does not create them. Mainly it simply evolves to manage them – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p63

The world’s three largest corporate entities have a combined value larger than the entire Chinese economy

Behind every great fortune there lies a crime. – C Wright Mills

The weather continues to be “strange.”

People in these parts have a heaven. They have come to the conclusion that God / Requiring a heaven and hell didn’t need to / Plan two establishments but / Just the one, heaven. It/ serves the unprosperous, unsuccessful / As hell – Bertolt Brecht – Poems p300

When aridity becomes normal it sould no longer be called a drought. Deserts are arid. They are not suffering from a drought.

I must pray you to inculcate upon the overseers that it is not their [the female slave’s] labor, but their increase which is first consideration with us. – Thomas Jefferson, 1819

Having an annual physical exam helps to diagnose new diseases but it don’t correlate with having a better health outcome. That’s because some diseases are analogous to song birds that have flown their cages. It’s already too late to get them back into their cage once they’ve flown. Other disease are like turtles, they are not going anywhere fast. Getting an annual check-up is like treating all disease as if they were rabbits (which can be caught and put back into the hutch). But all diseases are not rabbits. The Society of General Internal Medicine recommends that you go to your doctor only when you have a specific health need, so long as you don’t neglect establishing the doctor/patient relationship itself . Americans currently spend about $10b a year on annual checkups.

I sit by the roadside / The driver changes the wheel / I do not like the place I have come from / I do not like the place I’m going to / Why with impatience do I / Watch him changing the wheel? – Bertolt Brecht – Poems of 1913-1956, 1997 p439

Brain tissue uses 22 times more energy than does muscle tissue – think rather than work your way to weight loss.

Those on the bottom spend a great deal of time imagining the perspective of, and actually caring about, those on the top, but it almost never happens the other way around – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p51

Clowns are universally disliked by children. They don’t understand them (that’s OK sonny, I don’t understand em either, maybe it their perpetual smile? Which reminds me of models and spokespersons who always show lots of white teeth – constant smiling and showing lots of white teeth are sure signs of insincerity). They find them creepy. Ronald McDonald ranks 2,109 our of 2,800 celebrities

* Title refers to 2nd Presidential Debate and is from - Bill Moyers and Michael Winship (Sept 19, 2016)