"I think they are all homosexual communists in Satan's army...I espect as well they all live together and bathe together every morning and have the anal sex with one another, with the fisting and the guinea pigs." - Manuel Estimulo
"I can never quite tell if the defeatists are conservative satirists poking fun at the left or simply retards. Or both. Retarded satire, perhaps?" - Kyle
"You're an effete fucktard" - Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom
"This is the most pathetic blog ever..." - Ames Tiedeman
"You two [the Rev and el Comandante] make an erudite pair. I guess it beats thinking." - Matt Cunningham (aka Jubal) of OC Blog
"Can someone please explain to me what the point is behind that roving gang of douchebags? I’m being serious here. It’s not funny, and doesn’t really make anything that qualifies as logical argument. Paint huffers? Drunken high school chess geeks?" - rickinstl
I'm cynical about most things, incredibly cynical about lots of the remainder and indifferent to most. However, if you want to be a hero, this is an easy way. However, I strongly recommend that you follow this sequence -- Find a goddamn hospital first.
In it, he wasn't quoted so much about wanting to be Woody as about becoming more like the blues players, Mance Lipscomb, Lightning Hopkins and the various itinerant minstrels like Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and Bill Broozey. Download BeyondHereLiesNothin_.mp3. Go Figure.
Ok, I can understand the Chinese paranoia about the Dali Lama. The whole Tibet thing hasn't really worked all that well for them. As a an acquisition --thinking as a businessman and simple business principles -- the whole excursion has been a loss. It's a great place to use as a gulag, but that's about all. Tibetan Buddhists are not really pacifists...they feel bad about killing someone, but obviously not so bad about slapping the shit out of someone. And, if someone gets popped, well, when your concept of personal time includes infinity and infinite conscious, it was programmed to happen. You burn down the barracks, ten thousand Han Chinese die, and you come back as a cockroach -- the universe wanted it this way. I'd spin it off -- setup a stooge government, have Jimmy Carter and Spiderman and the Grand Mufti of Mecca and some Indian guy in a loincloth and two foot long mustaches come in to monitor the elections, and when the Dali Lama's party wins, have Jimmy and Vladamir Putin and the Pope and, I don't know, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens along with Achmajinabad and George H.W. Bush arbitrate a treaty. Make the cost of building that railway the cost of reparations and don't demand reimbursement. And then fucking leave...
However, the original invasion of Tibet and the People's Republic's action since then have nothing to do with logic, except in so far as Maoism is logical. To paraphrase the Sheriff from the new Robin Hood on BBC, "A clue: it's totally illogical." It has to do with an insane ideology that takes the worst of Stalinism and is joined with a Han Chinese triumphalism. In China, all the ethnic groups are equal in the eyes of the law, but "some are more equal than others." In a way, the PRC is kind of Animal Farm and 1984 combined, with some marketing principles tossed in the stew.
So, the news that the Chinese have hacked the Dali Lama's computer system shouldn't surprise anyone who visits the campus of MIT, or Stanford, or UCLA or any other major American, British and Canadian university and wanders around the Math, Engineering and Computer Science schools. The Chinese have a vast resovoir of very, very bright people. The rote, Confucian style learning necessary to produce a fully literate Chinese individual working with their written language combined with the subtlties of sound so that the word "Mao" can mean "cat" or "spear" depending on the pitch produces a really sophisticated style of thinking that combines very logical processing, an appreciation of subtleties and an acceptance of dictates from above. Their scientists, their mathematicians, their computer people are every bit as good as those of the west. They have limitations, but largely due to crappy technology and incredibly backword infrastructure.
When I taught at the University of Shanghai, I got very frustrated with the Business College's computer network. Their printers were useless, dot matrix pieces of crap. I almost went out and bought them a laser printer. The reason I did not was that the way the building was wired, I honestly didn't know if adding a good printer might not be seen as an attempt to sabotage the fucking place when the building burned down. If you are bright, talented and capable, the good technology you need to do what you can do given the right tools is available to you only if you are a member of the Communist Party and are employed by the government or by a business that is partnered with the PRC. The simple task of plugging something into a socket could be an adventure because you're not sure what voltage you're going to getting into and your plug might need a set of freaking adapters. Not an adapter, but several. Seriously, if you visit Shanghai, take along a surge protector and a set of every conceivable plug for you electric toothbrush.
So, I'm pretty sure that this explosion of malware is neither isolated nor particularly surprising. It's a great propaganda victory for the Dali Lama, except that it's not. We've undoubtedly got better stuff, and are capable of doing the same thing, and are undoubtedly doing it. Much of the NSA's activities are undoubtedly directed in this way toward anybody and everybody that we regard as an enemy. Or, for that matter, a friend.
The truly cautionary note for us is that if the technology can be directed outwards by us, to monitor what porno is being played in Pyongyang, it's availble to point at us. And, if it's available to the government, it's available to business. Which means that under less than benign circumstances it can be pointed at, well, at you. If you want off the grid, it doesn't matter...today, if you have electricity, you are on the grid.
Now, in the US when a princpal installs cameras in the Girl's Bathroom, we call it voyeurism. In England, where the IRA gave them the gift of 24/7 Closed Circuit TV Coverage of everygoddamnthing imaginable, it's just the next step in securing the state. From itself. For itself. God save the Queens...
I saw this piece over at IOZ and was immediately amazed. While Parsifal is not my least favorite opera -- anything in Italian trumps it, as well as well, most operas. It's not that I hate opera in general, I hate operas in specifics. Anyway, combining Bye-Bye Birdie with the Aryan nonsense of Wagner is so wonderful as to deserve continuous praise. Seriously, anonymous evil, twisted genius, your imagination and your technical editing skills are absolutely...awful and awesome.
OK, so I looked her up on Wiki... I probably wrote something about her Italian-swindler boyfriend, but I don't really remember. And, the question still remains--and, looking at her, she's attractive enough but not someone I'd waste precious time seeking dirty pictures of...
1. This appears to be from my old neighborhood in Shanghai, but then, they all look alike.
2. Everybody thinks the Chinese are docile in the face of authority and compliant. Hah. 2 billion anarchists, barely restrained...
3. We still have places in this country that don't have Wi-fi. This video was shot on a camera phone in China, posted some place, picked up by the French You-tube and sent to me for your viewing pleasure.
Last night, I heard Ariana Huffington suggest as one Oxbridge PhD to another that she and Rachel Maddow be put in charge of rehabilitating the Republican party because they both are committed to a two party system and because they are women and therefore more compassionate. I thought that was hilarious, but in the cold light of morning, it looks pretty good. Frankly, somebody has got to do something with these assholes.
I'm not talking about Batshit McCrazy. As the testosterone induced high of competition settled down, he's taken a look at what he's done, shuddered metaphysically, and is moving on to do what he has tried to do in his various incarnations -- serve the nation. I'm talking about a particular class of Republicans, a lot of whom seem to be tied to Dixie. We are seeing a bit of regional "Drop Dead" from these guys, and the psuedo-populism aside, I find it instructive. And, maddening -- at times, it strikes me that some of the Republicans are locked into a Pickett's Charge Mentality, only they have no Lee to say, "It's all my fault. We must gather our wounded and return to Virginia..." They have nothing but battle maddened reactionaries, babbling insanely about charging the hill again. If at times in the past 44 years the Democratic party has resembled the Children's Crusade, the party of the rich and powerful have been driven by a "God Wills It!" approach that is bloodier and more destructive but ultimately no less futile.
As I was driving around the installation yesterday, coming back from a government franchised Starbucks that isn't quite for lunch, my buddy and I started talking about my next car. I had been thinking about a Challenger, or maybe one of the new Camaros, or possibly the newest version of the Mustang in 2010. It was kind of sad to think that a muscle car guy had to now think about...BMWs. "Maybe an older 911." "No, but I make enough to easily handle a Boxster.." But, damnit, I don't want a goodamn Boxster! For everything wrong about the US, and anyone who's reading this knows that I'm pretty vocal about that aspect of things, I'm an American. And, if they have something I'd like to drive, I'd rather drive an American car. Frankly, looking forward to driving a Boxster excites me about as much as listening to a Swedish Band covering the Standells...speaking of which, for your viewing pleasure..
You see, they do it well, but they just don't quite get it...
The attitude toward the bailout for the car countries is instuctive. The center-left coalition that is the mainstream of the Democrats is interested in saving the economy from itself, but is not excited about status quo ante. The conservative-extremist-flat earth-troglodyte coalition that appears to be the ruling mob in the Republican party is interested in preaching it's ideology. Bob Herbert has a lovely (in the very Irish sense of the word, see Barry Fitzgerald discussing the burning of the Squire's house in The Quiet Man )characterization of the Big Three in today's column:
It’s easy to demonize the American auto industry. It has behaved with
the foresight of a crack addict for years. But even when people set
their own houses on fire, we still dial 9-1-1, hoping to save lives,
salvage what we can and protect the rest of the neighborhood. (AXE emphasis)
Now, a great many of the ideologically driven Republicans are really pissed off at the Bush administration's utterly upgefucked leadership and handling of the $700 billion dollar bailout, and equally pissed off at the indications that they put us incrementally on the hook for a lot more. Well, I don't blame them. However, while I find the banking industry and the finance industry interestingly awful in so many ways, that doesn't really translate to this. I can't feel too sad for the poor bastards at Merrill Lynch who lost a lot of paper wealth; I can feel really bad for some guy in a Detroit blue collar neighborhood who's worked for GM for 40 years and now watches his health care, pension and pride go away...I can feel really bad for the guy in Barstow who's a lead mechanic at the GM dealer who watches his subordinates get laid off and is told he has to take a 20% pay cut. (True story -- guy could come work for me, by the way -- except he has to have a high school degree. He has 20 current ASE certifications, which aren't easy to get. But, 30 years ago he dropped out of school and went to work. Worked hard. Saved his money. Did everything he was supposed to do...and now this.)
Hey, I'll stipulate that I have some self-interest here. My brother-in-law is an autoworker. He gets up at 3:30 in the morning, drives two hours to Romulus and then works as many hours as he can; he drives home, kisses my sister and goes to sleep. He's been doing this since the early 70s; suffered through layoffs until he got some seniority; relocated to Michigan when they closed the factory in Syracuse; has raised a couple of really good kids and gotten them through college and launched on careers. He did everything he's supposed to do...and with almost 40 years seniority and close to retirement, he's sweating about things that the power structure told him not to sweat about. He's been a life-long Republican, trying to hang on to the American dream of being in the middle-class. And, he feels abused and violated, and angry. Yet, he's still proud to make engines. He's excited about some of the innovation. He's disgusted that Pontiac has looked to fucking Australia for its rear wheel drive salvation.His only gripe with me is that I have never used the Friends and Family discount program through his benefits...and, he's proud of his company's products.
Shelby et al do have a possible dog in this hunt. There are a lot of cars manufactured in Alabama, for example. They just aren't made by the big 3 -- they're made by Honda, Hyundai, and Mercedes among others. These companies pay well, because they are using economics to keep the UAW out. They went to places like Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina to avoid the UAW. In talking to acquaintances in work force development from Alabama, Honda really has to pay a premium because of the way their company culture conflicts with the Alabamian (the resemblance to Albanian just struck me) culture. Both white and black workers are made to feel inferior to the mighty Japanese. But, the Koreans and the Germans get along fine with the workers...so, I could picture some local boosters saying, hey if GM goes, we'll profit.
Yeah. Well, that's just stupid. Not surprisingly short sighted of course -- the Babbits of the world, the Sarah Palins and the Grover Norquists and the Alan Greenspans are as fucked up as the big 3 have been. The foresight of crack addicts is a marvelous line...ideologues are very close to crack addicts. From Tim McVie or Trotsky Palin or Norquist isn't a big jump. But the flow from Buckley and Goldwater to Palin and Norquist is almost infinite. They say the words, but the words don't mean the same things.
Herbert begins his column with a discussion of the famous "Ford to city: DROP DEAD" approach to NYC fiscal crisis in the mid-70s. It took a woodshedding by world leaders to wake him up; there is a connection between the country and it's largest and most important city. If one fails, the other suffers. Well, in much the same way, there is a connection between our biggest manufacturing industry and the rest of the country. If it fails, then we're probably going to really suffer.
There is an opportunity here but in the financial realm and the manufacturing realm. Equity stakes are not the same as "nationalization." For the loans already outstanding and being misused, call the notes back and take serious equity stakes and conditions that serve the national interests. For manufacturing, equity stakes and serious, serious efforts to focus again on the national interests. Which, I think, are jobs that pay well, innovation, and technological leadership. Herbert's summation is clear and reasonable...
That means dragging the industry (kicking and screaming, no doubt)
into the 21st century by insisting on ironclad commitments to design
and develop vehicles that make sense economically and that serve the
nation’s long-term energy security requirements.
What I would
like to see is creative thinking on both ends of the bargain. Let the
smartest minds design a bailout that sparks a creative revolution in
the industry. Think of it as project synergy. (AXE emphasis: But, I am starting to get a little concerned about the whole Best and the Brightest trend. People who cite it ought to re-read Halberstram's book. It wasn't exactly positive...humility would be a good idea.)
Time’s wasting.( AXE Comment:And, the vultures are circling...)
I used to say that if you can't explain your business plan in five minutes or less to high school freshman, you had no idea what you were doing, or what you were doing made little if any sense. These guys kinda get it...
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