Untitled (the teapot)

the skies are filled with the half truths and sideways snides
of the coming

quickening

it is there in the sign
of the overturned
teapot,

a pile of ruins
where the floor is wet

if you look
you will see

take a gander where the
side bulged brown,
that piece that is a little 
bigger, and slants to the left

that is the sign of the 
Oft, the King to the West
of understanding

it means that the
Auroras have spoke

and there, you see the
handle, lost without its
burden and rendered
a sad annoyance

that is Shoden, the brilliant 
sea

it means The Cerelium have
begun the chorus

and it is there where the tea
has met the mat

that is the sigil 
of Raspoon
The Rapier

it means
Harpagia has turned 
the key

I see and I know

the skies are filled with
the wasted ideas and the
midnight sufferings
of fools

the quickening is
coming

grab your babes and run

~~~ Ted Vanderveldt ~~~
September 18, 2015

8 years of suffering under Barack Obama

8 years of suffering under Barack Obama

Teri Carter

The sentence I hear most from well-meaning, conservative friends since President Trump’s election is this: “We suffered 8 years under Barack Obama.”

Fair enough. Let’s take a look.

The day Obama took office, the Dow closed at 7,949 points. Eight years later, the Dow had almost tripled.

General Motors and Chrysler were on the brink of bankruptcy, with Ford not far behind, and their failure, along with their supply chains, would have meant the loss of millions of jobs. Obama pushed through a controversial, $8o billion bailout to save the car industry. The U.S. car industry survived, started making money again, and the entire $80 billion was paid back, with interest.

While we remain vulnerable to lone-wolf attacks, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully executed a mass attack here since 9/11.

Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

He drew down the number of troops from 180,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan to just 15,000, and increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

He launched a program called Opening Doors which, since 2010, has led to a 47 percent decline in the number of homeless veterans.

He set a record 73 straight months of private-sector job growth.

Due to Obama’s regulatory policies, greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 12%, production of renewable energy more than doubled, and our dependence on foreign oil was cut in half.

He signed The Lilly Ledbetter Act, making it easier for women to sue employers for unequal pay.

His Omnibus Public Lands Management Act designated more than 2 million acres as wilderness, creating thousands of miles of trails and protecting over 1,000 miles of rivers.

He reduced the federal deficit from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2009 to 3.2 percent in 2016.

For all the inadequacies of the Affordable Care Act, we seem to have forgotten that, before the ACA, you could be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition and kids could not stay on their parents’ policies up to age 26.

Obama approved a $14.5 billion system to rebuild the levees in New Orleans.

All this, even as our own Mitch McConnell famously asserted that his singular mission would be to block anything President Obama tried to do.

While Obama failed on his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, that prison’s population decreased from 242 to around 50.

He expanded funding for embryonic stem cell research, supporting groundbreaking advancement in areas like spinal injury treatment and cancer.

Credit card companies can no longer charge hidden fees or raise interest rates without advance notice.

Most years, Obama threw a 4th of July party for military families. He held babies, played games with children, served barbecue, and led the singing of “Happy Birthday” to his daughter Malia, who was born on July 4.

Welfare spending is down: for every 100 poor families, just 24 receive cash assistance, compared with 64 in 1996.

Obama comforted families and communities following more than a dozen mass shootings. After Sandy Hook, he said, “The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.”

Yet, he never took away anyone’s guns.

He sang Amazing Grace, spontaneously, at the altar.

He was the first president since Eisenhower to serve two terms without personal or political scandal.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Obama was not perfect, as no man and no president is, and you can certainly disagree with his political ideologies. But to say we suffered? If that’s the argument, if this is how we suffered for 8 years under Barack Obama, I have one wish: may we be so fortunate as to suffer 8 more.

Trevor Noah on Victimhood

Snagged from tumblr: Compensation

You cannot simultaneously demand a service, while dehumanizing the person who provides you with it, and demanding they not be compensated fairly.

howprolifeofyou

I work in a hospital. It’s also the worst flu season in recent years in my hospital. You know whose job is one of the most crucial for EVERYONE, doctors and medical staff included? Janitors. Go ahead and try to have a safe working environment, ESPECIALLY in the medical field, without them.

Tell me, do you know how to best create a medically safe work environment? Because I sure as fuck don’t, but the janitors do, and they know this while being on their feet and performing manually exhausting tasks for 8+ hours straight surrounded by caustic chemicals.

Same goes for fast food workers. Do you have any idea how much knowledge and physical work goes into working in a kitchen? Wanna tell me you put out grease fires, what temperatures different foods are stored in, and how to keep a safe working environment for both customers and workers in a job surrounded by hot oil, ovens and chemicals? Not to mention, again, being on your feet for 8+ hours in a hot kitchen being yelled at by customers constantly.

I promise you that these people do a more difficult and oftentimes more important job than a large portion of office jobs I’ve been in.

apersnicketylemon

Fun fact: In my neck of the woods, hospital janitorial staff union wanted a pay raise. Their workers were struggling. The hospitals laughed at them, so they went on full strike.

The hospitals were in crisis mode within an HOUR.

Surgical rooms were not being cleaned, toilets and patient rooms were not cleaned, garbage was not picked up, instruments that get reused were not being cleaned (i.e. scalpels, patient beds), laundry wasn’t done, floors were not clean, biohazard waste wasn’t collected.

The hospitals folded the next day and the union got EVERYTHING they asked for.

Now, you may not work in a hospital @purest-rain but wherever you do work, just imagine what might happen if… suddenly no one cleaned. No one picks up the trash in that fancy office. No one vacuums or sweeps, or cleans anything. Nothing. Not the toilets, not the offices. It might take a little longer, but pretty soon, those fancy law-offices look pretty gross, don’t they? Especially the bathrooms. I’ve cleaned bathrooms, I know exactly how disgusting people are when they use a toilet they don’t have to clean.

Stop shitting on low-wage workers just because you don’t understand how important their job actually is. You cannot simultaneously demand a service, while dehumanizing the person who provides you with it, and demanding they not be compensated fairly.

zombieabbyka

The fact that so many people are getting so defensive about this is disgustingly sad. If you think “anyone can do it” then YOU do it. The job is necessary for your convenience, so fucking be a little more goddamn appreciative.

lynati

Also, I suspect those who assume that the only people making poverty-level wages these days would be surprised to learn just how many “skilled” jobs, including those that require college degrees, are part of what we’re discussing.

And that given how many jobs *period* require college degrees, shitting on janitors and fast-food workers and such for not “earning themselves a better life” is synonymous with shitting on anyone who simply *couldn’t afford* to go to college in the first place.

The Four Dollar Option

About a week ago I read an article in Bloomberg in which the author, Jonathan Bernstein, opines that "if Republicans confirm [Supreme Court nominee Brett] Kavanaugh, the highest court in the land will be a living symbol that the law does not treat women as full citizens."

"Republicans should, as they did in 1987, realize that there are plenty of young, well-qualified lawyers who can be counted on to rule the way they want the Supreme Court to rule — indeed, there are plenty of young, well-qualified lawyers who can be counted on to be more reliable justices for them than Kennedy was. They can quickly turn to one of those potential replacements. Or they can drag the nation through an ugly spectacle that at best will produce a victory that gives them nothing substantive while being symbolically poisonous — for the party and for the nation."

The article raised the question in my mind: why this guy? I mean, if there are dozens, if not hundreds, of qualified judges that won't offend half the country, why are they so adamant that this guy in particular has to be the one?

Now, I know that on a Washington insider level this is all about supporting the plutocracy; Kavanaugh has a strong record of being anti-regulation, and he doesn't believe in caps on campaign finance. But when he was first nominated, all discussions seemed to center on hopes and fears regarding Roe v Wade. That, of course, was eclipsed when he was accused of sexual misconduct the first time, and then again, and then a third time, and then a fourth. (Someone pointed out that between Trump and Kavanaugh, that brings the total to 23.)
To me, it seems reasonable to investigate each claim against Kavanaugh; the FBI investigated Anita Hill's accusations against Clarence Thomas back in 1991. It took three days. But to the denizens of Foxworld, this was all just a plot by "the Dems" to "drag his name through the mud" and "destroy" him "in their sick game."  "Sad at what they will stoop to so that their agenda is accomplished." There are also plenty of attempts to discredit the accusers, as well as whataboutism arguments regarding ghosts of Democrats past. One friend posted a link to an article that claimed that the FBI just doesn't do that type of investigation, and that this is really all about confusion about today's sexual mores. Oh, and there's something about a vast left-wing conspiracy involving Hollywood. But has anyone put forth a reason to not take the accusations seriously that makes sense to people who don't watch FOX? Not really.

However...

I listened to a couple of programs this weekend that gave me a clearer picture. The first was a podcast in which Ezra Klein was interviewing Lilliana Mason, who is the author of a book called Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.  About nine minutes into the podcast, they start discussing the work of Henri Tajfel, a social psychologist who studied prejudice and social identity theory. His Wikipedia page discusses some of his work thusly:

In these studies, test subjects were divided arbitrarily into two groups, based on a trivial and almost completely irrelevant basis. Participants did not know other members of the group, did not even know who they were, and had no reason to expect that they would interact with them in the future. Still, members of both groups allocated resources in such a way that showed favoritism for members of their own group in a way that maximized their own group's outcomes in comparison to the alternate group, even at the expense of maximum gains for their own group. Even "on the basis of a coin toss...simple categorization into groups seems to be sufficient reason for people to dispense valued rewards in ways that favor in-group members over those who are 'different'."

Ms. Mason said that when Mr. Tajfel began his studies, his goal was to find out how long it would take groups to come into conflict. He expected that in the beginning no conflict would exist, but that it would grow more intense as different conditions were added in the experiments. The subjects were asked to look at a wall that was covered with dots, and then asked to estimate how many dots were actually on the wall. Then they were randomly told that they were either an over-estimator or an under-estimator.

That was all it took.

Just the notion that they were a part of a group, and that there was another group out there that was somehow different from them, was enough to put them in competition with the other group. Keep in mind that they had never met any of the members of their own group, much less the members of the other group, nor did they have any expectation that they ever would. But membership was enough to create the attitude that their group must win!

She goes on:

"The one experiment that I think is the best example of this is that, in one of them, he asked them to choose between a scenario in which -- these are not the actual numbers but like, for instance-- everybody gets five dollars, or the over estimators get four dollars and the under-estimators get two. And they tended to choose the one where they get less, but they win. So it sets up this scenario where there is a clear greater good, right? Everybody can have five dollars, and it doesn't hurt anybody. It's the best for everyone. And yet, they choose the scenario in which they have to sacrifice in order to beat the other guys."

Kavanaugh is the four dollar option. They can't pick someone else. Yes, he believes in a political philosophy that robs our country of its democracy, but if he's confirmed, our group wins!

By the way, this podcast was both fascinating and horrifying, and if you ears are not doing anything for about an hour and twenty minutes, it's totally worth a listen.

The second program was Monday's Fresh Air on NPR. Terry Gross interviewed Eli Saslow, who is the author of a new book called Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, and the subject of his book, Derek Black, whose father, Don Black, is a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, the founder of the website Stormfront, and the head of the group that popularized the term 'white nationalism.'
At one point in the interview, Ms. Gross asked Mr. Black, "Can you explain to me how it's possible to believe in the first place that the Holocaust didn't happen?"  He answered,

"I think the real reason looking back on it now is that the National Socialism, the Nazi regime in Germany, has always been the best example of a modern society that actually tried to impose what white nationalists want - forcing people to leave and try to make a racially homogenous society. And if that ended in mass genocide, then how can it be their example? And so my perspective on it now is holocaust denial now has to be so essential to the white nationalist belief system because they can't accept that what they want is going to lead to such horror."

Nobody is suggesting that they want a sexual aggressor on the Supreme Court. That's not the ideal that they are looking for.  And yet, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll revealed that a small majority of Republicans don't care if the allegations are actually true. Still, there is so much reluctance to actually do an investigation. Dr. Ford will be testifying today in front of the Senate committee today. At Anita Hill's hearing there were 22 witnesses. That won't be the case today. The whole affair is to be severely limited. In the meantime, they must deny, they must minimize, they must rebut, they must politicize. They don't want the accusers to be believed. Because politicians need the support of rich donors. Because voters really believe in the red herring that is Roe v Wade. And most important of all, the other guys can't win.

Note: a previous version of this post said that most Republicans would find the accusations disqualifying if true.  That has been corrected.

Fascist Things My Friends Post On Facebook

I've had a plan in the back of my head to write a long post about Fascism, both in general and in how I am seeing it play out in real life on my Facebook feed, but procrastination has allowed much of what I want to write about to slip into the murky past.  So I've decided to try a different tactic.

If you read my blog, you will have noticed that I have a couple of series that been posting of photos and screen captures.  The first one I called "Foxworld," and it consists of images describing some pretty dumb things that are believed in the alternate reality some people on the right are living in.  The second I call "First Reaction," which is just a visceral response to something, with no research or links to back up what I think.  Now I'm starting a third: Fascist things my friends post on Facebook.  I don't believe that many of them will need comment.

Here's the first:

Snagged from tumblr: Concentration Camps

PUA: Obviously what’s happening to these kids is horrific but should we really be calling them concentrating camps though? What do Jewish people think about this?

FSG: Hi, Jew here! They are concentration camps and any Jew worth their history will tell you that. The Trump murals, the “we’re just going to take your baby for a bath”, the photos of confiscated rosary beads, the older children taking care of younger children they have no relation to because there are no parents around.

We see this shit and it sends chills up our spines because that was the kind of shit gentiles ignored because it wasn’t “that bad”. It wasn’t “that bad” when they were just confiscating our wedding rings and throwing them into a pile because we were “prisoners”, because it wasn’t “that bad” when they were separating children from their mothers to put them into a separate barracks, because it wasn’t “that bad” when little kids were having to flee through Kindertransport without their parents.