Before you think this has caca to do with Halloween because of the title and the date, think again.
This is about the emasculation of America.
Women can’t find many real men anymore. And women are to blame for that.
Case in point: A high school coach in Tennessee chewed out his players for having no teamwork and thinking only of their highly indulged selves. One of the little twits decided to audio-record the chewing in progress, proving the coach’s point. The recording then made its way into the public discussion—read, League of Coddling Mommas and their lick-boot lackeys, the Disassociation of Dominated Men—and then the fire and hellstorm raged.
You can guess the rest. The coach was forced to resign.
I listened to the recording on YouTube. That coach was venting the rage and frustration of many—men in particular—with the excessively individualistic culture and female-dominated boundaries for discussion. Another soldier on the frontier of our civilization as the hordes of dissolution pour over the borders. Another soldier lost.
Women have little or no business in the locker rooms of men. Why? Because they don’t have much of a clue about what it takes to be formed into a man. That’s why we have fewer and fewer real men.
Hell, I've had a lot worse ass chewings than the one that coach gave, and for things far less deserved than what he was dishing. We have wimpified our boys into pansies. Coddled, individualized, indulged, little mommas-boys, PANSIES!
What women don’t often realize is how much backlash and resentment they build up in the culture by reactions like the one they had to the coach.
In seeking to make a kinder and gentler Johnny, the methods employed—and the reactions to events—could have just the opposite effect in the end.
Women, are you paying attention? You DO have a place, a very important place, in the formation of your sons, especially in the pre-adolescent years. But not in making them MEN.
And you don’t have to be Robert Bly to realize that.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Neros and More Neros
NOTE TO READERS: THIS POST HAS BEEN SLIGHTLY REVISED BY ME FOR BETTER CLARIFICATION
A bit more pausing (although interestingly enough, gender issues have arisen over on P&H—check it out!).
Republicans dug in their heels dogmatically against—completely rejecting--Obama’s jobs bill. Obama fired back, saying the Republicans took away jobs from firefighters, police, and teachers.
Both sides could hardly be more misleading—or with assumptions more off base.
The basics:
$50B for transportation infrastructure—highway, rail, transit, and aviation.
$54B for unemployment benefits and job training/retraining.
$35B for local governments to either hire, but mostly retain, police, firefighters, and teachers who would otherwise be let go or never hired.
$30B for school construction.
$2-10B misc, including for an investment bank to attract investment in infrastructure
Total: Approx $175-183B
Fairly modest as far as government expenditures go, especially compared to the Wall Street bailouts.
But there’s also tax cuts as part of this package:
Extend and expand the percentage of lowering payroll taxes, for both individuals and the businesses that pay the match, meaning a break for both of over 3% off. Businesses that hire more people or grant raises get a further break.
Tax breaks (credits) for hiring unemployed and veterans.
Tax breaks for writing off equipment faster.
Total estimated cost in lost revenue: $272B
And a tax increase on 392,000 households (approximately the top .1% of Americans) of 5.6% on (wage AND investment) income over $1M a year, beginning in 2013 (how convenient, AFTER an election). The first $1M earned in a year would not be subject to this surcharge.
Total estimated additional revenue over 10 years: $453B
(In Obama’s defense, this revenue enhancing originally consisted of ending government subsidies for the oil and gas companies, and limiting tax deductions for people making over $250K/yr, but the Senate changed it for their own reasons, many of them selfish of course)
The plan’s flawed. How flawed? Well, some fairly deeply, some only a little, some not much at all. And some is actually (or could be) good.
But that’s without stepping back, and we need to step back. The big picture is there is not enough of that—the big picture. These are temporary measures that don’t build much health for the long run. The infrastructure stuff, while good, is mostly about attempting to partially redress marked deficiencies in the repair of our infrastructure, but without taking a 4.0 look at what infrastructure we really need and what we need to steer toward. Again, status quo preservation.
Job retraining is a half-tired saw. Many retrained on the last stimulus bill, and the (largely) abandonment of the American worker by Corporate America/World meant there was still often no jobs—including in the very things the companies said they were looking for.
Getting fired up about the emotional police, firefighters, and teachers is us not looking at reality: if you don’t fix the longer range funding problem, what the hell is one year going to do except kick the can down the road until after the election? So of course, this one looks like a political ploy by Obama.
School construction could be a good thing, but facilities rarely make or break real education. Undoubtedly most are “needed,” especially given the chronic underfunding at the state and local levels (similar to the police, firefighters, and teachers above) but this emotional issue seems designed for political purpose by Obama and Dems.
Payroll tax relief for individuals and businesses: mostly cosmetic. It’s not that there isn’t significant money released back in the aggregate, but for most people it won’t be enough to turn the tide in individual budgets, although it might induce a little frivolous spending boost for a while before the election. For businesses, big ones especially, it might be a nice boost to the bottom line. For overall positive economic effect, this tax cut is mostly a gimmick—and a costly one. I will agree that the sad state of affairs this economy and individuals find themselves in leave few appealing options--especially if the purpose is to stimulate demand, stimulate consumption. But that lost revenue is needed by an already loomingly faltering program, let alone its effect on general revenue. Any accumulation of such moneys usually does more when collected together than when frittered out in individual small driblets—despite shrill Rightist nonsense about it “ALWAYS being better for the individual to have every cent of his or her money rather than the government.”
Tax breaks are poor prompters of good long-term or enduring decisions, and they cost the loss of much needed revenue. Both Obama/Dems AND the Repubs are secretly in love with these though (even though the breaks are usually a poor choice for the economy and the country as a whole). Even the noble goal of hiring the unemployed and veterans does not override this poor tool. These credits are another example of the kind of foolish and wasteful (and enduring!) government heavy-handed meddling.
What you don’t see in this is long-term investment in REAL measures to spur a better future: wean us off fossil-fuel (especially foreign) dependence, or to make real infrastructure investments, or, especially, to incent and even compel corporations to bring back jobs to America.
So the bill’s at best mediocre, and at worst a political dog shaded for short-term political benefit (and largely to benefit Obama/Dems a great deal more than Republicans). Its timing and urgency NOW is also suspect.
But Republicans didn’t oppose it for sensible or logical reasons. They didn’t point out its flaws and suggest better alternatives like what I discuss above. No, they opposed it for ideological reasons (opposing ANY tax increases or alterations of existing tax breaks), for spite, for selfishness, for political maneuvers to make Obama fail (regardless if the country goes further down in the process). Instead of calling out Obama—or more accurately, the Democrats in general, because it got altered by Senate Democrats—they offered nothing. Nothing but obstruction: adamant voting against in the Senate; refusal to even consider the measure or craft an alternative in the House.
More service to their uber-rich masters, more tax breaks for the already thoroughly filthy rich. And then have the gall to say that they did it to spare “the job creators.”
Both parties fiddle in visionless petty selfishness while the country continues its suicidal slide from great power status.
A bit more pausing (although interestingly enough, gender issues have arisen over on P&H—check it out!).
Republicans dug in their heels dogmatically against—completely rejecting--Obama’s jobs bill. Obama fired back, saying the Republicans took away jobs from firefighters, police, and teachers.
Both sides could hardly be more misleading—or with assumptions more off base.
The basics:
$50B for transportation infrastructure—highway, rail, transit, and aviation.
$54B for unemployment benefits and job training/retraining.
$35B for local governments to either hire, but mostly retain, police, firefighters, and teachers who would otherwise be let go or never hired.
$30B for school construction.
$2-10B misc, including for an investment bank to attract investment in infrastructure
Total: Approx $175-183B
Fairly modest as far as government expenditures go, especially compared to the Wall Street bailouts.
But there’s also tax cuts as part of this package:
Extend and expand the percentage of lowering payroll taxes, for both individuals and the businesses that pay the match, meaning a break for both of over 3% off. Businesses that hire more people or grant raises get a further break.
Tax breaks (credits) for hiring unemployed and veterans.
Tax breaks for writing off equipment faster.
Total estimated cost in lost revenue: $272B
And a tax increase on 392,000 households (approximately the top .1% of Americans) of 5.6% on (wage AND investment) income over $1M a year, beginning in 2013 (how convenient, AFTER an election). The first $1M earned in a year would not be subject to this surcharge.
Total estimated additional revenue over 10 years: $453B
(In Obama’s defense, this revenue enhancing originally consisted of ending government subsidies for the oil and gas companies, and limiting tax deductions for people making over $250K/yr, but the Senate changed it for their own reasons, many of them selfish of course)
The plan’s flawed. How flawed? Well, some fairly deeply, some only a little, some not much at all. And some is actually (or could be) good.
But that’s without stepping back, and we need to step back. The big picture is there is not enough of that—the big picture. These are temporary measures that don’t build much health for the long run. The infrastructure stuff, while good, is mostly about attempting to partially redress marked deficiencies in the repair of our infrastructure, but without taking a 4.0 look at what infrastructure we really need and what we need to steer toward. Again, status quo preservation.
Job retraining is a half-tired saw. Many retrained on the last stimulus bill, and the (largely) abandonment of the American worker by Corporate America/World meant there was still often no jobs—including in the very things the companies said they were looking for.
Getting fired up about the emotional police, firefighters, and teachers is us not looking at reality: if you don’t fix the longer range funding problem, what the hell is one year going to do except kick the can down the road until after the election? So of course, this one looks like a political ploy by Obama.
School construction could be a good thing, but facilities rarely make or break real education. Undoubtedly most are “needed,” especially given the chronic underfunding at the state and local levels (similar to the police, firefighters, and teachers above) but this emotional issue seems designed for political purpose by Obama and Dems.
Payroll tax relief for individuals and businesses: mostly cosmetic. It’s not that there isn’t significant money released back in the aggregate, but for most people it won’t be enough to turn the tide in individual budgets, although it might induce a little frivolous spending boost for a while before the election. For businesses, big ones especially, it might be a nice boost to the bottom line. For overall positive economic effect, this tax cut is mostly a gimmick—and a costly one. I will agree that the sad state of affairs this economy and individuals find themselves in leave few appealing options--especially if the purpose is to stimulate demand, stimulate consumption. But that lost revenue is needed by an already loomingly faltering program, let alone its effect on general revenue. Any accumulation of such moneys usually does more when collected together than when frittered out in individual small driblets—despite shrill Rightist nonsense about it “ALWAYS being better for the individual to have every cent of his or her money rather than the government.”
Tax breaks are poor prompters of good long-term or enduring decisions, and they cost the loss of much needed revenue. Both Obama/Dems AND the Repubs are secretly in love with these though (even though the breaks are usually a poor choice for the economy and the country as a whole). Even the noble goal of hiring the unemployed and veterans does not override this poor tool. These credits are another example of the kind of foolish and wasteful (and enduring!) government heavy-handed meddling.
What you don’t see in this is long-term investment in REAL measures to spur a better future: wean us off fossil-fuel (especially foreign) dependence, or to make real infrastructure investments, or, especially, to incent and even compel corporations to bring back jobs to America.
So the bill’s at best mediocre, and at worst a political dog shaded for short-term political benefit (and largely to benefit Obama/Dems a great deal more than Republicans). Its timing and urgency NOW is also suspect.
But Republicans didn’t oppose it for sensible or logical reasons. They didn’t point out its flaws and suggest better alternatives like what I discuss above. No, they opposed it for ideological reasons (opposing ANY tax increases or alterations of existing tax breaks), for spite, for selfishness, for political maneuvers to make Obama fail (regardless if the country goes further down in the process). Instead of calling out Obama—or more accurately, the Democrats in general, because it got altered by Senate Democrats—they offered nothing. Nothing but obstruction: adamant voting against in the Senate; refusal to even consider the measure or craft an alternative in the House.
More service to their uber-rich masters, more tax breaks for the already thoroughly filthy rich. And then have the gall to say that they did it to spare “the job creators.”
Both parties fiddle in visionless petty selfishness while the country continues its suicidal slide from great power status.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
James Madison Rolls Over In His Grave
More pausing...
The witless Left keeps being flabbergasted as to the Right’s irrationality. What foolish and shrill ineptitude to be so diverted. The Republicans, with few dissenters, are willing vassals and allies of their corporate and uber-rich masters. The Democrats are the occasionally reluctant henchmen, but henchmen nonetheless. Where’s compromise that TRULY benefits the middle class going to come from that? The pseudo-liberal class (there’s really no functioning liberal class as a whole anymore) would probably do better for its occasional delaying actions against corporate power to become belligerent and defiant.
James Madison, who envisioned political compromise as the norm that would keep our democracy safe because no one group could get too much power, would likely be depressed at today’s spectacle.
Well maybe not completely at the Democrats, who are still sleep-walking that rational government is going to be possible with the current crowd. But Madison WOULD be about the Republicans, unless something changes, for he would find them even more intractable and self-centered than the Federalists of his own time. As Charles Babington of the AP reported on July 4, 2011, Grover Norquist for almost three decades “has been driving the Republican Party toward an ever-more rigid position of opposing any tax increase, of any kind, at any time,” as well as opposing repealing ANY tax breaks (even temporary ones or ones that don’t make any sense anymore), credits, and favors for billionaires and corporations. By dint of money backing and relentless one-mindedness, he has brought Republicans into line, to where they will knowingly hurt the economy to help themselves and their corporate masters.
In 2003, Norquist, who has been the lightning rod of the Republican Party, said that if a Democrat becomes President, “we will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat.” That has certainly occurred. Even though every bipartisan budget deal in the last 3 decades has had both spending cuts and revenue increases, and even though Obama’s had it on a 2 for 1 ratio ($2 in cuts for every $1 in increased revenue), the Republicans were willing to tank the economy rather than have ANY tax increase or tax break repeal of ANY kind. Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts, says it’s a Republican strategy to “drive America to the brink of fiscal ruin and then argue that the only way out is to cut spending for the powerless.: And so “the burden of paying for our society shifts disproportionately to the middle class and working poor.” This after the Republican party for 8 years paid for two wars and a costly prescription drug benefit (that benefitted drug companies most of all) with borrowed money, because the government had been drastically underfunded by tax cuts for the rich.
As Jim Hightower has put it, the only way someone would pay heed to the Koch brothers’ “Save-the-Poor-Billionaires crusade” would be if that person was in denial or delusion about the above.
Both parties are complicit in the disintegration of our civilization, and I have little to no faith or confidence in prospects for those parties, but I agree with disgusted Republicans David Stockman and Mike Lofgren that their party not only deserves the lion’s share of the blame, but their party’s present stances are unconscionably ruinous—and perhaps traitorous.
If these “Occupy” protests can grow enough, and maybe resume in the spring, maybe they can force the creation of wholly different thoughts about economics, single-member districts, cooperation, participation, work, etc.
Because the present paradigms are unsustainable and self-destructive.
The witless Left keeps being flabbergasted as to the Right’s irrationality. What foolish and shrill ineptitude to be so diverted. The Republicans, with few dissenters, are willing vassals and allies of their corporate and uber-rich masters. The Democrats are the occasionally reluctant henchmen, but henchmen nonetheless. Where’s compromise that TRULY benefits the middle class going to come from that? The pseudo-liberal class (there’s really no functioning liberal class as a whole anymore) would probably do better for its occasional delaying actions against corporate power to become belligerent and defiant.
James Madison, who envisioned political compromise as the norm that would keep our democracy safe because no one group could get too much power, would likely be depressed at today’s spectacle.
Well maybe not completely at the Democrats, who are still sleep-walking that rational government is going to be possible with the current crowd. But Madison WOULD be about the Republicans, unless something changes, for he would find them even more intractable and self-centered than the Federalists of his own time. As Charles Babington of the AP reported on July 4, 2011, Grover Norquist for almost three decades “has been driving the Republican Party toward an ever-more rigid position of opposing any tax increase, of any kind, at any time,” as well as opposing repealing ANY tax breaks (even temporary ones or ones that don’t make any sense anymore), credits, and favors for billionaires and corporations. By dint of money backing and relentless one-mindedness, he has brought Republicans into line, to where they will knowingly hurt the economy to help themselves and their corporate masters.
In 2003, Norquist, who has been the lightning rod of the Republican Party, said that if a Democrat becomes President, “we will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat.” That has certainly occurred. Even though every bipartisan budget deal in the last 3 decades has had both spending cuts and revenue increases, and even though Obama’s had it on a 2 for 1 ratio ($2 in cuts for every $1 in increased revenue), the Republicans were willing to tank the economy rather than have ANY tax increase or tax break repeal of ANY kind. Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts, says it’s a Republican strategy to “drive America to the brink of fiscal ruin and then argue that the only way out is to cut spending for the powerless.: And so “the burden of paying for our society shifts disproportionately to the middle class and working poor.” This after the Republican party for 8 years paid for two wars and a costly prescription drug benefit (that benefitted drug companies most of all) with borrowed money, because the government had been drastically underfunded by tax cuts for the rich.
As Jim Hightower has put it, the only way someone would pay heed to the Koch brothers’ “Save-the-Poor-Billionaires crusade” would be if that person was in denial or delusion about the above.
Both parties are complicit in the disintegration of our civilization, and I have little to no faith or confidence in prospects for those parties, but I agree with disgusted Republicans David Stockman and Mike Lofgren that their party not only deserves the lion’s share of the blame, but their party’s present stances are unconscionably ruinous—and perhaps traitorous.
If these “Occupy” protests can grow enough, and maybe resume in the spring, maybe they can force the creation of wholly different thoughts about economics, single-member districts, cooperation, participation, work, etc.
Because the present paradigms are unsustainable and self-destructive.
Monday, October 10, 2011
The Neo-Hippies Are Working For You
We pause in our examination of the genders to address current events.
We hear in the corporate media, as it features the Congressional and other mouthpieces for the corporatocracy and the dismissive upper class, talk about how “these mobs occupying Wall Street and other places” are “scaring the job creators” (who have been, where the last 10 years?) and trying to start “class warfare.”
Wrong. Class warfare has already started. The Lower (Formerly, Working) Class has already been mostly dominated and subdued. Here’s news for you Middle-Class America: The upper class and the most powerful corporations* have launched war on you. Their goal is to make you distracted, confused, powerless serfs and slaves.
It started with subtle, dulling, sedative, gradual, disguised economic gassing of first the lower classes, then the middle class. Then the assaults began.
Some of those woke up when the wounds became so deep it brought them out of their Matrix’d-like induced illusions.
These awakened are called “radicals,” or “aimless, generality-spouting, socialist fools,” so that the mostly still half-asleep will not be tempted to join them. Americans have traditionally stood pat on what appears to be the middle ground, so that they could go back to their apolitical and ahistorical lives. But those lives seem less and less possible, and less and less realistic, more a shared illusion and shared delusion.
The hour is late, the specifics desired either unformulated or unagreed upon. A marked lack of political sophistication, a lack of political science/government/economics acumen, combined with willful ignorance of history, have come back in droves of ghostings to haunt the awakening. Time, weather, and the active forces of corporate and upper class opposition can do much to dissipate this so far feeble gnat and its minor bothering of the real power structure. But perhaps the gnats can breed fast enough to be felt. As Hedges would say (see P&H), the illusions, and the distractions of the spectacle culture, might keep the crowds from duplicating what has transpired elsewhere—or what transpired in the dissatisfied’s own history of a quarter-millenia ago...
That may be the tragedy you don’t recover from, Middle America.
Silence and passivity are our enemies. Sheer logic won’t do, Middle Class America; you better get mad. The slave train is pulling from the station. Stop it, change it, dismantle it—or you’ll be on it.
*There are dissenters from this among both the upper class and among corporations. They are, unfortunately, the minority. Just like there were the good and caring minority among the aristocracy and other rich before the French Revolution, there are the good and caring now. And just like then, they are unwilling, or, more the case, unable (given the intractability and arrogant separation of their fellows) to persuade their group to chart a less selfish course.
We hear in the corporate media, as it features the Congressional and other mouthpieces for the corporatocracy and the dismissive upper class, talk about how “these mobs occupying Wall Street and other places” are “scaring the job creators” (who have been, where the last 10 years?) and trying to start “class warfare.”
Wrong. Class warfare has already started. The Lower (Formerly, Working) Class has already been mostly dominated and subdued. Here’s news for you Middle-Class America: The upper class and the most powerful corporations* have launched war on you. Their goal is to make you distracted, confused, powerless serfs and slaves.
It started with subtle, dulling, sedative, gradual, disguised economic gassing of first the lower classes, then the middle class. Then the assaults began.
Some of those woke up when the wounds became so deep it brought them out of their Matrix’d-like induced illusions.
These awakened are called “radicals,” or “aimless, generality-spouting, socialist fools,” so that the mostly still half-asleep will not be tempted to join them. Americans have traditionally stood pat on what appears to be the middle ground, so that they could go back to their apolitical and ahistorical lives. But those lives seem less and less possible, and less and less realistic, more a shared illusion and shared delusion.
The hour is late, the specifics desired either unformulated or unagreed upon. A marked lack of political sophistication, a lack of political science/government/economics acumen, combined with willful ignorance of history, have come back in droves of ghostings to haunt the awakening. Time, weather, and the active forces of corporate and upper class opposition can do much to dissipate this so far feeble gnat and its minor bothering of the real power structure. But perhaps the gnats can breed fast enough to be felt. As Hedges would say (see P&H), the illusions, and the distractions of the spectacle culture, might keep the crowds from duplicating what has transpired elsewhere—or what transpired in the dissatisfied’s own history of a quarter-millenia ago...
That may be the tragedy you don’t recover from, Middle America.
Silence and passivity are our enemies. Sheer logic won’t do, Middle Class America; you better get mad. The slave train is pulling from the station. Stop it, change it, dismantle it—or you’ll be on it.
*There are dissenters from this among both the upper class and among corporations. They are, unfortunately, the minority. Just like there were the good and caring minority among the aristocracy and other rich before the French Revolution, there are the good and caring now. And just like then, they are unwilling, or, more the case, unable (given the intractability and arrogant separation of their fellows) to persuade their group to chart a less selfish course.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
No Longer THE Pill (Dysfunction of the Genders, the Continuing Saga)
We are a pill popping nation.
There’s so much to that statement, and it could be expounded on for many, many facets, but I will focus on one, in keeping with the theme of the last several weeks.
How’s your relationship with your significant other’s pharmacy?
What exactly is he (and especially, she) on? What is it doing to health? To mood? To mentality? To rationality (or irrationality)?
A population that reaches for a pill to “solve” something, but usually never “solves” it, is a nation not dealing in reality between the genders. What is real where drugs are involved? How does one know where the drugs stop and the person’s “real” self begins? Who or what are you having a relationship with? How do all those drugs interact?
The marked rise in bipolarity, social disorders, hormonal swings, and general “odd” behavior (often no longer recognized by many!): what part do all these pills, many of which are no doubt contraindicative, play?
As if we needed any MORE stress and dysfunction between the genders.
There’s so much to that statement, and it could be expounded on for many, many facets, but I will focus on one, in keeping with the theme of the last several weeks.
How’s your relationship with your significant other’s pharmacy?
What exactly is he (and especially, she) on? What is it doing to health? To mood? To mentality? To rationality (or irrationality)?
A population that reaches for a pill to “solve” something, but usually never “solves” it, is a nation not dealing in reality between the genders. What is real where drugs are involved? How does one know where the drugs stop and the person’s “real” self begins? Who or what are you having a relationship with? How do all those drugs interact?
The marked rise in bipolarity, social disorders, hormonal swings, and general “odd” behavior (often no longer recognized by many!): what part do all these pills, many of which are no doubt contraindicative, play?
As if we needed any MORE stress and dysfunction between the genders.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)