The Henry Ford Meme
There is a meme going around. It has a quote, “Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him, better take a closer look at the American Indian.” The credit/blame for the quote is given to Henry Ford. There are so many things to say.
You might ask if the quote is genuine. A bit of research leads to a foundation that studies the life of Henry Ford. They have a spreadsheet of his quotes. A search for the words happy, Indian, and prosperous do not show this quote.
The second comment is about what might be termed political correctness. The term American Indian is now considered offensive. If you consider the historic relationship between Native Americans, and the European conquerers, you see a history of land theft, treaty violation, and genocide. That this could be considered “letting the government take care of him” is a sick joke.
Ad hominem comments are just too easy to make. Henry Ford had a reputation for extreme anti-semitism. Mr. Ford was no fan of labor unions, and fought them fiercely. There are many other stories about what a horrible man Henry Ford was.
This is a repost from 2016. Pictures today are from “Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” This featured picture shows 826 Peachtree St.
Junk To Smithereens
This is a repost from 2017. @JonathanLKrohn “This is quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever read. The person who wrote this should be barred from ever writing again. If you could burn emails, I would recommend burning this one with a blow-torch, and scattering the ashes deep in the heart of the Atlantic Ocean.” This pastel performance got my attention on a boring Saturday. It actually was value added comment to a re-tweet.
“The PR email for Meghan Trainor’s new album is absolutely insane” was the seminal offering. @WizzKhaleesi had a screen shot of the special text. “”hot newlywed sex Meghan and Daryl Sa-BAE-ra are having (did you see what we did there?). Which is why you’ll love the banging’ single “All The Ways.” Billboard was wet for “All The Ways,” calling it “another fun, danceable track to fall in love with.” And would Billboard lie to you, girl?
But perhaps the piece de resistance (that’s French for “Wig Snatch”) is “Marry Me,” a romantic acoustic guitar and ukulele-tinged Awww Fest which delivers all the feels (and then more feels). Meghan wrote the song thirty days after meeting Daryl, and it was so good that she walked down the aisle to it. We know, it’s a little bit #Vomworthy, but also, am I chopping onions right now or are those tears rolling down my face?”
I saw this purple prose, and felt the need to make a statement. The result was a blackout poem. “But Wig Snatch all the feels We know chopping onions.” As a wise man once said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
Who is Meghan Trainor? Why Is This Meghan Trainor Press Release So Horny? has the text of the PR sensation. The first sentence will live forever. “Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and whether you’re planning on smashing bae’s junk to smithereens or making out with a pint of Phish Food, you need some fresh Valentine’s Day bops to get you in the mood for L♡VE.”
Help, This Meghan Trainor Press Release Is Haunting My Nightmares piles on with glee. “This happened with Thinx underwear’s deranged series of press releases, which used phrases like “Hey squirrelfran” and “astronaughty booty” in an effort to sell period underwear.”
Caroline Goldfarb claims to have written the Trainor train wreck. (Don’t let your mouse hover over the background of that page.) @hairoline A lot of people absolutely HATE the press release I wrote for Meghan Trainor and claim it seems like “a horny 12 year old with no writing experience” must have written it. Jokes on them because I’m actually a horny 28 year old with *some* writing experience @hairoline Trivia: The original draft had a line about Meghan buying sex toys with the ginger from Spy Kids but they took it out @hairoline I just had to block someone who said I deserved the electric chair for writing the horny Meghan Trainor press release, but jokes on them, cause I’m the one who got paid to say “smash bae’s junk to smithereens”
Jonathan L. Krohn had fifteen minutes of fame before he was fifteen years old. In 2025: “@JonathanLKrohn Essayist. Film programmer. Filmmaker. Jewish Benjamaniac. Bisexual baseball faggot. The Place Formerly Known as DF.” Pictures for this post are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the pictures in April, 1941. “Singing “Trying to Make a Hundred, Ninety-Nine and a Half Won’t Do” during the collection at Negro church in Heard County, Georgia”
Question Authority Part Two
This is a repost from 2023. … The facebook thread that produced the meme discussed yesterday had a tasteful photo comment. “Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein The sans serif text was illustrated with a photograph of an thoughtful Dr. Einstein. Since I was already on a debunking rampage, google was the logical next stop.
The short version is that young Albert said something similar in a letter, which was possibly mistranslated in the meme. “It comes from a letter he wrote to Jost Winteler, with whom he had boarded while at school in Aarau, Switzerland. In the letter, written on July 8th, 1901 (when he was aged 22), Einstein complained about German physicist Paul Drude, editor of Annelen der Physik, who had dismissed EInstein’s criticism of his electron theory of metals (now known as the Drude Model).”
“Was Sie über die deutschen Professoren gesagt haben, ist gar nicht über-trieben. Ich habe wieder ein trauriges Subjekt dieser Art kennen gelernt – einen derersten Physiker Deutschlands. Auf zwei sachliche Einwände, welche ich ihm gegen eine seiner Theorien anführte, und die einen direkten Defekt seiner Schlüsse darthun, antwortet er mir mit dem Hinweis, daß ein anderer (unfehlbarer) Kollege von ihm der selben Meinung sei. Ich werde dem Mann demnächst mit einer tüchtigen Veröffentlichung ein heizen. Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit.”
“What you have said about German professors is not exaggerated. I have got to know another sad specimen of this kind – one of the foremost physicists of Germany. To two pertinent objections which I raised against one of his theories and which demonstrate a direct defect in his conclusions, he responds by pointing out that another (infallible) colleague of his shares his opinion. I’ll soon make it hot for the man with a masterly publication. Autoritätsdusel is the greatest enemy of truth.”
“I’ve left the word “autoritätsdusel” untranslated, since this is the key to the quote. Princeton translates it as “authority gone to one’s head”, and in a paper published in Science and Engineering Ethics, it is translated as “the stupor of authority” (“dusel” meaning “stupor or daze”).”
The Science and Engineering Ethics document promises more cheap thrills. Suppression of Scientific Research:Bahramdipity and Nulltiple Scientific Discoveries “Just as Horace Walpole coined serendipity, so can the term bahramdipity be … defined as the cruel suppression of a serendipitous discovery. Suppressed, unpublished discoveries are designated nulltiples. Several examples are presented to make the case that bahramdipity is an existent aspect of scientific discovery.” A recent example might be the suppression of ivermectin, in favor of more profitable vaccines.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the featured picture in June 1940. “Building a new house for Mr. Craig, first citizen. Pie Town, New Mexico.”
A Lazy Option
It is not everyday that a meme quote turns out to be legitimate. Today is that day. @angrywaterman.bsky.social posted a drawing of Benjamin Franklin, along with “Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you.” When you type the phrase … you cannot copy text off an image … and feed this to google, you learn that Mr. Franklin wrote a letter to his sister Jane Mecom, on November 1, 1773. BF was in London on some business or another, and making people angry with his words. The revolution was coming, and BF was encouraging resistance to the empire.
“Maidencane” by Chad B. Anderson · A person … we never learn if they are male or female … has a troubling childhood memory. The incident was right before mother left, taking the older brother. The storyteller is left with his father, for the rest of a troubled childhood. One day, they get a phone call from brother, who remembers the seminal incident in a totally different way. Maybe they are just a fucked up person, who nonebody ever liked. This is the first story of a collection, which is going on the shelf until I finish the popular book I requested, that just came in.
Recycling blog posts is supposed to be a lazy option. I find a boring post with good pics … Confederate soldiers from the recent unpleasantness. Later, there was a book report about Janis Joplin. Most of the youtube links don’t work. One that does work is Janis telling Dick Cavett “I can tell you’re a swinger by those shoes” I click on a click to Peggy Caserta, and learn she has died. She also claims that “Going down with Janis” was ghost written trash. The only reason she went along was to fuel her heroin habit. I was disillusioned, again.
I was talking to someone hard of hearing. I said tariff. He thought I said terrorist. That may be a bit of cosmic confusion there. Tariffs are economic terrorism. Donnie’s slapdash tariff tossing on Canada and Mexico may have severe economic repercussions, which the orange haired wonder does not fully comprehend. Tarifs were a major cause of the War Between the States. The North wanted high tariffs to protect industry. The South wanted low tariffs to facilitate the sale of cotton to Europe. Of course, if you say that now you are condemned as defending slavery, but history does not …
One of the images I put up with my weekly notes had a silver dollar sized black spot on his forehead. Since this was a Confederate soldier from the recent unpleasantness, this black spot led to speculation. The identifier was googled on the appropriate Library of Congress page, and a raw copy of the photograph emerged. It was a formal portrait, seen here in a cardboard frame that was popular for such keepsakes. The soldier was no doubt alive when the portrait was made. Similar spots are seen elsewhere in the photograph, no doubt due to the ravages of age.
Is anything more boring than hypocrisy? It is obvious that it exists. The old story about the church, with room for one more hypocrite, is no doubt true. But so what? Just because you have strong opinions, and share them promiscuously with anyone within earshot, does not mean you have to actually do what you say you believe. You just have to say it with conviction, and people will congratulate you because you really believe it. Yes, the middle three letters of believe are lie. So much of our media meandering is pointing out examples of hypocrisy that prove nothing.
“It’s at the core of bullying, believing that your own rights prevail over others paid right to hear.” There is a conflict in the concept of free speech. Yes, you have a right to speak, but does that mean I have an obligation to listen? With canned entertainment available everywhere, many people feel it is their right to play their chosen sounds, regardless of other people. This extends to discussions of touchy subjects, like politics, religion, or God forbid, racism. Some people wield their opinions like a blunt object weapon, and if you do not submit to their authority …
Little Bird Poems
What follows is a telephone dictation of notes from the February little 5 poetry bash. … Down at the Java Lord’s emporium, waiting at 7:20 on the 9th of the first Monday of this February. I’m here for the Java bash. This is going to be a hell of an editing job once I get started with it.
Well it’s a little bit closer to closing time, or opening time. People are sitting around talking, and there’s all sorts of conversation going on, and a couple people that I know, but everybody seems to be busy talking to everybody else, and that’s fine. They’ve got this pole here, it’s a column, it’s about about five inches square and it’s covered with stickers. Someone was standing behind it, acting like he was going to be gesturing with it. I thought of using that as a dancer’s pole. That’s not not going to happen. None of these people need to be pole dancing. I would probably break something if I tried.
I’m one of the least dressed up people here. I’m wearing my boots, and some clunky old jeans and a white dockers shirt. I’m wearing a t-shirt but I can’t remember what it says I’ll have to look at it but Rosser’s setting up the show. I’m supposed to be opening this thing. I can’t imagine what I owe this honor to. This guy, Dennis, who’s a very entertaining person, he’s going to be the feature.
Rosser’s wearing a fleece vest, a day glow green long sleeve shirt, some flowered pants and some silver Lame’ sneakers. He’s the MC tonight, and he’s going around he’s negotiating with people about who’s going to be performing when and I’m just I’m just here, just here taking up space, not really knowing what I’m doing, but that’s how that’s how you know little 5 poetry bash works.
There’s this Aroma that I always seem to notice when I come to L5P. I was walking past this one of the theaters … they are having a concert, and there’s all these hipster type looking people competing with the security for attention. And there is this L5P odor … a combination of cigarettes and old barroom smell and Old Hippie smell and something else but I can’t really describe it that well I probably wouldn’t want to. You wouldn’t want to wear it as a cologne but this is peculiar to L5P and I smell that it smell every time I come down here.
The show was great. Dennis brought a couple of his pals, and they were all good. Of course it was live, so even bad poets are fun to listen to in person. Something called little bird poems kept coming up, which may necessitate further inquiry. … I googled little bird poems, and did not see any of the groovy violence I heard tonight. This one is typical: “Once I saw a little bird, Coming hop, hop, hop. So I cried out, “Little bird, Will you stop, stop, stop?” I was going to the window To say, “How are you?” But he shook his little tail, And away he flew.” … “TO THE TEACHER Read the poem aloud. Make the children repeat it along with you.”
Finally came the ride home, and the search for junk food. Since the taco bell on buford hiway is closed, the one on North Druid Hills will have to do. Unfortunately, this means an interminable wait at the drive through, and food that is cold when I finally arrives. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the featured photgraph in June 1940. “Group at the literary society. Pie Town, New Mexico”
Throw Biden Under The Bus
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Quote Origin: I’d Rather Have a Free Bottle in Front of Me Than a Prefrontal Lobotomy
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make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you
From Benjamin Franklin to Jane Mecom, 1 November 1773 Dear Sister, I received your …
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greg palsat · greg palast · hangout · vigilantes inc · @slimepriestess
This is what I looked at last week. The grafiti enabled meters of L5P and EAV are timeless · until a couple of days ago I hadn’t heard of Greg Palast in years, the man who claims to have been pursuing me with questions for two months. He has never phoned, written, emailed or made any other contact with me, which is curiously reminiscent of the behavior of the US Senate committee. Having now forced myself to look at his pernicious writing, it seems like the deranged ramblings you might expect to find pushed out from under the door of a locked ward. He claims to be a journalist. He clearly doesn’t get much work. · Crawl back under your rock, Mr Palast! · The Library of Congress Russell Lee took the featured photograph in July 1941. “Putting samples of wheat into sack of central sampling office. Walla Walla, Washington.” · There is a video on youtube, claiming that the 2024 election was stolen, using Jim Crow voter suppression. I was not convinced. … The pictures today have more truth. “Putting samples of wheat into sack of central sampling office. Walla Walla, Washington.” · “these things are so horrifying they’re almost hard to say he’s saying that there’s so many dead bodies in Gaza that cannot especially in Northern Gaza that are not even buried that literally the dogs are obese” · “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy” · Tom Waits on Fernwood 2 Night August 1, 1977 … The yt transcript rendered lobotomy as “the bottom of me” · Somebody dumped a futon on the path, across from Ashford Park Elementary. I dragged it to the curb. … First phone call to Dekalb County: The english challenged man, after being asked to speak up 25 times, gave me a phone number to call. I called the number. After ringing twelve times, someone picked up, and said they were for City of Atlanta, not Brookhaven. … Second phone call to Dekalb County: The lady said they don’t handle this, I should call “Keep Dekalb Beautiful”, and gave me a number. KDF does not provide this service, but gave me a number with the City of Brookhaven. The lady I talked to there said that Dekalb county picks up the trash in Brookhaven. … Third phone call to Dekalb County: I ask for bulk pickup, and give them the nearest address to the path. The lady said it might take ten business days. … Later, I sent an email to Dekalb Sanitation … Greetings, Please visit Dekalb Sanitation and select roll cart request for replacement, damaged repairs, upgrades, returns etc. · “law banning U.S. · mean fortunate President · solution” is what you see of the featured reduction on bluesky/facebook/X. To see the rest of the story, you will have to see the commentary. Unless you are on X, in which you case you see it now, and have to go in the comments for the link · the spell check for ordo amortis is odor amortizes · It is not everyday that a meme quote turns out to be legitimate. Today is that day. @angrywaterman.bsky.social posted a drawing of Benjamin Franklin, with “Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you.” When you type the phrase … you cannot copy text off an image … and feed this to google, you learn that Mr. Franklin wrote a letter to his sister Jane Mecom, on November 1, 1773. BF was in London on some business or another, and making people angry with his words. The revolution was coming, and BF was encouraging resistance to the empire. · “Peggy Caserta whose candid revelations about her romantic relationship with rock star Janis Joplin were revealed in a groundbreaking if often sordid 1973 tell-all book that she later disavowed as ghostwritten exploitation, died Thursday, November 21, 2024, of natural causes at her cabin on the Tillamook River on the Oregon Coast. She was 84. … Her first memoir, written she later said for the sole purpose of funding the ferocious heroin habit that would dog her for decades, has over the years been both reviled as a tawdry invasion of privacy and revered as an LGBTQ souvenir from an era and milieu that offered few.” · Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Charles R. Rees took the featured photograph in 1862. ‘Captain James H.M. Neblett of Neblett’s-Coleman’s Virginia Heavy Artillery Battery” · This is a repost from 2017. John B. Cooke passed away September 3, 2017. … · I don’t know which was worse. Hearing Peggy Caserta had died, or learning that “Going down with Janis” was ghost-written trash, fueling a heroin habit. The picture: ‘Captain James H.M. Neblett of Neblett’s-Coleman’s Virginia Heavy Artillery Battery.” · October 21, 1965 “Allstate Insurance Company office party” LBSCB01-050f · gsu · there was a poem in MAD magazine. “Tigers Tigers fighting bright/In the ballparks of the night /Your pitchings fair, your fields adroit/So why no pennant for Detroit.” I was surprised forty years later to read “The Tyger” by William Blake. · The photographs are from The Library of Congress The featured photograph was taken by Charles R. Rees between 1861 and 1865. “Unidentified soldier in Confederate uniform and Craig’s Rifles, or 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment” · selah
Handist And Offensive
This is a repost from 2015. … As saturday morning turned into afternoon, I was looking for text. Twitter had an entertaining entry. @DangerMindsBlog “Hunter S. Thompson’s typical daily intake of drink ‘n’ drugs.” The comments were charming. “It’s funny how everyone is obsessed with the truth of this absurd itinerary. This article made me smile and love HST more than ever. It’s what he stood for or symbolized that I respond to. We need more crazy fucking lunatics in this world and fewer anal-retentive fact-checking pussies.”
Maybe that is not a good idea for a post. There is always something in the archive. There were two stories in 2009 about word lists. Ten words was based on a story at YOU ARE REMARKABLE, where the last post was published November 21, 2014. “here are 10 of the most beautiful words in the human language. try sprinkling them throughout your next conversation & admire the way they feel rolling off your lips. watch how the listener’s eyes light up.”
The 10 words are: 01. adroit: dexterous, agile 02. adumbrate: to very gently suggest 03. aestivate: to summer, to spend the summer 04. ailurophile: a cat-lover 05. beatific: befitting an angel or saint 06. beleaguer: to exhaust with attacks 07. blandiloquent: beautiful & flattering 08. caliginous: dark & misty 09. champagne: an effervescent wine 10. chatoyant: like a cat’s eye.
Adroit is also the first word on the list. When I was young enough to think it was funny, I read MAD magazine. There was a poem: Tigers Tigers fighting bright/In the ballparks of the night /Your pitchings fair, your fields adroit/So why no pennant for Detroit. (I felt really stupid when I read “The Tyger” by William Blake. Maybe Allen Ginsberg read MAD magazine.)
A commenter at the original post begs to differ: “I take issue with the top word on your list. Adroit comes from the French word for “right”, as in “right handed”. It is the direct antonym of gauche, both in English and in its native French where it means “left”, as in “left handed”. As a non-right-hander I find both of these words to be handist and offensive.”
The second rerun today is 12 Funny Words. It is based on a post at alpha dictionary, which is still producing. The post was sponsored by Chinese Lady #1 Most Trusted Dating Service in China.
As you may have noticed, the first list was not the ten most beautiful words in english. It was merely the first ten, in alphabetical order. The fact that 01 rhymes with Detroit tells you more than you need to know. The second list….the 100 funniest words…. is also an a-z affair. The reality is that the last word is yahoo, and no z words made the cut. I decided to edit the list for the convenience of the reader. It occurred to him that perhaps this said more about me than about the list…what words did I choose, and why? Here is the list:
09 bloviate To speak pompously or brag. 23 crapulence Discomfort from eating or drinking too much. 24 crudivore An eater of raw food. 31 fatuous Unconsciously foolish. 32 fenestration Putting in windows. 39 fuddy-duddy An old-fashioned, mild-mannered person. 57 klutz An awkward, stupid person. 59 la-di-da A saying indicating that something is pretentious. 61 logorrhea Loquaciousness, talkativeness. 73 osculate To kiss. 83 rhinorrhea A runny nose. 92 troglodyte Someone or something that lives in a cave. … The pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, GSU Library. The featured image was taken October 21, 1965. “Allstate Insurance Company office party”
On The Road With Janis Joplin
This is a repost from 2017. John Cooke passed away September 3, 2017. … John Byrne Cooke, the son of public television star Alistair Cooke, had gotten a liberal arts degree from Harvard. He stumbled into a job filming the Monterrey Pop Festival. Like the rest of America, he was impressed by Janis Joplin. Soon, Mr. Cooke got a job as the road manager for Big Brother and the Holding Company. One result is a book, On the Road with Janis Joplin.
The management of Big Brother did not want the band filmed at Monterrey. After their saturday afternoon show, the film makers realized that Miss Joplin was important to the film. A second show was arranged for sunday night. This show was filmed. When you see Cass Elliot saying oh wow, that was saturday afternoon. The film crew filmed the crowd during that show.
Mr. Cooke arrived in San Francisco as the summer of love was playing out. Many old timers on the scene were already getting out. At first it was an uneasy fit with the band … the eastern bluegrass player, and the hippies. There was one meeting, where Mr. Cooke thought he was going to be fired. Things were patched up, and the show went on.
There were a lot of people who knew each other. Mr. Cooke had been trying to romance a California girl. It turns out she was a friend of someone, possibly Linda Gravenites, the roommate, and close friend, of Miss Joplin.
Peggy Caserta was another connection. Supposedly Miss Caserta had a lesbian thing going with Miss Joplin. Whatever did, or did not, happen, Miss Caserta wrote an awesomely trashly book, Going Down With Janis. The opening line: “I was stark naked, stoned out of my mind on heroin, and between my legs giving me head was Janis Joplin.”
“Peggy Caserta whose candid revelations about her romantic relationship with rock star Janis Joplin were revealed in a groundbreaking if often sordid 1973 tell-all book that she later disavowed as ghostwritten exploitation, died Thursday, November 21, 2024, of natural causes at her cabin on the Tillamook River on the Oregon Coast. She was 84. … Her first memoir, written she later said for the sole purpose of funding the ferocious heroin habit that would dog her for decades, has over the years been both reviled as a tawdry invasion of privacy and revered as an LGBTQ souvenir from an era and milieu that offered few.”
The year spent with Big Brother was 1968. Miss Joplin was staying in an apartment on Noe Street. Robert Kennedy made a campaign appearance on nearby Castro Street, with Miss Joplin in the crowd. When Mr. Kennedy was killed, after winning the California primary, the band was in Los Angeles. Mr. Cooke sought solace with Judy Collins that night.
Around this time, some people convinced Miss Joplin that she should leave Big Brother. There was three weeks between the last Big Brother show, and the first show as a solo artist. The Kozmic Blues band never really worked. Miss Joplin felt she was a failure. Miss Joplin started to use heroin frequently. Except for a European tour, 1969 was a bad year.
In 1970, Miss Joplin quit using heroin, and started to play with Fult Tilt Boogie. Things wer going well. The band was in Los Angeles recording an album. One night, Miss Joplin got some extra strong heroin. Mr. Cooke found the body.
This book report leaves a great deal of the story out. Miss Joplin broke a whiskey bottle over Jim Morrison’s head, and got into a fist fight with Jerry Lee Lewis. There were three appearances on the Dick Cavett show, 1969, 06-25-70, and 08-03-70. At 1:12 in this video, Miss Joplin observes “you’re a real swinger I can tell by your shoes man.” (Here is a screen shot from 1969, with heroin, next to another from clean 1970.)
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Charles R. Rees took the featured photograph in 1862. ‘Captain James H.M. Neblett of Neblett’s-Coleman’s Virginia Heavy Artillery Battery.”
ABYSS! HELL
WHAT? THE ABYSS! HELL · I TOLD YOU NOT TO LOOK! SHIT · NIETZSCHE IDIOT
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is a favorite of stupid people who want others to think they are smart. Almost nobody who throws those nifty quotes around has actually read the context. If they did read FWN, it is probably in English, and not in German. When you quote a legendary smart fellow out of context, in translation, you are probably going to screw things up. In this cartoon, FWN is chatting with some other legendary philosopher, whose identity has been obscured. Some lady walks by. The two heteros have a sexist conversation about her. The lady wants nothing to do with them.
macro Isreal · vow nuclear apartheid · activist profits
The concept of “greater Israel” has been around. The tools for the creation of this ethno-state are rhetoric, guns, and money. Warren Zevon wrote a song called “Lawyers Guns and Money” which is another way of putting it. On October 7, I knew two things. Israel would exponentially retaliate, way beyond what should be allowed. This killing spree would be supported by a hideous propaganda campaign. Both these things have come true, and it is not over yet. Iran has been paying the price for Israel’s existence for a long time, and is going to get revenge.
forgotten worry · have speedometer cocktail · faster greener best
I have not forgotten to worry about writers block. Maybe a speedometer cocktail would help, but not unless the repair shop police came through on DUI patrol. There has never been an auto shop like S&M clutch and brake, on Monroe Drive just off Ponce. Many a clever person noticed that sign in its heyday, and nobody seems to know what happened to it. There was also a speedometer repair shop on Spring Street, just up the hill from the Cheetah. That neighborhood has been gentrified to the point of boredom, while Monroe/Boulevard stubbornly putrifies.
Tammy edible · Spokesperson anal “MAGA” · lit liberal fraud
I used to know someone, who said, of a woman who was not pretty but had a vagina, that she was “edible.” Maybe that is what the spokesperson for anal “MAGA” would say about Tulsi Gabbard. A few years ago, I saw Tulsi on JRE, and was impressed by her opposition to wars of choice. Across the table at Manuel’s one night, a person started screaming that Tulsi was a Russian asset. In her confirmation hearing today, Tulsi refused to throw Edward Snowden under the bus, and spoke of the CIA sponsoring Al-Queda. Telling the truth is a dangerous hobby.
Smokes to compensate · challenge buffet metaphor · Too Much cubicle
You can always find an excuse to smoke, or drink, or do any form of damaging behavior that provides a temporary fun fix. The justifications for bad behavior is one of the oldest preoccupations of the mind of man, right after the transformation of waste, which Patti Smith said was the oldest, and she should know. She did a song, rock and roll n$$$$$, where she flamboyantly shouted the six letter word and got away with it. Maybe the new age will allow us to focus on racial dysfunction, without the alluring distraction of six letter words. So it goes.
RACIST ATTITUDE · WHAT? HAPPY CRY “OFFENSIVE” · MAYBE I FEEL REAL
This will not be drabblized in all caps. Racist is the six letter racial slur that you are forbidden to not say, as opposed to her codependent partner that you are forbidden to say, and strongly discouraged from thinking. When the AI thought-police are on duty, even thinking the verboten six letter word, without proper melanin based authorization, will result in severe penalties. You will be forced to shave your head, by your own hand, and proclaim that I feel real. Sylvester spins in her grave so hard that the wig falls off. The new order is on the way.
law banning U.S. · mean fortunate President · solution stay tuned!
This is another step in the drabble degeneration. It is key to remember that in an audio format, you can just spew out your hundred words, and go for it. In the blog format, you have to worry about widows … the one or two words left all alone on a line at the end of a drabble. These look gnarly and are to be avoided, and if doing so results in shaving a word or two off the generating drabble, then that is the way it has to be. You should never ever let rules get in the way.
New Law About Voting
This is a repost from 2022. The Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act failed to pass after a Senate fillibuster. … Democrats have proposed a new law about voting access. Grandpa Brandon thinks denouncing “voter suppression” is the way to build support. Unfortunately, the debate has centered around toxic, race-pandering rhetoric. Almost nobody says what the proposed new law would do. A bit of googling turned up a document from Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. If you get tired of the chamblee54 version, you can go to the original source. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.”
Most of the proposals are the federal government telling states how to run elections. The IANAL masses wonder if this is constitutional. Another feature of this bill is that the instructions are given to the states. In Georgia, the elections are mostly run by the counties. This did not stop Democrats, or Donald J. Trump, from blaming the Secretary of State for inconvenient election results.
Lets take a look at some of the specific proposals. With regards to early voting, the bill requires the states to offer early voting for a specified time period. No-excuse absentee ballots are subject to a national standard, along with other regulations concerning mail-in voting.
Election Day holiday: “The bill would make Election Day a legal public holiday…” This sounds good in theory, but may be troublesome to many employers. One thing that might help here is to move ED to Monday. Voting on Tuesday is a holdover from days when farmers went to the county seat on a horse. Voting on Monday would make things a bit simpler.
“Voter validation: The bill would promote a national standard for states that have an identification requirement for in-person voting, allowing for the use of a wide range of forms of identification (including electronic copies) and alternative options for voter validation. States that do not impose an identification requirement would not be required to have one.” Voter ID is widely denounced as being racist. If this passage is any indication, Voter ID is here to stay. (In the controversy over Georgia’s SB202, the ID requirement was widely seen as a feature of Jim Crow on steroids. It turns out that SB202 calls for the voter writing their driver’s license/ID number on an absentee ballot application.)
“Cracking down on deceptive and intimidating practices: … It would also establish federal criminal penalties for deceiving voters…” If it was a federal crime to deceive voters, every politician in America would be in prison.
“Voting rights restoration: The bill restores federal voting rights to formerly incarcerated citizens upon their release … removing the vestiges of restrictions born out of Jim Crow.” Kentucky had a law disenfranchising felons in 1792. This was a hundred years before the Jim Crow laws were passed. There are arguments to be made on both sides of this issue. It should not be addressed with misleading racial arguments.
“Countering long lines and related discriminatory practices: The bill creates protections for individuals subjected to excessive lines on Election Day — most often Black and Latino voters — by requiring states to ensure that lines last no longer than 30 minutes …” This is more gratuitous race baiting. While the idea of lines less than 30 minutes is appealing, one wonders exactly how the feds are going to enforce this requirement. Also, since the elections are usually administered by the counties, what are the states supposed to do?
“Requiring paper records and other election infrastructure improvements: The bill requires states to replace old, paperless electronic voting machines with voting systems that provide voter-verified paper records and provides grants for states to purchase more secure voting systems.” Georgia is going to a system with a backup paper ballot. When you cast your vote, a laser printer prints out a sheet of paper with your vote, represented by a QR code. This paper is then fed through a roller into a receptacle. To this uninformed voter, that seems like a lot of moving parts. While the new system MIGHT work in a high volume election, there is a high potential for screw ups. These are Georgia elections we are talking about here.
There are sections of the bill devoted to Campaign Finance Reform, and Gerrymandering. You can look at the Brennan Center document for more information. While the new bill has good intentions, the suspicion here is that the proposals will make things worse. God is in the details.
“The bill would require strong, uniform rules for congressional redistricting, including a ban on partisan gerrymandering and strengthened protections for communities of color.” Gerrymandering is like the weather … everyone has opinions, but relatively few know what they are talking about. If you create a black district, then the districts surrounding it are going to get whiter. If you tinker with the districts to favor one group, another group is going to be unfairly affected. The bill has good intentions, that might not be well thought out. God is in the details.
“Automatic voter registration: The bill would make automatic voter registration (AVR), which 19 states and the District of Columbia have already adopted, the national standard.” In Georgia, when you get a drivers license, you are automatically registered to vote. This eliminates any of the “exact match” issues that Democrats made so much noise about in 2018. The DMV is an exact match operation. Also, paperwork at the DMV is typed. Illegible paper applications were a major reason that registration applications were thrown out in previous elections. Illegible applications were also a problem with the New Georgia Project, a voting registration program directed by Stacey Abrams.
“Same day voter registration: The bill requires states to offer same day voter registration … SDR permits eligible voters to register to vote and cast a ballot in federal elections on the same day.” The sense here is that this is not a good idea. What happens when you move, and want to vote in another precinct? Will your old registration be cancelled? How do the states/counties keep up with all this? Is there a national database, that tells Georgia to cancel your Atlanta registration because you have moved to Alabama? And how are we going to process all of this while people are waiting in line behind you to vote? Once again, SDR might be a good idea, but there are a lot of details to work out.
“Protections against unlawful voter purges: The bill provides safeguards to prevent unlawful, faulty, error-prone methods for purging voter rolls … Further, states would be required to notify within 48 hours any individual removed from the list of eligible voters of their removal, the reasons for their removal, and how they can contest the removal.” In 2018, before voters were removed from the rolls, they were sent a post-card, and asked to reply. If they did not reply, they were removed. Now, if the state could not get in touch with them before, how are they going to reach these voters now? The feds do not always think these things through.
Poverty, Inc.
Poverty, Inc. is a 2014 documentary about the do-good industrial complex. Governments, agencies, celebrities, and just plain folks are the players. They see a need in the third world, and rush in to help. Often, they do more harm than good. As the person in tsunami-hit Thailand, said to the man in earthquaked Haiti… you survived the disaster. Now lets see if you can survive the aid.
P,I was part of a documentary discussion series. The group used to meet in a church, watch the show together, and break into groups to talk. Now, the group sees the movie on their own, and meet on zoom. When asked how he likes to “give back,” PG says that he mutes his microphone when he is not speaking. This is also true of real life … mute yourself when it is not your time to speak.
One story is about rice in Haiti. The island nation used to have an indigenous food industry. Then big brother flooded the island with subsidized rice. The native industries could not compete, and faded away. The cycle of dependency moves on.
Someone (most of the Africans on camera spoke English) gave the analogy of a bonsai. One tree is outside, and grows very tall. The inside tree has a similar seed, but only grows to a meter tall. It cannot get taller, because the small pot cannot support a large tree.
What this analogy does not mention is the 99.9% of seeds that never get to germinate. Even if they do become a plant, the forest is a competitive place. Most trees never get to grow tall. The bonsai is in a controlled environment, with limited growth opportunities. Even at a meter tall, it does get to live. That seed did better than almost all the rest.
A viewing service was used to view P,I. The movie was supported by advertising. These commercials seem to be inserted at random, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. It is jarring to be watching a first world/third world story, and then be interrupted by a flashy sales pitch for auto insurance. There is an irony of using third world suffering, to draw eyeballs to 21st century capitalism.
The old story of the emperor’s new clothes comes to mind. Many of the people in the poverty industrial complex work for the emperor’s tailor. The travel the world, and make a good living. It is in their best interest to keep the racket going.
Bill Clinton makes an appearance. He says, in effect, that he tried to help, and wound up creating more problems. We cannot expect to hear anything like that from Donald J. Trump. P,I was filmed in 2014, when Mr. Trump was a reality tv star. Perhaps by doing little to help the do-good industrial complex, Mr. Trump wound up doing less harm.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Chamblee54 
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