A sign in Brooklyn (via thenewephemera)
Glad someone finally quantified it. Resting easy now.
Fracking Democracy: Why Pennsylvania’s Act 13 May Be the Nation’s Worst Corporate Giveaway
1. Sorry, Pennsylvania, but you’re fucked.
2. How, exactly, can you be a politician in favor of this and not realize you are truly fucking your constituents who you, allegedly, serve? How is it not painfully obvious to all who might say something (ANY other politician, the news, the law/courts, their own fucking consciences if there is such a thing) that by signing something like this you’ve obviously been bought by these companies?
3. If you’re the sort of asshole who defends this sort of thing (“Jobs! It’ll create jobs!” I can hear such shitheels saying already), like whoever that dumbfuck was arguing with OneFootInTheGrave over this sort of thing, you can go take a long walk into a fracking hole and disappear forever.
So this just happened. (Twitter channel.)
Well, this is alarming.
(via towerofsleep)
… I was saying boo-urns.
(via lukesimcoe)
So much worse than this quote indicates. Why? Because it was apparent at the #hlth meeting that the senior administrators did not have a damned clue as to what was even going on. They didn’t have answers to at least half of the questions and concerns that came from the library staff. Obviously it was a good idea for them to call that meeting then, right? So, I must ask, who deserves to have their jobs on the line, the librarians or the administrators being paid to not know anything?
(Source: katherinestasaph)
This is the world we live in, where a murder that will never seem to come is a death too kind for Finance Capital.
brendan: Wow.
me: yup. “the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.” also, as noted, unlike TARP, no strings attached to that money
brendan: Why would there be? Who works at the Fed? A bunch of people who used to run these bailed-out banks and companies. These are friends doing favors for friends. Friends don’t attach strings and conditions to favors. God, how cynical are you, Craig
brendan: I also like how Barney Frank and Judd Gregg knew there was something going on, but no specifics. And apparently didn’t feel it was important to ask
me: these follks are sensitive, yknow? don’t wanna ruffle any feathers or make them feel bad since the financial stability of the entire world apparently depends on their wealthy ballsacks being consistently warmed by robo-whores made of gold who can give blowjobs with (somehow soft) diamond lips
brendan: That was beautiful. Somehow soft diamond lips.
me: it’s a technology only Fuck-YOU Money can buy
— UC-Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, explaining why she shouldn’t be held accountable for the UC Davis pepper spray incident (numerous videos available at the above link, if by some strange chance you haven’t seen one yet).
“Moving forward” has become a handy euphemism for ignoring abuses of power and shielding the people responsible from consequences. (Though the call for starting the healing process and moving forward is strangely absent when the accusations are against, say, young people of color or non-citizens.)
Katehi’s call to move forward is hardly the first time the language has been code for free pass. As Glenn Greenwald wryly notes, that same day, Vice President Dick Cheney publicly lauded President Obama for not prosecuting people responsible for the Bush administration’s “enhanced-interrogation” policies, itself code for torture. (Just like “Iraq has WMDs” was code for “No it doesn’t.”)
Obama himself has used these words like a mantra, and even gained some devotees:
April 2009, when asked about a Spanish investigation of US abuses at Guantanamo (“I’m a strong believer that it’s important to look forward and not backwards”)
July 2009, Senator John McCain agreeing with Obama (“it’s time to move forward and not go back”)
January 2011, on appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Bush-administration crimes (“I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”)
March 2010, on an investigation into the abuses of an ex-President’s human rights abuses (“”We have to acknowledge that those past human rights abuses existed. We can’t go forward without looking backwards…”)
Oh wait. The last one was Obama referring to ex-Indonesian President Suharto. Apparently we only look backwards when we’re talking about some one else’s skeletons.
CLICK HERE and read more by Jeannie Rose Field on the topic.
Let’s weave this into my political platform…. Truth and Reconciliation? Fuck, who needs that, we are people of the Future. Look at that great big Future out there. Keep looking! Nevermind the past. Forget about the present. Look on to Forever, where the Future is, keep reaching for it as it keeps receding into the distance. Don’t look at the Present, that’d be like when the cartoon runs of the cliff and then it looks down to notice that there’s nothing there. CERTAINLY don’t look to the past.
As long as we’re at it, anything I’ve ever done wrong, let’s just forget about it. Let’s look forward. Again. Forever. why’d you even ever stop? As a friend suggested “I may have messed up all those times I suggested we just move forward, but let’s look ahead and not back to here.” and that time, just now (see there you go again with the Present), that I again said let’s look forward? Well NOW that’s the past, so let’s move forward. Again. Forever.
oh uh, but I just wanted to point out one thing before moving forward. That thing that you did terribly and horribly wrong that you need to be held accountable for. I’m sorry, but we simply can’t look forward without looking back. I know what I said, but that’s for you, YOU look forward, but I must look forward and back because I am like Janus, I am god-like, you’re a fucking mortal. So fuck you. And keep your eyes on the fucking future prize.
THIS IS NOT A DREAM
that Cinefamily/Everything Is Terrible screened this on the day/night that I took and passed my Wing Tsun Primary Technician test is probably a good omen. (also, who wants to send me that French version of Paint It Black?)
