MCARP has a post on 3:40 a.m.  about Court TV becoming TruTV that got me thinking.  You know how dangerous it is between my ears, but I went there anyway because fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Anyway, I thought about how not having a television to speak of and without cable, I’m sometimes at a loss to understand popular culture and its references.

One thing I think I do understand about the youngest adults I’ve observed, at least a portion of them.  I’m thinking now about the customers at Sauced, Sidecar and Starbucks in the under 30 age group, but still likely out of high school.  The guys are wearing cargo pants that hang down below their underwear waistband and are cut off below the knees, sneakers and a thrift store shirt that is often too small.  They are pierced and tattooed.  They may or may not carry a backpack with an iPod and a laptop.  Some of these fashionistas also wear all black and all very tailored, topped with a snap brim or porkpie hat.  The music-driven upper middle class nihilist who actually knows the word instead of just not giving a good flying rusty f***.  All the girls wear thrift store clothes and these are often deliberately crappy and often from the era of their parents’ Baby Boomer salad days.  Ugh.  The 70s and 80s.  They think school is stupid because anything you’d want to know, you can just Google.  They are substantially right.  They are also pierced and tattooed.  They wear scandalously short skirts and then modestly put leggings on underneath, or even a pair of jeans or perhaps they’ve perfected a “look” of their own eccentricity. 

They are very open about sexuality and gay, bi, whatever is just that: what ever.

I think I “get” part of what’s happening with this subgroup about whom I generalize so broadly.

They are saying that they are never going to be Lindsay Lohan or some such in the way they look, they aren’t going to try, they want to be judged on something else altogether.  They are asking we look past looks and judge them on “better” values, at least a different value.

I think they are telling us that the whole Clinton thing all the way through Mark Foley is just bullshit.  Sex just isn’t that important to get all twisted up.  Sexuality is not a lifestyle or a choice, it’s just who you are and how you’re wired.  Get over it.

They think our obsession with education is misplaced and that school is not relevant to their future.  You may think that’s wrong, and maybe it is, but it’s the view I think they have.  They may go to school and do well, but they have no respect for school, even when they are playing the game by all the rules, because they do respect relevant education.  Not a contradiction.  They don’t see school as a particularly efficient delivery system.

They’re sick of our materialism.  Having clothes and a car and a house matters, but there are limits.  The consumption can become conspicuous.  I think they see materialism much like they see sex.  It’s important, it matters, but jiminey cricket folks, let’s have some balance and perspective.  I think there’s vegan and green versions of this.

I also think they are somewhat nihilist.  I think they really do think that they’ve been left a bad hand and that it’s beyond their ability to, shall we say, relieve life of its quality of suffering.  It — whatever it may be — just really doesn’t matter.  Go to school make good grades or don’t, it doesn’t matter.  Dress in clean clothes or not.  Doesn’t matter.  I don’t think they are true nihilists.  I don’t think they are as blase as the existentialists nor even the “beats” they sometimes mimic in their black attire.  Very few of them are philosophic about it.  I think they are saying, however, that a great many things we grownups think matter, just don’t.

This is not my point of view of life, but I can’t say it’s wrong.  I might bemoan these messages I think I’m “hearing” from this group, and I might wish they were more optimistic about their future.  They say Social Security will fail in 2017 and there’s nothing we can do about it and the world will come to an end, amen.  About when these kids are in their prime, well, there won’t be any prime because there won’t be any oil and the clouds are going to rain fire anyway.  We’ve told them that this is their future.  This is not likely to make one optimistic.

And even if it kills them, all this Social Security and terrorism and environmental collapse, even if it kills them, it still doesn’t matter because it seems sure that we’re all going to hell. 

We grew up in a great country and we were astride the world.  They are growing up in a time when we are the warmongers of the globe. 

Politics is corrupt and Hollywood is decadant, and who cares and why not.  If Mom and Dad can vote Republican, go to church and still get drunk, does it really matter what anyone says they believe or think?

Look.  We’re a hulluva lot more powerful and rich than they are and we can’t keep guns and drugs out of schools and we can’t stop airplanes from crashing into buildings.  What the hell do you expect of them?

Or, maybe it’s just plain old teenaged oppositional behaviors.  That whole kill your father Oedipus thing.

Nevermind.

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President Bush again today said he would continue to be in charge of the Iraq war, would “stay the course” until Petraeus’ report in September, threatened a veto on any legislation shutting down the war, and all in a context of eroding Republican support in the U.S. Senate.

And, to give the neocon devils their due, some parts of their present (ever shifting) position has some validity and is reasonable, even if I reach a different conclusion.  Part of the problem, and what the rightwingnut/FauxNews/neocon/partisan/deadenders 27 percent don’t seem to get is that we no longer trust anything whatsoever that the Bush administration and especially the president himself EVEN WHEN THEY TELL US THE TRUTH.  Yeah, I know, I’m shouting.  I’ll take a breath.

Here’s the deal as far as I’m concerned:  let’s say that it’s exactly the right judgment to wait until September and make a judgment at that time about the “way forward.”  We don’t trust Bush to deal with the war issue in an honest and straightforward way when it’s time for new judgments.  Meanwhile, we have to start planning to get troops out now while we still have an operating fighting force.  We simply have not seen enough competency at the highest levels to believe that they are up to the job, no matter what the job may be.  GW and Co. have yet to be right and competent about anything whatsoever from beginning, when they lied about WMDs, to Fallujah, the civil war, the connection to al Qaeda, the number of troops that would be needed, reconstruction efforts, you name it.

We’ve earned the right to make an independent judgment because we’ve given him everything he asked for over a span of time that was enough for FDR to defeat fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and destroy Imperial Japan.  We can’t capture Osama bin Lauden, the most wanted man in the world, because he’s hiding IN OUR MAJOR PARTNER IN THE WAR ON TERROR?!!!??!!!

They had a chance to do that in the past year and Rumsfeld panicked and backed out because he was afraid of what the tyrant and military dictator Musharref might think?

Chickenhawk cocksuckers.  But they blistered Clinton’s ass for just raining a couple of Cruise missles on his believed hiding place.  It’s all Bill’s fault, you know.

they really believed Grover Norquist, antitax neocon nutjob, when he said he didn’t want to starve the government to death, he wanted to shrink it small enough to drown in a bathtub.  They know how to tear things down and criticize and bitch, but they simply do not know how to govern. 

They couldn’t get the Congress to repeal the Food and Drug Act, but they could put in political appointee leadership that had the purpose of keeping the FDA from doing what it is supposed to do.  They couldn’t get the Congress to rig elections, but they appointed folks to the Justice Department whose job was to rig elections.  Same with Civil Rights and Fair Housing. The Environmental Protection Agency became a shill for factories and polluters, miners, timber cutters and oil drillers. 

Their very purpose was to make government disfunctional on every conceivable level. 

We have not yet begun to deal with what it will take to repair the damage wreaked by 8 years of Republican rule under the Bush/Cheney Imperial Presidency.

They have packed the courts with lifetime appointments of men who are determined to change the law to fit a particular religious view as God’s law that “trumps” all other legislation by man including the Constitution.  God help us.  Save us from these self-appointed “righteous” men who pretend to dispense Justice.

We must rebuild our precious Bill of Rights.  I’m not sure that anything short of a new Constitutional Convention can repair the damage that’s been done to our common and ordinary rights and human dignity.  We must act immediately to repudiate torture.  It’s barbaric, unnecessary, brutal, ineffective, a horror to those of us who retain some semblance of civilized thought.

We must rebuild a scientific community for the FDA, NASA, NOAA and dozens of other technical agencies.

We will have to rebuild the Department of Justice from scratch.  It’s mortally wounded as it stands today.

We will have to rebuild our military while continuing some combat-type struggle on a worldwide basis, on some level, against terrorism and other threats.  True defense should be our first priority, which will call for many more domestic safety measures to upgrade port, emergency, airline, immigration, passports.  We should not preclude some offense outside our borders when we can be effective and efficient.  Isolation will not be an answer.

It will take my grandkids’ lifetimes to deal with the financial mess we’ve got on our hands.  Budget deficit, trade deficit, Social Security … intractable issues at best.

Those who don’t want socialized medicine should remember that we had a good private health care system when employers routinely provided coverage to workers, but the reason we have a health care crisis is that they stopped doing that.  Our national standard of living, the day to day struggle for the legal tender that most Americans face, has been slashed by corporations who give their CEOs hundreds of millions of dollars annually and a pat on the back for accomplishing our impoverishment.

The obscene concentration of wealth in the face of rising poverty, bankruptcy, foreclosures makes me want to grab a red flag and go to the barricades except that it isn’t Paris in 1968 and I’m no longer quite that Romantic and idealistic.

We will never be rid of hypocricy, but we must put an end to the bribery and corruption in government.  I suppose there will always be SOME corruption in politics, but there are too many billions of dollars at stake of OUR money to let campaign finance dollars get traded for government contracts.  Of course, Halliburton should be investigated, but we need to look into this mercenary army we’ve created in the Middle East.  Earmarks (‘Nuff said). 

We’ve got to rebuild the CIA and State Departments.

Homeland Security is a complete clusterfuck and it’s taken FEMA with it.  Katrina recovery is also a complete clusterfuck.

Then we come to the environment and dependence on foreign oil.  This is not an easy problem and there is widespread agreement that it’s time to get serious about working on it.  It will be difficult, regardless of any politics, it’s going to be hard.

I think it’s time to save some money by declaring victory on the war on drugs and getting out of Columbia.  Let’s treat it as a public health problem, decriminalize it and focus on something else.

The mind fairly boggles at the enormity of the agenda.

I think what you and I must do is ask the right questions.  We must ask presidential candidates whether they agree with the “unitary executive” theory advanced by Dick Cheney.  We must ask their thinking about judicial appointments.  We must ask what they see as America’s place in the world: hegemon?  good neighbor?  warrior?  Christian?  Will you keep pre-emptive war as a foreign policy cornerstone?  What is your first environmental priority?  What role do you see for your vice president?

We cannot risk another failed presidency like this one.  I only hope we survive this one with enough left to pick ourselves back up.

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My little sis complains about my jerimiad against those who want to “fix” me about my health habits.

Turns out that my smoking is preventing me from getting Parkinson’s Disease.

Nyah Nyah Nyah

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There are 2 billion mices in China that need me to chase them and eat them, but Jhon won’t let me out of the house.

I shall officially protest the imperfection of the universe.

ex Imperium Sinatra

If you want to know what the rightwing response is to the NY times editorial seeking an end to the Iraq war, try Surrender Now?, and be sure to read the comments. 

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My most heartfelt thanks to the large number of friends who made this past birthday weekend so much fun.  I want to especially thank my niece, who appears to have been procreating about the time of my birthday because my sister, who many of these friends met or became reacquainted recently, will soon be a “Mimi”.  Congratulations!

Thanks to the twin birthday friends, The Gary and Osager, for deliciously funny cards.  Thanks to Cindy for the tie, it’s lovely.  The lovely Juliet threw me a bin 73 party and it was a delight.  There are really too many to name.

I hope some of you have noticed that I’m doing more short posts/links these days and trying, really trying, not to do so much of the long screed kind of thing.  I hope you enjoy the stuff I find on the net as much as I do.  Since I only have dial-up, it just takes too long to post pictures and videos, but my birthday resolution is to get faster lines.

This year, I feel the years.  This year, my body has finally told me in no uncertain terms that a new way of behaving is imminent.  Exercise, better diet and a no-shit try one more time to quit smoking.  I hit the wall.  Maybe I’m finally ready to grow up a little more.

Besides, I’m sick and tired of the bad habits.  I’m only slightly less tired of the incessant attempts by the “fixers” in my life telling me I mmuuussstttt do these things.  Shut the fuck up, you controlling co-dependent cocksuckers.  Go rehab a house or restore an old car or something and leave me the hell alone.  If I manage to do any of these things for myself, it’ll be despite your “help”.  Besides, if I do them, you’ll just find some other way I don’t meet your approval and start trying to fix that.  Like Sophie Tucker said to her husband Phil when he complained her chest was flat:  Get off my back.

I feel better now, don’t all y’all?

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This brief video is the very height of the advertising art.  simply brilliant.

Funny, thought provoking and memorable.  Except, what was the name of that company?  German, I think.  Oh, well.

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The New York Times editorial , “The Road Home”, in today’s editions:

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

It’s a long editorial with arguments about leaving, staying and how to get out of Iraq, not all of which I endorse.  However, it’s a milestone in America’s political path towards ending the war when the NYTimes says it’s time to go.  One thing I do think is important is to consider the consequences of getting out of the war and doing a better job of planning the withdrawal than we did at the beginning of the war of the consequences of victory.  There will be refugees.  There will be attempts to fill the vacuum we leave behind.  We have 150,000 troops and almost 200,000 civilians there along with untold billions of dollars of equipment and they can’t just get on an American Airlines 737 and fly away in a day.  The Bush advocates accuse us of a plan to “cut and run”, but their alternative is “stay and die for no good reason”. 

In the entire history of our country, nothing has been as disasterous as our decision to invade Iraq.  I do not believe George Bush, Condi Rice and the Pentagon have the ability to lead us out.  It’s not just that they don’t want to, it’s that they aren’t capable.  They do not know how.  Even if we gave them a roadmap and a subpoena and let them use both hands, they couldn’t find their own ass, much less a way out of Iraq.  That’s the real problem right now.  Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi cannot legislate our way out because they cannot constitutionally negotiate the delicate details with Jordan, Turkey, Syria, Iran, etc., much less the assistance that will be needed from Europe and Asia.  While I favor impeachment, I do not think that will be helpful in getting out of Iraq in an orderly fashion and may, in fact, be counter-productive on that score.  We need impeachment for internal reasons of protecting our Constitution from this Imperial Presidency of lawless invasions of our rights.  However, it won’t help on the foreign policy front.  Getting ourselves a withdrawal from the Bush presidency is as difficult a task as getting out of Iraq.

I hope we elect Barak Obama as our next president only because I believe that it is only by electing a man with the middle name “Hussein” that we will have the international credibility to extract us from this mess with some semblance of dignity and some restoration of our good will from the international community.  America is presently seen as stupid, racist, fat and infatuated with gun slinging violent cowboys.  His election will refute that in a way that will even be obvious to relatively ignorant and tribal people globally. 

God save us.

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When Nixon learned that not-yet presidential candidate Fred Thompson had been named as minority counsel for the Watergate hearings, his reaction was that the kid was “dumb as hell,” according to White House recording transcripts.

Nixon and his lawyer agreed that he was “friendly” enough, and, of course, now we know that Thompson was the White House’s spy in the proceedings, tipping them off on upcoming events and betraying his duty to the U.S. Senate.

My guess about why he’s so high in the polls of Republicans is because he really is dumb as hell and is therefore representative of his constituency.

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christopher walken flies through space.