MINUTIA AND INCONSEQUENTIA
- Okay, I realize everybody's already seen it, but watching Korea specialist Professor Robert Kelly's Skype interview with the BBC getting interrupted by his kids, followed by his wife's desperate attempt to get the kids out of his home office, probably did more to lift global spirits than anything since November's disastrous US election night results. So, HUZZAH! Also, if you're one of those irrepressible sour-pusses for whom this video was a disturbing reminder of the ever present deadening hand of the Patriarchy or some other such shit, then please allow this great rundown of why you should allow yourself to enjoy this accidental spectacle to get you back on the human track!
- Yer old pal Jerky is sad to report that, with the publication of his latest piece at Nation of Change, so-called "journalist" Dave Lindorff has joined the ranks of Julian Assange/WikiLeaks, The Intercept/Glenn Greenwald, CounterPunch/Chris Hedges, Jacobin, and pretty much anyone who cashes a paycheck from/appears on Russia Today as having lost all credibility on the issue of Donald Trump and Russia. The depths to which some of these so-called “purity leftists” have sunk in their most recent efforts to wave off scrutiny of the increasingly obvious and nefarious overlap between this White House and the dark and dirty nexus of the Kremlin/Russian oligarchs/Russian organized crime... it boggles the goddamn mind. I mean, this Lindorff guy actually used to be a respected journalist of sorts. And now, he's peddling WikiLeaks' (intentional) "misinterpretation" of their CIA document dump--days after it's been definitively debunked--and worst of all, now he's echoing Assange's disgusting fanning of the Seth Rich murder conspiracy flames? Nope... sorry Lindorff. There's simply no un-jumping that shark.
- Trump's army of Redcap deplorables has struck again, this time in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where 64-year-old Richard Lloyd tried to burn down a convenience store because he mistakenly believed the Indian owners were Muslim Arabs... and because they failed to stock his preferred brand of orange juice. Upon giving himself up at the scene, where he had rolled a large dumpster in front of the store's entrance, filled it with signs torn down from the front of the store and set the whole thing on fire, Lloyd reportedly told sheriff’s deputies that he was trying to "burn the building to the ground" in order to "run the Arabs out of the country." While appearing in court the day after his arrest on arson charges, Lloyd informed the court that he will be representing himself, and that he was just "doing his part for America." No word yet as to the identity of Lloyd's favorite brand of orange juice, but as soon as I find out, I'll let y'all know.
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| JUST LOOK AT THIS FUCKING IDIOT |
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Speaking of hate crimes, I’m frankly shocked more of a fuss hasn't been made about Trump's attempt to mainstream the long-standing Far Right notion that a significant number of anti-Semitic attacks are self-inflicted “false flag” events.
Trump made this claim last Tuesday, at a gathering of attorneys general, when asked about the sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents since his election (which, coincidentally, was seen as a victory by the likes of Richard Spencer and David Duke). He answered that often such incidents were "the reverse", and that they were carried out "to make people, or to make others, look bad."
Now, while faked hate crimes do, indeed, take place--on both sides of the political divide--pushing the idea that a majority, a plurality, or even a significant minority of these incidents are bogus is a dangerous road to travel down, particularly at this fraught historical moment. Some of the many reasons why this is the case are explored in Sam Kestenbaum's article for The Forward.
But The Forward is a publication targeted at a Jewish readership. Considering the fact that the Jews own the media, why hasn't a bigger stink been raised about the President--particularly THIS President--saying “y’all are doing it to yourselves to make me look bad!”?
Am I right people?! Are you with me?!
SUGGESTED READINGS
1. Now that a fairly well preserved and undeniably gorgeous 3000-year-old collosal statue of Ramses II has been discuvered beneath the streets of a Cairo slum... yer old pal Jerky can't help but wonder how many more incredible finds lie in wait for our shovels and eyeballs? Read all about what's being called one of the greatest archaeological finds of the past century and a half!
I always regarded him as, if you’re going to have New York City, you gotta have a Donald Trump. He was a joke of a wealthy guy. We didn’t take him seriously. He’d sit down, and I would just start making fun of him. He never had any retort. He was big and doughy, and you could beat him up. He seemed to have a good time, and the audience loved it, and that was Donald Trump. Beyond that, I remember a friend in the PR business told me that he knew for a fact — this was three or four presidential campaigns ago — that Donald Trump would never run for president; he was just monkeying around for the publicity. So I assumed that was the story and now it turns out he’s the president. Now, who owns New York?
It’s a family. The Wassersteins.Read the whole thing. Especially if you're my mom, who loves Dave to bits. You're gonna love this interview, Ma!
Say the head of the family, let’s say his name was Larry Wasserstein. If Larry behaved the way Donald behaves, for even a six-week period, the family would get together and say, “Jesus, somebody better call the doctor.” Then they’d ask him to step down. But Trump’s the president and he can lie about anything from the time he wakes up to what he has for lunch and he’s still the president. I don’t get that. I’m tired of people being bewildered about everything he says: “I can’t believe he said that.” We gotta stop that and instead figure out ways to protect ourselves from him. We know he’s crazy. We gotta take care of ourselves here now.
3. Okay, we've had a wondrous historical find, and we've visited with a beloved old friend. Now, it's time to get down to business, this time via an essay entitled What He Could Do, the work of Mark Danner, for the always estimable New York Review of Books. After a noteworthy caricature and an epigram from Stephen Bannon (about whom more in coming editions of the DDD), it begins:
Standing beneath the dais on inauguration day, squeezed uncomfortably between the Washington establishment gathered at the west front of the Capitol and Trump’s hooting supporters on the lawn below—“Lock her up! Lock her up!” they chanted when Hillary Clinton was introduced—I marveled that the rain that had threatened for hours chose to fall at the precise second the newly sworn president opened his mouth to speak. It seemed a grim joke, so obvious as to be in bad taste, bringing forth inevitable clichés of an Age of Trump ushered in by weeping skies. I felt the water run down my face (all umbrellas had been confiscated); and yet it took only a few hours to learn I’d been mistaken. “You know, I looked at the rain,” the expansive new president told the black-tied attendees at the Liberty Ball that evening, “which just…never came!” By the next day he was telling CIA employees that “God looked down and he said, ‘We’re not going to let it rain on your speech!’” Soon he was raving about the sunshine.This is a lengthy, girthy, even a meaty read, but trust yer old pal Jerky, it's worth risking a mental UTI to climb aboard and take the ride.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The fatal conceit of Obamacare is, we're just going to make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal government level, young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people. So, the young healthy person is going to be made to buy health care, and they're going to pay for the person who gets breast cancer in her 40's, or who gets heart disease in his 50's. The whole idea of Obamacare is ... the people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick. It's not working, and that's why it's in a death spiral.”
- Wisconsin Representative and inexplicably reputed "policy wonk" and "Republican intellectual" Paul Ryan (R-Cheesehead) lets us all know that he has no idea how health insurance works. Either that, or he's against the basic concept of insurance, on a philosophical level. Which I don't think is what he was going for with the goofy shit he was spewing in the above video. Thankfully, Ryan is being subjected to widespread public ridicule for his incredible gaffe.
DDD EXTRAS
THE TAKEAWAY
If y'all are going to the movies, check out Logan and Jordan Peele's directorial debut, Get Out. Both are excellent.
- I've created a new blog! The Mediavore! From Cult to Canon, from Classic to Trash, this is the place to find out what yer old pal Jerky thinks about all the latest media! Cinema! Books! Music! Comics! Television! Bullet Reviews! In-depth Analysis! If you have any suggestions, don't hesitate to send them along! New stuff coming shortly!
- If you want to learn about some cool and/or weird things that happened on whatever day of history that it happens to be when you're reading this, why not check out our sister-site, Useless Eater Blog? You're sure to find something of interest, guaranteed!
If y'all are going to the movies, check out Logan and Jordan Peele's directorial debut, Get Out. Both are excellent.
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