Daily Archives: September 18, 2012

Tuesday Newsday : Bad Times For The One Percent

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Another Tuesday rolls around and it is time to clear more news type links from my Chrome window. Still wish Chrome had tab grouping like Firefox does, but for now, I am enjoying it simply not crashing as much or as hard too much to consider switching back.

My bookmarks bar disappeared recently, and I had to go hunting through the menus to find out how to bring it back, but it was not too hard to find. Still, not cool, Chrome. A web user without their links is like a modern person in a blackout : suddenly, you realize you don’t know how to do anything any more.

On to today’s news, which today has a theme : Bad News For The One Percent. See, things are going badly for the One Percenters and their (poorly) chosen candi-bot Mitt Romdrive. Mittens’ gaffes keep getting more and more egregious and offensive (and hilarious) and the long delayed forces of public accountability are catching up with them while we still, technically, have some democracy left to use against them.

That was clearly not the plan at all.

I mean, check this out : megabanksters like Barclay’s and JP Morgan are being investigated about their shady financial dealings with criminal enterprises.

I am quite happy to hear it. There has been anarchy at the top levels for far, far too long, ever since Ronald “government is the problem” Reagan rode into Washington, DC with a mission to really filthy up that town. Myself, I am an law and order kind of person, and have no sympathy for the criminal class who, as all black hearted villains do, hate law, order, police, and the very notion of anyone telling them “no”.

So I am glad that the regulatory systems their despise like a toddler hates their nanny have not been permanently removed, just weakened and bypassed, like the Mongols bribing their way through the Great Wall. As with the last Great Depression, poverty has a way of eroding away that vital connection that makes the middle class identify more with those above them than those below, and that means they are perfectly willing to turn on the people they used to aspire to be, and bring them down to their level instead. If they can’t move upward, they will bring you downward.

And I have through for some time that, to the Personal Jet Set, there is no distinction based on how you got the money. They simply accept criminality as a price of being rich, and so they figure a billionaire druglord and a billionaire corporate CEO are more or less just as much criminals. So why not get even richer laundering people’s money? We’re all part of the same club anyhow, right?

Well, not for long, pal. Turns out, the law applies to you no matter how long you pout and hold your breath. You are still citizens, and that means you are bound by the law.

I know. It just isn’t fair, is it?

And their precious, precious Rom-bot is not doing too well either. Secret video (oh how I love you) taken at a swanky private political function shows the Romdroid saying things like that he does not think the Palestinians want peace, and that the 47 percent of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes are basically a bunch of entitled freeloaders who expect the world to be handed to them and are basically a bunch of useless welfare moochers.

Because as we all know, there is nothing worse than a bunch of people who think the world revolves around them and have never had to work a day in their life, isn’t that right, One Percenters?

After all, your boy Mitt worked hard for everything he ever got, right?

So boom goes any remaining vestiges of populist support Mitt has. And with that, goes even more of his support from American conservatives. You just cannot come out and say “Hey, fuck nearly half the country, am I right?” and expect to win the election. At least some of those people have to actually vote for you.

Did I mention that this dreaded 47 percent includes 20 million senior citizens? Yup. Sure, take a crack at old people, Mitt. Tell all the people to tell their elderly parents that are on Social Security that they are a bunch of mindless feeders and Mitt Romney does not want their vote.

I mean, it is not like senior citizens watch a lot of Fox News and Florida is a key electoral battleground. Oh wait… yes it is. It is exactly that. Oops!

Speaking of Fox News, they recently got punked by someone claiming to be a ‘former Obama supporter’.

And the real story is not that it happened, but that it was ridiculously easy. All the fellow had to do to get on the air with Gretchen Carlsen was to email Fox News that he was, indeed, a former Obama supporter and that was it. No vetting, no verification, not even the most basic of fact checking, like for instance, checking out the many ways they could have proved that the young guest was not even of voting age when Obama was elected in 2008.

Thus, it is the perfect sting for proving that Fox News does not give a shit about the truth and will believe absolutely anything that agrees with their dominant narrative.

Of course they do not fact-check. Facts are the enemy, why encourage them? If you fact-check, you might find out that something you really wanted to be true is not, in fact, true, and that would make you all disappointed and sad, and place you on the slippery slope towards verifying all your beliefs, and you are pretty sure that would only make you even more sad, and worse, confused.

Thus, they will remain extremely vulnerable to this sort of thing, something we in the reality based community should seek to exploit as much as humanly possible.

The idea is to force them to choose between two equally deadly (to their delusions) options :

1) Agree with a liberal
2) Actually think about what they say and do and believe.

Either way, they lose.

Talk, and lynx

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Or was that “links”? Well, just to have all the bases covered :

A lynx. her cub, and you going AWWWWWW!

Got a few links to share, plus some random chat about my life.

Had a bit of a weird thing happen today, though it is not unprecedented. Woke up from a nap to find I was very dizzy. It was not so bad that I could not get around in order to make supper and eat it, but it was still very irritating and I felt like every time I moved my head, my whole world lurched into a spin in that direction. My head also felt way bigger and usual, and even when I was sitting still, I had this feeling like the room was spinning very very slowly.

Luckily, this has happened to be before, so I was not as freaked out by this as I might have been. I am pretty sure it happens due to a fluid buildup in my inner ear from seasonal allergies, and so all I have to do is clean my ears thoroughly then lie down and wait for the world to stop spinning, more or less.

And that is what I did, once I was finished eating. I feel more or less fine now, the dizzies have gone away, But it was damned unpleasant for a few hours.

But then again, there’s Star Wars ninjas.

It is pretty impressive for a fan made video. The Star Wars angle, to me, seems slightly tacked on. I mean, these are clearly just regular dudes in some warehouse or whatever. Take the special effects away, and it is just another action sequence.

Not that the Star Wars stuff does not add a lot of sheer awesomeness to it. Force powers are very cool, especially when integrated into high intensity combat like in this video, and so I suppose that is all the justification for their inclusion that is needed.

Plus, you have to admit, “Star Wars ninjas” as a title is instant Internet bait. After all, it worked on me, and I am all jaded and shit, so it must be an attractive premise.

The real star of the vid, though, is the action, and that is mighty impressive on its own, and double intense impressive for a fan film. The guy who plays our unnamed protagonist has some serious moves, and those are clearly not special effects. He had to be able to really move like that, and that is no mean feat. If he did not move so well, the whole thing would have just come across as another dorky fan video that is mostly about the special effects.

But these people clearly have learned a lot about high octane action from modern movies like The Raid, and it makes the video a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Amazing what you can do with a bunch of friends, some digital cameras, and off the shelf programs like After Effects, isn’t it?

Also on the “cool video” front is this rather fun short film slash music video from South Africa done in a stylish and loving B movie style about the Attack of the Hedadas.

Truth be told, I don’t care much for the song. Seems pretty washed out and structureless and hookless to me, typical of this era of music. Seems to be working hard to make sure it does not become musically interesting. Perhaps that is the “new sound” these days, but I am a classicist and therefore newness means little to me. It is good, or it is not, new or old, regardless.

But who cares about the song, because the video itself is so much fun! Oh, FYI, a hadeda is a large bird native to all of southern Africa. Its named is actually an onomatopoeia for its loud and distinctive haa-haa-haa-de-dah call.

Anyhow, back to the video. It reminds me most of a Dee Lite video, only with more violence and giant birds. The violence is quite cartoony, though, and overall I found the video to be fun and funny and kitschy and quite the enjoyable little short movie, lame music aside.

One little nit : why did they switch from subtitles to voiceover half way through? Also, I was a little disappointed, but not really surprised, that Mister Ranger Man got killed. I wanted him to survive, but you need monster fodder in these kinds of movies and this video does not exactly have a cast of thousands.

Finally, not a video but a picture. One that is surely rocketing around the Internet right now and becoming fodder for a million Photoshoppings as we speak.

And if people ever figured out who the guy at the end of the red arrow is, he will be famous in a very embarrassing way for at least his fifteen minutes.

Thank God nobody can see me here.

Yup, that is some dude in a baseball cap taking a leak right behind (from one camera’s POV) the President of the United States giving a speech.

That is one heck of a way to make the news. Many have speculated that this fine fellow has made the classic camper’s mistake of defining what counts as “peeing behind a bush” only from the point of view of the group of people you just left, and not, in fact, realizing that one point of view’s “out of sight” is another point of view’s “right in front of God, the President, and millions of people worldwide. ”

I made that mistake once as a wee child, and thankfully never made it again. Good to get these things done when you are young and clueless and people will just find it cute.

But my theory is that this guy did this on purpose, as a bit of political performance art.

See, he was just doing an impression of Mitt Romney : behind Obama, and pissing himself.