A study now indicates that people who’ve tested positive for COVID can have reduced cognative abilities as compared to an average population sample. Thus is consistent with the concern that some who are hopitalized for Covid-19 will emerge with permanent brain damage, among the myriad of other heartbreaking secondary outcomes. HOWEVER, without having tested the same group before infection, it is difficult to deny the probability that the virus is selecting for stupid. Not in the hospital emergency rooms I imagine, but maybe where it chooses between masked and unmasked…
Category Archives: Enough Said
Choose Your Womanizer
Would you rather a dick who can’t grab a pussy without making an ass of himself, or the establishment favorate who chaired the Anita Hill witch trial?
Texas church gunman kills two gunmen before being killed by next gunman
A gunman goes into a church –have you heard this one? Essentially the latest headline goes: Texas church gunman kills two armed churchgoers before being killed by yet another. That’s a lot of Texas church gunmen. Apparently when the shooting stopped even more worshipers pulled out their guns. Let’s see, the lesson about needing a gun to defend oneself doesn’t add up so well in this example. In Texas totting a gun to church means you have a one in three chance of surviving an attack by a fellow gun believer. Sunday’s two victims were armed after all and it didn’t save them. And if we think about this charitably, as we ought to because the first gunman, the troubled one, was a churchgoer himself, having a gun didn’t save him either, the actual odds become one survivor out of every four church gunmen. God rest everybody’s piece. So the lesson here is, don’t go to church! And especially not if you are packing. If a fellow troubled soul doesn’t shoot you, security will.
Jeffrey Epstein escapes federal jail
Even petty blackmailer extortionists know to warn “if anything happens to me, incriminating evidence will be released to the media.” Billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is already fading from the news and not one manila envelope has dropped. What does that tell you about what “happened” to Jeffrey Epstein? It didn’t. You might think his suicide was really a murder, but let’s remember he counted the most powerful pervs among his friends. Fat chance any of them wanted their friend and primo procurer killed. Before his suicide, Jeffrey Epstein signed a will, his last legal opportunity to do so, then he did El Chapo one better. With allegedly dozing guards (one of them a temp with a shorter personnel record, maybe more easily impersonated), and under faulty surveillance cameras, El Epstein disappeared from federal custody into his own self-financed witness protection plan. What’s it take? An anesthetic cocktail for the short gurney ride, not that many parties to pay off or knock off later, your body is released to an unnamed “Epstein Associate,” and it’s party time again at your Virgin Island! Pretty damn obvious.
Programmed obsolescence for iPhone? Apple has an app for that! iOS update.
Forget planned obsolescence, the digital age means manufacturers can trigger killer apps like a remote switch for the hangman’s trap door. Just poke a hole in your customer’s canteen if you want to bring them back to your watering hole.
Was Apple’s throttling of late model iPhones mentioned in the fine print which users approve every time they authorize a software update? I doubt it. First the suspicious timing of the dumbing of smart phones was dismissed as urban myth. Next sleuths learned that googles of “iPhone slow” spiked before launches of new models. Then someone benchmarked the IQ drops of the transformed dumb phones. Now Apple has been forced to admit it programed the slowdowns.
Apple says they had to hobble your phone to go easy on its aging battery. Imagine a car dealership progressively disabling cylinders in your car engine, to secretly save you on gas.
Essentially Apple is retiring your phone on a fixed income of energy while you consider its functionality still under contract to you, under your employ. Whose iPhone is it?
“Everything you need to know about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle etc”
1.
The next time someone tells me they’re a federal agent
The next time someone gets in my face and presumes to shout orders at me, and when I ask by whose authority, they tell say “I’m a federal agent”, I’m going to ask them: “Would that be with President Trump’s federal government?” That should take some wind out of their sails.
The Fed’s Janet Yellen says economy healthy enough for usurers to start bleeding it again
That’s essentially what the Federal Reserve does, it monitors public wealth to regulate how much surplus production can be skimmed off the top. Usually all of it. But someone has to determine how much that is to prevent the banking vampires from sucking the public to death.
So-called liberal UC Berkley relaxes its academic standards to admit idiots.
Next science departments are going to invite clerics to speak, to open the dialog, as UC Berkley wants to explain, between the educated and un. Climate scientists should dialog with deniers apparently. Imagine math departments sponsoring conversations with preschoolers. What a crock to think universities need entertain a diversity of IQs.
Worse than ignorant, imbecile, or batshit crazy are political ideologues already championed by the conservative establishment.
I don’t think free speech rights protect Ann Coulter’s access to an amplification system at Sproul Plaza. Let the free market determine if what she’s got to say should be licensed by the campus population. It doesn’t have to be hate speech to merit shutting down. Ignorant bigoted sociopathic blather can be shouted down, tarred, feathered, and run out of town without anyone feeling pangs of concern for the First Amendment. The corporate media and publishing houses prop her up. The grassroots have no more obligation than to make sure Coulter’s feet are burned wherever she lands her broom. The Berkley students who invited Ann Coulter to speak need to be counseled their prospects are better with vocational school.
Don’t just commemorate Martin Luther King, avenge him
Reclaim MLK, yada yada. Yes, reclaim his radical persona from the academics and religious leaders who have painted his example to be an uncontroversial conformist. Commemorate MLK, reclaim him, fine. Wouldn’t that begin, at a minimum, by deligitimizing his assassins? How universal is recognition of Martin Luther King if the government agencies which killed him are unaccountable and still broadly in charge?
Our Killer Santas fly F-16s
These are unretouched photographs distributed by the US Department of Defense, as Christmas greetings.
F U and the horseshit you rode in on
Barack Obama is an impressive speaker and a figurehead to make you proud –if you’re not listening or paying attention to what he’s doing. How sickening the fawning over his last addresses and his supposed legacy. Obama was the antithesis of Dubya, now Trump. Obama was probably the world’s most palatable politician in recent memory, but what he said and did was no less nauseating. And damnable. I can sympathize with onlookers mourning the loss of America’s gloss coat. Trump is the ugly face that is Obama unmasked. The king is dead, long live the ugly disreputable can’t-bear-to-listen-to-him king. Frankly, it wasn’t long into his doublespeak that I couldn’t stand listening to President Obama either.
You are not to blame. US stands with victims allied to neoliberal objectives.
“Why don’t we stand with Istanbul like we did Paris in the aftermath of their terrorist attack?” Because Western social media campaigns are orchestrated. Though built on outporings of sympathy, they are coordinated with NATO efforts to propagandize against perceived foes. The public’s failure to muster support for Turkish tragedies, like African or Asian or Balkan or other less-Western hosts, drawns criticism of racism. But it’s not YOUR racism, that’s blaming the victim. Your heartstrings are pulled by whatever photos the corportate media is pitching. Photos of Syrian children for the moment.
Haha. Nobel prize shuns contemporary literature, rewards 60s poet for SONGS.
I’m not saying Bob Dylan isn’t deserving of laurels, though one might consider Dylan to have been adequately lauded in his own century. When the Nobel Prize for literature goes to a songwriter, what does that say about the committee’s regard for contemporary literature?
Whether you’re an America idiot or not, Trump is the candidate you deserve.
It’s easy to say Donald Trump is the presidential candidate America had coming. The traditional exceptionalist xenophobe at last has a candidate crafted in their image. You want to ban all outsiders? Donald Trump has the solutions for you. But Trump doesn’t just speak to the simpletons. Trump is exactly what the doctor ordered for his critics too.
Michael Phelps wins gold to “right the wrong” of USA missing out on a medal
Minutes after winning the first of his 2016 gold medals, Michael Phelps interjected into an interview of his teammates “this [victory] was to right a wrong” referencing a loss in 2012 in which he was robbed of a medal apparently. Not because somebody cheated, or a bad call was made, but because Michael Phelps had willed a win that he didn’t then earn. Being “wronged” by not being given a medal. Doesnt that pretty much illustrate American Exceptionalism?! As if the US sports media was interested in explaining such a thing. Last minute decisions to let Michael Phelps intercede in further relay teams, for the sake of breaking medal hording records, as opposed to physical feats, comes at a price obviously to the other relay swimmers. We’ve heard about the hopes of would-be Olympians dashed by the boycotts of 1980 and 1984. Add the Phelps-first priority of 2016.
Have you heard that Snopes pretends to be the last word on not just rumors?
TRUE OR FALSE? SNOPES began as a website to debunk urban myths, but since being bought by a major internet conglomerate, Snopes acts as final word on which conspiracy theories have merit and which are too disruptive of the dominant narrative. As the internet grew, Snopes gathered geek cred to join National Geographic Magazine and the History Channel as de facto authoritive brands trusted to provide nonpartisan accounts of current and past events, except of course all three simply confirm the authorized story. Another would-be gatekeeper, on who says what’s what, is Wikipedea. Because the online encyclopaedia is crowd-sourced, its authority is regularly questioned, and Wikipedia entries on controversial issues are demonstraby slanted by editorial teams advancing agendas that mirror the fully funded propaganda campaigns dominating conventional media. While Snopes was great at arresting rumors about vanishing hitchhikers or microwaved babies, more and more we see Snopes consulted about news scoops and whistleblower revelations, and it’s no surprise that Snopes summarily dismisses incidiary exposees that threaten established power. Don’t take my word for it, let’s ask Snopes!
Dem presidents won’t chose better supreme court justices than Repugs
NOW we’re told the ultimate reason to prevent a Trump presidency is because he’ll appoint Supreme Court judges who will set progressive movements back for generations. You forget that President Obama’s latest nomination put the lie to that bugaboo. Put it to bed and burned it. Upon the fortuitous demise of one of the most corrupt justices ever, Antonin Scalia, who died literally, in bed with a crony patron, President Obama submitted for consideration as his replacement the conservative jurist Merrick Garland. Garland’s most notable legal achievement was to indemnify the US regime from charges of torture. I’m sure voters in 2008 elected Obama to uphold Democratic ideals not scuttle them. We’re being sold the same pitch with Hillary, really without any basis in fact, that a democrat will attempt to curb the Supreme Court’s antisocial conduct, as exemplified by the Thomas, Alito, Kennedy, Roberts cabal. The Garland nomination has also exposed the other lie, that Trump’s appointments could not be opposed. As we see with Garland still, SCOTUS nominees can be embargoed indefinitely.
When court jesters stop laughing at despots they expect you to stop too
They’re funny, they’re clever, and their comedy can be dead serious, but it turns out when political comedians actually are dead serious they expect their audience to come to heel. Bernie Sanders was just a laugh, look at yourself, you fell for it. Court jesters pile on the ridicule of whoever’s the ruler, but when the diversion is over, the joke’s on you, now shut up. Said Sarah Silverman to heartbroken Bernie delegates: “Don’t be ridiculous.” Adds Seth Meyers: “We don’t have time for this.”
Every god but Allah for Muhammad Ali?
When the fuck did Muhammad Ali become Unitarian? He was Muslim. Why all the other God/G*d freaks crashing his funeral? I understand friends wanting to speak. This being a culture of celebrity worship, I can even understand a policy of open mike for celebrities. Presumably there was a pecking order to separate the A-list from the Bs. You’d think Ali’s memorial would have warranted also discriminating icons from mere celebrities. Religious demagogues should have been disqualified without question, no matter their humanitarian temperament. Ali was a follower of Elijah Muhammad. Where was Farrakhan? Where were the militants? Extorted to take a backseat. As usual the corporate media whitewashed Muhammad Ali’s activist persona in favor of painting him into a black Albert Schweitzer. As if the shared experience of rooting for boxing opponents in itself uplifts humanity.
FBI says Hillary Clinton was “careless” with classified secrets, not treasonous for evading public record.
Pundits are decrying the unfair scrutiny on the presumptive successor-in-chief, pointing out that Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell were never called out for using private servers. Other miscreants too, who should have been hauled before the justice department, tarred and feathered and pilloried. Carl Rove and Dubya Bush purged email records. Are they the new role models for what behavior is acceptable?!
And all that is missing the point. Hillary’s use of a private server for state department emails was more than a security breach, it was an avoidance of keeping a public record. It was evasion of accountability. It was treasonable. Richard Nixon was in touble for erasing 18 minutes of taped conversation in the White House. Hillary has deleted millions of records in flagrant violation of rules of transparency meant to check government corruption. Fortunately Wikileaks snagged a bunch of them, and presumedly the NSA has archived them all, with the entirety of everyone’s public and private record. Funny no one is reopening that can of worms.
Putting Donald Trump into perspective
If we must yield to Godwin’s Law in hyperbolizing about the less lesser of weasel presidential candidates, let’s agree that Trump is not Hitler, neither by villany, political accumen, IQ, nor charisma. If Trump is a Nazi he’s a dead ringer for Nazi blowhard Hermann Göring, self-aggrandizing Lord Fontleroy of the Luftwaffe, minus the hair.
I’m pretty sure PRIVILEGE is voting for a warmongering sociopath to feel good about having a first woman president.
Oh, really, so it’s “privilege” to support Bernie Sanders because he will take votes away from Hillary and thus enable a Trump presidency? Is it privilege to vote for Trump just for the entertainment value of seeing what the blowhard will do? Who is the only candidate with a direct record of mass murder and banksterism? I’ll assert it’s wildly privileged to inaugurate Hillary Clinton, just as you did Barack Obama, for the token victory of a first whatever, at the cost of giving the US regime a public mandate for more war and imperialism. Remember how we used to believe the world didn’t hate us ordinary Americans, just our fraudulently elected president? Now you want to elect the Bush-est of evils. Privilege is knowing the most formidable military in the world will kill untold thousands of darker-skinned others for the sake of your security.
Was Stanford rapist’s punishment lax or are standard sentences too punitive?
I’m not sure the length of prison sentences is a measure of society’s repudiation of rape culture. If severity of punishment was a gage of our social objectives, property crimes would carry the greatest stigma. I have no sypathy, not even empathy, for rapists, nor frat boys, nor white macho crap. I think convicted rapist Brock Turner is a glaring example of white male privilege. He may also be the embodiment of its most casual excesses, and his six month sentence is an embarassment to a justice system that throws away the key for less white perpetrators. However I do loath how easily the public is made to cheer for greater punishment in lieu of a more humane perspective. Apprehending a live criminal, as opposed to killing him like so many others, should not prompt calls for equal mistreatment. Rapists should be chemically castrated, fine. There’s no evidence that longer prison terms helps reduce sexual assaults, so why automatically call for more harsh punishment?
Happy (International) Labor Day
Because the official one will be (a) months away and (b) it’s going to be a party for office workers more than laborers. All the bars and restaurants and stores will be open. THEIR employees ain’t going to have the day off.
But since this is also a Communist holiday, and of course in Northern Europe an ancient celebration of spring, well, I can’t really write about it without being called a commie. Too bad.
It doesn’t bother me any. Communism as an economic structure has been continuously practiced for more than a century and has proved more stable than Capital. In just my lifetime we’ve been subjected to recession after recession or as the Wall Street Elitists (not the same thing as being elite, just thinking that they are) “market corrections” more times than I have kept count thereof.
the “corrections” actually put more control of resources into fewer pockets/hands/bank accounts and especially if there’s massive bail outs. The ones who engineer these “corrections” know full well what they do. Nice for them, but for those who have been repeatedly impoverished by the same scam being perpetrated over and over and over… shit, we don’t even have to participate in the scam to be steamrollered. Although Steam Rollers are kind of outdated, the name lives on as a verb.
And as the first sentences said, the Corporates have taken Labor Day and are selling us a shadow of what it is supposedly the meaning of actually celebrating Labor and our contributions to the world.
Try to have a good time anyway. Sometimes it actually works.