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Posts published in July 2013

Mandrake the Congressman

These days American government is all just a magician’s show, nothing but slight of hand and misdirection.

That’s only to be expected. For years Congress, the Presidency, Wall Street and about everyone else who holds the real keys to ownership in this country has been maintaining the illusion that you and I, who have nothing but a borrowed pot to piss in, are actually the owners of this great land and that the government works for us.

The Bigotry Quotient

Never fear, this isn’t about Paula Deen. She’s just some kind of weird canary in a coal mine. It’s the coal mine that should bother us.

You see, what I find so freaking not understandable in the second decade of the 21st century, nearly fifty years after the civil rights law and the beginning of desegregation in the South, is how anyone could think a “plantation party” would be a good idea. She said she wanted to dress-up “little” black people, I guess to pretend she was back in some idealized version of the Olde South in all it’s glory as depicted in the first half of the first half of Gone With the Wind–you know, before Atlanta burned and Miss Scarlet was reduced to (gasp!) eating a carrot dug out of the ground with her own two hands because there were no darkies to dig it out for her.

Wal-Mart to DC–We’ll Take Our Ball and Go Home

If we want to get rid of feudal lords in America, as I wrote about yesterday, we should start with Wal-Mart. Believe me, this won’t be an easy task. The smiles that Wal-Mart features in their advertisements are a facade, hiding pure ruthlessness and greed.

If Wal-Mart was forced to pay their employees an actual living wage, they would undoubtedly have to raise their “everyday low prices.” Their low priced business model is based on the assumption of unrequited servitude by their employees, ergo paying decent wages means they lose their competitive edge which they’ve demonstrated time and again they will do anything to retain.

The Tea Party’s Feudal Lord

It boggles my mind how the tea baggers can get it so wrong.

I think most Tea Party folks probably trace their ancestry back to Europe. Most probably they imagine they originally hail from England, since once upon a time Merry Olde was considered to be our “mother country.”

The Hate Mongers

Hate.

It occurs to me more and more that hate is at the root of the problems we’re having with our politics. And it’s not only the other guy who’s sowing hate. We’re doing it too.

Left or right, our politics are all based on hate. This would seem to indicate that whatever afflicts us isn’t going to be solved with left/right politics. First we must apply the antidote to hate throughout our society before we can even think about moving forward. Indeed, that would be the first step of our forward motion.

Fear and Loathing at the ‘Jamestown News’

You can’t fire Ogi Overman. What’re ya, nuts?

If you’ve got a community driven newspaper anywhere in the Triad, especially in Jamestown or anywhere else in Guilford County, firing Ogi makes about as much sense as having Disneyland in your portfolio and firing Mickey. Or owning NBC and firing the Peacock. Or being England and giving the Queen her walking papers.

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