90-percent
90-percent's JournalQuote from my hero
Stupidity has a certain charm. Ignorance does not. -Frank Zappa
Yah, know, with all this oligarchy-fascism-plutocracy corporations-are-people and money-is-speech doctrine the SC recently established (Hell- just this past week in that Montana Ruling), some form of Revolution seems mandatory if we are to restore our FORMER DEMOCRACY to factory original showroom condition.
It ain't a Democracy any more when the wealthy buy the entire government outright. We are going to be bathed in corporate propaganda this election cycle.
-90% Jimmy
Hallelujah
This is one of the more happier days in my life. I’ve worked reasonably hard all my life to be solidly in the American Middle Class. I grew up in the middle class, maybe just a schoosh above the center of the middle. I am 58 and have been laid off 3 times and quit once in the last three years and have held on desperately to my life savings, which consists almost entirely of our primary residence we own outright. My wife once had a thriving self employed business, but she’s suffered serious health issues the last 6 or 7 years and our savings have gone away in the last three.
WE NO LONGER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT LOSING EVERYTHING WE’VE WORKED FOR OUR ENTIRE LIVES in the event of continued or new serious illness!
I’m consulting presently and the money is good enough to maintain our standard of living and continue to pay our $1050 per month COBRA bills. I’m happy with that for now.
We all no longer have to worry about health insurance pre-existing condition DEATH PANELS vaporizing everything we’ve worked our entire lives to get! And now I can devote more of my life to righting this slide into FULL BLOWN PLUTOCRACY in America. And that we all better do right this minute, gang. This Election Cycle will be a BLOODBATH of CORPORATE PROPAGANDA that will require the AID OF ALL GOOD AMERICANS TO COME TO THE SERVICE OF THEIR COUNTRY. This election is the most important of our lives, gang!
We need to annihilate once and for all the CITIZENS UNITED CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE ruling from the Supremes. We need to restore the principals of Progressiveism that is the root of MIDDLE CLASS PROSPERITY. We need to punish all the banksters and Wall Streeters that wrecked our economy. We need to CRUSH CORPORATE GREED and unhealthy concentrations of wealth. We need to help those lives ruined by unjust foreclosures and medieval drug laws and three job economic servitude. We need to show America is still a beacon of hope in the world for the good of all humanity, not a morass of 300,000,000 selfish I GOT MINE AND SCREW YOU greed heads.
LASTLY, WE NEED TO RID OUR INSTITUTIONS OF ALL THE SOCIOPATHS THAT HAVE TEMPORARILY CAPTURED THEM!
Better Education, media, infrastructure, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and a better future are not as far away as they seemed only a day ago.
Let’s do it, gang!
-90% Jimmy
The Corporate Authorities
The Corporate Authorities do a great job solving problems nobody has.
I took a class called "Managing Multiple Priorities", the essence was simply put your highest priority on tasks with the most money at risk.
This sort of police action is in the category of "Solving problems nobody has". The most recent shining magnificent example is the Republican State voting fraud purges. In terms of magnitude bogus voters are statistically smaller than the number of Americans hit by lightning! On a list of governmental priorities, this "problem" is literally 999,999th out of a million, yet they do it aggressively. It is a screaming proof Republican's can only win elections if they game and steal them.
And the authorities go after Mr. Dotcom whilst they let all the Maddoff-caliber Wall Street criminals continue to walk free amongst us while they pay themselves the salaries of royalty for doing "God's Work".
THE PLUTOCRACY IS HERE AND NOW IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. The last nail in the coffin of our former Democracy was the supreme court decision this week (the Montana Decision) that Citizen's United also applies to state elections.
MONEY IS SPEECH AND CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE. That is almost the dictionary definition of PLUTOCRACY!
-90% Jimmy
Marijuana Prohibition
The current situation is akin to TREATING DANDRUFF BY DECAPITATION, to quote some Senate Testimony by my hero Frank Zappa during the rock ratings debate.
The absolutely most unhealthy aspect of marijuana is becoming entangled with our medieval American criminal justice system if caught with marijuana.
Getting sent to jail and getting your life ruined is absolutely by far the most damaging aspect of marijuana use.
Tell me why this woman's testimony doesn't deserve a big fat fucking CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS CITATION?
another nasty side effect of marijuana prohibition is that it may cause unintended death to innocent people, like, for example, the estimated 50,000 dead mexicans. Just a little blow back and unintended consequences of our imbecilic marijuana prohibitions.
The fucking cure is worse than the disease, fer chrissakes!
Mexico has lost almost as many people in this drug war as America lost IN THE ENTIRE VIET NAM CONFLICT! (50,000 vs. 58,000)
And the demand is as high as ever. What is it about America that makes so many of us strive to go through our lives totally anesthetized, any way?
It's pretty damn sweet watching a Congressman actually representing the people that elected him. What a refreshing concept! I hope he never morphs into a vapid bureaucrat like this non-responsive female waste of skin who's solitary redeeming value seems to be in running out the clock.
There will come a time when we look back on our failed and stupid marijuana prohibitions and see it as something as ignorant as blood letting with leeches.
-90% Jimmy
You bet your ass Grayson needs to be back
I put my modest money where my mouth is for Alan. I've been on a $10 a month plan with him for perhaps the last 6 months, and I'm fucking unemployed right now!
And I live in Connecticut.
Based on the recent Wisconsin results, we all have to be working a bit harder, my DU mates.
They got their fucking gigabucks AND GREED on their side, we have little more than our collective love for Democracy and the vision of what our country could be on our side.
Oh, one other thing, THERE'S 99% OF US AND 1% OF THEM!
If we can't take back our government with those numbers, we'll deserve our more work for less pay lives of economic servitude to our corporate overlords for the rest of our fucking lives.
And the satisfaction our inaction will inflict such a dismal Terry Gilliam's Brazil future on our children!
-90% Jimmy
sanctimoniously preaching to the DU choir, I guess?
Zappa books
I stumbled onto a pdf of his whole book today doing google research on my above post.
There's a lot of Zappa books out there. I wore out my 1971 copy of David Walley's "No Commercial Potential", which Zappa hated.
Let's see - some of the ones I can remember include Candy Zappa's book about her older brother, which was nice. Other recent ones include "Zappa the Hard way", strictly about the 1988 Tour. I saw seven shows on this tour throughout the northeast, as he hadn't toured in over four years and I had become a rather rabid fan.
The most recent book, which I haven't finished yet, is by his English secretary of the late 60's and early 70's, Pauline Butcher. "Freak Out! My Life With Frank Zappa". This is possibly the most fantastic Zappa book out there, as it's a first person recollection of the Zappa household from 1968 to 1972. A helluva lot of stuff I never knew before and some great insight into Frank's often extremely eccentric way of thinking. It provides a lot of missing pieces to the puzzle that is Zappa.
Both books are nectar for a hardcore fan like me. Don't know if they would be nearly as appealing to a non-rabid fan, though.
When asked about the secret of his success, Zappa said; "First, don't stop. Second, keep going." As Bunk Gardner said of Frank in "Necessity is, the story of the Mothers of Invention", "Frank had the stamina of a bull." Frank's perseverance and faith in himself has been a life long inspiration for me. The clarity of his thinking and reasoning was so magnificent that self doubt simply was not an option.
I really gotta stop this Zappa fanboy stuff on DU. It's like I'm a 12 year old girl and Zappa is my Taylor Swift.
-jim
Speaking of Mr. Biafra
Yes, a big sloppy drooling DU welcome to you, A Democracy needs a well informed citizenry such as yourself to function properly.
Zappa is my hero and "the idol of my youth", so I like finding stuff he said and sharing that with my DU brethren. I wish I could find the quote about revolution in the 60's where he advocated using the systems that fucked things up to repair the system. He wanted to use television as a weapon to turn "democracy" back to more of what the Founding Fathers originally intended. He was a self described "Constitutional Fundamentalist", a term which I plagiarize all the time here on the DU.
I did stumble on this, pretty worthwhile if you have 14 minutes to spare.
http://wn.com/The_Industry_Part_78
Back when the Fox network first started, they were extremely experimental and risk-taking with their programming. So much so that they were developing a Zappa News Commentary Show called "Night School", which would have been anchored in part by Daniel Schorr. Well, like many Zappa projects, that fizzled and somehow morphed into either or both the Arsenio Hall Show and Joan Rivers was in the mix there, too. The Simpsons was borne of this era. (Matt Groening is a very hardcore Zappa fan) I think Ben Stiller, Michael Moore and even Julie Brown had Fox shows in this era. (I remember Jennifer Anniston on Julie Brown, dressed in a bikini in almost every scene she was in.)
Lastly, Zappa came to the aid of Mr. Biafra in the late 80's, when he was being persecuted by the American Legal System. Don't know the details of Biafra's legal problems, though.
Enjoy, and I enthusiastically welcome all you have to contribute to DU.
-90% Jimmy
Talk about an understatement!
"I could go on, but the media does not favor the Democrats at all"
Forgive the hyperbole, but that's kind of like saying the Nazi party of the late 30's did not favor the Jewish community.
I'm not in any way critical of your post. I agree with it, it's just that we Democrats/Liberals/Progressives have been demonized all over the place in our "liberal media" for so long, the "Liberals want to give your hard earned money to the lazy" meme is now accepted as fact in the collective American Consciousness.
The meme that we even have a "Liberal Media" is also infuriating!
These wealthy that have purchased our Democracy so they can be even more greedy have certainly done a great job over the last thirty years, haven't they? To what end?
My bumper sticker once again
OUR INSTITUTIONS ARE INFESTED WITH CORRUPT SOCIOPATHS
Thom Hartmann's been discussing this lately; We have human history, like the American Indians, that prove PROVE PROVE that humans can construct a just and fair and WAR-FREE society!
It is within our capacity as human beings to create a society where the opportunities for LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS are within the grasp of everyone! The current "I got mine and screw you" norms of modern America is not really the way we humans were designed to be! We're more social animals than predators, but the predatory class has taken over all our Institutions!
-90% Jimmy
The stuff Mitt is made of
Every molecule of his being is the entirety of what is wrong with American Democracy all bundled into one person.
He is every country club entitled crony capitalist that has ever fucked up the lives of every working American.
Hey, all you millions of foreclosed former home owners. You want to put one face on your misery?
Rmoney, he is the epitome of all that corrodes what's left of our Democracy.
He is Kenny-boy Lay, Jamie Dimond, Lloyd Blankfein, Joe Cassano, Tony Hayward and Stephen J Hemsley recombined into one man!
Are we as a country stupid enough to elect such a monster to ruin our lives even further?
Thom Hartmann recently discussed the SUPREME COURT NOMINATIONS the next President will make. Since the SUPREMES ARE THE MOST POWERFUL BRANCH of our Federal Government, the damage even more Romney-appointed TREACHEROUS CRETINS sitting on the Court will wreak upon us is beyond comprehension.
Future children will be home schooled before they are sent off to their little 10 year old full time jobs about the quaint Constitutional Rights Americans used to enjoy before the advent of THE PERMANENT REPUBLICAN MAJORITY.
-90% Jimmy
What's going on?
OUR INSTITUTIONS ARE INFESTED WITH CORRUPT SOCIOPATHS.
And one of them seems to have a 50% chance of being our next President.
Are we bad enough as a people to deserve such a fate?
Do we really have to live the rest of our lives in frightened struggling one paycheck away from bankruptcy economic servitude?
Are the sociopaths that deliberately cause all this economic misery even happy about it? I mean, are they TRULY ENJOYING THIS?
-90% Jimmy
Profile Information
Name: JimGender: Male
Current location: Barkhamsted, CT
Member since: Sat Jul 3, 2004, 08:36 AM
Number of posts: 6,829
