David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme, gives a sobering assessment of the future of America in these powerful clips from a 2007 talk at Loyola College.
Simon feels we’re headed for separate Americas, where the “haves” exploit the “have-nots,” and where human beings will lose their value. He faults “raw, unencumbered Capitalism” for making our country numb to the plight of the most vulnerable among us. America makes the wrong choices every time, he says, and unless we change, Simon predicts “we are doomed.”
The man is a genius, and as a writer and journalist, he’s explored the very darkest corners of our fraying “civilization”—trust me, this is really worth listening to… Keep in mind as you watch that this was recorded a year before the world economy did a belly-flop on concrete.
More of David Simon on the end of the American empire after the jump…
American Juggalo, a new short film by Brooklyn-based director, Sean Dunne explores (without judgement or editorializing) the distinctive youth culture of the Juggalos, adoring fans of Christian horrorcore metal rappers, The Insane Clown Posse. It is funny, fascinating and disturbing in turns.
Each year approximately 20,000 juggalos and jugglettes, meet up (usually in campgrounds far from civilization) for the four-day musical festival known as “The Gathering of the Juggalos.” Think of it as a white-trash version of Burning Man, but with a much lower collective IQ, no good-looking people, pregnant drunk chicks with cigarettes, and empty two-liter bottles of Faygo orange soda littering the landscape…
As one participant reflects: “These motherfuckers made me the motherfucker who I am today.” I believe him!
A progressive Christian group is pressuring U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to support President Obama’s jobs plan using the story of the loaves and fishes to demand a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans. Although I think this is hilarious and support their efforts, good luck with this line of reasoning and “Crazy Eyes”. Via the Minnesota Independent:
“Jesus would support this bill,” said Brandon Nessen, the group’s spokesperson. “Ask the wealthiest to contribute so that ordinary families can get back on two feet again.”
The group will re-enact the biblical story of Jesus Christ using either five or seven loaves of bread and several small fish, depending on the version of the story, to feed thousands of starving people. The story is seen as a lesson to help the less fortunate.
The event is being organized by members of the “religious left,” according to a press release. “A group of church-going progressives will descend on her Woodbury office to ask her to support President Obama’s jobs bill, which would use revenue from taxes on the wealthiest Americans to pay for infrastructure projects and other bipartisan policies aimed at stimulating job growth,” the group’s statement said. “The group will reenact a version of the biblical story of Loaves and Fishes to demonstrate that Jesus created abundance from apparent scarcity just as Congress could do with the President’s jobs package.”
The group, calling itself the “Spirit of Truth Faith Community” describe themselves as “a faith community from the Christian tradition that strives to put love and justice at the center of everything we do. We are a group of people who realized we wanted to live out our values of love and justice, and that we needed a faith community to do it.”
The cognitive dissonance that this must cause for Bachmann is funny to contemplate…
Some controversial remarks made by Andrew Breibart at a Boston Tea party meeting recently are getting a lot of attention, on blogs both right and left. In the clips below, Breitbart (inadvertently?) lays bare his psyche, specifically his liberal killing daydreams, when asked about the “Days of Rage” protests on Wall Street:
“I must say, in my non-strategic… ‘cuz I’m under attack all the time, if you see it on Twitter. The (unclear) call me gay, it’s just, they’re vicious, there are death threats, and everything. And so, there are times where I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot.’
Bring it on. Because I know who’s on our side. They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns. (laughter) I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with.
And I have people who come up to me in the military, major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.’
They understand that. These are the unspoken things we know, they know. They know who’s on their side, they’ve got Janeane Garofalo. We are freaked out by that. When push comes to shove, they know who’s on our side. They are the bullies on the playground, and they’re starting to realize, what if we were to fight back, what if we were to slap back?
Well…. to look at Breitbart, even if he DID have a gun in his hand, a rich well-fed Republican lardass like him could probably do very little harm. At the rate his waistline seems to be expanding, he’ll have to be fork-lifted out of his La-Z-Boy chair when the Liberals vs Tea party war breaks out, like most of the other “patriots” who um, “have his back” but can’t tie their own shoes or see their dick when they piss…
As for the military supporting the Tea party in the event of a civil war, whereas I do believe that most soldiers probably skew to the right of the ideological spectrum, the notion of Navy SEALS and special forces divisions coming to the aid of the likes of Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, Scott Walker, Michele Bachmann and a bunch of cranky, confused senior citizens seems rather far-fetched to me…
Breitbart doesn’t seem concerned in the least here that he himself lives in the liberal stronghold of Westwood in Los Angeles, a place where there is probably one Republican to every five thousand Democrats. In the event of a new American civil war, it could be reasonably predicted that his fat, arrogant, shit-filled head would be one of the very first to end up on a pole.
Breitbart continues telling the Tea party activists about his “dreams” after the jump…
Increasingly irrelevant Republican presidential candidate/human punchline Michele Bachmann just can’t get a break. Nor does she deserve one. A trip to California over the weekend saw the bigoted Christianist Congresswoman from Minnesota’s 6th congressional district the target of a flash mob who danced to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” to protest her (more or less) “pro-bullying” stance (it’s what Jesus would want) and anti-LGBT words, deeds and activities as a private citizen, as a state legislator, and as a member of the US Congress since 2007.
Even Jay Leno piled on when she appeared on the Tonight Show and good for him. This woman and her kind need to be rebuked in no uncertain terms by right-thinking people in this country.
Even in normally ultra-conservative Orange County, Bachmann got the business. I guess the new OC is quite a bit different that the old OC. From The Minnesota Independent:
“That’s not a federal issue,” she said, dodging the question.
Nice try! It’s an AMERICAN and HUMAN ISSUE, Bachmann, and your public words and deeds are coming back to haunt you and will continue to haunt you every time you step out of your comfort zone. Few people in this nation, in your state or in your own DISTRICT have PERSONALLY done more to make the lives of LGBT teens worse than YOU have.
Two days earlier, Tammy Aaberg, a mother in the district who lost her son to suicide in 2010, presented Bachmann’s district office with a petition signed by more than 100,000 people asking her to take a stand on bullying in schools. Her office said Bachmann might eventually respond to the petition.
Might respond? Might? (And there were 145,000 signatures, btw, I think that many people deserve a response, don’t you?)
Michele Bachmann deserves no respect, she doesn’t even deserve politeness. She deserves ridicule. And worse.
Bachmann calls herself a Christian. If there is a God—I’ll up the ante here, make this a CHRISTIAN version of God—which of these two mothers would that God smile upon? Tammy Aaberg. the woman whose son killed himself—because of a climate of “Christian” intolerance in the local school district that was brewed up by the likes of Bachmann and her cronies like the Minnesota Family Council and dogshit dumb “preacher” of idiocy Bradlee Dean—who decided to STICK UP for other vulnerable children or one of the prime reasons for this climate of hate existing in the district, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann?
Why does Michele Bachmann believe that she and Jesus are playing on the same team? It boggles the mind…
Primer: Deep roots of Anoka-Hennepin’s discrimination controversy (Minnesota Independent)
Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert has long distinguished himself as one of the least intelligent GOP members of Congress (and that’s really, really saying something). Now he’s doubling down on the dumb... Via Think Progress:
Taking the GOP’s anti-tax ideology to its logical conclusion, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) introduced today his own “American Jobs Act” — giving his bill the same name as President Obama’s plan — which would completely eliminate corporate income taxes. Gohmert claims this will create jobs:
It is a very simple bill, which will eliminate the corporate tax which serves as a tariff that our American companies pay on goods they produce here in America. This bill will actually create jobs in America
But Gohmert’s plan is even more irksome considering that he’s spent the last few days attacking Obama’s jobs plan because it would prohibit employers from discriminating against people who have been unemployed. Gohmert appeared on various conservative media outlets to expose this “devilish detail,” saying on Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday, via Political Correction:
GOHMERT: We have created in this bill a newly protected class, not on race, creed, color, sex — not even sexual orientation, this is a new one. It’s not religion, it’s a prohibition of discrimination in employment on the basis of an individual’s status as unemployed. By golly, if you apply for a job and you’re unemployed and you feel like you got discriminated against and not hired because you were unemployed, see a lawyer. You’ve got a claim under this bill.
Is “Freedom” just another word for nothing left to lose?
OR is “freedom” now some sort of ironic code word for DEATH in the fucked-up lexicon of stupidity employed by the modern Republican Madhatter’s tea party? Hard to tell with these assholes anymore, but there is a fascinating—and tragic and utterly repulsive—backstory to Congressman Ron Paul’s comments about “freedom” ‘n’ shit during the debate the other night. From Vulture:
At the fifth GOP debate this week, moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul, a doctor, whether someone who opts to not buy health insurance and then gets sick should be allowed to die. The crowd responded with startling shouts of “Yeah!” followed by applause, leaving even Rick Perry “taken aback.” Paul’s answer, while more gentle, was more or less the same. “That’s what freedom is all about: taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to take care of everybody ... ” said Paul, who was cut off by clapping from the audience. While you wouldn’t know it from his answer, Blizter’s hypothetical probably hit close to home for Paul, whose campaign manager Kent Snyder died young of pneumonia — without insurance — in 2008.
He was just 49 years old when he died of complications from the virus on June 26, two weeks after Paul dropped out of the race. Snyder’s mother was left with around $400,000 in medical costs. Paul supporters set up a donation fund to help with the debt.
Snyder was credited as “the driving force behind Ron Paul’s presidential bid” in the last election, having turned “his one-man operation into a national grass-roots phenomenon that now calls itself ‘The Freedom Movement.’”
That same freedom, which Paul referred to in the debate, complicated Snyder’s health problems, as a preexisting condition made insurance premiums too expensive, according to Snyder’s sister. After Snyder’s death, Paul wrote on his website: “Like so many in our movement, Kent sacrificed much for the cause of liberty. Kent poured every ounce of his being into our fight for freedom. He will always hold a place in my heart and in the hearts of my family.”
I’m quite sure that Mr. Snyder happily and patriotically died without burdening the wealthy “job creator” class of this mighty nation. Congressman Paul’s words at the debate must have been a great comfort to Snyder’s family…
Attention Tea party dummies: Look at what the Libertarian philosophy did for Kent Snyder? It killed him!
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE MINDS OF PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE SUCH THINGS?
Sadly, you can’t just snap your fingers in front of an idiot’s face and tell them to “Wise up,” because it doesn’t work that way.
Viva la muerte! Long live death!
As the United States sinks further and further into its death spiral, all you can do is watch and wonder in astonishment. We’re doomed!
Last night on the GOP Tea party debate on CNN, the assembled crowd of mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging Neanderthalsfucking assholes dumb old white people cheered like braying assholes asses at the notion that someone uninsured should be left to die.
Here’s just one idiotic comment left on YouTube by a moron using the handle “nicpag9”:
Whoever posted this video needs to off themselves. People like you are what is wrong with this country and the reason it’s in the shape it is in now. No doubt you’ll be voting for Obama again. Too bad we can’t divide the country up into the idiot section run by Communists such as your self and the rest that just want to be left the hell alone for everyone with a damn brain. I’m sure the founding fathers would have no problem with that whatsoever.
No, my fren’ this country is in the state it is because of people like you… too damned dumb to understand the world around them.
