As mentioned earlier on Dangerous Minds, Gummo auteur Harmony Korine’s new film follows around a band of masked degenerates who like to, well…hump piles of trash. Vice magazine gives Harmony some room to explain himself, and reminisce about his childhood:
I remembered that when I was a kid there was this group of elderly Peeping Toms who used to hang out in the neighborhood, and sometimes I would see them stare into my next-door neighbor?
When he’s not attending Ballard memorials, RE/Search Publication’s V. Vale puts out a monthly newsletter. They’re packed with interesting info and updates, and I now have him to thank for introducing me to the small-scale Mothra V. Meganulon world of Japanese Bug Fighting. The rules are Chuck Palahniuk-simple:
1. Two Bugs to a fight
2. Bug fights go on as long as they have to
3. No outside weapons in Bug Fights
The Japanese Bug Fighting site currently showcases some 30 bug-on-bug matches. Round #7—Red Spider V. Black Scorpion—follows below:
Here’s Air America’s list of the top ten companies to avoid this holiday season. (Personally, I recommend not buying anything, and instead actually spending time with the people you care about and doing nice stuff for them, but then we can’t dispense with capitalism all at once can we? Oh wait, of course we can… it’s already dead! It’s kind of like “Sixth Sense”... “Some ghosts, they walk around, thinking they’re alive, but they’re actually dead, they just haven’t realized it yet…”)
1. Children’s Place: “It gets its products from places with human rights and labor violations and had to pay $1.5 million in a settlement alleging that they violated the Securities Act.
2. Hanes: “...went the extra step to be cited for ?
You gotta leave it to a Druid to really give a f*ck about nature. Archdruid John Michael Greer has a go at our culture’s standards on measuring productivity. Reported by GOOD magazine below:
The author, blogger, and druid (no joke, he’s a real druid) John Michael Greer has a piece in Energy Bulletin explaining why our normal way of thinking about economic “productivity” is flawed. Greer suggests that we look at “energy productivity” instead:
In an age that will increasingly be constrained by energy limits, for example, a more useful measure of productivity might be energy productivity?
Hmm…is this what global warming sounds like?
For Langj?ɬ?kull, Sn?ɬ
Artist Ran Hwang creates these giant wall installations by using a gazillion buttons and hammering pins. Ran Hwang says:
My immense wall installations are extremely time consuming and repetitive manual work. This is a form of meditative practice that helps me to find inner peace. Typical materials related to the fashion industry are used to create conceptual icons such as Buddha or traditional vase. Works are divided into two groups.
For the first type of work, pins are used to hold the buttons onto the surface to form silhouetted image, or to disintegrate such image. No adhesive is used so that buttons are free to stay and move, which implies the genetic human tendency tobe irresolute. I use buttons, because they are common and ordinary, like the existence of human beings. The second group of work consists of connecting a massive number of pins with yards of thread to occupy a negative space of the presented image. Here, threads serve as metaphor for connection and communication between unlinked human relations. Fulfilled negative space and absence of the image formed by positive space suggests deeper understanding of the image. I believe mortal essence in the heart of self recognition.
(via Dude Craft)
David Rees is a master of hilarious comedy and startling polemic. I rank him up there with Tom Tomorrow, Aaron McGruder, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. His Get Your War On cartoon series is one of the iconic things history will recall the Bush administration by (and this is a wonderful, wonderful thing).
Aside from cartooning, Rees is a wonderful essayist and public speaker. Here’s a recent column of his from True/Slantt, which should have really appeared in The New Yorker if they had any balls:
Joe Lieberman walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The bartender turns to him and says, ?
I’m someone who, like many of you, I am sure, had high hopes for the Obama presidency. After two terms of Bush, it really felt like the country was turning the page. Inauguration Day felt like a wonderful exhalation of 8 years of just… pollution. I thought Obama would be the second coming of FDR, I really did, but almost a year later, has anything truly changed? Has anything gotten better for the common man? We all know that the Wall Street oligarchs are sitting prettier than ever, what about the rest of us?
Today’s Huffington Post had a nice bit of reporting from Ryan Grim about Ben Bernanke’s remarks to the Senate Banking Comittee today and as I read it, I was absolutely enraged. This asshole has got to go. If Obama is getting his advice from guys like Ben Bernanke (and Geithner and Rubin) we are fucking doomed!
Let this sink in:
Ben Bernanke has overseen the greatest expansion of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet in its history, pouring trillions of dollars into Wall Street firms at roughly zero interest rates.
His generosity, however, has a limit.
In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee today, where he’s seeking re-appointment as the Fed’s chairman, Bernanke called for cutbacks in Medicare and Social Security even as unemployment rises and the middle class is endangered.
Citing legendary bank robber Willie Sutton, Bernanke said of the retirement and health care funds that are the legacy of the New Deal: “That’s where the money is.”
Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) sympathized with Bernanke, saying that, because of entitlement spending, “you’re going to be looking at a situation where the Congress will be unable to provide any kind of fiscal discipline because of the mandatory spending. That puts an enormous burden on your plate.”
“Well, Senator, I was about to address entitlements,” Bernanke replied. “I think you can’t tackle the problem in the medium term without doing something about getting entitlements under control and reducing the costs, particularly of health care.”
Bernanke reminded Congress that it has the power to repeal Social Security and Medicare.
“It’s only mandatory until Congress says it’s not mandatory. And we have no option but to address those costs at some point or else we will have an unsustainable situation,” said Bernanke.
But here are several other obvious options that could make the situation sustainable—including a transaction tax on Wall Street speculation or a slight tax hike on the wealthiest Americans.
Bernanke talks as if increasing taxes on the wealthy simply isn’t an option.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) followed Bennett and pointed out that “there’s only really two ways you can deflect this deficit, and that’s either by cutting expenditures or raising income taxes or other forms of taxes.”
Reed asked him if he could think of other ways, but Bernanke returned to entitlement money as the way to balance the budget.
“Willie Sutton robbed banks because that’s where the money is, as he put it,” Bernanke said. “The money in this case is in entitlements.”
When I read this I wanted to throw up. Apparently Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the last honest men in government felt the same:
Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who has placed a hold on Bernanke’s nomination, was apoplectic when HuffPost told him Bernanke was pushing for cuts in entitlement spending. “Bernanke wants to cut entitlement spending? Well, that confirms everything I’m saying,” Sanders fumed.
“The CEOs and top people on Wall Street make huge bonuses, and what? We’re going to cut back on Social Security and Medicare? That’s what we’re going to do?”
I think Sen. Sanders has the right idea, don’t you? Here’s what Progressive change said of Sanders (I wholeheartedly agree!)
Now, Bernie Sanders has taken the brave step of putting a “hold” on renominating Bush’s choice for another 4-year term at the helm of our economy.This is huge. Wall Street will not be happy, and they’ll go after Sanders with everything they’ve got. Most senators wouldn’t even consider going up against them like this. That’s why Bernie Sanders is a real progressive hero.
If you want to donate money to Bernie Sanders, click here.
And finally, here’s an information rich clip of Rolling Stone’s ace political editor Matt Taibbi’s take on Obama’s economic team. It’s a preview of Taibbi’s upcoming expose for the magazine titled “Obama’s Big Sellout”:
“[Bob] Rubin probably more than any other person was responsible for the financial crisis by deregulating the economy [while] in the White House. And he had a major role in helping destroy one of the world’s biggest company in Citigroup. He has one of the worst tack records you can find, but he was basically the guy who was the architect of the entire Obama policy. Obama put him in charge of everything. “
These guys are idiots. Hell, they’re practically traitorous! They’re traitorous idiots. They should be fired with extreme prejudice. And then tar and feathered.
You think I’m joking?
