BTW: this has a bunch of stuff that the U.S. history textbooks omitted a long time ago.

I think this is the best one I’ve had yet.  Note that it’s only half full in the picture, couldn’t wait.  One will do ya, trust me.

As far as the big beats go, I’m on an ignant 808-laden dirty south kick lately.  Juvenile’s latest is playing right now.  Anyone else think it’s ironic I like that shit?  I mean lyrically damn near the whole album is about how much money the dude has.  Then again, I’ve never taken the uber gangsta ghetto fabulous shit seriously, it’s been one big joke to me from day one.

Edit: that’s a sign of how strong that brew is, that I forgot to categorize this post.  Take so much as two sips & you’re already in DUI territory if you go anywhere.  I find that if I drink better I drink less, so it all balances out.

Edit 2: now I got Lil Boosie’s “Superbad” playing, continuing the theme.

Question 1: “blahblahcognitivescienceblah?”

Noam: “Yup, and it’ll make psycho’s eyes glaze over!”

Question 2: “Anarchist movement…WTF, yo?”

Noam: “Coherence & foresight would be nice.  Oh yeah, and no more Judean People’s Front/People’s Front of Judea stuff”

Question 3: “Government as check on other power, at least in long run: you = for, but reality = why bother.  So…why bother?”

Noam: “You silly idealist!  State > Corporate or collapse!!  Organize!  BTW: health care reform?”

Me, in reaction to response #3: “Circle any more & GoDaddy’ll slap a logo on your ass…”

So, according to Noam, though he in the long run rejects government, it in his view has to be kept & “improved” before then to ameliorate the same things that it has enabled in its entire existence, even though the effect is two tears in a bucket & the effort for even that is like pulling teeth, because…well, just because.  Yet in the next breath he talks about organizing radical labor in the meantime, as if Roderick could possibly be unaware of such a strategy.

It appears that Noam Chomsky thinks the point behind such moves outside of electoral politics as he mentions must be to maintain the socio-political system they respond to, rather than to undermine it.  If that kind of organization works though, then what would be the point?

A) Politician.  The product is land:

wassa, Ethiopia — We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia’s largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 50 acres* — the size of 20 soccer fields.

The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 1,500 foot rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1,000 women pick and pack 50 tons of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 200 miles to Addis Ababa and flown 1,000 miles to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13-million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least 7.5 million acres of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world’s most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.

Having trouble maintaining enough food for themselves with the land they have.   Yet it’s being sold, by the government, for food for other countries, worked by imported labor.   The only way this could avoid failing a laugh test for “free trade” would be if your definition of it was “I free you of your shit at gunpoint, then trade it”.  There’s more, read the whole thing.

Props.  BTW: Eerily I had the same reaction upon first reading it, w/r/t comparing it to Kelo.  Spooky…

-Behind many political statements that are taken for granted are implications that, sadly, never get discussed.  Take accusations of Chinese currency manipulation, for example: the claim is that the Yuan is artificially undervalued, giving China an advantage in trade.  If the value were to go up, then U.S. exports would become comparatively cheaper because it would take fewer Yuan to get a dollar worth of goods.  This means that to argue that the Yuan is undervalued is akin to saying the dollar is overvalued.  Note that China happens to hold a particularly large chunk of U.S. government debt, and you see where this is going.

-Y’know, as long as we’re going to have super-wealthy media moguls in this world, it’d be interesting to see what kind of shifts would be initiated in the U.S. media as a result of a Mexican joining the club.

-Joe Biden, while Israel was announcing new construction for East Jerusalem settlers: “progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel”.  Um, yeah, which is why they’re fighting over the same shit still after all these years.  Speaking of East Jerusalem, here’s how some of the residents celebrate their holidays.  Nice neighbors ya got there…

-The Cheneyite approach to terror suspects, which results in the kind of atrocities that Conor Friedersdorf describes here, among other things, can only be explained by one of two things: vengeful indiscriminate rage (that is, it’s all about expressing “don’t fuck with us!!!” at any and every opportunity that arises, accuracy be damned) or cultural hatred.

Lane suggests that a symptom common among schizophrenics was glossed over by the doctor in question, who recommended cannabis to address his insomnia.  Even if true it wouldn’t say anything about marijuana in this case, because the mans psychological problem was clearly not the one the marijuana was intended for.  If he means to hint that it made his mental stability worse somehow, then, well, science suggests otherwise thus far.  Nice try…

That said, I’m firmly in the “it’s no one’s business to give a fuck if you DO just want to get high” camp.

-Cops taser belligerent drunk driver, find out he’s a cop too.  Naturally he’s still on normal duty pending investigation, an odd courtesy considering he admitted he was drunk.  Rules are for little people.

-Shorter Will Wilkinson: “Y’know, maybe if the U.S. didn’t spend a fuck-ton on mass death…”

^^^^my general though w/r/t the type of attitude Kevin Carson talks about here, in a nutshell.

The Senate voted Wednesday to extend for a year key provisions of the nation’s counterterrorism surveillance law that are scheduled to expire at the end of the month. In agreeing to pass the bill, Senate Democrats retreated from adding new privacy protections to the USA Patriot Act.

The Senate approved the bill on a voice vote with no debate. It now goes to the House.

Bipartisanship.  If it doesn’t have an entry in Urban Dictionary, then it needs one.