Egyptian Trash Talk

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Hi there denizens of this strange blog. I am a spooky hacker (No como se Adrian Lamo) and have determined there is far too much negativity in the common daily activities here. I protest. Like an Egyptian. Time to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. So here is a little music with which to celebrate what can be accomplished by the youth of a country when they are engaged, mad as hell and not going to take it any more.

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For years, we have been trying to figure out what it will take to wake up the American government, Congress, powers that be and get them to return to the ethos of what this country – the United States – is supposed to stand for and exemplify. Instead of watching Obamaco Organizing For America and Move On lamely and pathetically try to suck up and pray the youth will come out and vote for centrist, status quo, Bush-Lite bullshit in 2012, maybe we should be telling and encouraging the youth to figure out where the American version of Tahrir Square is and helping them get there. It is the least we can do. Seriously.

Our generation has borne the climate change deniers, Tea Party, evolution deniers, Andrew Breitbart and Fox News horse manure and propounded freaking Barak Obama as the hopey-changey salvation. In short, we are totally fucked. Turn the gig over to our kids and get out of the way. If Egypt has proven anything which can be taken home here, it is that we need to be talkin bout a new generation. We are done and have screwed the pooch big time; it is up to them, but we can help them and “prepare the battlefield”.

Okay. Here is the legal disclaimer. There is no way in hell I was going to post the fucking Bangles, even though I kind of like Walk Like An Egyptian. Not gonna do it. So, Live at Pompeii may not quite be Egyptian, but close enough for rock and roll. By the way, I think Suleiman is Pink.

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  1. Jim White says:

    Howdy, bmaz. Gosh, the way you and Olbermann were going at each other on Twitter today I thought Obama was going to have to jump in and call for a beer summit.

      • scribe says:

        Oh, please. I’m sure he’d go for a beer. He went to Cornell, where beer in bulk was the coin of the realm.

    • phred says:

      What did I miss, what did I miss???

      Dang of all days to have a booked up calendar, today was most definitely NOT the day.

      Thanks for the post bmaz — I’m still grinning to beat the band : )

      Go EGYPT!!!

      And nice tunes, too… Thanks : )

      • Jim White says:

        Well, Olbermann tweeted about being with Markos when he heard about Mubarak stepping down.

        bmaz retweeted and added to it:”Who gives a fuck; its not about U @KeithOlbermann Where were U when Mubarak left? Naturally: at lunch with @Markos http://yfrog.com/h4ptiofj”

        Can’t get the link to Olbemann’s reply to come up, but he said “YOU do. You replied, Moron.”

        To which bmaz replied “Better than being a narcissistic pompous jackass. Fucktard.”

        ‘Twas a glorious fight, with righteous trash thrown in. Like I said, nearly beer summit time.

  4. JohnLopresti says:

    I would like to see Egypt*s new leadership address climate change remediation. I know someone whose internet speed is limited because of what is called in telecom law, the universal service area (USA). Obama*s FCC wants to upgrade that backwater of modern media, so folks in USAs will be capable of listening to music clips while watching the video like the links in the post, above. The Republican stuff is worrisome. One of the places where that freedom courtyard in the ancient city is located, now is in cyberspace. Then again, maybe Arianna*s AOL wants to acquire moveon, to add *content*. Alternatively, Moveon might be ready to remain independent, change its name to distance itself from its past from the era before the Independent Counsel law*s sunset; and take a more genuinely liberal direction different from the democratic leadership council.

  5. scribe says:

    And now you come out with this, BMAz?

    After pooh-poohing my idea to simply ask the Real Democrats of the Base whether they ratify each of Barry’s atrocities and to think of their answer to that question each time Obamaco came calling for their time, money or effort? Every fucking time he fucked over his base?

    Y’know, “but I love him” is no reason to keep going back to a battering boyfriend, in addition to which he’s getting sugar somewhere else and using you for a booty call. Kicking his ass out into the street is the appropriate thing to do.

    I once had a significant other (S.O.) who decided that the way to encourage me to do something serious which S.O. wanted (i.e., make a life commitment) was to cut off sex, in the expectation that I would be so inflamed by my need for same to figure out what it was S.O. wanted and do it. S.O. miscalculated severely- this was the exact wrong thing to do. My reasoning was “if I go ahead and do what it is S.O. wants, I’ll be ratifying the behavior (cutting off sex) that ‘inspired’ me to do what S.O. wanted.” From there, logic impelled only a short step to “And I’ll never get laid again, for life.”

    Would that people assessing their elected political representatives exercised half the sense rehearsed in my prior paragraph. Obama will say, if he’s re-elected, that his re-election represented a ratification of every fucking atrocity he undertook in the present term and that therefore neither change nor reflection nor, God forbid, remediation of any of it is necessary. (Just like Bush did in 2005. “The people have spoken. They re-elected me.”)) So, does he deserve your stamp of approval on all he has and has not done these last several years?

    I thought so.

    So, why are you opening your checkbook or giving your time or effort to Barry? (In so many words, it’s time to walk [out] like an Egyptian.)

    In other properly trashy news, a NE radio station is running a promotion in which the prize is dinner with Patsies’ TE Gronkowski, the hook being that during the off-season (already seeming very long) he’s bored and therefore needs companionship at dinner. Off-season’s long when you get knocked out in the first game/second week….

      • scribe says:

        As to those currently controlling the House, they are rapidly showing themselves to be the idiots we said they were. And, if the post over on FDL yesterday is to be believed, the rapid poll swing back to Dems as being more trusted shows the populace at large gets that, too. (I suspect the voters will keep tossing incumbents out until either changes which satisfy the populace at large get enacted or the two parties run out of candidates. But I digress.)

        But, and this is the big concept most people have yet to get their heads around, it really does not matter whether Democrats (as currently constituted) or Republicans control one house, two, the White House, or some combination of these. You and everyone else here would do very well by yourselves to read and digest what Glenn Greenwald wrote the other day in his piece on The Tea Party and Civil Liberties. Not so much on his (correct) assessment of the Tea Party as the home of radical authoritarians. But rather on the way the two parties each alternate between decrying the wrongdoing of the other and clinging to the Constituition and Civil Liberties as a great issue to rally their respective bases and, when in power, conveniently find every flavor of excuse known to the human mind to further the same abuses themselves, while doing absolutely nothing to undo the damage already done. Greenwald wrote it far better than I could ever hope to. Go read it. Then come back here.

        You, and all the other readers, need to get over the idea that “the Republican would be so much worse than Obama, so I’ll hold my nose and vote Obama.” Get it straight: each one – Republican or Democrat – will grab as much power as they can and get away with as much as they think they can. They are no different. They are politicians and therefore, by definition, whores. They are motivated by one thing and one thing only – fear of losing the next election. Unless and until you can effectively wield against them the fear of losing – as the Tea Partiers have done to the so-called moderate Republicans – they will not respond to you. Oh, they might say things you want to hear. But, ask yourself, how many things did Obama say that you wanted to hear? How many of those did he deliver on? To them, if you cannot make them fear losing, you are a fucking chump for believing them. They only respond to those who can make them fear losing. That’s why this week Obama went and knelt down and sucked the shit out of the assholes at the Chamber of Commerce: because he knows they can deploy more money and more media and more ratfuckers than anyone else and they intend to deploy them against him and make him lose.

        And if somewhere in your hippy-dippy heart you harbor the idea that, once re-elected, Obama will be free to Do The Right Thing, please, get this straight: that idea is a dreamy illusion. Please disabuse yourself of it because you’re merely embarrassing yourself. Or you should be embarrassed, because harboring that idea is infantile. Ask yourself: Who is Obama’s closest friend in politics, whose advice and counsel he valued most? Rahm Fucking Emmanuel. When was the last time that Rahm ever did the right thing? Birds of a feather.

        Get over your ideas of morality and right and wrong and doing the right thing when it comes to politics and politicians. Politics is a hard, cynical business and the coin of the realm is winning and losing. Whatever avoids losing or helps winning is good, and losing is plain bad. That is the only language they understand. Winning and losing are the only things which matter, and to communicate effectively to politicians and bend them to your will so as to make them enact policies you think are better, you must couch your communications to them in terms of “do this or lose because neither I nor my friends will be here for you.”

        Mushy “well, he’s better than the other guy so I guess I’ll forgive him all the wrongs he’s done” crap does nothing to get you anything other than more of the same shit dumped on your head.

  6. BoxTurtle says:

    I had to post this. Not often a political cartoon gets a belly laugh from me.

    Boxturtle (Anybody know where I can get a couple gross of Guy Fawkes masks?)

  7. scribe says:

    Watching Deroit at Boston hockey – the Wings are making some astonishing plays and their skating is simply amazing. Now 5-1 Detroit – and Boston had been playing tough for weeks.

    • phred says:

      Excellent selection. I love Leonard Cohen’s songs. However, I’m not sure I’ve ever really seen a picture of him before (yes, I do live under a rock, thanks for noticing)… So here’s my question, does he always look like Leonard Nimoy or is that just a freakish quirk in this particular video?

  10. substanti8 says:

    The primary common ailment across the political spectrum in America is the misguided belief that “bigger is better.”  Republicans may talk a good game about opposing “big government,” but they actually only oppose it being used for certain things (such as social justice).  Power on the left – whether in Washington, on college campuses, or even in radical third parties – is similarly addicted to statism.

    So if you want to compare Egypt with the United States, you need to look first at the difference in SCALE, and you need to understand that the larger a country is, the less inherently democratic it is.  Avoiding that fact is like a failure to notice the emperor’s lack of clothes.

    But Americans have long been good at delusion.  I don’t expect this time to be any different, and I don’t expect any real lessons to be learned from the streets of Cairo.  Pundits will continue to spin their narrative of large scale – and perpetuate the myth of democracy for 300,000,000 people.

  11. orionATL says:

    box turtle @10

    bellyLOL!

    that is one hell of a funny cartoon.

    kind of strangely cubist –

    the fundamentals oddly arranged.

    tx

    • thatvisionthing says:

      I liked this headline over at Huffington Post:

      Obama, Who Refused to Lead, is the Big Loser on Egypt

  12. thatvisionthing says:

    JUBILATION!!

    Paul Supporters Call Cheney “War Criminal” at CPAC

    And former vice president Dick Cheney has been publicly heckled at an unlikely venue: the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. On Thursday, Cheney appeared at CPAC to grant a “Defending the Constitution” award to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. After taking the stage to the pop music hit “Simply the Best,” Cheney was met with shouts of “war criminal” and “where’s bin Laden?” The heckles appeared to come from a contingent of supporters of libertarian Republican Ron Paul. The Paul group walked out of the room as Cheney began to speak.

  14. nomolos says:

    Our generation has born the climate change deniers, Tea Party, evolution deniers, Andrew Breitbart and Fox News horse manure and propounded freaking Barak Obama as the hopey-changey salvation. In short, we are totally fucked.

    Your generation maybe. My generation brought you Civil Rights, the end of the Vietnam debacle, Lsd, the Beatles, Roe v Wade, The Stones, MLK, computers, an endless list of great writers, poets and artists, the end of the draft, etc. etc. etc. Your generation has fucked it all up.

    • substanti8 says:

      On the contrary, it was the Baby Boomer Generation that “fucked it all up.”

      Despite its potential for greatness, most of the motivation for Baby Boomer social achievement turned out to be banal self-interest.  Unlike the “greatest generation” that defeated fascism in Europe, the Baby Boomers’ primary question was, “What’s in it for me?”

      So when faced with a choice in 1980 between Jimmy Carter (who called upon Americans to sacrifice for the greater good) or Ronald Reagan (who promised prosperity with no limits), Boomers elected Reagan – which empowered a reactionary ideology that has unraveled almost every gain that the Boomers could claim.  We now live in a country with nearly unprecedented inequity, and our denial of science makes us the laughingstock of the world.

      Most Baby Boomers failed to question the growth paradigm that now fuels the destruction of the natural world.  They were too busy enjoying the fossil fuel party with everyone else.  The “Love Your Mother” bumper sticker on the VW bus did nothing to curb CO2 emissions or the sprawling invasion of suburbia.

      With all of their technological wizardry, the Boomers created a lifestyle that externalizes its costs on to future generations.  As the Earth enters a period of catastrophic anthropogenic warming and mass extinction, we are witnessing the greatest case of trans-generational injustice in human history.

      Cool, man.

      • dakine01 says:

        So when faced with a choice in 1980 between Jimmy Carter (who called upon Americans to sacrifice for the greater good) or Ronald Reagan (who promised prosperity with no limits), Boomers elected Reagan

        I keep seeing this claim from folks yet have never seen any evidence to back it up. The closest thing to “evidence” has been someone saying they were from a wing nut family and all their family members were boomers who voted for Reagan.

        FWIW, I and most of the Boomers I know were anything but Reagan supporters – including fellow veterans and active duty folks (I was in the USAF in ’80 and working DoD in ’84)

    • scribe says:

      Assuming arguendo the truth of your allegation that:

      My generation brought you Civil Rights, the end of the Vietnam debacle, LSD, the Beatles, Roe v Wade, The Stones, MLK, computers, an endless list of great writers, poets and artists, the end of the draft, etc. etc. etc. Your [younger/next] generation has fucked it all up.

      please remember that the generation which brought us all the things you claim for your generation was also the generation standing in the front of the classroom teaching the young impressionable minds of the generation you accuse of fucking it all up. If your great generation was so great, how come your generation fucked up so badly in the classroom?

  15. BayStateLibrul says:

    Update on Tommy Boy

    “Several Pats players were in the crowd to watch Ray Allen break the 3-point record, but not Tom Brady. That’s because No. 12 is relaxing on the beach in Costa Rica with wife Gisele Bundchen. According to our international cadre of sources — OK, it’s someone on Twitter — the NFL MVP and his supermodel spouse lounged in Santa Teresa yesterday with their young son, Ben. Bundchen has a seaside compound in nearby Malpais where the couple was married a few years ago.”

    • bmaz says:

      Good call!! I should have thought of that one. I did kind of like the Cairo Jazz Band piece quite a bit, although they maybe could have cut a minute out of the middle somewhere. Overall, not bad though.

  20. rusty houndog says:

    We have been running so long on opposition adrenalin that we can not recognize leadership that operates on the principled politics of legitimate compromise. If you wanted another Bush war monger we would be following McCain down the invasion rat-hole.
    We do not want more of that no-mistake garbage. We must get used to a softer tone from the White House and accept the fact that the world is revolting against force as the only means of accomplishing our ends. Compromise is not a dirty word.

    • bmaz says:

      Principled politics of legitimate compromise?? Is this your description of the Obama Administration? What drugs are you consuming? I do no find anything principled about what Obama is doing to gut privacy and civil liberties protections and find his dereliction of duty to the judiciary and judicial system to be near criminal. And even his “skill” at compromising is pathetic.