Category: Painful Truths

(lifted from Sarah Hoyt’s blog)

COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America.
ABBOTT: Good “subject”. Terrible “times”. It’s about 9%.
COSTELLO: That many people are out of work?
ABBOTT: No, that’s 16%.
COSTELLO: You just said 9%.
ABBOTT: 9% Unemployed.
COSTELLO: Right, 9% out of work.
ABBOTT: No, that’s 16%.
COSTELLO: Okay, so it’s 16% unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, that’s 9%…
COSTELLO: WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 9% or 16%?
ABBOTT: 9% are unemployed. 16% are out of work.
COSTELLO: If you are out of work you are unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, you can’t count the “Out of Work” as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.
COSTELLO: But … they are out of work!
ABBOTT: No, you miss my point.
COSTELLO: What point?
ABBOTT: Someone who doesn’t look for work can’t be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn’t be fair.
COSTELLO: To who?
ABBOTT: The unemployed.
COSTELLO: But they are ALL out of work.
ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work…Those who are out of work stopped looking. They gave up. And, if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.
COSTELLO: So if you’re off the unemployment rolls, that would count as less unemployment?
ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!
COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don’t look for work?
ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down. That’s how you get to 9%. Otherwise it would be 16%. You don’t want to read about 16% unemployment do ya?
COSTELLO: That would be frightening.
ABBOTT: Absolutely.
COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you. That means there’s two ways to bring down the unemployment number?
ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.
COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job?
ABBOTT: Correct.
COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job?
ABBOTT: Bingo.
COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to just stop looking for work.
ABBOTT: Now you’re thinking like an economist.
COSTELLO: I don’t even know what the hell I just said!
ABBOTT: Now you’re thinking like a politician.

Now, I understand. I think.

I present an interesting article by David Horowitz. A taste:

I will never forget standing next to Elaine, as I did months later in growing horror, as she threatened KQED-TV host Bill Schechner over the telephone. “I will kill you motherfucker,” she promised him in her machete voice, if he went through with plans to interview the former Panther Chairman, Bobby Seale. Seale had gone into hiding after Huey expelled him from the Party in August. As I learned long afterwards, Seale had been whipped — literally — and then personally sodomized by Huey with such violence that he had to have his anus surgically repaired by a Pacific Heights doctor who was a political supporter of the Panthers. A Party member told me later, “You have to understand, it had nothing to do with sex. It was about power.” But in the Panther world, as I also came to learn, nothing was about anything except power.

…

My involvement with the Black Panther Party had begun in early 1973. I had gone to Los Angeles with Peter Collier to raise money for Ramparts, the flagship magazine of the New Left which he and I co-edited. One of our marks was Bert Schneider, the producer of Easy Rider, the breakthrough film of the Sixties which had brought the counter-cultural rebellion into the American mainstream. Schneider gave Ramparts $5,000, and then turned around and asked us to meet his friend Huey Newton.

At the time, Newton was engaged in a life and death feud with Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. Cleaver had fled to Algiers after a shoot-out with Bay Area police. (Eldridge has since admitted that he ambushed them). Schneider wanted us to take Eldridge’s name off the Ramparts masthead where he was still listed as “International Editor.”

Huey’s attraction to the Left had always been his persona as “Minister of Defense” of the Black Panther Party, his challenge to revolutionary wannabees to live up to their rhetoric and “pick up the gun.” Huey had done just that in his own celebrated confrontation with the law that had left Officer John Frey dead with a bullet wound in his back. Everybody in the Left seemed to believe that Huey had killed Frey, but we also wanted to believe that Huey — as a victim of racism — was also innocent. Peter’s and my engagement with the Panthers was more social than political, since Ramparts had helped the Party become a national franchise. Their military style had left me cold, but now, a change in the times prompted the two of us, and especially me, to be interested in the meeting.

Such lovely people. Heroes, almost. Hell, in the Seventies I was almost as seduced as Horowitz, I admit (with much shame).

My generation has a lot to answer for. You Millenials should not pick up that horribly stained banner.

 

 

Gleefully stolen from Ms. Weasel

https://youtu.be/G9m8O-7J5NM

Sick of all of it. A cabin on the Nantahela River is looking mighty enticing…

Mr. Malki may be giving too much credit.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Stirring words. Would that his spiritual heirs believed them. I have, all my life, but I’m the one who’s a racist.

  

Josh Earnest: I’ve Never Been So Proud That We’re Giving Billions of Dollars and A-Bombs to People Kidnapping Our Sailors

—Ace

Respect.

I cry for my country.

I’m glad I’m armed.

…or the Bumbling Through History Theory. The Zman has a compelling look at how we can end up far, far from where we started, with no good idea how we got there-

My bet is most everyone reading this is familiar with graph paper. That’s the paper with the little boxes on it. Now, imagine yourself in a world  like that graph paper. You are in a room that has four walls and each wall has either a door, a window, or nothing at all. The plain walls range from impenetrable to fairly easy to bust through…

…

Presented with such a puzzle. you could go exploring, looking for the route out of the maze. If I decided to make the game more fun for me and added some dangers in rooms, for example, then you would be a lot more cautious about seeing the other rooms….

…

Even without me adding life threatening dangers to the puzzle, your way out of the maze would be trial and error with lots of backtracking. If in your first room you have two doors and those connecting rooms each have two doors, there are four possible outcomes. If those rooms have two doors then you have (12) possible outcomes. It’s not hard to see how the number of possible outcomes can multiply quickly.

Now, imagine instead of a simple grid, the maze is like the gaming paper from the 70’s version of Dungeons and Dragons. That’s the hexagonal stuff. Instead of have(ing) four choices you now have six. That means your first choice has thirty possible outcomes. Multiply this out of a few moves and you see how quickly this puzzle becomes (sic). Even after a few moves, you would struggle to retrace your steps without some sort of map.

RTWT, of course, I’m only quoting…

So it’s easy to see how those with the best of intentions can sometimes reach a point where maybe War is the least of an array of bad options, and there is really no way to backtrack for a “do-over”.

Or you could have a mendacious incompetent such as President Three-putt and quickly find yourself in ‘way over your head with no way out. I think we’ve gotten there.

The next few years should be interesting, in the Chinese sense.

via American Digest

I never lost respect for him. Godspeed, Ziggy Stardust.

Rudyard Kipling

Tommy

I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-‘alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.

Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!

There’s a time coming that you’ll need us- and we’ll be gone