SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY: YOU AND I

Sometimes, not very often – and as you get older you will understand why – but sometimes, you get lucky, and a friend plays you something, and it is simple, mundane almost, until you realise that it is such simplicity that makes a song, well, unique.

Such was the case when I first listened to Ingrid Michaelson's You And I.

It spoke to me. She spoke to me, and she just may speak to you, too, especially if you are still young and the weight of the world is bearing down on you and your loved one. If and when there are days when all appears to be lost, and you ask yourself, how are we going to make it through this? Will she still be here tomorrow? Will she leave me? Will he come through?

I have been there, and there was no happy ending for me.

I wish there will be one for you all, who are living through the uncertainty of today's wild times. Hold on tight. Hold each other. And know, in the depths of your hearts, that no-one can spoon like you do.

INSTEAD OF READING AN ECONOMICS BOOK, READ THIS CALVIN & HOBBES EXPLANATION INSTEAD

  

... because again, Bill Watterson knew it all, and he was way funnier.

Sad, isn't it?

HOMELESS CAMPAIGN, OR: HOW THE REPUBLICANS CONTINUE TO ANALLY RAPE THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY

Benjamin Pearcy, a candidate for statewide office in Arizona, lists his campaign office as a Starbucks. The small business he refers to in his campaign statement is him strumming his guitar on the street. The internal debate he is having in advance of his coming televised debate is whether he ought to gel his hair into his trademark faux Mohawk.

Mr. Pearcy, 20, is running for a seat on the Arizona Corporation Commission, which oversees public utilities, railroad safety and securities regulation. Although Mr. Pearcy says he is taking his first run for public office seriously, the political establishment here views him as nothing more than a political dirty trick.

Mr. Pearcy and other drifters and homeless people were recruited onto the Green Party ballot by a Republican political operative who freely admits that their candidacies may siphon some support from the Democrats. Arizona’s Democratic Party has filed a formal complaint with local, state and federal prosecutors in an effort to have the candidates removed from the ballot, and the Green Party has urged its supporters to steer clear of the rogue candidates.

“These are people who are not serious and who were recruited as part of a cynical manipulation of the process,” said Paul Eckstein, a lawyer representing the Democrats. “They don’t know Green from red.”

But Steve May, the Republican operative who signed up some of the candidates along Mill Avenue, a bohemian commercial strip next to Arizona State University, insists that a real political movement has been stirred up that has nothing to do with subterfuge. [...]

The Democratic Party is fuming over Mr. May’s tactics and those of at least two other Republicans who helped recruit candidates to the Green Party, which does not have the resources to put candidates on ballots around the state and thus creates the opportunity for write-in contenders like the Mill Rats to easily win primaries and get their names on the ballot for November. Complaints about spurious candidates have cropped up often before, though never involving an entire roster of candidates drawn from a group of street people.

What else can you say about this? Dishonest. Deceiving. Detestable. See, the Republicans know that a great many youngful supporters are disillusioned with Barry Tumbleweed in the White House, and are seriously considering voting their conviction, which in many cases will mean the Green party, if a candidate is available.

By filling those candidacies with strawmen, the Republican whores know that the worst outcome for them will be that in any and all states, any and all elections where they put a "Green Party" candidate on the ballot... will weaken the Democrats in the upcoming elections.

So, to all those young folks out there, look at your candidates very carefully.

If it isn't a real Green Party candidate, fuck'em. If the Repbulicans want to abuse your right to vote your conscience (and it is too late in the current process to change anything about it), then vote for the Democrat. They want to play tactics with you? Tactic them right back.

And then, start building the Green Party up, from grassroots level. In your towns. In your regions. In your states. It will be a long and protracted battle, make no mistake about it, but in Germany, it took the Green Party a long time as well to get anywhere.

It's up to you.

They are trying to fuck you. Don't let them.

POWER WATCH: SIX DAYS SINCE "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"

Since Keith Olbermann apparently only cared about it when BushCo was in office, which makes him a hypocrite, a propagandist and a sell-out, let me point out the facts that everybody already knew: combat in Iraq continues despite the dog-and-pony show Keith, Brian and Rachel were all clapping their hands over.

Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq's ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.

It was the first exchange of fire involving U.S. troops in Baghdad since the Aug. 31 deadline for formally ending the combat mission, and it showed that American troops remaining in the country are still being drawn into the fighting.

The attack also made plain the kind of lapses in security that have left Iraqis wary of the U.S. drawdown and distrustful of the ability of Iraqi forces now taking up ultimate responsibility for protecting the country.

Sunday's hour-long assault was the second in as many weeks on the facility, the headquarters for the Iraqi Army's 11th Division, pointing to the failure of Iraqi forces to plug even the most obvious holes in their security.

The troops are still on the ground. They are still fighting. Now, there may be very good arguments presented as to why the US forces still need to be there, chiefly among them still Colin Powell's (in)famous "You break it, you bought it" argument from way, way back. And if you are Barry Tumbleweed in the Oval, you just might make those arguments. But he doesn't. See, it's an election year, and he thinks that this will make his followers happy and full of pride and joy, like a pinata ready to be beaten by the fat kid in the backyard birthday party. See? See? I ended the war.

Yes. Just like Richard Nixon did.

And yes, that phrase you are looking for is "Vietnamification", Barry. Look it up. And look how well that turned out for your troops back then. Last chopper out of the Green Zone in four years?

Six days until the end of combat missions.

Six days and counting.

50 MILLION AMERICANS CANNOT AFFORD TO EAT HEALTHILY (AND THAT WAS IN 2008, SO BEFORE THE GREAT RECESSION)

So concludes a study by the American Dietetic Association that has just been released, or in science speak, it sounds like this...

More than 49 million individuals living in the United States experienced food insecurity in 2008. Negative nutrition and non–nutrition-related outcomes have been associated with food insecurity in children, adolescents, and adults, including substandard academic achievement, inadequate intake of key nutrients, poor health, increased risk for and development of chronic disease, poor disease management, and poor psychological and cognitive functioning.

Yes, boys and girls, the richest country on this planet (or so we always get told) has 15 percent of its population so poor, they cannot afford proper food and instead scarf down the processed, cheap shit, with all of the consequences that follow. Obesity. Lack of vitamins. And so on and so on. According to the study (and as I said in my headline, the study was conducted before the shit proverbially hit the fan), the hardest hit are poor mothers, who literally don't eat or barely eat, so that they can give their children food.

In America.

Let me say this again. We are not talking about the Sudan here. We are not talking about Somalia. We are talking about the United States of America.

Where the new job figures released today show that more and more people are in danger of becoming the so-called 99ers...

(with 99 weeks being the longest time unemployment benefits run for those who – while they had a job, most of the times a single job that they had to have for 3 to 5 years steady, according to most state laws – had paid into this entitlement program. If you couldn't hold on to that job for more than 3 years? Well, then you have been fucked already. No benefits for you!),

...or how the Tea Baggers would call them, lazy fucks who should pull themselves up by their own boostraps. The numbers show that more people are in danger of slipping, oh what the fuck, let's call it what it really is, in danger of being pushed down through the cracks. And down below is not only poverty (which is only romantic those those who have never experienced it), but also a fight for pure survival.

In America.

How selfish, how inhumane must a society be to allow this to happen?

How inhumane, how fascist must a society be that has its most prominent politicians cave in already and allow the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 % to continue on and on, while this is happening? To 50 million Americans? Or more?

I have no words for it. Not anymore.

INSTEAD OF A POLITICAL COMMENTARY ON TODAY'S WORLD, READ THIS CALVIN & HOBBES PIECE

... because Bill Watterson said it all.

I PROBABLY SHOULD SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THILO SARRAZIN, THE JEWS, GENETICS AND THE GENERAL STUPIDITY OF THE MEDIA WHEN COVERING IDIOTS

I really should, but I'm too tired and too worn out to deal with somebody who can only be called one of the great morons of modern German culture. Others have said many things about Thilo Sarrazin, who once was Berlin's Secretary for the Interior (not decorating, we should have been so lucky) and who has clearly some kind of issue with Jews and particularly Muslims.

I should say something, because such a thing should be my duty as an informed, intelligent and hopefully vocal human being. And have I not always maintained on this blog that one should stand up against hatred, against prejudice, against racism?

I'm not going to.

He is but one man, and our media has been giving this pathetic, spiteful excuse of a human being far too much room, has made him a symbol, has made him a flag-bearer of sorts for some kind of "white cultural rage" that is simmering somewhere, somehow.

He is but one man, and yet, he has dominated the German news cycle for this past fucking week. He is very likely going to be fired for his latest remarks (by the same people who parked him at the Bundesbank, in the hope that he would shut up) as of this evening, and that will only make him look more like a martyr for some.

His book owes a lot to the same intellectual filth that is penetatring the American media landscape right now, courtesy of Glenn Palin. Germany takes itself out of commission (Deutschland schafft ab, wow, now there's somebody who knows his words, right?).

He is of no consequence. He is but one man.

But our media treats him like he's more.

And there they were again, the angry shouts and the self-serving defenses, the professional "Betroffenheit" as we call it here in my country. The "but what is this, then?" that makes for good drama at a roundtable, controlled, guided and useless, in one political talk show after another.

He holds no elected office, that man. He lost that.

He was parked by his own party, given a cushy job for the last time he spoke out with his brain that apparently consists of one functioning cell, barely enabling him to construct a proper sentence. Let's not forget that. They parked him there, rewarding him for his last hateful outburst. And now they go, "oh dear, how could we have seen this coming?"

And still, he dominates the news cycle.

Because it is good drama. Because you can attack him easily. And shouldn't we? Isn't he the enemy? Isn't he exactly everything I once swore to fight until my dying breath? Shouldn't I be happy that he is torn down, and rightfully so?

I should.

But just at is the case in America with Glenn Palin, we give these people their echo chamber, we give it to them and not to the millions of hard-working people, who keep their noses against the grindstone every day, who integrate, who live and love, we don't tell their stories, we don't look up to them.

No.

We look up, look down on this one man.

This one moron.

And that is the first and last time I am going to mention him.

That one moron.

Because that is all he is worth. That one mention. Life has no use for him. Love is unknown to him. Humanity is a statistic to him. He is not worth all those minutes, those hours, those days that have been spent, that have been wasted on him.

Let him die, I say. Let him die in silence, far away from the spotlights and the cameras and the TV show hosts that make him a spokesperson, that make him the freak of the week (now in its remake phase), that make him known to the rest of us.

Let him disappear. Into the shadows. Where he was, where he should be, where he hopefully will be soon. So that we will never hear this name again.

Thilo Sarrazin.

NO, REALLY, I WON'T PLAY AROUND NO MORE (I PROMISE)

So says the guy who keeps on changing things, always, up until the last minute, because I always think, this could be a bit better, maybe just a dash her and there. 

And so, obviously, I played around with the cover of The Watchmaker's Wings last night some more. And probably will continue, if another idea hits me. You will see by comparison that I cleaned up the gold in the title, gave it a sub-title, made my own name bigger (and no, not because I am an arrogant, egomaniacal bastard, the other version didn't balance out completely), and I gave my cover girl a somewhat more muted look as to not have her be dropping down on the colour scale.