The guerilla in defeat

Over on Lucky White Girl, the blog proprietor waxes nostalgic about the modern anti-globalization movement, which has proven capable of mustering 10,000 guerillas to take on the Borg-like forces of globalized mercantilism (I call it mercantilism rather than capitalism because government-enforced "capitalism" which takes the wealth of nations and gives it to a privileged few via government-enforced oligopolies is nothing of the sort). She exults over its decentralized nature, its lack of central leaders that can be taken out to destroy the movement, their resilience in the face of overwhelming opposition from the forces of globalized mercantilism. The thing is, by comparing her movement to a guerilla movement, she is admitting that it has been defeated.

Look, nobody fights a guerilla war if they don't have to. The only people who fight guerilla wars are the losers. If you can take on an opposing army in a straight-up battle, that's what you do. In Vietnam, the NVA resorted to guerilla tactics not because said tactics were effective. They resorted to guerilla tactics because every time they fought a straight-up battle against the U.S. Army, they got their butt kicked.

"But the U.S. lost in Vietnam!" I hear you say. No. The U.S. left Vietnam. The U.S. left Vietnam because there was no compelling national interest for the U.S. to be in Vietnam. North Vietnam never posed a security threat to the United States, and lacking such a security threat, there simply was insufficient rationale to forever station half a million troops on the other side of the world at enormous expense. Reality is that no guerilla army has ever defeated a professional army using guerilla tactics, and never will. All that guerillas can do is provide pinpricks in the side of a professional army, pinpricks which are painful but not life-threatening by any means. Over time, such pin-pricks can motivate the professional army to go elsewhere, much as the pin-pricks of a thousand flying mosquitos can send a troop of Boy Scouts to the shelter of a screened-in cabin, but the notion of a guerilla defeating a standing army is ridiculous. The Viet Mihn which defeated the French Foreign Legion at Dien Bien Phu were not a guerilla army. They did not use guerilla tactics against the French. They were a regular army, equipped with artillery and anti-aircraft cannon, using regular military tactics against an opposing army.

The very fact that you use guerilla tactics is an admission of weakness, because if you had the strength, you would mount a full-scale assault using conventional tactics. But in this particular war, the mercantilists have all the weapons. They control a vast right-wing propaganda machine that has propagandized millions of brownshirts to enforce political conformity amongst wide swathes of the population. The anti-globalism activists reach hundreds of thousands with their tactics. The VRWC reaches millions every single night, every day of the week. And furthermore, the mercantilists can't be pinpricked into leaving the way that the Americans were pinpricked into leaving Vietnam. They were born here. They live here. They have much self-interest in perpetuating their rule over the United States, a rule which is very profitable. They're not going anywhere.

Does this mean the situation is hopeless? Probably not. It is starting to dawn upon the more brilliant of the mercantilists that pure mercantilistic oppression of the masses is probably not in their best interests. A kinder, gentler rule works better in the long run because it keeps the sheep contented and on the farm where they can be more easily fleeced than if they jumped the fences due to harsh conditions. The pinpricks of the anti-mercantilism activists, while not particularly hurting these people, have the potential to grow into something larger if the masses are oppressed harder, and heading off a potential adversary at the pass before he has mobilized his full forces is always a wise thing to do. So while this movement will never win, the very fact that it exists brings some unpleasant facts to the fore that our ruling class had unwisely forgotten. But, as with Vietnam, in the end the decision will be made by our ruling class, not by "we the people", who do not rule this nation and have not ruled this nation since the day it was born (unless by "we the people" you mean a wealthy elite, or, as George W. Bush puts it, "my constituency, the haves and the have-mores"). Our noise is important in leading them towards making a wise choice, but in the end, we will no more defeat the mercantilists using guerilla tactics than the North Vietnamese Army defeated the U.S. Army using guerilla tactics. At best, we're a nuisance. Which, in the end, may be good enough.

-- Badtux the Movement Penguin

The AK-47 at age 60

No major army in the world still uses the venerable AK-47 rifle. Its low muzzle velocity means that the big 7.62mm round doesn't manage enough steam to penetrate even modest modern body armor. And the size and weight of that big 7.62mm round means that a soldier can't carry as much rounds as with more modern .223 or 5.45 rounds. Yet at 60 years of age, the AK-47 is still the world's best guerilla rifle.

Part of it is because of the requirements of Soviet-era industry. Soviet industry was, let us say, crude. So when Kalishnikov designed the AK-47, he designed it with largely stamped parts with loose tolerances. The result is a rifle that is dirt-cheap to make and largely idiot-proof and capable of functioning despite neglect by ignorant peasants, tolerant of conditions that would have a modern assault rifle jammed solid. The downside to the loose tolerances is the low muzzle velocity. But then, the first target of any guerilla is not enemy soldiers, who after all represent a foreign and alien presence that will some day leave. The first target of any guerilla is the civilian infrastructure of governance propped up by those soldiers, which must be comprehensively undermined and rendered ineffectual so that when the foreign soldiers leave, the foreign-influenced government can be swept out of office rather than remaining as a tool of foreign imposition upon the body politic. The goal is to kill tax collectors and city councilmen and other such regional tools of the central government and thus render the central government isolated and helpless, not to attack the occupation troops. For every U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, a dozen Iraqi civilians employed by the central government have been killed. They just don't get counted because, well, they're just darkies after all, they're not real people, God's chosen people, the only real humans, Americans.

For that purpose the AK-47 is simply brilliant. Cheap, durable, and quite capable of ventilating someone who isn't expecting to be ventilated, guerillas world-wide love it almost as much as they love their RPG-7's (the funny looking rockets that you always see the guerillas waving around, which are almost as old and cheap as the AK-47). I think it is safe to say that wherever you have a puppet government being propped up by foreign troops, you will see AK-47's. The AK-47, sad to say, is a weapon that will likely see another 60 years of continuous use before being abandoned because the inheritors of the Earth have no hands to use it (besides, cockroaches do not fight wars).

-- Badtux the War Penguin

Buried alive

There is a mound of earth near the intersection of Lick Mill and Hope Drive in Santa Clara, California. Right now it is a rather anonymous mound of earth, with nothing to tell what it is, but when the developer sent a bulldozer to clear the brush and scrub off of it the bulldozer hit bones. Human bones.

Nobody knew what these bones were. Speculations were rampant. There was no record of a cemetery in that location. Was it an Indian burial mound? A Spanish land grant cemetery? Or what? The answer turned out to be, none of the above, and shows more about our society than you would think.

This land was the far corner of the Agnews Insane Asylum in 1906, a vast mental hospital run by the State of California where several buildings from the early 1900's are now preserved by Sun Microsystems as part of their corporate HQ (and how appropriate that is). None of the buildings that Sun Microsystems preserved dates to April 17, 1906. On April 17, 1906, Agnews Insane Asylum was a vast three and four story red brick building with multiple wings. On April 18, 1906, one wing of Agnews Insane Asylum collapsed and most of the rest of the building heavily damaged, shaken apart in the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 with the immediate loss of 112 lives and dozens more to die over the next few weeks from exposure or injuries. While every tent in the U.S. Army inventory was immediately on its way to San Francisco, it was not until days later that anybody outside of the hospital and its immediate community even knew about the problem at Agnews. In the meantime, to prevent disease, the surviving staff organized the surviving patients to dig a mass grave for the victims, who were then unceremoniously dumped in and covered with dirt. The mass grave was then forgotten, left to sit in a tangle of brush at a far corner of the asylum grounds until re-discovered by the developer. It took forensic anthropologists working with historians digging through archives dating to 1906 to re-discover the contents of this mass grave. Because, after all, the people buried in it were only crazies. Mentally unstable. Untermenschen, as you will. And then, as now, most people viewed these people as being failures, as being weak of mind and weak of will, rather than possessing a disease where their brain produces certain chemicals in the wrong proportions for proper functioning, so it wasn't as if they counted as real people, right?

I am in a beach town on the outskirts of a major city. There is a public restroom at this beach, and three homeless men are holding a very loud discussion about something I've deliberately moved out of earshot of. From experience I know that dealing with these men would be frustrating because they are untreated mentally ill and their minds work in ways that are not conducive to normal conversation, so I simply do not deal with them. After a while the men move away, and I move towards the public restroom. Through the door I see the ass ends of two more homeless men, and I know what they are doing -- they are shooting up. Undoubtedly if I continued through the door I would see white latex gloves and syringes all over as they self-treat their illness with a drug that they can obtain without going through doctors, pharmacists, insurance companies, and all those other things that as homeless mentally ill they have no access to. I move away and go elsewhere.

Later I am in a hotel near the center of this beach town. The surrounding houses are small well-kept cottages dating back to the 1940's and 1950's. The cars parked outside them are not expensive cars, not Mercedes and BMW and Lexus and such, but they are relatively new and shiny and proudly proclaim the middle-classness of these people who can afford to live in this beach town. If this were the early evening, I could walk along these streets and see the homeowners outside proudly pruning their landscaping. I imagine talking to one of them about what I saw at the beach. The confused stare at the outset as their suburban mindset is disturbed by the notion of something outside their own existence. The instant dismissal, "they're crazy, there's nothing to be done, they choose to live that way", not seeing the contradiction between saying they're mentally ill and saying they "chose", not seeing that it was the illness that did the choosing here. And of course there are things that could be done, easy access to doctors and medications and showers and secure lockers for their goods so that they can go to those doctors without fearing loss of what little they possess, and for those who will simply refuse to do so at least easy access to clean needles and secure places to shoot up so that the public restroom becomes merely a restroom again rather than a shooting gallery, but all of that would fall on deaf ears anyhow. Because these are only "crazies". Mentally ill. Weak-willed. Untermenschen, if you will. And acknowledging that they are instead ordinary human beings who were born with a problem with their brain chemistry would require actually, like, doing something. And for these well-dressed middle class people precariously hanging on to their pleasant little homes and their relatively new cars in the shaky economy that the Republican looting of our economy over the last 28 years has produced, doing something other than trying to get what little they can hold onto into their own greedy little hands is just too much work, too much effort, requires too much thought. And besides, those homeless guys at the beach? They're only crazies.

It seems to me that the only difference between 1906 and 2007 is that today, we don't wait until the mentally ill die before burying them. We do it while they're still alive. And pretend we're not doing it, as we do it. And when they do genuinely die, make sure it gets marked down as "pneumonia" or "heart failure" or whatever, not as what it really is: Suffocation due to being buried alive in a society that eats its own.

-- Badtux the Mental Health Penguin

Penguin blah update

Still feel blah. I have no idea how I could catch a cold in the summertime, but a cold it decidedly is. Not allergies, allergies don't make me feel bad they just make my nose run and the antihistamines knock that out. Antihistamines aren't knocking this out.

Gotta go, have some coffee, mint tea, and chicken soup to suck down, then take a nap.

-- Badtux the Sniffling Aching Penguin

Chicken soup

Since this is the Silicon Valley, I went to the local pho place and got some pho ga -- Vietnamese chicken noodle soup. I got the "small" bowl. I don't see how anybody could eat the "large" bowl at this place, the "small" bowl is decidedly more than I can eat!

Penguin still feel blah, but breathes better. Thanks, Sharecropper!

-- Badtux the Well-Souped Penguin

Penguin don't feel good

Sore throat, all blah... gah.

Too blah to even haul out a cat picture. Though not too blah to pet a cat. Mencken is resting quietly beside me, purring happily, while the Mighty Fang earlier did his catly duty of providing furry softness.

-- Badtux the Ill Penguin

Computer geeks are exciting

My brother Cooter the Suthern Penguin came over from Cooterville to visit. Cooter is a computer geek too. Here is what our day looked like:

7:30am: Get out of bed, put coffee on.
8:00am: Manage to suck down 4 cup pot of coffee. Put another pot of coffee on.
8:30am: He logs onto his laptop at the dining room table. I log onto my laptop on the futon. Hilarity ensues. Okay, maybe not. Just the sound of tapity tapity tapity on the keys, with occasional grumbling from him ("Damned Windows! Close, bastard, close! No, that's not what I wanted you to do, you stupid Microsoft piece of shit! GRRR!").
10:00am: Finally drag him away from his computer. Go to Korean grocer and get some kimchi (cabbage, radish), sprouts, and green tea, as well as buy a wok for cooking stir-fry tonite (after remembering that my last wok had started to rust and I tossed it). BTW, Korean woks are *not* the same as Chinese woks.
11:00am: Eat leftover jambalaya along with kimchi and other veggies. Return to computers. Tapity tapity tapity "why is this computer so freakin' slow? Stupid Microsoft piece of shit!". (I'm just smiling from behind the keyboard of my Macbook).
12:30pm: "Yo, dude! We're gonna miss the tour at the Computer Museum!" (tapity tapity tapity).
12:35pm: "Yo, dude? Hello? We gotta get going!"
12:40pm: Leave for computer museum
1:00pm: Arrive at computer museum. Tour.
3:00pm: Leave computer museum. Go to the Fine Palace of Tasteful Swedish Furniture, buy two of their white book-cases.
3:30pm: Find out that their white book-cases *will* fit into a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, if you tilt them right and run them at an angle with the passenger seat all the way forward (I had left the back seat at home of course). By this time my throat is hurting from drainage and I feel blah because I have a cold. Brother wedges himself behind me and we drive home.
4:00pm: Take book-cases up to apartment, lean them against wall. Go to respective computers. Tapity tapity tapity tapity.
5:30pm: Cooter sez, "I'm hungry. Let's go to In'n'Out." He is quite taken with In'n'Out, which they don't have back in Cooterville. The notion that they make the french fries by slicing up potatoes right there in front of him fascinates him, the notion that not even the ground beef is frozen amazes him, and he sucks them down. If he could, he would eat every meal at In'n'Out.
6:00pm: Get back from In'n'Out with bag of takeout. Eat.
6:30pm: Go back to computers. Tapity tapity tapity tapity.
9:00pm: Make mint tea for sore throat. Tapity tapity tapity.

Yeah, computer geeks are such exciting people...

-- Badtux the Computer Geek Penguin

Friday critter blogging

I tawt I saw a putty tat!

-- Badtux the Bird-watching Penguin

Chicken and sausage jambalaya

Recipe:

• 1 box Zatarain's Jamalaya mix
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (2 teaspoon if you're not a wimp)
• 1/2 pound chicken breast meat
• 1/2 pound andouille sausage or fine kielbasa sausage (andouille is best, but often unavailable)

Dishes required:

• 4 quart covered saucepan, non-stick
• Small stainless steel pot
• Bowl
• Wooden spoon
• Plastic spoon

Directions:

• Using scissors, cut up chicken breast meat into thin strips as if you were about to stir-fry, then cut strips into smaller chunks.
• Put olive oil into stainless steel pot
• Put crushed red pepper into olive oil
• Put pot on stove, turn burner on high
• When crushed red pepper begins to sizzle, use wooden spoon to shove it around a little to make sure it all gets coated with oil and cooked, then toss the chicken into the pot and stir vigorously with wooden spoon until all chicken is coated with pepper and oil and is seared white on all sides. Remove pot from heat and pour chicken into bowl and set aside.
• Toss the wooden spoon in the sink (it touched raw chicken)
• Using scissors or a knife, cut sausage into chunks.
• Cook the Zatarain's in the saucepan according to the directions on the box, putting the chicken and sausage into the mix mixture at the appropriate time.
• Enjoy!

The chicken, cooked this way, is extremely tasty (and spicy!) and combines well with the sausage. The only other thing I would do would be to add some fresh bellpepper (chunked) into this, that's the only thing it really lacks. The local chefs go nuts with their jambalaya, but let's remember that this was invented as a peasant food to take advantage of leftover meats, and thus should be simple. The Zatarains mix already has a fair amount of spices in it and the crushed red pepper and fresh pepper oil adds more, the need for bellpepper is equal parts flavor and texture.

Oh - be careful with the raw chicken, y'all. Make sure you wash your hands well after handling it and don't re-use instruments that touched raw chicken. Salmonella is rampant in raw chicken nowdays.

-- Badtux the Lazy Cook Penguin

About a girl

I am thinking about a girl. On the cusp of woman-hood, staring out upon a cold sea with goose-bumps showing on her arms and legs, I am wondering, what is she thinking? There has been a war on ever since she was old enough to be aware, a war that is increasingly a disaster and that her generation and the generations after her will be paying for, a war that has resulted in tens of thousands of crippled soldiers coming back from Iraq-nam to be dumped on the streets like so much garbage. Maybe her brother is in the Army. Maybe a boyfriend. Like so many of her generation, perhaps possessed of a cynicism and world-weariness beyond her years, as it becomes increasingly clear that her generation will be cleaning up this nightmare for the rest of her life. Is this cynicism hiding anger at the situation in which she will find herself in when she becomes an adult?

I wonder, what does she think of my generation? What does she think about how we have dealt with things? What about the baby boomers, what does she think of them? I fear that it is not going to be positive. What happens next, I wonder? Will the anger simply simmer, simmer, simmer, turning into self-hate and self-disgust as the years go by? Will she become as "bought" as my generation, leashed to our endless cycle of debt and work? Or will the destruction of the American dream by the Busheviks and their ilk result in something more explosive, more violent, more... revolutionary?

If the last, I fear for my own life and safety, for I have certainly done nothing to help make this young lady's life easier. Oh sure, I donated a few bucks to John Kerry and voted for both President Gore and for Kerry, but really, is that all that I could have done? I doubt it. I doubt it. And I doubt she thinks so, either. And really, who can blame her?

-- Badtux the Pensive Penguin

Outrage fatigue

I suppose I could post some outraged screed about how Dear Leader believes in that "rule of law" thingy only when it's a Democrat who gets convicted. But really, are we at all surprised that he pardoned his buddy Scooter? I had already predicted, months before, that Scooter Libby wouldn't serve a day in jail. Because Dear Leader simply does not care. He done been electorated, señors and señoritas. And short of impeachment, which ain't happenin' as long as eleven Republicans don't bolt to the Democratic Party in the Senate (I am counting Joe Lieberman as a Republican), he ain't gettin' UN-electorated, so why should he care? Because of that "legacy" thing? Crap, his legacy done been shot to shit with that Iraq mess, which shall go down as the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history. He done finished with that "legacy" thing. He just gets to sit in his Oval Office and go "heh heh heh" with that asinine smirk on his face for the rest of his term of office, no matter what, while watching his cronies rub their hands in glee over all the money they're looting from the Treasury while Dear Leader smirks.

In short, it's hard to get outraged over what's not a surprise. I'm just waiting for the bombs to start falling on Iran, myself. I figure that it'll be in October of next year, shortly before the elections. Either then, or December of next year immediately after a Democrat has been elected to the Presidency, just to fuck over his successor -- nevermind that it'd be a disaster for the nation, Dear Leader don't give a shit about the nation, all he cares about is spite and profit for himself and his cronies.

- Badtux the Tired Penguin

The Pledge of Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Corporate States of America. And to the Walmart for which it stands, one corporation, under Manna, with Chinese-slave-produced cheap shit for all.

Happy 4th of July, y'all. And oh, that other flag? Well, that one represents an idea and a nation that's been mostly deceased for the last 42 years, ever since That Bastard LBJ lied us into another senseless war against brown people for reasons that nobody can really understand.

-- Badtux the Cynical Penguin

Keeping apart

I am visiting a big city with an engineer from another state, where he lives in a small town. We are in a park in this city full of parks, on a sunny Monday afternoon immediately after eating a scrumptious meal in a gorgeous Italian cafe'. He looks around at the surrounding townhouses and condo towers and says "I don't know how anybody can live like this, with no space!"

I look at the old black man sitting on the other end of the park bench, the elderly Chinese man slowly winding his way around the track around the edge of the park, the young five or six year old Caucasian girl riding her bicycle unsteadily on that same track as her father worriedly holds his hand near the back of her seat. A pair of lesbians nuzzle each other on a blanket spread on the grass, a frat boy sunbathes on another blanket. A homeless dude lies down in the sun on what looks like half of a U-Haul furniture pad. A young Asian man performs some sort of exercise that involves headstands and various postures, and an Indian couple jabbers away while a Japanese dad photographs his spawn posing in front of the statue of Ben Franklin standing in this park. A stereotypical white yuppy family, mom, dad, son, daughter, sit on a blanket eating a picnic lunch.

All of these people live together in this big city and mix and learn and work together as one. And I realize that he simply will not understand. Because there is a distance in his life between himself and the people around him, a distance not only physical but in the heart, the same sort of distance that is in the lives of almost everybody else who lives in the so-called "heartland", and he does not understand how to live without that kind of distance. He does not understand how to live in the world, rather than apart from the world. And nothing I say will change that.

-- Badtux the Observant Penguin
Also posted in slightly different form at the Mockingbird's Medley

Musings from a major city

I walk out the hotel, past the security guard, and head uphill towards the Denny's. I step over a white surgical glove. I decide I want to learn what is going on in the world, and walk past the Denny's towards the gas station on the corner to buy a newspaper. I cut across the parking lot. There is a spot where the cashier of the gas station and anyone in the Denny's can't see. There are needles and syringes scattered all around on the asphalt.

People, if you are going to shoot up, will it kill you to pick your shit up? That's just, like, fucking *gross*, y'know? I realize that if you cared about being nasty and disgusting and gross you wouldn't be shooting up, since shooting up is guaranteed to make you nasty and disgusting and gross, but c'mon, people. Have a little fucking pride, okay?

Meanwhile, right-wing politicians continue to pound their fists upon their podiums and demand more prisons, more police, more penalties. Dudes, that shit ain't working. Those fucking needles in the parking lot are proof enough of that. Like the war in Iraq, the war on drugs just ain't working, and ain't been working for, like, THIRTY FIVE FUCKING YEARS now. More of the same ain't gonna make it work one damn bit better. It's time to admit defeat, and do something else. Like, say, treat addiction as a medical problem, not a criminal problem, and quit trying to outlaw something that losers have proven capable of acquiring anyhow despite all our attempts to stop them. Playing Big Brother just, in the end, does not work. All it does is make me have to step over syringes and white surgical gloves in the parking lot of a Denny's in a big American city when all I fucking want to do is buy a paper to read with my breakfast.

But crap, that's just me making sense again, and we all know how much use that is...

-- Badtux the Realist Penguin

In the blogosphere, nobody ever knows where you are

Especially if you have a Macbook and a bluetooth phone that does DUN. Right now I could be anywhere in the US where Sprint offers EVDO data service... and I ain't tellin' ya.

-- Badtux the Migratory Penguin
Hmm, lots of posts about birds today!

An Iraq war critic encounters an Iraq war supporter

The Iraq war supporter says, "It's not dead! It's just... resting! Yeah!"

Well, if it's been "resting" for four years, mate, it isn't bloody likely to get up and start rumbling a samba, right? Let's face facts. This parrot is deceased. Dead. Gone to meet its maker. Kaput. If it ain't been won in four years, it ain't gonna get won. Saying this parrot needs "more time" ain't gonna make it any less stiff. The only reason it isn't pushing up daisies is because the shop keeper err Bush Administration keeps nailing it to its perch and selling it to more gullible idiots who come through the door. But this parrot is, in the end, *dead*.

- Badtux the Parrot Penguin

Why Michael Moore was right

Some folks object to Michael Moore saying that we ought to go to universal single-payer. "There's other ways to achieve universal coverage!" they cry, pointing, for example, at the Swiss model, which incorporates multiple private insurance companies.

The thing is, the Swiss model includes heavily regulated insurance companies that basically operate as arms of the government. It's sorta multi-single-payer coverage, much as in the old Bell System days when the Bell System was so heavily regulated as to basically be just another department of the Federal Government. The problem with retaining the current U.S. insurance industry is that it has proven itself to be utterly corrupt and irredeemable, in my opinion. My mother has worked in the health care industry for close to 40 years now, and has seen the results of the health insurance industry moving from the mutual model to the profit model first-hand. In my opinion, health insurance corporations which are publicly traded should be *OUTLAWED* as a menace to society, no different from cluster bombs and handguns in their ability to kill innocents. Because the moment you become a publicly traded corporation, your first allegiance is not to health care. Your first allegiance is now to your stock holders, who don't care about health care, they just want profit, moh profit, moh profit, and if you don't deny coverage of sick people in order to increase profit, you get fired and people more vicious get hired to replace you.

So retaining private insurance in the primary care business is, in my opinion, unworkable. Our insurance industry has become too corrupt, too wealthy, too willing to bribe Congressmen to do its bidding, for us to put together *any* health insurance scheme that includes them that will actually work at, like, actually providing universal health care. Via their venal behavior over the past two decades they have foregone any seat at the health care table, as far as I'm concerned. Let's just extend Medicare to *everybody*, allow health care insurers to remain as "Medi-gap" providers if they so desire, and otherwise get their venal butts out of our health care.

Medicare. If it's good enough for the prunes, it's good enough for the rest of us. Or do you say we're giving second-rate care to our old people?

- Badtux the Medical Penguin

Peckerwoods, suits, and sickos

So what do the people that Mimus Pauly so charitably calls "peckerwoods", the music industry suits, and the health care insurers covered by Michael Moore's new film "Sicko" all have in common? Simple: They all possess an unwarranted sense of self-entitlement that says that they're entitled, yes, *ENTITLED*, to make a living in the industry in which they've chosen.

I ran into it first hand working in the oil industry in the early 1980's. Affirmative Action programs had brought the first black oilfield workers into the shop. As far as I could tell, they were competent and did the jobs for which they were hired just fine, but that didn't stop the peckerwoods from grumbling that "goddamned niggers are taking our jobs". Like, the fucking stupid peckerwoods thought they were *entitled* to those jobs, like it was some natural born right or something. Now the peckerwoods are grumbling about how them goddamned cockroaches from south of the border are taking their jobs. Nevermind that the goddamned moron peckerwoods are stupid as a brick and time after time vote for the same goddamned politicians who set up the system that lets the Mexicans swarm across the border. Nevermind that the peckerwoods are lazy, intellectually interested only in beer and football, and do as little work as they can get away with, to the point where a lot of construction contractors I know will hire *legal* Hispanics over legal peckerwoods simply because the Hispanics will work their goddamned tails off while the peckerwoods just slouch around whining about how they're being picked on by "The Man" for, like, being expected to actually WORK. In the HEAT. In the SUN! Without being waited on hand and FOOT! But will they actually get out there and bust their butts to show employers that they're both capable and willing of working hard and getting the job done? Hell no. They prefer drinking beer and whining about Mexicans taking their jobs.

The recording industry suits are the same way. Rather than listen to the public when the public says that, like, firing 1/3rd of the recording artists and suing thousands of your customers is bad business, what do they do? Why, like buggy whip makers whining about that new horseless carriage, they whine that new technology is rendering their job obsolete and should thus be outlawed! It's the same goddamned mentality. They think the world has an obligation to give them a living. Sorta like the linotype operators at the New York Times who whined that the Times had an obligation to provide jobs for them despite all those fancy new computer typesetting widgets the Times had acquired. They went out on strike, the Times said "fine", turned on the computer typesetting widgets, and the linotype operators never came back from strike because, well, they had no jobs to come back to. Technology happens. When it happens, you either learn the new technology and make a living there, or you learn how to say "Do you want fries with that order, sir?". The world has no obligation to give you a good living in the industry you've chosen. Shit, musicians know that, that's why they have day jobs except for a very very few who are lucky enough to make their living at music full time. The suits are scared as hell that they're gonna join the ranks of barristas at Starbucks who work evenings as roadies on the local bar circuit.

Now we get the health insurance companies and their paid lackeys in the corporate media whining about Michael Moore's new film "Sicko" and his call for universal national single-payer health care. They whine, "what about the hundreds of thousands of Americans who work in the health insurance industry?" Oh cry me a river, you see this . ? Yeah, it's the world's smallest fucking violin. They're not goddamned *ENTITLED* to those fucking jobs. Let'em join the rest of us motherfuckers out here on the free market, who have to show that we goddamned *KNOW OUR SHIT* and work our fucking tails off to get ahead. And the same thing for the billionaire profiteers who own those companies. So their stocks in those companies become worthless? oh WAH! You fucking *CHOSE* to invest in the most evil companies on this planet, and now you're going to whine that your choice was a bad choice? It's your own goddamned fault, you stupid-assed bitches! You and your short-sighted asshole demands for moh profit, moh profit, moh profit at the expense of health care quality destroyed our health care system and kills thousands of people every year (*MORE PEOPLE DIE OF DENIED HEALTH CARE COVERAGE EVERY YEAR THAN AMERICANS KILLED IN IRAQ DURING THE ENTIRE WAR!*), so fuck you. Go jump off the goddamned top of a skyscraper or something, you stupid assholes. You deserve to lose all your money for being such jerks as to place profits ahead of people.

And to all of the people above: *THE WORLD DOESN'T GODDAMNED WELL OWE YOU JACK SHIT!*. *Nothing*. Nada. Not one goddamned thing. If you're too goddamned lazy, greedy, venal, and/or stupid to make an honest living, it's your own goddamned fault. Don't whine that I should bail your stupid lazy ass out because you're too stupid to move into the digital media market or too lazy to compete with Mexicans or too greedy to, like, fucking provide the goddamned health care that we pay and pay and PAY for (15%+ of our Gross Domestic Product, or about twice what a universal single provider health care system would require to cover every single American). Just shut your fucking mouth up and go get a job, you lazy slacker assholes, and quit bothering my fucking ass with your whine whine whine whine (oh do you want fucking CHEESE with that whine, assholes?). I'm tired of it. WAYYYY more than tired of it. Goddamn it, get a fucking CLUE, will ya?!

-- Badtux the Rude Penguin

As usual, I cross-post my best stuff over at The Medley...

Shiny!

The Mighty Fang out-shines my shiny new Macbook while Mencken looks on from under the futon. (No, he doesn't spend all his time under the futon -- only when I pull out my camera does he run under there!).

-- Badtux the Shiny Cat Owned Penguin

Let's party like it's 1953!

The U.S. Supreme Court overturns Brown v Board of Education, re-legalizes segregation (as long as it's done wink wink nod nod by drawing school boundaries in a "color blind" way that just happens to put all the white kids in "good" schools and just happens to put all the brown kids in miserable schools).

As a black and white and yellow multicolored penguin, I am of course concerned about this decision, since it means that my multicolored offspring are likely to never be allowed to mix with pale-skinned monocolored monkeys in the schools and thus will be less prepared to interact with them in the workplace and beyond as they go their migratory waterfowl ways. But hey, gotta keep the darkies in their place, right? Why, if white-skinned monocolored monkeys are allowed to mix with dark-skinned monocolored monkeys, it could... it could... uhm... cause the moon to turn into cheese and fall to Earth and cause a plague of mice? Cause San Francisco to slide into the ocean? Cause everybody to come down with leprosy and die horrible deaths? C'mon, folks, I'm reachin' here, help me out!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin