Author's posts
Sep 10 2010
Wild Wild Left Radio #80 To Vote or Not to Vote…
Gottlieb and Diane G. are live and in color (or is that off color?) on WWL radio Friday night at 6pm Eastern Time to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective.
Hear the Unreported & Under Reported Headlines stories you should be paying attention to, from US Politics, to the farthest reaches of the Earth by the WWL coalition of subversion: undermining the PTB by speaking Truth to Power!!!!
The Mid-Terms are bearing down our throats like Cholula Sauce and there just isn’t enough Mescal to put out the fire. It BUUUUUUUUUUURNS!
So, here we are on the Left of the Left fringes of Liberal/Progressive Land wondering just what we are supposed to be doing. The Obama administration has done more to crush the Left than a thousand Palin Presidencies ever could, and exposed the Bipartisan Kabuki as bad Uniparty Political theater more than a tsunami of heinously acted fake Beck tears.
Less than 50% of the People normally vote in a POTUS year, far less in the midterms. So with the Left thrown fully under the bus by the Democrats, do we bother to vote? Do we sink to the lesser of the two evils again, vote third party and write ins, register Republican to force people to see the horrors of their ways, or start burning our Ballots outside of every Polling Place in the US in protest?
What are the viable alternative outcomes as the Empire collapses? Will unions be the structure, or utter chaos, or a Police State?
Is there any ground level structure that can be formed to make We The People wrest our Power back from its Corporate Sponsors?
Is it all over but the hoarding heirloom ganga seeds, toilet paper and porn?
The Debate is on, folks: Jump in!
****** Be heard by joining in our live chat, or calling in! Spread the message by telling your friends to listen in or sending them the podcasts!
Please join us for the only “out there where the buses don’t run” LEFT perspective on the breaking news!
Controversy? We face it. Cutting Edge? We step over it. Revolutions start with information, and The Wild Wild Left Radio brings you the best in information and op/eds from a position that others on the Left fear to tread.
Call In!
Join Diane and Gottlieb every Friday at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for News from the Real Left. No hand-wringing, no PC, just straight talk from reality based politics.
WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.
The call in number is 646-929-1264
The live chat link will go live around 5:20.. found at the bottom of the show page, or by clicking the link below!
CHAT LINK:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/f…
Sep 09 2010
Faux Populism
The government is the enemy. If we could just go back to the 50’s, things would be swell, you know.
Father knew best. Whether he left us or stayed. Lets face it, when you work 14 hours, and come home to a well dressed, obedient family pampering you, life is grand. Back when we let Father run things, jeepers, everyone went to Church, no one had to lock their doors, and all those darkies knew their place. There were boarding schools to make the Natives see the error of their ways. No one would mess with us. Teachers didn’t spoil the child, they applied every spare rod imaginable to them, even their own. There was no crime, because no one spoke of crimes. Loose lips sink ships, and every day was Family Day and Flag Day and Church Day. Your obligation was to protect all three!
Things were better before the Government got all involved in our lives, and taxed us to death. That’s what orphanages and sanitariums were for – to keep the distasteful and dissenters out of view. Commies belonged on chain gangs and the lazy as migrant pickers. We productive Americans did fine. No one had sex, drank, did drugs or disobeyed. I mean, without the sanctity of marriage, the prescription of Dr Feelgood, or to calm their nerves from a trying day of Mommyhood. Frank Sinatra was king, and all that be-bop was the beginning of the end. People should have listened to Tammy, stood by their man, and kept their traps shut. Men will be men, and Father knew best.
We just need to go backward, backward to a time most of the people who talk about it, don’t really remember.
The path back is simple: Listen to Fox News.
Sep 07 2010
The Morality of Liberalism
Its interesting, I’ve read so many odd things this week that meld together in this contraption that runs my physical being. Religion, Liberalism, Science. Open-mindedness.
I’ve seen sites co-opted in the past by people insisting our rage against the liars and the murderous bastards at the helm of this nation is illiberal… since good liberals don’t ever use language that might “dehumanize” another. You all know where I stand on that touchy-feely bullshit.
I’ve seen other blogs, in the name of free speech, let pedantic madmen, bullies or right-wingers set the tone, just by sheer screaming volume, since real liberals must allow everyone a turn at the podium. Right… lets let Dick Cheney frame the day!
I’ve heard people say we need to find a moral reasoning to support our stances. I’ve heard people say we are too connected to science, and not connected enough to faith.
So, in no particular order, I’m going to shit pearls of Liberal wisdoms, and what I think to be the obvious morality behind them.
Lets start with the oldest philosophical question of all about what “goodness” is, and how it is weighed in a society. The few vs the many? Kind of a no brainer. You learned it in kindergarten whether or not you studied any religion. Its called the Golden Rule.
Sep 06 2010
Declined To Investigate
DTI – That may well be the new name of our Country, or at least its Ruling Class. Anyone who does not see that this is a Class War really needs to think about the fact if you have money, or are assigned a position of Power by the moneyed class, “Declined To Investigate” is always your designation, no matter how reprehensible your acts.
In the land of those suckled on Indian-killing cowboyism, I guess I am not surprised that the DTI on torture and War Crimes doesn’t trigger any reaction, I mean those are less than human darkies in their purview …. but you would think there would enough parental triggers left in the species to make baby raping something we just might react to.
But when 264 Pentagon Employees used credit cards to repeatedly purchase kiddy porn? Nadda. In 2006, they “looked into” only 52 of those, with only 10 were charged. We are talking about people with the highest security clearances in our land… and they just Declined To Investigate them. And no one says a thing.
Sep 05 2010
Timing IS Everything. Look to Labor.
I had a surprise knock on my door yesterday. Cindy Denby is our MI House State Representative, and she is running for re-election. Truth be told? When I heard the car door, and saw her plodding up my walk, I thought, someone lost a dog or something. She handed me her doorknocker sized pamphlet, and started to introduce herself. I glanced down at the picture and the bright red “Conservative Republican” and said, “Oh, honey, I’m sorry, never going to happen, I’m a wild liberal!” She actually laughed. “Wild?” I wished her a nice day anyway. I suppose on a better day, a day I was remotely in the mood for people, I would have taken that chance to ask her in for coffee and debated with her. She seemed pleasant enough. I have to give her credit for going door to door herself. I must be growing soft, I didn’t even have the remote desire to rip her spine out through her mouth. I totally blew off the chance to get on my soapbox and ask if supporting the Rich really was good for the People.
Other than hunkering down with our immediates and stockpiling toilet paper, what is it we can do? That’s the question the far-left keeps asking. Communes are a pretty pipe dream, but post-oil Armageddon? We could suggest the survivors all do the pilgrimage back to the Georgia Guidestones, and renew the World with our new angelic ways. But Georgia has Georgians, and they know the lie of the Land. Ever seen Deliverance? I’m pretty sure the area is tropical swamp. It has lots of fresh water, 887 thousand kinds of poisonous snakes, and the mosquitoes have gunner pilots on board. Besides, most of us are old fucks and couldn’t survive the 3 year walk it would take to get there.
( map wouldn’t work here…)
So what now, Diane? You blow off change from within, and you won’t let us think we have special powers to survive, find one another and live happily ever after. Hell, you won’t even let us hunker down and wallow in self-gratification as the Empire burns. Just when you thought your porn collection and stockpiled heirloom weed seed would come in handy!
Don’t despair. I have an angle. I always have an angle. You did read the Title, yes?
Sep 03 2010
Wild Wild Left Radio #79 Perma-War, Perma-Disasters, & Perma-Gov
Gottlieb and Diane G. are live and in color (or is that off color?) on WWL radio Friday night at 6pm Eastern Time to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective.
Hear the Unreported & Under Reported Headlines stories you should be paying attention to, from US Politics, to the farthest reaches of the Earth by the WWL coalition of subversion: undermining the PTB by speaking Truth to Power!!!!
1984 much anyone? Come to the land through the looking glass yet again; where attacking an innocent Country and destroying it is Victory, where leaving means staying, where Oil spills become the Norm, where both Parties are One and Slavery is the best end-game for our economic system.
We have myriad breaking news stories to cover, friends, listeners and lunatics… but really? We wish the song remained the same… but no, it IS getting worse.
****** Be heard by joining in our live chat, or calling in! Spread the message by telling your friends to listen in or sending them the podcasts!
Please join us for the only “out there where the buses don’t run” LEFT perspective on the breaking news!
Controversy? We face it. Cutting Edge? We step over it. Revolutions start with information, and The Wild Wild Left Radio brings you the best in information and op/eds from a position that others on the Left fear to tread.
Call In!
Join Diane and Gottlieb every Friday at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for News from the Real Left. No hand-wringing, no PC, just straight talk from reality based politics.
WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.
The call in number is 646-929-1264
The live chat link will go live around 5:20.. found at the bottom of the show page, or by clicking the link below!
CHAT LINK:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/f…
Sep 02 2010
On Political Fans and the Fringers
Crossposted from that wild-left-fringe blog’o mine The Wild Wild Left
I am Fringer. I want an American Socialist Revolution in my time. Ideally, a World Revolution. I am fringe enough that even with the absolute certainty that my desires will likely never come to fruition does not make the fires of my desire burn even slightly less intensely. I am WAY out there.
In fact, I would seriously postulate that I am an extraterrestrial being, but I have evidence to the contrary: You never see bags under those huge alien eyes – and my human weaknesses are too telling in that way.
Life and gravity have not been kind to my all too human packaging.
I feel that a true desire for justice, for all that is good and right has an event horizon; a gravity that once you commit to it, will not allow one to back away from the position. Once you see that light, that is really all that exists. You are part of the singularity.
Budhydharma wrote a brilliant sermon (fiery as a sermon, anyway) in which he asks, “Do YOU Want The Republicans To Win?” The frightening title would infer trying to make people cling back to their partisan politics, to renew their support for Democrats. That was not his whole story, though. He accomplished that in some, while maintaining that the Dems themselves are doing nothing to stop it. His idea is to “push” the Dems to do better. The comment thread was the best part, inspirational to me.
I honed my analogy from last night, from the pages of WWL, where we have been discussing the same issues, just from a Fringe-Left position. The last 4 or 5 essays all have been in part, or in full, about the process of actual change in this country. Let me expand my thoughts. (and use the Red Sox, rather than the Tigers – I hear it will make a more compelling argument 🙂
You cannot get a Red Sox fan EVER to like the Yankees…. but you can get a Baseball fan to get REALLY pissed at the Owners for locking out the League.
We need to change the very basis of the conversation.
The Owners of the League set the rules, the prices, the schedule, the ads, everything. They make bazillions off the trade. These, the richest of the Game, get subsidized by we the fan’s tax dollars – to build larger shrines to them, larger so they can charge more, and fill more seats while so doing. Welfare for the rich, tax-fueled stadiums, and tax breaks for building them in our cities.
The Players? Oh, yes, they are the pampered and well paid whores that enable the process. It doesn’t matter one bit if they wear a Yankee uniform, or a Red Sox one. They can change teams as easily as underwear.
You, the fan? Are nothing but an easily played means for more revenue. Back your Team! Show your Pride! Pay for the newest arena! Hate the other Team! Pay through the ass to watch what is still theater, meaningless team-less theater… brought to you by your Owners.
Do I need to point out the obvious analogy to our Political process?
Aug 31 2010
Time to get Back to 2008
Your doing it wrong, children.
I know you feel like a battered spouse, tricked into staying again, out of some misguided sense of loyalty. I know you feel like there is nowhere to run TO, had you the courage to leave. I know, it feels powerless and hopeless to try – and really? Despite all the disappointments, you look around and say, “Its not that bad, there are a LOT of people worse off than I am. I’m strong. Its not THAT bad yet. Nothings perfect…”
To which I say:
WHAT THE FUCK, MORONS!?!?!?!?
Sure, I know one of the things people burn out on is sustained rage – but every single thing we came together about in ’08 has gotten WORSE not BETTER.
I’m not talking about sustaining rage anymore. I’m talking about exponentially increasing our rage.
ENDING WAR?
THE ECONOMY?
TRANSPARENCY?
PRIVACY?
HEALTH CARE?
WALL STREET’S ROBBERY?
WAR CRIMES?
The only way to counter the INSANITY of the Tea Baggers slapping their balls on your face and calling it taking America back, is to remind people of HOW and WHY they got here, and who and what RUINED THEIR LIVES UP IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Aug 30 2010
Tenacatita Clusterf*ck for Ex-Pats
Crossposted from Wildwildleft.com
The US press hasn’t bothered with this, though The Vancouver Sun has given it two mentions, one this morning.
First let me explain a little Mexican remedial land usage for Ocean Front Properties… basically, they understandably don’t want foreign investors taking it all over, so it is nearly impossible to “own” coastal regions outright.
But there are ways: 30 year leases, or banks that hold title in trust for you.
The second issue with this particular piece of property is that it was an “ejido” – basically a communally held piece of property wrenched from the hands of exploitative rich ranchero owners who tried to keep the peasants from owning or using land.
Now this particular piece of property has been in question since 1991, when a developer purchased it from the widow of a former Jalisco state governor. There have been two previous mass evacuations before this one.
Portends started last summer when someone blocked the road, with no explanation, from the nearby village to the beach area.
Mass evacuation basically has happened again – Americans, Canadians, and European people who bought properties in good faith (deeds approved no less by the office of the President under Fox) have been run off their properties, along with the Mexican community that lived there, and flourished under the needs of the International Community. They not only appropriated the property; but have stolen the possessions on that property. They are tearing down homes and businesses.
I feel horrible for those people.
Aug 26 2010
Wild Wild Left Radio #78 GLBT Mindbend – An Interview with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Gottlieb and Diane G. are live and in color (or is that off color?) on WWL radio Friday night at 6pm Eastern Time to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective.
Hear the Unreported & Under Reported Headlines stories you should be paying attention to, from US Politics, to the farthest reaches of the Earth by the WWL coalition of subversion: undermining the PTB by speaking Truth to Power!!!!
Come join in on our interview with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. Check out her blog “NOBODY PASSES, darling”!
Mattilda was recently interviewed on NPR and Pacifica where she talked about the malevolence of the mainstream gay marriage/military/ordination-to-the-priesthood movement, resisting the violence of assimilation, gender fascism, gay hyperconsumerism, sex work, myopic liberals, defiant ways of loving, the failure of the “gay liberation movement”, US imperialism, creating oppositional culture, challenging all hierarchies (including anarchist hierarchies), incest, and more!
This will be one fascinating, insightful, transgressive and fabulously provocative show you don’t want to miss. She makes the case against the gay marriage movement.
WWL is delighted to have Mattilda with us this Friday. She challenges EVERYTHING, even the narrative of Gentrified Mainstream *Gaydia, (yes that is a Dianism, inspired by her book) who she feels has co-opted the larger movement against the realistic needs of the larger GLBT community.
In reading her latest book, “So Many Ways to Sleep Badly” you are transported directly to the place of no words, to the direct soul of her being. And that being is amazing. This is not observational reading, this is rolling around in the direct-essence of Mattilda until you are Mattilda. Buy this book! It will change your EVERYTHING.
From the boxes we all put one another in, to the issues people “decide” are important, to the description of “acceptable” behaviors… the only way to bend the spoon is to realize there is no spoon. When you read or listen to Mattilda, you are invited directly to a place where there is no you, and no her, there is only surviving a world of shattered glass pasts, the hugs that put the Earth back on her axis, the sweet relief of an orgasm, and always, always the air we all breathe.
We will be discussing her book, gentrification, gay marriage, anarchy, sex workers, tricks, gross consumerism, or anything the fuck else she feels like talking about.
Come let your mind be bent… or blown!
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is a writer, editor, activist, critic and troublemaker. Most recently, she is the author of the novel So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008). She is also the editor of Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal 2007), and an expanded second edition of That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull 2008).
Mattilda’s first novel was Pulling Taffy (Suspect Thoughts 2003), and she also edited Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving (Haworth 2004) and Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write about Their Clients (Haworth 2000), which now also appears in Italian (Effepi Libri 2007).
Mattilda is currently working on a new anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform. She is immersed in Lostmissing: a public art project – about the friend who will always be there, and what happens when you lose that relationship. She is also working on a memoir called The End of San Francisco.
Mattilda’s articles, essays, interviews, reviews, and stories appear regularly in a variety of publications, including the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Bitch, Utne Reader, AlterNet, Bookslut, The Stranger, and The Gay & Lesbian Review, and she writes a monthly column in Maximumrocknroll.
Mattilda is the reviews editor at the feminist magazine Make/shift, where she also writes a column.
In 2010, Mattilda made a short film, All That Sheltering Emptiness, in collaboration with Gina Carducci. Mattilda and Gina are currently working on a second film.
Mattilda’s activism has included ACT UP in the early ’90s, Fed Up Queers in the late ’90s, Gay Shame, and numerous lesser-known (or even unnamed) groups.
Mattilda lives in San Francisco, but tours regularly, and is available for bookings. In the past, she has appeared in independent bookstores, community centers, performance venues and universities including Yale, Harvard, Brown, McGill, University of Chicago, Wesleyan, Macalester, NYU, UCLA, University of Massachusetts, Evergreen, DePauw, DePaul, Mills, Antioch, University of Michigan, Wagner, University of Oregon, UC Santa Cruz, Georgetown, and others.
****** Be heard by joining in our live chat, or calling in! Spread the message by telling your friends to listen in or sending them the podcasts!
Please join us for the only “out there where the buses don’t run” LEFT perspective on the breaking news!
Controversy? We face it. Cutting Edge? We step over it. Revolutions start with information, and The Wild Wild Left Radio brings you the best in information and op/eds from a position that others on the Left fear to tread.
Call In!
Join Diane and Gottlieb every Friday at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for News from the Real Left. No hand-wringing, no PC, just straight talk from reality based politics.
WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.
The call in number is 646-929-1264
The live chat link will go live around 5:20.. found at the bottom of the show page, or by clicking the link below!
CHAT LINK:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/f…
Aug 20 2010
Wild Wild Left Radio #77 Islamogeddon for Xenophobes!
Gottlieb and Diane G. are live and in color (or is that off color?) on WWL radio Friday night at 6pm Eastern Time to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective.
Hear the Unreported & Under Reported Headlines stories you should be paying attention to, from US Politics, to the farthest reaches of the Earth by the WWL coalition of subversion: undermining the PTB by speaking Truth to Power!!!!
Well Holy Moly and Guacamole! Racism is dead, according to Dr. Laura… other than all the poor whites being demonized by Black Activists who aren’t satisfied they got their Black President. The damned oversensitive ingrates think she should not be able to say “Nigger” 11 times in 7 minutes!
And that story is only the bait-in for a full Fest of the Parade of “White People Who Just Don’t GET It.” The 14th Amendment and Hispanic-hate. The Park 51 “non-mosque” protests.
The absurd idea that Iraq’s “withdrawal” is anything but a “New Dawn” for privatized armies, as we continue to occupy them.
But Holiest of Scary?
Iran gets nuclear fuel tomorrow!The ramped up fearmongering is on the Rise, and “We need YOU to PREVENT
forest firesArmageddon!!!”Gottlieb and I shall try and break through the layers of disinformation and tap into the main vein of truthiness tonight! See you on the air!!! Join us as we beat back the rhetoric of fear and loathing, on this the Eve of Mini-Woodstock!
Peace!!
Be heard by joining in our live chat, or calling in! Spread the message by telling your friends to listen in or sending them the podcasts!
Please join us for the only “out there where the buses don’t run” LEFT perspective on the breaking news!
Controversy? We face it. Cutting Edge? We step over it. Revolutions start with information, and The Wild Wild Left Radio brings you the best in information and op/eds from a position that others on the Left fear to tread.
Call In!
Join Diane and Gottlieb every Friday at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for News from the Real Left. No hand-wringing, no PC, just straight talk from reality based politics.
WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.
The call in number is 646-929-1264
The live chat link will go live around 5:20.. found at the bottom of the show page, or by clicking the link below!
CHAT LINK:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/f…
Aug 17 2010
“Net Zero” at Ground Zero? Just say NO!!!!!
I mean, how painful is that to the survivors of Ground Zero, when everyone knows all terrorism starts with the internet. So building the Net Zero at Ground Zero is simply fiendish, trying to make legions of baby terrorists out of lego-star-wars playing kids, who will learn to plot to take over our American way!
I mean look at the subterfuge of the Net Project: With your very eyes you can see that they are fighting along with a Satanic figure, not to mention artificial life forms. God hates artificial life. He only loves life HE creates, in the dark, by couples who married as virgins, in the missionary position and with no female orgasm… or by rape. Same, same. God only loves those life forms, not artificial ones. And just LOOK at those weird robes they are wearing and helmets. Even the women are covered by it. It is repressive and stone age! God only loves Christian virgins who go commando in short skirts. Covering all that T & A is just wrong. And that Han & Chewbakka team is obviously not only GAY, but promotes BESTIALITY! Net Zero is trying to program the kids, I tell you. If we allow this, America is dead!
Even the NAME is blasphemous. No one would pick the name “Net” unless they wanted to insult those who are followers of the LORD GOD, since everyone knows Jesus cast his NET as a fisher of men. Its a code word to insult us fish and make us feel like zeroes.
Its a plot to destroy the very fabric of America, this Net Zero Project to destroy the memory of Ground Zero!
Wait. You mean Net Zero is a dial-up internet service? They aren’t building at Ground Zero?
Welllllll then. Whats all the hoopla about anyway? I am SURE whatever it is, unless its a Tammy Faye cathedral to the one true Church of overmade-up, distraught, weeping wives of cheating, pin-dicked husbands, I can object to it: the name, their intent and just know in my heart they want to program our kids to be America-killers.
Let me at them!
/dripping sarcasm….
So lets talk.