Today, class, we’ll learn about false choices

Posted on by Dale

I am quite pleased that somehow I’ve ended up on Rasmussen Polls call list. I presume it’s because the first time I saw them on the caller ID and picked up with malice in my heart, that marked me as a sucker. Rasmussen, if you’re not familiar with them, are a right-wing polling firm, and their polls are always sly pieces of propaganda, with forced choice answers that are designed to produce “polls” that support the ongoing nazification of our country.

Fooled them: as a diehard, educated, well-off liberal, it has become my mission to screw with their data. The first question is always “Do you feel the country is heading in the right direction, or do you think things have gotten off track?”

Duh.

Yesterday afternoon they called again, and it was clear they had rushed this one out the door in response to the murder of schoolchildren in Minneapolis, because there were several questions about that event in particular and gun control in general. There was the usual “Do you think we need stricter gun control laws, or should we enforce the ones we have now?” which translates into “Should we do something about the only country in the world where this happens, or nah?”

The most insidious question was “Do you think the shooting was due to political influences, or to the shooter’s mental health?”

First of all: both, bitches.

Second of all: His mental health wouldn’t have mattered if we had gun control in this country.

I’ll say that again for the hard-of-thinking: His mental health wouldn’t have mattered if we had gun control in this country.

Naturally, I answered that it was due to political influences — because it was.

So. If you haven’t contacted your congresscritter directly and shoved this in their face, what are you even doing?

 

The invasion of Newnan, GA, August 2025

Posted on by Dale

You may imagine our astonishment when we awoke this morning, August 15, to find this announcement on Facebook:

WTF, as the majority of the comments ran. We were being told that we were to be the hosts for a military training operation tomorrow.

Reaction was swift and mostly negative. There were some MAGAts who apparently are thrilled that our military might be training to invade American cities to protect us from the usual suspects — immigrants, trans people, and drag queens — despite fact that our military is forbidden to do shit like this.

Beyond that, the actual language of the press release is worrisome, especially in these days of rampant Nazification. Let’s take a look, shall we?

1. Surprise! That’s tomorrow! That’s not going to raise eyebrows or panic people, not in the least HOW COULD YOU EVEN THINK THAT EVEN?

2. We all know exactly what a “United States Army Special Operations Command” is, right? Special Ops… that’s like the people who raided bin Laden? And they’re going to train here because… Hold that thought.

3. Yep, that’s what it says: “in and around” Newnan. Hold that thought.

4. “Rotary wing” operations. Could they possibly mean “helicopters”?

5. And what exactly are “operations”? I have to presume weapons will be fired. Tough, manly “warfighters” running through our neighborhood? Swarming the Court House? Getting lunch at Redneck Gourmet? Also, “ground–based, close–quarter” needs those hyphens and that comma. Your English teacher is ashamed of you.

6. “Battle training.” Ah. In and around Newnan. I’m beginning to feel as if I should be concerned, especially if it’s going to be “close-quarter.” [See: 5.]

7. “Simulates environments troops may encounter while deployed” — to small American towns, you mean?

8. “for more information”…

Let’s start there. I clicked through to the city website, where I found exactly this DOD press release along with a bit more information. But nothing that explains one bit of this.

Okay, this whole thing, taken merely as a PR announcement is a disaster. Let’s do a deep dive.

First some caveats: I am assuming that the City of Newnan was told that they were in no way to alter the wording of this release. I can assume this because a concerned citizen — whose name I am not going to publish, but THANK YOU! — made it her business to call the mayor and get some actual facts, the first of which was that “operations” weren’t going to be in Newnan, but on a piece of property that the land owner offered to the DOD for “operations.” (Hold that thought.)

Also, all of you who worship our military, please note that I don’t. Like the founding fathers, I have a deep distrust of the military. They were right, and so am I. So bugger right off with your weepy-ass SUPPORT THE TROOPS KENNETH bull.

So. What a pile of ill-begotten propaganda! The whole thing is designed to obfuscate, confuse, conceal, and intimidate. Note the jargon like “rotary wing” — why not say “helicopters” and/or “drones”? Why not indeed? Because, citizen, it is not necessary for you to understand what they are up to. In fact, they’d rather you not. One of the additional bit of info on the city website was more DOD propaganda, including the phrase “Robust safety precautions are currently in place to protect both the participants and the City residents, along with significant planning considerations to minimize the impact to the community.” Protect the participants? Bubba, you signed up to go to war — shouldn’t you be prepared to sustain injuries?

And what makes our fearless “warfighters” so concerned about their safety? Is there something in the air that makes them think that their presence in these “operations” might not be welcomed by the community and that they might need “robust” protections?

The additional information goes on to say “No public viewing opportunities will be available throughout the exercise, as the participants will maintain the highest level of security.” Translated into English, they’re telling us that you will not be protesting this event and that if you do… well, you’ve seen the ICE/DHS/National Guard videos, right? Pure intimidation.

I get it. You don’t really want civilians in the way when you’re training your teenagers to go kill people, you really don’t. They have a tendency to be a bit on edge, don’t they? And you can’t vouch for what an edgy teen with a gun might do if any part of real life intrudes into that bubble you’ve created around him. What if it suddenly dawns on him that he’s being trained to obey unlawful orders? NOT THAT THAT WILL EVER HAPPEN IN THE AMERICA KENNETH.

But this announcement? It’s practically a provocation to panic for the citizens of Newnan, for all the reasons I’ve limned above. I mean, how do we know this isn’t a “operation” to arrest enemies of the state for thoughtcrimes against Dear Leader? This communication does nothing to dispel thoughts of conspiracy.

Oh, and the property? Our intrepid citizen activist kept calling until she got the location: the old hospital building and grounds on Hospital Road. And the “land owner”? Piedmont Healthcare. Draft your emails and letters accordingly.

Onward to the Glorious Reich!

Minimum wage

Posted on by Dale

A while back there was a meme on social media along the lines of “Let’s tie the minimum wage to local rent levels and let the landlords and business owners fight it out.”

This is actually a very good idea, because in no county in these United States is it possible to work a minimum wage job and afford any apartment or rental home.

Let me say that again:

In no county in any state of these United States is it possible to work a minimum wage job and afford any apartment or rental home.

Let’s do some math.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour and has been since 2009. Some states have boosted that minimum wage; Georgia is not one of them.

If a worker made minimum wage and worked full time, i.e., 40 hours/week,[1] they would make $290.00/week before taxes. [$7.25 x 40 = $290.00] I’ll be honest: I found myself doing this math over and over because I could not make myself believe that a full-time minimum wage worker in this nation only makes $290/week or $1,160/month.

Then if we assume the worker works all 52 weeks with paid vacation/sick leave, that gives them a yearly salary of $15,080, or just under the federal poverty line for 2025.

Hold that thought.

In Newnan, GA, the average rent is $2,185/month as of this writing, nearly double what someone making minimum wage makes.[2] It would take a minimum wage of $13.66/hour to pay that rent.

Keep thinking. Rent is not anyone’s only expense. Conventional wisdom is that rent should amount to no more than 30% of your take-home pay.

So:

  • $2,185 (rent) = .3*x
  • x = $2,185/.3
  • x = $7,283/month, for a minimum wage of $45.52/hour

This is where my brain went sproing and yours probably is doing the same thing. More than $7,000/month for a minimum wage job??

More sproing: That’s a yearly salary of $94,892, for 52 weeks of pay.

Am I proposing that someone who works at KFC or Kroger or Ollies or wherever should make $95K a year? I never made that much as a 35-year educator with an Ed.Sp. degree, nor as the director of the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program. (I actually made less as the director of GHP than I did checking out books to kindergarteners; the state got a deal.]

Yes, I am in fact proposing that anyone in this great nation of ours who works a full-time job of 40 hours/week should be able to rent an apartment or house in their town for 30% of their salary. The fact that we’re shocked that the resulting annual salary is more than six times their current annual salary — if they’re working full time, which most are not — and more than even most education professionals currently make — is more of an indictment of the capitalist economic forces that we’ve permitted to keep a significant portion of our wage earners in poverty than it is a comment on the “worth” of minimum wage labor.

So could we implement this? It seems clear that it would be unfair to implement the policy on a statewide basis: Average monthly rent in Buckhead is $4,000, while in Hahira it’s $1,295. Creating a uniform statewide minimum wage would be a burden for the employers of rural areas and shortchange the workers in wealthier areas. If we made it applicable by congressional district, though, it would be more equitable. And if our brilliant state legislature wanted to create a more granular regional system, that would be even smarter.

The big, ugly question of course is where is that money coming from? Large corporations can suck it up and make less profit (or pay their CEOs less than 290 times the amount they pay their employees), but what about the local shop or cafe owner? I can’t see how Golden’s on the Square could pay $45/hour to their fry cooks.

It’s fun to think of employers and landlords fighting it out to lower/raise the minimum wage, but let’s face it: Our capitalist overlords would no doubt figure out a way to keep “their” money and screw over the working class. As usual.

I have no real solutions; I will leave it to our brilliant legislature and their continuing efforts to improve the lives of the citizens they represent to figure out the best and fairest way to implement the plan, remembering always that the goal is to make it so that anyone working full time — and almost every job should be full-time — is able to rent an apartment where they live.

Oh, and about that tipped wage of $3.25/hour…

—————

[1] Most minimum wage jobs don’t offer full-time positions, because if they did, employers would also have to offer health benefits in most cases. So most minimum wage workers have to work multiple jobs and still cannot afford a month’s rent.

[2] Yes, yes, roommates, multiple family members working, yada yada yada. You are missing the point.

A small rant

Posted on by Dale

Isn’t that an interesting photo? Kind of like the minimalist stuff you would see in some of our tonier galleries, right?

But that’s not what I’m ranting about today. Do you know why I have these four paper bags?

I have these four paper bags because, in the state of Georgia, you cannot be seen leaving a store having bought a completely legal substance without concealing that substance in a paper bag. It’s kind of like Utah’s law that you cannot, as a bar, mix a cocktail in front of a minor.

These four bags came from Kroger, and of course they were placed in plastic bags — which apparently don’t sufficiently conceal my completely legal purchase.

What on earth is the purpose of this law? If I walk out of Kroger carrying a bottle of white Bordeaux, for example, is Carrie Nations going to rise from her grave and do the Bodysnatchers point-and-scream at me? Is a Baptist going to faint right there in the parking lot? Are little children going to rush the beer aisle and get snockered on IPAs?

Thanks to my paper cloaking device, though, none of these things will happen, I guess. Baptists will never know that I’ve bought a completely legal substance for my personal use, right?

If a callous sophisticate buys a bottle of booze and a Baptist can’t tell what he’s bought because of the paper cloaking device, does the callous sophisticate still go to hell?

Not to alarm you, any Puritans out there reading this, but your paranoia is justified: we are all out here, somewhere, having fun. It is not your job to stop us.

With eyes narrowed and eyebrows raised…

Posted on by Dale

… and with lips pursed withal, I need to express some dissatisfaction with ::waves hands:: all this.

And in particular, I call your attention to the old Brown Steel property on Lower Fayetteville Road, just before the bypass. You should understand that I had plans for that property should I ever win the lottery, and they were as follows:

  • First, buy the Brown Steel property and all the property down to the bypass.
  • Renovate the manufacturing structures there to become studio space for large-scale artists, particularly public sculpture artists. Build some tiny homes onsite to accommodate them. (Maybe some tiny homes for unhoused people as well?)
  • Fund artists with stipends and grants to create large art, which then is displayed in the art park we construct in the forested areas.
  • And then: Create a program for towns that would like to replace their Confederate memorials with something less treason-y. They select four neighborhoods/parks in their town, and then commit to spending $10,000 every two years for ten years. Every two years they get a new piece of public art (which they can choose however they like, subsidized by us) from the Factory, and after two years that sculpture is moved to one of the four parks. The fifth sculpture then is permanent.
  • Also, we have concerts, parties, and galleries onsite at the Factory.

What was not to like?

So it was with a sad heart when I saw the demolition of the Brown Steel plant facilities, and even sadder heart when construction fencing recently went up around that upper half of my art park.[1]

Curiously, there were signs on the construction fencing that had this message on them:

Not the exact sign, but the exact wording

Oh, I thought, that’s new, a construction business that actually preserves as much green as they can. That’s nice.

I knew this was incredibly unlikely, though, so I didn’t get my hopes up, and indeed yesterday I drove by and every single tree, shrub, and plant had been bulldozed.

I realized that I had interpreted the sign to mean:

…when obviously they meant:

My mistake.

And don’t get me started on what to do with the Brown Steel property downtown.[2]

—————

[1] Not to mention my not having won the lottery.

[2] You should absolutely get me started on what to do with the Brown Steel property downtown, Newnan City Council, if that is even your real name.

The eternal mystery: Javert or Valjean?

Posted on by Dale

By now we’ve all seen the Current Leader be stymied when asked — about his “favorite musical,” Les Miserables, which he attended at his own personally hijacked Kennedy Center — whether he identified more with Javert or Valjean? (If you haven’t seen it, click on the link. Oy.)

Well. Okay. I know that Trump’s Razor (a variant of Occam’s Razor) says that when faced with multiple explanations of his behavior, it’s a safer bet to go with the stupidest reason. But I think I have to disagree with Stephen Colbert’s assessment, that his “brain is wet bread.”

Yes, the man is stupid, vain, and incurious, but I think it’s more than his encroaching dementia.[1]

Let us review the facts, and let us also then assume that contrary to everything else we know about the man, he has actually seen the show — and a bunch of other shows — enough for it to be his “favorite.”

CONTEXT:

Jean Valjean is the main character in Hugo’s novel and in the musical. As the novel opens, Valjean has been imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. After his release, he is shunned by society for his criminal past. He is given refuge and a meal by a kindly bishop, but he steals a set of silverware when he leaves. He is caught by a local patrol and hauled back to the bishop’s house to be accused of his new crime.

But the bishop recognizes Valjean’s essentially blameless spirit and when shown the stolen silver simply exclaims that he was disappointed when Valjean left and had not accepted all the bishop’s gifts, and he hands over two additional silver candlesticks to the astonished man.

Long story: Valjean uses his new wealth to build a new life, one of virtue and benevolence.

However, Inspector Javert is determined that this criminal, this man who stole a loaf of bread, is going to face justice and be returned to his slave labor. He pursues Valjean from place to place, from decade to decade, never relenting in his righteous fury that the Law Is ETERNAL KENNETH.

It ends only during the Revolution when Valjean, behind the barricades, volunteers to execute Javert, who has been spying on the revolutionaries for the government. He takes Javert out of sight, then fires his gun into the air and frees Javert.

More long story, but Javert is so rattled by Valjeans clemency, opposed to his unwavering version of the Law, that his moral underpinnings come loose and he commits suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Seine.

So everyone’s mocking Turmp for not being able to say which character he identified more with (and let’s face it, it was a cheeky question). As someone on Bluesky put it, “Of course he can’t choose between a convicted felon and a vindictive prick.”

It’s worse than that, though.

I think he must sense that Valjean is the “hero” of the piece. He doesn’t get it, I mean, all the guy does is give his money to other people and endanger himself (AND HIS BUSINESSES KENNETH), but Valjean seems to have the most lines and stage time, so that’s a good thing, amirite? Still, he’s a criminal, isn’t he, stealing that loaf of bread all those years ago? He should be in prison.

But that Javert guy — he’s an Inspector, one of the good guys, LAW & ORDER KENNETH, not like all those fupping liberal students and prostitutes and street urchins, filthy, you wouldn’t believe how filthy those people are. Javert knows what’s what. He just screwed up that one time, letting his “feelings” get the better of his bedrock knowledge that the Law Is Unchanging! He was so close, though, to throwing that criminal Valjean back into prison for life.

So you can see Turmp’s dilemma. On the one hand, the star of the show, always in the spotlight, takes the final bow, standing ovation. On the other, a virtuous law-abiding government officer, loyal to his ideals to a fault.

What’s an amoral Philistine to do?

—————

[1] Not that I can completely discount it. Nor can I discount the idea that he in fact had never seen the show when he tried to bluff his way through the interview. But I think my explanation is part of the answer.

::sigh::

Posted on by Dale

I’m reading back through this blog’s 20 years of posts, and just now I came across this post, written in 2008 while I was still trying to write the Symphony in G, back when I was still checking out books to kindergartners during the day and riding herd on Georgia’s gifted and talented teenagers during the summer.

You don’t need to read the post; essentially, I was whinging about Dvorak and never being able to match his inventiveness. Of course, I said, it was his day job. He had all the time he needed to be inventive.

And then I wrote this: I begin to wonder if I would be more productive if I had all day every day to thrash out ideas and discard the less worthy ones.

Oof.

I guess I’ve answered that question.

Not an Easy Question

Posted on by Dale

Well, not an easy question for him.
My email to my congresscritter, Brian Jack:

Whoever had control of the “AUTOPEN” is looking to be a bigger and bigger scandal by the moment. It is a major part of the real crime, THAT THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN! Millions and millions of people knew that, but the Radical Left Democrats waged a campaign on inoculation [sic] and innocence like none that had ever been waged before. THIS IS WHY THE UNSELECT COMMITTEE OF POLITICAL THUGS, WHO WERE GIVEN A FULL AND COMPLETE PARDON BY THE PERSON WHO WIELDED THE NOW ILLEGALLY USED AUTOPEN, DELETED AND DESTROYED ALL EVIDENCE AND INFORMATION FROM THEIR CORRUPT AND VICIOUS WITH HUNT AGAINT ME, AND MANY OTHER PEOPLE, WHOSE LIVES WERE COMPLETELY SHATTERED AND DESTROYED BY THIS HISTORICALLY CRIMINAL EVENT. Remember, it all began with DIRTY COP James Comey, Obama, a hapless and cognitively impaired Sleepy Joe Biden, and my now very famous ACCUSATION that, “THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!” Whoever had control of the…

This is who you support and — indeed — worked for. Why?

As usual, your reply will be posted on my blog and on Facebook. Thank you for your attention.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’d fake my own death to avoid answering this for my constituents.

Tempus fugit

Posted on by Dale

I’ve been under the weather for the past week and a half, just pitifully unable to rise to any occasion. The only productive thing I’ve been able to handle is 1) going back through all my Liberal Rant posts and tagging the ones that need it with a new Propaganda Studies tag; and 2) going back through every post for the past twenty years and making minor edits where necessary. Also, just to recap the past 20 years of my life.

Well.

It’s been a journey for sure, as one project or another, one rant or another, one cocktail or another, bobbed to the surface and sank again. Some posts were very very depressing; others validated my existence. (Some of my Liberal Rants from the 2016 election have proven to excruciatingly predictive.)

I’ll do a little profiling of one or two posts that jumped out at me, but this one took me aback. Feel free to go read it, but here’s the gist:

Reality TV show called The Mimeograph Kitchen, in which three generations of a family are presented with a fairly unappetizing dish (see above) from one of those mimeographed cookbooks so beloved of church groups back in the 1950s/60s — each generation is then challenged to go home and update the recipe to their tastes, bring them back to the studio and compare notes.

Why producers weren’t shoving wads of cash at me for the rights to this idea is still a mystery to me, but you know what, producers? You blew it. It is no longer possible to make Mimeograph Kitchen.

I realized this with a shock as I read this paragraph:

So our reality TV show is called Mimeograph Kitchen, and it will feature besides its host three couples: 1) someone our parents’ age, 70-80, i.e., the generation that produced these things; 2) someone our age, 50-60, the generation that grew up eating this stuff; 3) someone our kids’ age, 20-30, who have never known what it’s like not to have fresh salmon with dill cream sauce and a side of roasted broccoli.  The recipe is presented and discussed by all three couples (reminiscences, reactions, etc.) , and a sample is provided for a tasting.

::sigh::

I wrote that post in 2014, eleven years ago. We are now the 70s–80s generation, and our parents are either no longer with us or are in their 80s–90s — none of whom could rise to the challenge of considering, adapting, and making a completely new recipe. So, no: Mimeograph Kitchen will never be.

So, producers, let that be a warning not to sleep on our other idea, Mama’s Stuff. That one will never die out, for lack of a better phrase.

Hey, MAGAts, I sympathize with you

Posted on by Dale

No, really, I get it. The fear and anger with which those of us on the other side are reacting to the rapid, overwhelming Nazification of our country should feel familiar to you — it’s exactly the way you reacted during the Obama years or the Biden years, with panic and anger over the RADICAL LIBERAL TAKEOVER OF OUR GOVERNMENT KENNETH.

I am not mocking you. I get it. Your world was rocked because the Democrats were giving you affordable healthcare, infrastructure funding, alternative energy support, family medical leave, etc, etc, etc. It must have felt as if the wheels were coming off your Cybertruck. No wonder you revolted and ran straight into the arms of the Big Daddy to protect you.

However.

You were afraid of affordable healthcare, etc, because you were told it was SOCIALAMIZM KENNETH. You scorned alternative energy support (even though most of it went to your states) because WINDMILL CANCER KENNETH or DRILL BABY DRILL or something. You screamed with irrational rage at the two Democratic presidents even as they fixed the broken economy left to them by their Republican predecessors, raging about actions which neither man was taking nor was even considering, and not just allowing yourselves to be lied to by Fox News and the Republican Party but lapping it up like mother’s milk without any skepticism at all. (Receipts upon request; I got links, I’m just venting.)

We are afraid of the Gestapo, the crashing of the world economy, the wrecking of the post-WWII alliances, the blatant bribery and corruption, the dismantling of our social safety net, the dismantling of the agencies that keep our food, our water, our cars, our airports safe, the targeting of minorities, and above all, the arrogant incompetence of the Republixanazi Administration.

We are not the same.