Henry Rollins: DIY Life

Tommy Douglas: Mouseland

What self respecting mouse would elect a cat?

2012 Superbowl Halftime: A Pagent about Occupy Wall Street & Impending Collapse of US Empire

Madonna was trying to do us all a huge favor this SuperBowl sunday, but I don’t think many of us got the message. So let me break it down for you.

Her half time show opened with a display of Roman Sentinels, a display meant to create a visual metaphor of the Roman Empire, and make more plain to see, the parallels between ancient rome and today’s United States.

Ancient Rome, during it’s bread and circus years was just on the cusp of total collapse.
The plebeians of Rome had no voice in their government. The Roman Senate was extremely corrupt and changed laws of Rome not to benefit the common good, but to further enrich themselves. The Roman empire had, at this point before collapse, so overextended itself around the known world, that it was unable to effectively govern. And so this projection of power created resentment, leading to popular uprisings, and terrorist attacks on the soldiers stationed in the furthest reaches of the Roman Empire. The Plebeians, certain beyond the shadow of a doubt of the corruption of their government, were extremely apathetic towards politics, and instead spent their free time watching gladiatorial games at the Bread and Circuses.

This Superbowl, nay, football in general, Madonna was quite blatantly stating, is our modern day Gladiatorial Games. The halftime show, with its celebration of hedonistic sexuality, is our modern day bacchanalia. The SuperBowl is the convergence and amplification of everything about our society that parallels ancient rome, condensed into a money and testosterone drenched nugget of our collective American id.

Madonna was warning us of the impending collapse of the United States.

Further parallels are drawn with the appearance of LMFAO singing “I’m sexy and I know it” a song which was clearly chosen to illustrate the hubris of American Exceptionalism, while clearly casting light on the gaping discrepancy between the song’s lyrics and the average American viewer, which in a self-recursive, or “meta” moment, draws a parallel between the bloated corpse of the American empire, and the bloated bodies of those watching the game.

What of the hippie on the slack line, dressed as an ancient roman plebeian? He is representative of the 99% of Rome, and the 99% of America, the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Balanced precariously on a thin line of credit, his station in life moves up and down, and he is totally at the mercy of the fluctuations of the economy. Our day to day balancing act of securing employment and living paycheck to paycheck is made literal in the visual metaphor of an actual balancing act. As this Occupy Protester is vaulted up into the air in a final flourish, suddenly finding himself no longer moving up or down, but moving sideways, into a new dimension of reality. As he turns end over end, the world, relative to him, is flipped upside down, and then righted again. He lands this time not on the insecurity of the slack-line, but on the solid foundation of a steady-state economy many yards away from the area he was suspended above.

Finally, through the magic of special effects, the football field is torn away, revealing the vacuous expanse of space, a nietzscheian void that is outside of the illusory world of our modern day crumbling roman empire. Madonna then after the destruction of the field, evolves into a being of pure light and energy, which disburses to form the words, “World Peace” making clear that this whole display was meant to mock the very game it divides, which itself is an analogue for regional warfare.

The One Percent

h/t to K.E. Harleston

The One Percent

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And as a finisher:
Dennis Trainor's video "Anti-Obama rage is justified-- when will the poor threaten to kill and eat the rich?"

Lee Camp: Now that Osama is dead- what now?

Bin Laden maybe dead, but he is still winning the war on terror

‎"The slaying of multitudes should be mourned with sorrow. A victory should be celebrated with the funeral rite." - Tao Te Ching 31

Bin Laden is dead. But does this mean that we've won the "War on Terror?"

We, as a nation, never tried winning the “war on terror” by simply acting like adults and going about our business.

We, as a nation, never tried winning the “war on terror” by staying true to the supposedly American values of freedom, openness, and tolerance.

I remember a time when the only reason you had to get in line at the airport was so somebody could check that you had an airplane ticket. That seems insane today. Or is it that so much of our world today is insane, that sanity seems a perverted deviation from the new normal?

Bin Laden may be dead, but we’ve changed. We’ve changed a lot.

America has become a twisted monster; we are wrought with suspicion. Our identity has become tied to violence. Our foreign policy has become based on war.

We have become callous to murder.
We have become callous to torture.
We have forgotten the rule of law.
We have forgotten “innocent until proven guilty.”
We have forgotten the things we stood for as a nation.
We have lost our fundamental identity as freedom-loving people.
We have been thoughtlessly willing to give up our innate liberty for false promises of security.
We have become infantalized.
We have become monsters.

The biggest blow on September 11th, 2001 was not the WTC or the Pentagon. It was the psychic wound we inflicted on ourselves and our national identity.

Bin Laden may be dead, but he is still winning the war on terror.

And he’s winning by quite a lot.

The Punk Patriot Performs an Experiment

Hi there. It’s been a while.
I’m a little fuzzier than last time we talked. I know you might have liked me better clean-shaven, but it’s cold outside, so I ask that you just put up with it.

So a little housekeeping to start. I want to point out that in a past video, I said that congress would never pass a repeal of DADT. Some of you asked that I make a retraction. So here it is: I was wrong about that, and I’m glad to be wrong about that. Now I can say things like “Shouldn’t all our soldiers be allowed to marry whomever they want?”

However, I don’t feel I’m wrong that both parties use wedge issues to fire up their base, and that neither party actually cares about these wedge issues. When Republicans rail against illegal immigration, and then it turns out that they have illegal immigrants working at their mansions as full time staff, that’s not hypocrisy. That’s just flat contempt for the stupidity of the voting population. When Democrats say that they care about poor people, but refuse to talk about Single Payer healthcare, or a living wage, that’s not their playing to the middle. They just don’t care. They’ve got corporate dollars to chase after so that they can fight the next election battle. Which brings me to another point I would like to develop more in a later video-- the real power center of the USA isn’t in Washington, DC. Those familiar with the term, “Soft Power” will recognize that the place where the bulk of the nation’s decisions are actually made is on Wall Street, in New York City. Protesting in Washington DC to be heard by congress or the President, is like yelling at a McDonald’s cashier about the rain forests being cleared for cattle in Brazil. It might make you feel better, but the kid behind the counter isn’t the person making the decisions for the company. He’s only there because that’s where he gets his paycheck. His job is to sell you on the idea of buying the apple pie... which isn’t even really an apple pie, but some sort of strudel in a cardboard box. and Ain’t that America?

One more item of housekeeping. This video is sort of an experiment. I want to see if actually want me to keep making these videos or not. If you do, please subscribe over at my blog for whatever level is right for you. We can work together on this. If I can get say, 60 people to subscribe at $10 a month (that’s $2.5 a week) I’ll be able to afford to quit my job, where I’m currently working 54hrs a week, and find part time work. I can also start making a Punk Patriot video every week.
Currently, I have 5 subscribers at the $10 a month level. They are awesome people who get it. Thank you to: Maike Both, Patti Ellis, Jason Dawson, Michelle Duffy, and Billie Rae Lucoff.

Others are saying, “Wait! Didn’t you get rich with your YouTube Partnership and your thousands of views on your last few videos?”

No. Due to a glitch, google ad-sense never linked with my YouTube channel, and I was never able to collect my massive monthly paycheck of a whopping 38 cents in ad revenue.

And now some of you kids who think everything on the internet should be free, I want to tell you something-- things in real life aren’t free. And if I’m going to work all the time so that I can afford to stay alive, then I won’t have time to make videos. So if you’re okay with that, please don’t donate, and I’ll go away.

CourageToResist.org :: Jeff Patterson :: VFP 25th Nat'l Convention

Jeff Patterson is the project director for Courage To Resist, the organization representing Bradley Manning, raising money for a civilian defense attourney.

If you would like to volunteer your help to war resisters, be it driving them to Canada, driving them back from Canada, donating money for attorney fees, or even just writing letters of support to war resistors, go to http://www.couragetoresist.org

Dennis Lane, Executive Director of Veterans For Peace

Please support this organization, and the great work they do:
http://www.veteransforpeace.org

Due Process signs Obama's B-Day card

Tsk tsk. Here's the link to sign Obama's B-day card. Send me what you come up with.

Politics and Ethics: What does it mean to be free?

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

Global Politics in 30 seconds

Thank you to Cindy Sheehan for passing this golden little nugget along.

Global Politics in 30 seconds:

Have Socialists Taken Over?!

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On in 2001, on 9-11, the WTC was struck by two planes.
Before the buildings came down, the scene was swarming with employed agents of a socialist organization. An organization with their headquarters right in New York City. Was this an international conspiracy by socialists? You’re watching the Punk Patriot.

Are you KIDDING me? Those socialists were all first responders- EMTs, Police, and Fire Fighters. They’re HEROES, remember?
Everybody worshiped and diefed these folks, and I think rightfully so. They were all responding to a higher calling. They were there to save lives.
They get paid the same whether they are pulling injured civilians from the burning rubble of a terrorist attack, or if they are sitting in the station playing cribbage. Why? Because the Fire Department is a socialist organization. YUP! The heroes of 9-11 were all agents of socialism!
It didn’t always used to be this way. Prior to the socialist model for Fire Departments, we used to have private fire companies.
The first Government-Funded Fire department was started in 1898. It was a socialist model that replaced the private fire company model. Under the private model fire companies would compete with one another to be the ones to respond to a fire in order to get payment from fire insurance companies. Now on it’s face, that seems like a good thing, right? They all compete to be first!
That totally ignores human psychology. As so often happens when you start attaching profits to something, these private fire companies became extremely corrupt, and would actively prevent other fire companies from responding to a fire to make sure that their company would be first and only, through activities like sending a person ahead of their pump wagon with a barrel. This "Barrel Sitter" would place his barrel over the fire hydrant, and sit on the barrel to prevent other fire companies from gaining access to it, and thus becoming the first to respond.
While these schmucks fought over profits, fire destroyed homes and took the lives of those trapped by the flames and smoke.
To make matters worse, private fire companies refused to put out fires that affected homes that were too poor to afford fire insurance plaques, despite there being a definite risk to the public safety. Fire has no regard for the income of residents, rich or poor, and will spread from house to house regardless of whether or not the owner has fire insurance.
The socialist model changed all that. Socialism is the model seen in Fire Depts almost everywhere in the United States today.

That's right! Whether they know it or not, your local fire department is filled with Socialists!

Socialism isn’t an international conspiracy-- it’s as American as Apple Pie!

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Socialism: Protecting America From Fires since 1898

Click the image to purchase this shirt

Socialism has serious branding issues here in the USA.

It's totally reviled and hated, despite it being as American as Apple Pie.

The first Government-Run Fire department was started in 1898. It was a socialist model that replaced the private fire company model, in which fire companies would compete with one another to be the ones to respond to a fire in order to get payment from fire insurance companies.

These private fire companies were extremely corrupt, and would actively prevent other fire companies from responding to a fire to make sure that they would be first, through activities like sending a person ahead of their pump wagon with a barrel. This "Barrel Sitter" would place his barrel over the fire hydrant, and sit on the barrel to prevent other fire companies from gaining access to it, and thus becoming the first to respond.

While these schmucks fought over profits, fire destroyed homes and took the lives of those trapped by the flames and smoke.

To make matters worse, private fire companies refused to put out fires that affected homes that were too poor to afford fire insurance plaques, despite there being a definite risk to the public safety that had no regard for the income of residents, rich or poor.

The socialist model changed all that, and is the model seen almost everywhere in the United States today.

That's right! Whether they know it or not, your local fire department is filled with Socialists!

Click the image to purchase this shirt

Commuting by Bike in Rural America

So as promised, I've included some photos of my 12 mile commute to work and back.









Insight of the day: The secret to keeping up your momentum is to be able to rest while on the go. Obviously, you are going to want to keep spinning, and all the fundamentals come into play, but in addition to all that, if your heart is pounding away in your chest, you might find that you can actually slow your heart rate by slowing down your breathing, and giving your body a rest while still moving forwards on your bike.

I've found that after fully exerting myself, if I focus on my breathing and heart rate, and hold my breath after breathing in or out for four heartbeats, I can slow my heart rate down. After I'm done I feel rejuvenated and ready to exert myself fully once again-- as though I've stopped on the side of the road and taken a 10 minute rest. Even while in the middle of climbing a hill!

There's a metaphor about day-to-day life that's dying to be made here, but I'm not going to make it.