Remedial Is Moving

Hey everyone-

Remedial is moving. Please redirect bookmarks and RSS feeds to http://remedial.tumblr.com/

All future posts will be posted there.

My favorite posts from the WordPress Remedial will eventually find their way over there, as well.

~Sinatra

Notes on a sunny, chilly, April afternoon

1.  “Out of touch”.

I love how people in Washington have the audacity to call each other “out of touch” with America, reality… whatever.  Like anyone in Washington is “in touch” with everyday America.

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2.  Barack Obama.

I feel sorry for him.  I think he underestimated the toxic blend of public apathy and media idiocy that we have going on in this country.

I imagine at least once a month, Obama says to his crew, “Okay… okay… yes.  I do remember what happened last time.  But surely this time…  I mean, it doesn’t even make sense! Just look at this new commercial…”

Last year Barack Obama claimed to be 45.  This year he claims to be 46… Which Is It Obama??? Can’t make up your mind?  The phone’s ringing, Obama.  Which hand will you use to pick it up???  What’s wrong?? Can’t decide?  Time’s running out, Obama.

And time is running out for America.  I’m <insert candidate’s name here /> and there is no confusion with me.  I’ve been 36 for as long as I can remember and I always answer the phone with my Right Hand.  Vote for me.

… quickly followed, of course, by “you have got to be fucking kidding.”

Washington, DC (AP) — Will questions about Obama’s confusing switching of age every year and inability to assure the public he will always answer the phone with his right hand hurt his campaign?  Voters seem to be reconsidering…

At this point, I’m not rooting for Obama.  I’ll be happy if he wins, but really… he’s too good for us. 

We don’t deserve a President like Barack Obama (or John Edwards or the New Al Gore).  I’m all for loving your fellow citizens and “the greater good”, but that shit only goes so far; he needs to look out for #1.

I have to believe Barack’s starting to regret answering the call to represent such an amazingly media illiterate, uncritically thinking, apathetic, dysfunctional group of people.

Welcome to American Media and Politics, man; we hope you enjoy your stay.  (If you run now, maybe you can still save your soul.)

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3.  We should remove power from the Presidency.

This seems like an easier solution than trying to elect a reasonable candidate who runs a reasonable campaign.  We’ve been trying that angle for a while and it clearly isn’t working.  Maybe it’s time for something new.  And, honestly, what ever happened to State’s Power and State’s Rights?  You have all these nut jobs who love to talk shit about “the founding fathers’ intentions” when trying to reason why they need a semi-automatic hand gun with burst-fire capabilities (you know… well armed militia and all… one that may spontaneously form at any given moment, which is why I need to keep it on me at all times.  just in case.  The British, you know… can’t trust them.)…  I’m pretty sure they were crystal fucking clear about their intentions vis-a-vis the states having power.  Hence the 600 people we elect as States to send to DC and the 1 person we elect as a Country to live in DC.  Where my “founding fathers’ intentions” dawgs on that?  Let me hear you bark!  Yeah!  …  Guys?  Dawgs?  Bark?  Bark bark?  No??  Dammit.

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4.  Politics, as long as I’ve known it, has always been dirty.  But it seems until recently - Very recently - it was at least pretend clean.  Politicians pretended to hide and we pretended not to see, and there was this great sort of silent check and balance in place.  You don’t do anything too stupid and we’ll let you have the small stuff.

Now, they aren’t even trying to hide - it’s just fucking out there, man.

I blame Bill Clinton.  I really do.  I think the highly partisan response to his affair green lit the greediest motherfuckers in Washington to go ape shit.

I think the NeoCons saw that the President of the United States could literally get caught ejaculating on one of his interns, say, “Well at least I’m not a Republican”, and get a round of applause from the party faithful, and they thought to themselves, “Holy Shit…  It’s the Promised Land.”

“Hey guys… you think we can “accidentally” start a war, based on “bad intelligence” and stay in power?”
“Yeah… probably.  I mean, if Clinton can survive cumming on an intern’s face, I think we can send troops into Iraq.  Just, you know… nobody cheat on your wife or be gay, and we’ll be fine.”

Hit RollingStone to see the article that sparked this one.

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5. Speaking of not hiding, and sort of going along with the “money” section at the end of the RollingStone article, CBS is actually referring to its coverage of the election as “Horserace 08“.  God help us if we ever decide not to cover politics like it’s a sporting event.  Not sure what we’d do with an informed public.

Follow-Up - PTSD

An article from the IHT.

According to the article, 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan troops show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression and of the half that seek help, almost none of them get good help.

Quickie - PTSD

Another Rollingstone article.

A few notes:

1. The very first picture felt much different when viewed in the actual magazine. It’s much larger and feels like nothing but hopelessness and despair - personal opinion, obviously. Nevertheless, the sadness of the picture collored my reading of the article - so much so I feel it’s worth mentioning, as the smaller version wouldn’t have given me the same feeling.

2. My thoughts here are best summed by a friend: “The things that make you a functioning member of our society are very the often the opposite of the things that make you a functioning soldier.”

3. A lot of people talk a lot of shit about supporting our troops and they have no idea what that really means. They probably posted in the comments of the article (which you shouldn’t read, if you’re sensible - I just read a few of them and the idiocy may seriously ruin the rest of my day (Not joking.)).

Reality Check: War and the felled

Here is an article about an actual person who actually died in Iraq.  Not a number, not a cause - a person sized hole in the lives of family and friends.

This is sad, no matter who you are.

More Quickies (on a sunny spring morning)

President Bush and the Supreme Court at odds over a Mexican national sentenced to death row in violation of international law.

President Bush thought that honoring international law was unimportant and the Supreme Court disagreed.

Wait…. I messed that up. President Bush thought honoring international law was absolutely important and ordered the man retried. And then the Supreme Court flipped him the bird.

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John McCain can’t distinguish between Shiites and Sunnis. Which is concerning. In his defense, however, all people from that region really do look alike. The Blacks and The Asians as well.

Windows and iTunes Free

Amazon.com has the BEST mp3 store in the world right now.

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I appreciate all that Apple has done to free consumers from the chains of the record industry. Personally, I see a direct line between Apple and stories such as the following-

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame recently released a 4-Disc CD with no aid from record labels - no middle-people between him and his fans. He released three (primary) versions of the album: 1) First of the four discs for free on the internets. 2) All four albums for $5 on the internets. 3) A super-deluxe edition with tangible items for $300.

After being on sale for a week, the album made $1,619,420. And all of that money goes right into Trent’s pocket. By comparison, if Trent went the studio route A) the cd wouldn’t have made that much money and B) his share would have been, maybe, 10% (i.e. he would have $161,940 in his pocket versus $1,619,420).

In my opinion, this is possible because Apple, over the course of the last few years, has done a great job preaching the word of digital music sales.

Having said that, I dislike iTunes passionately, which is fine because there’s no Linux version of it anyway. It used to be that if I wanted to buy music I would load Windows, run iTunes, and download (because I refuse to buy CDs). The combination of Windows and iTunes (and then converting the songs into mp3s from copyprotected AACs so I could listen to my music without using iTunes) pained me greatly.

Then there was Amazon.com.

1. They have deals with all the major labels to sell music with no DRM. This means that when you buy a song from Amazon.com, you can play it on any music player, any where, any time. (Apple, by comparison, only had 1 of the 4 labels last I checked).
2. You can use their store, even if you have Linux.

I never have to boot into Windows or use iTunes again. And I couldn’t be happier.

Three Quickies from Dunn Bros.

One

Rejoice! Attitudes about the US in the world are actually improving! The percentage of people in the world saying the U.S. has a positive influence in the world has risen by 4%… from 31% to 34%.

The two countries that the world thinks has the most positive influence on the world? Germany and Japan. You might remember these two countries from a little something I like to call World War II.

How quickly things change.

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A presidential candidate is endorsed by a pastor who preaches hate and the media doesn’t care. Al Jazeera reports on McCain’s endorsement from Rod Parsley, a pastor from Ohio who had the following to say:

The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.

By “this false religion”, he, of course, means Islam. Or as I’m sure he prefers to say, “Those goddamned Mosloms.”

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I don’t trust Hillary Clinton.

Quickie - 5 years of war

Our friends at Al Jazeera report on 5 years of liberating Iraq and ridding the world of harmful WMDs.  (They aren’t as mean as I thought they’d be - I must be too acclimated to American media.)

Happy Easter everyone… unless you don’t celebrate that sort of thing… and your country is on fire, and stuff, for like 5 straight years now.  That might make Easter sort of a bummer…

But, it’s not our country that’s been on fire for like 5 straight years (unless you live in New Orleans, maybe), so go find some brightly colored hard-boiled eggs!

Luckily, all ideas in politics expire after 90 days

“Now one of Clinton’s laws of politics is this: If one candidate’s trying to scare you and the other one’s trying to get you to think, if one candidate’s appealing to your fears and the other one’s appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.”-Bill Clinton, 2004