Arise, ye workers from your slumber

It’s International Workers Day, comrades! If you can’t make your local Smash the State rally (there doesn’t appear to be one in Bibleburg, surprise, surprise), then sing along with Alistair Hulett and Jimmy Gregory. And a-one, and a-two, aaaaaand. …

While we’re awaiting the inevitable proletarian triumph over the slavemasters of Wall Street, let’s have a list of your favorite working-class anthems in comments. Here are a few of mine:

• ”Joe Hill,” by Paul Robeson.

• ”Which Side Are You On?,” by Billy Bragg.

• ”All You Fascists Are Bound To Lose,” by Woody Guthie.

• ”Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?,” by Tom Waits.

• ”The Red Flag,” by Jim Connell.

• ”The Sergeant and Arthur McBride,” by Paul Brady.

• ”Hallelujah, I’m a Bum,” by Utah Phillips.

• ”Christmas In Washington,” by Steve Earle.

• ”I’m Changing My Name To Fannie Mae,” by Arlo Guthrie.

The sky is crying

Huh. All those hours wasted marching in the streets, trying to end war, poverty and injustice. Turns out all we had to do to get the government’s attention was stand in line at the airport for a bit. Who knew?

• Editor’s note: In all fairness, it could simply be that their babies wrote them a letter.

Fetuses have Second Amendment rights too

Do you suppose a mass shooting of fetuses might move the Senate to action on gun control? Naw, they’d just vote to station armed guards in American wombs.

Herself and I sent the usual NastyGrams® to our senators, for all the good that does. Two more mutts yapping. You don’t even hear it after a while. I’ve lived next to runways and railroad tracks, crack houses and frat houses, and if I’ve learned one thing it’s that a fella can learn to sleep through any kind of godawful racket, even me screaming at you over the phone.

If the killing of 20 children in Newtown can’t motivate “our” elected representatives, I don’t know what can. Oh, yeah, right — money. How silly of me.

The National Rifle Association spent $500,000 on Wednesday alone, for advertising critical of “Obama’s gun ban.” Of course, this is above and beyond what they’ve already invested in the best Congress money can buy.

Further on down the road

Was it really 10 years ago today that I wrote this?

It shouldn’t be any surprise that on the evening Junior decided to launch his war — a war that is not, repeat not, for oil — the local ABC affiliate’s “news” half-hour featured ads, in rapid succession, for various Chevys and Fords, the Hummer H2, Jeep, Hyundai, Subaru, Pontiac and Honda. Semper finance, with easy monthly payments.

How time flies, etc. Those “easy monthly payments” sure have turned out to be a bitch, though, eh? Especially in this economy. Maybe it’s time to trade the old heap in on a new model.

In which a rhetorical question is asked

Hey, kids, what’s Austerity Clause gonna bring you for Sequestermas?

I asked for a Mitch McConnell Inaction Figure.

Not gonna get it, of course.

A kick up the Oval Orifice

You know it’s Monday when you drop your English muffin en route to the toaster and it rolls straight into the dog’s water dish.

I blame Presidents Day, which is a bullshit holiday, like Valentine’s Day, intended to herd the feeble-minded to the nearest big-box outlet to buy shit they can’t afford and don’t need.

George Washington’s birthday? That I’ll celebrate. Lincoln’s birthday? Ditto. But there have been far too many nitwits, pud-pullers and ne’er-do-wells in the presidential pantheon for me to grant a blanket absolution, even for a single day.

There’s plenty of dead wood stacked up beneath that storied office, too. Case in point: “As budget crisis looms, Congress leaves town.” You get one day off for Presidents Day. This lot has fucked off until Feb. 25.

And to think some of them have the chutzpah to say the gummint should be run like a bidness. The stoutest union shop in the country doesn’t pay out this kind of slack. Try telling the manager at Mickey D’s you need a week off for Presidents Day and he’ll give you a kick up your Oval Orifice.

Hell, try telling him you want Presidents Day off. We wish you luck in your next endeavor.

The parting glass

A fine wine turned to vinegar.

Longtime fans of the DogS(h)ite know that we don’t do cable TV here.

We partook, briefly, in 2006, when I reasoned that I needed TV with all the fixin’s to help me help VeloNews.com cover the 2006 Tour de France. When Floyd tripped the Dope-O-Meter® I jerked the cable out of the wall and that was that.

Now we have rabbit ears, a Blu-Ray disc player, and a Mac Mini for streaming video over the Innertubes. And watching TV has become arduous, as it should be. We can’t just punch a button on a remote and let the high-def bullshit wash over us like the incoming tide. It takes some thought, and that thought is usually, “I think I’d rather do something else.”

Which brings me to the impending multimedia extravaganza in which The One Ball To Rule Them All will bounce into Soaprah’s expansive lap to wallow in his own stink for a couple-three hours. It will be “broadcast” on Soaprah’s TV network, such as it is, and streamed simultaneously on her website, and I have decided that rather than bring the snark, live and in poison, I will shun both of those venues as though they were infested with vermin, which, come to think of it, they will be.

Fact of the matter is, I think I’d rather do something else.

I can see why The One Ball Etc. and George W. Custer got along so famously. There is not a gram of shame in either of the sons of bitches, and when not on the clock I will be pleased to listen to whatever they have to say when they say it under oath, with the threat of hard time hanging over them like Damocles’ sword. Because in a world with its collective head screwed down tight, the only cameras these two would face would be of the closed-circuit variety, and their only audience a sleepy guard.

Here’s a thought. Instead of giving The One Ball Etc. and Soaprah what they so desperately crave — attention, which in this world translates to money — why not give some money, or some time, to a worthwhile cause? Spend a couple hours walking dogs at your local Humane Society, wash dishes at a soup kitchen, fix a creaky bike for a kid.

Let ’em do their playacting before an empty house, and drink a toast to the eventual ringing down of the curtain in this theater of the absurd.

Wayne’s insane

If anyone thinks the NRA is a voice for responsible gun owners and not a shameless shill for the bang-bang biz, well, ol’ Wayne LaPierre sure wised ‘em up today.

This guy is a walking, talking 90-round drum of full-auto, armor-piercing batshit. And the only solution to him and those like him is to go full-bore after the merchants of death who prop his dumb ass up in front of the cameras when he so clearly belongs in a rubber condo, getting daily doses of Edison medicine.

Here’s a transcript of the remarks it took the NRA a week to arrange. Thank God they didn’t shoot from the hip, so to speak.

Meanwhile, happy birthday to Frank Zappa, who was born on this day in 1940. Thus endeth Zappadan.

All the news that fits, we print

Extry, extry, read all about it!

The inimitable Charles P. Pierce gave us a heads-up yesterday about the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to “streamline and modernize” rules governing media ownership, which Charlie rightly calls the prelude to “sheer unadulterated brigandage.”

For starters, the streamlining and modernization would give his old boss, Rupert Murdoch — yes, that Rupert Murdoch — a chance to get his paws on what remains of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.

Beyond that, it would give media conglomerates the opportunity to get your local media by the plums with a downhill pull. How would you like to have ol’ Rupe or someone like him running your “local” newspaper/website, radio station and TV channel all at once?

Credo Action followed up with an online petition drive, and there’s something similar going on over at Free Press. Adding your name to the chorus against the FCC’s holiday giveaway can’t hurt and might even help.

Meanwhile, take a quick look around your own media landscape and figure out who the player(s) are. It can be eye-opening to see just who controls your local flow of information.

Here in Bibleburg there is only one locally owned newspaper, the weekly Colorado Springs Independent, which also owns (and shares some staff with) the Colorado Springs Business Journal. I didn’t bother to look up all the radio stations, because I only listen to one — NPR affiliate KRCC-FM, a.k.a. Radio Colorado College — but I did check out the TV stations I can get via rabbit ears. Following is a breakdown of who owns our “local” media.

Newspapers

Gazette — Freedom Communications, Irvine, Calif.

www.gazette.com

www.freedom.com

Colorado Springs Independent — locally owned

www.csindy.com

TV

KKTV (CBS) — Gray Television Inc., Albany, Ga.

www.kktv.com/home

phx.corporate-ir.net

KRDO (ABC) — News-Press & Gazette Co., St. Joseph, Mo.

www.krdo.com

www.npgco.com

KOAA (NBC) — Evening Post Publishing Co., Charleston, S.C.

www.koaa.com/home

www.evepost.com

FOX21 (FOX) — Barrington Broadcasting Group, Schaumburg, Ill.

www.coloradoconnection.com

www.barringtontv.com

KTSC (Rocky Mountain PBS) — Pueblo, Colo.

www.rmpbs.org

Radio

KRCC-FM (NPR) — Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO

radiocoloradocollege.org

Friday Funnies

Ah, Black Friday: The gift that keeps on giving. As some Walmart employees are agitating for a living wage, Sears customers in San Antonio are throwing hands and drawing firearms. Some people clearly did not enjoy enough mood-altering tryptophan on Thanksgiving.

At the higher-end shops, meanwhile, those mannequins you’re inspecting are inspecting you right back, with cameras and facial-recognition software not unlike that used by les flics. Hey, there’s one … whoops, nope, it’s just Mitt Romney.

Meanwhile, here’s something to leave on the shelf, no matter where we are in the shopping season. And fuck Weepy John Boehner and the horses’ asses he rode in on.