Starbucks helps widen the great divide

Posted on April 22, 2018 by oddmanout215

Headline from an opinion piece by a lifelong black resident of Philadelphia:
“Starbucks wasn’t created for black folks, it was made to push us out.”

The piece appeared this week in response to the widely reported arrest of two young black men at a Starbucks in Philly’s affluent Rittenhouse Square section. The store manager called the cops on the men, who were sitting at a table but hadn’t yet bought anything. A customer recorded the arrest with her phone, the video went viral, and protests ensued.

The Starbucks story sounds like it’s about racism, and it is, but it’s also about classism. The fact that arrests were made, and made almost immediately, demonstrates how high a priority Philly cops place on protecting residents of affluent neighborhoods from real and imagined dangers.

Put another way, it’s likely that arrests wouldn’t have been made — that police wouldn’t even have been called — if the incident had occurred at a Starbucks in a poor neighborhood, where people are less likely to raise a fuss unless something truly criminal is taking place.

Wait, I forgot — there are no Starbucks in poor neighborhoods. The mere presence of a Starbucks in a neighborhood indicates that property values are booming to the point where poor people, black and white, have been pushed out, or soon will be pushed out, by people who can afford higher rental and mortgage payments.

(Check out the Zillow study, conducted in 2015, that documents the role Starbucks plays in the “gentrification” of city neighborhoods.)

Now Starbucks has announced it will close 8,000 stores for an afternoon next month in order to hold “racial-bias education” sessions for its employees. This may be a smart corporate strategy for avoiding lawsuits, but it will do nothing to allay the xenophobia so prevalent in wealthy enclaves where residents have enough clout at City Hall to make cops jump through hoops at their command.

Racial bias sessions won’t keep wealthy residents from raising a stink when someone plays a flute in the square, or when the so-called Friends of Rittenhouse Square try to ban wall sitting there.

More broadly, the sessions will do nothing to relieve tensions in big cities like Philly, where the gulf between rich and poor residents continues to widen.

Posted in life in the big city, livable cities, mainstream media, Philadelphia | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Pistol-packing pol doesn’t mind dying

Posted on April 12, 2018 by oddmanout215

Now the senator came down here/Showing everyone his gun…
— Bob Dylan, “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again”

This guy isn’t a senator. He’s Rep. Ralph Norman, and he is fast on the draw. So fast that he made the news last week by whipping out a loaded handgun and placing it on his table while having “coffee with constituents” at a restaurant in Rock Hill, SC.

“I don’t mind dying, but whoever shoots me better shoot well or I’m shooting back,” he later said.

“I don’t mind dying” is a line from Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” The narrator of the song is a boastful young rowdy looking to impress a girl named Arlene. Norman is a middle-aged Republican drone who’s also looking to impress Arlene, I guess.

The congressman told his coffee mates that he’d protect them with his gun. He vowed to not end up like Gabby Giffords, the ex-congresswoman who was shot in the head by some hombre while meeting with constituents in Arizona back in 2011.

But what if some bad guy had walked over to the table, picked up the gun, pointed it at Norman, and said “Who you gonna protect now, cowboy?”

Norman told reporters his intent was to demonstrate that “guns don’t shoot people; people shoot guns.”

One of them should have replied, “Anyone who would say something that stupid shouldn’t be allowed to have a gun, or hold public office.”

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Trump has nothing to lose

Posted on April 11, 2018 by oddmanout215

Reporters and White House insiders seemed to agree yesterday that Donald Trump was “losing it” I wondered what they were talking about. Did they mean his ability to put aside personal problems and focus on the welfare of others? Was it his sense of humor, his grip on reality, his human decency?

He never had any of those things, so how could he lose them? He is what he is – the ultimate ugly American, obsessed with the ownership and sale of things, content to believe that greed, fraudulence, ignorance and arrogance are virtues, not flaws.

Trump apparently threw a tantrum in the White House after learning the FBI had raided his personal attorney’s home and office. Later, in front of reporters, he called the raid “an attack on America,” as if nailing down evidence of his corrupt conduct, in and out of office, was akin to Pearl Harbor or 9-11.

But there’s no point ranting about Trump. What’s exasperating is his fan base, that malignant mass of white Americans who refuse to renounce him, to admit they were suckers for having voted for him. Many of them admire him, precisely because his persona reflects their own worst selves.

Trump tweeted this today:

Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’ You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!

Nice and new and smart. Gas killing animal. In a little while, Trump fans might get to see the real-world consequences of having elected a fake macho man who thinks it’s a good idea to risk World War III by punching adolescent threats into his phone.

The awful truth: Our fearful leader is happy to risk World War III, if only to divert attention from the Mueller probe, which seems to have hit pay dirt. That’s the kind of guy Trump is.

Posted in history, mainstream media, plutocracy | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

From Iraq to Trumpland

Posted on March 19, 2018 by oddmanout215

Tom Engelhardt marks the 15th anniversary of the start of a war that seems more disastrous with each passing year:

In an act of pure wizardry, bin Laden drew out of Bush, Cheney, and company their deepest geopolitical fantasies about the ability of [the United States] … to dominate any situation on Earth. The early months of 2003, when they were preparing to invade Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, may have been their ultimate hubristic moment, in which imagining anything other than success of a historic sort, not just in that country but far beyond it, was inconceivable.

I read the above to my friend Swamp Rabbit and told him I’d felt at that time that something really bad might happen, something even bigger than 9/11 and another ground war. Everybody and their mother was flying the flag and pinning yellow ribbons on phone poles and calling Muslims rag heads. French fries were renamed “freedom fries” by a Congressional jackass who was mad because France wanted no part in America’s war plans.

Saddam and bin Laden weren’t in cahoots, far from it, but many people were too worked up to see they were being lied to by Bush and Cheney and others who stood to make big money when the bombs started falling. A huge number of Americans approved of the war in Iraq. Then they disapproved. Then they sort of shut up and went back to their video games and reality TV shows.

But fear and loathing of dark-skinned foreigners lingered, along with contempt for politicians of both parties who’d supported the war. As historian Andrew Bacevich recently noted, contempt was strongest in those communities that had been most affected by the war.

But the contempt didn’t coalesce, didn’t really have a face, until real estate hustler and reality TV star Donald Trump decided to run for president. Millions of voters spited the establishment and themselves by electing a bloated bigot with a bizarre comb-over who would seek to ban Muslims, build a border wall and “make America great again.”

Swamp Rabbit told me I should chill. “Trump ain’t nothing but a clown. You make him sound like an antichrist.”

“John Lyden is an antichrist,” I said. “Trump is an anti-human. He uses fear and hate to grab power. A classic dictator type. The more he gets, the more he wants.”

Swamp Rabbit was annoyed. “Ain’t no call for that kind of talk. I can’t picture Trump becoming dictator. It can’t happen here.”

“Two years ago, you couldn’t picture him becoming president,” I said. “How’d that work out for you?”

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We’ve got a long way to go, baby

Posted on March 5, 2018 by oddmanout215

jane_walker

Last week Johnnie Walker Black Label, the scotch company, introduced “The Jane Walker Edition” in an effort to persuade women to drink more scotch and

…to coincide with Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day celebrations. In a multi-faceted attempt to support women in business, culture and politics, the company will donate $1 for each bottle produced to nonprofit campaigns like Monumental Women…

The ad campaign features a female version of the Johnnie Walker “striding man” logo and the slogan “With every step, we all move forward.” It’s like the campaign for Virginia Slims, a cigarette brand that appeared in 1968 and used the slogan “You’ve come a long way, baby” to persuade women to take up the smoking habit.

Here’s how far you’ve come, baby: You’re still being condescended to by con men who will voice support for just about any cause that might increase their bottom-line profits.

And here’s how far we’ve all come: We’re still being duped into accepting it’s perfectly normal to bow down to corporations that have perfected the art of convincing us to buy stuff we don’t need at prices few of us can really afford.

The Jane Walker phenomenon is not about promoting “gender equality.” It’s about teaching women to be good consumers and to endorse a corporate culture in which CEOs make about 350 times more money than the average worker, a disparity that no other country comes close to matching.

So drink up, boys and girls. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Posted in mainstream media, plutocracy | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

WP: Arctic warmth is ‘stunning’ scientists

Posted on February 28, 2018 by oddmanout215

polar-bear-on-ice-838x0_q80

Swamp Rabbit and I stopped for an overnight at a motel midway through a sales trip in upstate PA – Trump country. Some cadaver in camo gear checked us in and said there would be no meals until 7 a.m., so we settled for pork rinds and coffee from the vending machines. The coffee was rotgut, so we added sugar and a powdered milk substitute made of mercury or something.

We sat on a couch in the lobby, not far from a paneled wall hung with an elk head looking down on us with black marble eyes, very judgmental. Its jumbo antlers seemed to reach for me.

Swamp Rabbit told me hunters were less of a threat to wild things these days than human-made toxins, that scientists were finding tiny bits of plastic on polar ice, thousands of bits every square foot.

Not that there was much ice left at the North Pole, as the Washington Post noted yesterday. Swamp Rabbit pulled out his phone and showed me a picture of a polar bear standing on a small slab of it, surrounded by a thawing-out sea.

“I feel like that bear,” I said.

He threw a pork rind at me. “How you know how that bear feels? I don’t know how he feels.”

I told him all the bear wanted was a decent meal and a safe place to hang out, but there it was in the middle of nowhere, on a surface that becomes more fragile by the day, thanks in part to guys like Trump’s boy Scott Pruitt, the climate-change denier who heads the Environmental Protection Agency.

Swamp Rabbit said, “You’ll feel better once we’re out of Trump country. Even better when Trump and his gang get kicked out of office.”

“That’s the problem,” I replied. “Climate change is happening now. By the time Trump gets kicked out, the whole world might be Trump country.”

Posted in climate change | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Trump’s plan to stop school shootings

Posted on February 22, 2018 by oddmanout215

Donald Trump thinks real life is a reality TV show, or an old cowboy movie. To counter the threat of more mass shootings in schools, he wants to issue guns to 20 percent of schoolteachers in America. The movie version of his idea should star Clint Eastwood as an octogenarian teacher:

FADE IN
Young wacko enters schoolroom toting a semi-automatic rifle. A teacher confronts him. The wacko squares off with the teacher while students hide under their desks.

WACKO (Smiling) This school ain’t big enough for the both of us, old man.
TEACHER (Smiling) Feelin’ lucky, punk? You better git while the gittin’s good.

Wacko raises rifle and aims. Teacher whips out concealed handgun and shoots wacko dead before he can kill any students. Skinny student emerges from under desk.

STUDENT (Shouting) You killed him, Mr. Dirty Harry! You shot him with your gun!
TEACHER: (Whispering) I did, Johnny. You run along now and tell the principal the showdown is over. The rest of you boys and girls can go home now. Tomorrow I’ll get back to learnin’ you how to read and write.

Patriotic music swells. Credits roll. Teacher slips gun into concealed holster and puts on cowboy hat.

CUT TO:
Setting sun faces teacher as he strolls out of school and into parking lot, casting a long shadow.
FADE OUT

Posted in gun nuts, humor, movies | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

‘Your people I do not understand’

Posted on February 6, 2018 by oddmanout215

On Sunday night the Eagles won their first Super Bowl and there was joy in Mudville, a.k.a. South Philly. I could hear the revelers from my bedroom window, hooting and honking car horns, breaking glass, rejoicing. Reminding the world that that being a sports fan is like being a religious fanatic, but more fun because you can get drunk.

I went outdoors and saw cars gridlocked from Passyunk Avenue to Broad Street. Fans waved Eagles flags, climbed light poles, set fires, sang “Fly, Eagles, fly.” Was there a war? Was it over or just beginning?

I’ve read that some fans attached symbolic meaning to the victory of the “working-class” Eagles over the “elitist” New England Patriots, which is funny. Both teams field millionaire players, and their owners are in the plutocrat gang that banished quarterback Colin Kaepernick, a favorite target of Donald Trump, for the crime of calling attention to racism and other real-world phenomena.

I like watching great athletes play football, but I confess to being tone-deaf to the allure of football culture. The NFL is not my friend. Teams get tremendous tax breaks from the cities that host them. NFL players hardly ever grow up in the cities they play for. They are gladiators, not homeys.

Speaking of tone-deaf, what was all that half-time noise about? Justin Timberlake is a talented guy, but his songs are about nothing. They are product. He is product.

Long ago, seven months before the first Super Bowl, there was a Jimi Hendrix song called “Third Stone from the Sun,” in which an alien checks out Earth from his spaceship. “Your people I do not understand,” he intones over guitar feedback and other effects.

I don’t understand them either, and I’m supposed to be one of them. Beam me up, Jimi.

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Trump’s defense: A house is not a hole

Posted on January 16, 2018 by oddmanout215

Leave it to the worst U.S. president in history to bring the office down a few more notches by making this remark at a meeting about immigration last week: “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

The Washington Post reported the quotation, and that was that for a day or so, until it dawned on the dummy-in-chief that people outside his base thought his remark was despicable.

So then, of course, he tweeted “…this was not the language used at the meeting.”

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, who was present at the meeting, rebuked Trump for his denial and added that the “shithole” remark was in keeping with the rest of what Trump had said to those in attendance: “He said these hate-filled things and he said them repeatedly.” And Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, also at the meeting, more-or-less went along with the Post’s account.

But then, incredibly, Trump attempted to turn the shitstorm in his favor by trotting out two Republican lackeys — Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, both at the meeting — who reportedly said that our fearless leader had said “shithouse” countries, not “shithole” countries.

Scholars took note. The leader of the free world might have said “shithouse” instead of “shithole.” Untold millions had begun to wonder if Trump harbored racist feelings and was stupid enough to voice those feelings in front of congressional leaders at a meeting about immigration.

Thank God he cleared that up!

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A big victory for vile-but-discreet

Posted on December 21, 2017 by oddmanout215

Last week, after Roy Moore lost the race for a Senate seat in Alabama, I wrote “Old-guard Senate Republicans don’t like over-the-top vile. They like guys who are vile but discreet.”

In other words, they prefer colleagues who are like themselves. But there’s always room under their tent for guys like Moore and Donald Trump, faux-populists who convince low-information voters (gotta love the euphemism!) that the GOP is more than just the party of the rich.

But that’s exactly what the GOP is. Congressional Republicans invariably push for legislation like the newly passed tax bill, which is nothing but a huge giveaway to the corporations and individuals that fund their campaigns and set their agendas.

Vile but discreet Republicans — the McConnells and Grassleys and Cornyns and so on — don’t grab pussies or wave pistols or publicly dismiss Mexicans as criminals. They pretend to be appalled by the antics of their overtly vile colleagues. They pretend to serve both rich and poor constituents, and to worry about the federal deficit.

Some of them — the pipsqueak Bob Corker comes to mind — even pretended to doubt the wisdom of the new tax bill before adjustments were made to ensure the bill would benefit them personally.

In the end, all the Republicans in the Senate and all but twelve in the House voted yes to the bill, because it will further enrich their masters and themselves.

Maybe passage of the tax bill will wake Democrats to their great opportunity to retake both houses of Congress next year in the midterms. But don’t bet on it too early — Dems are experts at blowing opportunities.

Posted in mainstream media, mid-term elections, plutocracy, Politics, taxes | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment