Author: TheGentlemanAtLarge

NPR Member Gifts for the 21st Century

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

We at National Public Radio are humbled, as always, to welcome you each morning with the up-to-date news, weather reporting, and children’s programming that you need to start each day on the right foot. At NPR we know that you cherish the news that matters most to you, and our giving members are truly our lifeblood since public funding ended.

Here at NPR we live to showcase the compelling storytelling that makes you tick for a full month each year. We’re just a few pledges shy of our goal, and on pace to end this pledge drive some time in December. So please, consider giving today with a one time or monthly sustaining gift to your local public radio station, as we transmit from an underground bunker in an undisclosed location.

Remember that even a small gift can help us tell the stories that matter most, and we can’t wait to send you one of our member gifts for your contribution.

For just one Amazon Credit, a sustainably raised, fair-trade leather strap to bite down on through this primary season.

For the small, one time gift of two Amazon Credits, this organic cotton NPR tote bag will look great and show your public radio pride at the Amazon Commissary Farmers’ Market Park, and sports a hidden pocket for smuggling documents and passports from Canada. Available in classic beige or sassy navy.

A monthly sustaining gift of 0.5 Amazon Credits will let you hide in plain sight. This organic cotton reversible “PUBLIC RADIO NERD” and “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” t-shirt will keep you safe in any neighborhood, once the revolution comes.

If you give the small gift of 3 Amazon Credits today, this vacuum sealed Klean Kanteen travel water bottle with built-in ultraviolet purifier will let you drink the tap water.

Of course all gifts are recognized with a “Wait Wait….. Don’t Tell Me! No, Really, Please Stop Telling Me What’s Happening Out There!” keychain and bottle opener.

And right now, for a limited time, if you make a pledge by 10pm this evening, we’ll send you an NPR branded grappling hook to show your support for public radio as you scale the wall and escape to Mexico.

Now is the time. We hope you’ll consider making a gift today to keep the programming going, you’ve been listening for years….. right? Is someone listening? Please pledge today. Or send food. Or let us know you’re out there. Someone. Anyone?

Signing off. We’ll try again tomorrow.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail


 

Game of Thrones Characters in Real Life

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

More and more the US political landscape resembles a kind of bizarro-fantasy world of backstabbing, intrigue, and high drama. It can be hard to keep straight whom we’re cheering for, whom we’re cheering against, and who even still has their head. (Who’s the Secretary of State, Defense, and Interior now? I would actually have to Google that).

And so I think it will be helpful to connect the dots to everyone’s favorite children’s show, Game of Thrones, to keep things straight. If I’ve missed the mark to let me know – still searching for Tyrion . . .

Game of Thrones Characters in Real Life

(if we can call this real life)

Joffrey Baratheon is Donald Trump – Because obviously. Have you seen this new crossbow? It’s the best crossbow. He has all the best crossbows.

Tommen Baratheon is Barron Trump – Again, you know, obviously.

Cersei Lannister is Mike Pence – Always lurking in the background, pulling the strings he can. Of course the King is the King, and won’t be controlled all the time.

Jaime Lannister is Ivanka Trump – She’s pretty hard to feel sorry for, but ever so often there’s a glimmer of dignity and grace. I love the idea of redemption here, but I need to see some effort. King Slayer’s gonna slay?

Margaery Tyrell is Steve Bannon – A master manipulator of the king. Not long for this world.

Lord Varys is Lindsey Graham – He’s been around as long as the kingdom itself, and does what he needs to do to stay relevant. He’s got a keen sense for the political winds, and will probably make it through just fine as long as he can live with himself.

The Minstrel Guy Who Sings The Wrong Song And Then Joffrey Has His Tongue Cut Out is Chris Christie.

Petyr Baelish is Stephen Miller – A tactical and strategic genius, and wildly ambitious. He’s never far from the king and has a knack for staying in the game. Objectively a bad person. “He would watch the kingdom burn if he could be the king of the ashes.”

Grand Maester Pycelle is Sebastian Gorka – Full of stories. Documented mouth-breather. Has he been stabbed by children yet?

Sir Gregor Clegane is Fox News. You don’t fuck with Fox News. Fox News will crush your skull.

Robb Stark is Beto O’Rourke – Had a good run early on, but it went to his head a bit. You don’t want to be too big for your britches, do you? Patience, bro. Patience.

Arya Stark is Glenn Greenwald – She’s got a bit of tunnel vision, sure, but punches well above her weight. You don’t want to find yourself on her list.

Sansa Stark is Elizabeth Warren – She’s had her ups and downs, and been treated cruelly by the King and his Court. But she’s got a head for this, and shit who knows? She could run this place.

The White Walkers are Bernie Bros – Dudes only, very white. Initially a pretty good idea for protecting the helpless against the powerful, but now march onward in dead-eyed obedience to the Night King. Just hope they don’t get a fundraising dragon.

The Night King is Bernie Sanders – Is he a hero or a villain? That’s a good question. We’ll have to watch next season and find out.

The resemblance is undeniable.

Night’s Watch is The Progressive Left – Really between a rock and a hard place here. Sworn to protect the realm against the army to the north, but then again the kingdom really kind of needs to be saved from itself, too, doesn’t it?

Wildlings are Millennials – A rag tag bunch of bearded young people who don’t own property. They’d be a real force in the world if they’d just get their shit together.

Jon Snow is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – Leader of the Night’s Watch and a voice to unite the Wildlings. Still has one get-out-of-dead-free card, too.

Craster is Ted Cruz – No one likes him, but they keep him around because, well, it’s cold outside, I guess. Definitely a creeper. Not a popular man.

Ramsey Bolton is Alex Jones/Rush Limbaugh – What happened to you? Why are you like this?

Ned Stark is Howard Dean – Good guy. Really could have gone places, but picked the wrong hill to die on. Sorry dude.

Daenerys Targaryen is Hilary Clinton – She’s got an army of fundraising dragons and won’t stop until she has claimed her birthright on the throne.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail


 

 

Presidential Budget

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

Another year, another Presidential Budget. With this proposal, the largest ever at $4.75T, supporters of President Trump have cast away any claims to fiscal conservativism to join those “family values” Republicans who sold out years ago just to wave a red pennant. In fact, the only ideologically consistent tenet of the President’s platform is now a white nationalist one, what with the rallies, and the wall thing, and the carrying on like a street performer doing Mussolini.

In proposing an unprecedented Presidential Budget, it’s amazing, really, that this administration has still found a way to make cuts at all, let alone the evisceration of social safety-net programs which many of us refer to as “humanity.” It is a good thing that the Presidential Budget is really kind of a marketing document, and that Congress actually makes all of those decisions. But the president’s budget speaks volumes to the instincts and preferences of the man in the White House.

I’m sure that analysts will find nuggets of misanthropy deeply buried in the document for weeks to come, but just behind the military parades and silly walls there is an implication much more telling of just how much contempt this president and his new party have for the public. Look, for instance, at education spending.

This budget suggests a 12% cut to the Department of Education, which includes slashing the Pell Grant funding that assists lower- and middle- class households in sending children to college. It also funds the Arts in Education Program, which as seen as much as 50% budget cuts since Republicans took control of Congress in 2012. Taken with consistent calls by this administration to defund the Endowment for the Arts and the Endowment for Humanities, we can interpret this as a real cynicism toward a liberal arts education.

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), on the other hand, is so hot right now. In spite of deep cuts to education spending, we now have new grant opportunities for Computer Science, STEM, etc. from that same agency on the heels of this administration’s promise to invest $200M in those fields. Hot dang! Education!

And that looks great. We’re funding programs to prepare kids for the world. Except that the programs that would someday hire those kids, NASA, the NIH, the NSF, the Department of Agriculture, etc., are also looking down the barrel of billions of dollars in budget cuts.

This begs the question: who stands to gain here?

The answer, of course is Facebook. Google. Tech. What we have in this budget is the framework for a public education system that serves at the pleasure of Big Technology. Where a narrowly educated workforce is churned out heavily in debt to toil toward profits of Byzantine proportions that will be shared by a very few.

It should come as no surprise that the items of Federal R&D budgets which did see proposed increases were for Artificial Intelligence and 5G broadband: the underpinnings of our new surveillance economy and the data hegemony of these same mega-companies.

We see in this budget the cynical view that the government should serve corporate interests above all. With the influence of money in modern politics, this should not surprise us (the tech industry spent $220M on elections in 2018).

Until we get money out of politics this is the new normal: where government works for the interest of private sector growth, and not for the individuals who cast the votes.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail


 

It’s Not That I’m a Climate Denier

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

Look, I get it. Climate change is real. Humans are causing it. I’m not going to argue with that.

Because, I mean, any rational person can look at the overwhelming body of evidence, or at least listen to unanimous scientific consensus, and pretty much land in the same place, right? NASA, the Euros, everyone, really. We’ve got good people working on this. We’re on the same page. The climate is warming. We’re causing it. At this point “climate skepticism” is really just deliberate obstinance, like a toddler repeating “why?” ad nauseum.

So no, I’m not a climate denier, or a climate skeptic, or whatever. It’s just, like, you know, fuck everyone else.

By now we all pretty well know that transportation is the leading contributor to conditions that will eradicate marine life on earth, and don’t get me wrong, that sounds like a big deal. But have you ever actually taken the bus? Good lord. There’s poor people on the bus. Fuck that.

And bicycles seem fine, I guess, if you’re a child, or a peasant, or something. But I have a job, you know? Bicycles are undignified. Someone might see me. Besides, you would have to get up early, and going to the store to get a light seems like a lot of work*. Yeah, technically, the global hunger crisis is recently on the rise again after more than a decade of consistent decline, but bike commuting in the winter would mean wearing two jackets. Fuck those people. I’m not about to wear two jackets. It would look ridiculous.

It’s not that I don’t believe the climate is warming. That would be silly. I believe it, I do. But I work hard, you know? I’m important. When I need to be someplace I need to be there already, and when I need to blow off some steam then I do it. After a long week of blogging, or thinking about blogging, or driving too big a vehicle into a small parking lot, sometimes I just need to get away for a while. Reboot. Get some perspective. So I hop on a plane. Screw you. I earned it, and what am I going to do? Not go to Mexico for the weekend? You must be out of your damn mind. What would I put on Instagram?

It’s not that I don’t care about those people, I just don’t care enough to do anything. It’s different.

The thing is, I feel for those people who lost their homes in Houston and their lives in New Orleans. I do. But when I’m on a road trip and I need a burger, am I supposed to not get a burger? Do you know how that sounds? Sure, industrial agriculture and rain forest deforestation contribute to 24% of global carbon emissions, but it could take as much as thirty minutes to make a sandwich. And besides, burgers are good. I’m getting one and that’s that.

At the end of the day, it’s not my fault people live in Miami. That’s their bad, you know? I understand that my actions contribute to increased flooding and storms, but do they understand how depressing it is to read about those storms? Shouldn’t they just move? Like, we’ve made it pretty clear that climate change is going to flood their homes. That’s not in dispute. They should probably get out of there, because I’m definitely not going to stop hitting McDonald’s.

Just don’t come to Montana. Montana is full, haven’t you heard?

 

*ugh omg and then you’d have to charge that light, eventually. No thank you.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail