nikhil.io

seventy-one things tagged “politics

Letting the Cat Out of the Bag

From the United Automobile Worker magazine, 1937: “What did you tell that man just now?” “I told him to hurry.” “What right do you have to tell him to hurry?” “I pay him to hurry.” “How much do you pay him?” “Four dollars a day.” “Where do you get the money?” “I sell products.” “Who makes the produ…

“If you can’t be responsible of following some other simple rules in society to behave, why should you have a gun?”

That would be a Swiss gun instructor. His country has 2.3 million guns per 8.6 million people and has had exactly one mass shooting since 2001. They are able to do this despite being one of the most armed European countries because they have commonsense gun laws, actually fucking act to prevent sens…

Bheemla Nayak

Excellent cinematography and art direction. Bouncy background score by Thaman. Rana Daggubati stole the show, is magnetic in every scene he’s in, and we were all amazed by the ease with which he plays arrogant douchenozzles 💯 Could’ve been at least an hour shorter. Lovely poetry.…

Rating: B

Two Messages for Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to the fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers, and father figures who enrich our character, love us unconditionally, and give so much of themselves every day so we can live lives worthy of their dreams and sacrifices. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. And, this is real (as much as you…

Election

Election

(1999)

One of the best black comedies I’ve seen. Amazing attention to detail. Watched with LD. Reese Witherspoon was just perfect. Indeed, it was a breakthrough role for which she won a bunch of awards. Learned that Jessica Campbell who was also perfect as the angsty Tammy Metzler sadly passed away in Janu…

Rating: A

We are Facebook. When a fascist, Hindu Fundamentalist government tells us their fee-fees are hurt by a hashtag, we Move Fast and Break Democracy to the pleasure of our shithead plasticine overlord.

Because the only thing that matters is delivering Value to shareholders. (cached) Incidentally, and to the “huh” of many Value-illiterate people, defending totalitarian governments is exactly how one gives “people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”…

The Diabetic Racist

Matt Rowan is a family man, a Christian, and a former youth pastor (so we’re off to a fantastic start already). At a high school basketball game, this pillar of the community called children “f****** n******s” for that grave sin of actually kneeling during the national anthem. On the video, Rowan…

On Space Lasers

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites…

A Malarkey-Free America

Here’s to a Malarkey-Free America 🇺🇸🍦😎 Things won’t magically start getting better. He isn’t perfect. But he certainly is a decent human being, if only because he isn’t malevolent narcissism incarnate. And unless your career depends on democratic dysfunction and systemic ineptitude, cruelty, and…

We Love America the Mostest

I’m always curious what exactly Conservatives mean when they say they “Love America” because you hate most of the people who live here, you hate the civil liberties afforded by the Constitution, you hate the separation of Church and State. You might claim to love its economy but you hate all of th…

A Conservative Plan

By Amii James (Instagram). Context was the Tories but applies to our fine people stateside as well. Tory ministers saying “we owe it to children to keep schools open” might want to explain to me why they closed my youth centre, cut mental health services, underfunded my secondary school, stripped…

Conversion Table

by Prof. Kieran Healy

A B No one could have predicted this would happen Many people have been saying something like this would happen I never thought I’d live to see this day I have been asleep for the past five years Anarchists Trump Supporters This is not who we are This is exactly who we are Our 250 yea…

THIS is America

Lord of our lives and sovereign of our beloved nation, we deplore the desecration of the United States Capitol building, the shedding of innocent blood, the loss of life, and the quagmire of dysfunction that threaten our democracy. These tragedies have reminded us that words matter and that the po…

This Is America

During the four years of the Civil War, the confederates never got closer to Washington than Fort Stevens. Until today, when insurrectionist supporters of @realDonaldTrump paraded through the U.S. Capitol Building carrying the Confederate battle flag. @JordanOnRecord The ultimate in White…

Scottish Sass

Asked about speculation that Mr Trump could travel to Scotland in order to avoid the inauguration, Ms Sturgeon said: "I have no idea what Donald Trump’s travel plans are, you’ll be glad to know. "I hope and expect that – as everybody expects, not everybody necessarily will hope – that th…

The Work of Ron Cobb

Ronald Ray Cobb was “an American-Australian cartoonist, artist, and film designer” who passed away in September last year. He worked on movies like “Back to the Future”, “Jodorowsky’s Dune”, and “Alien”. An ornithopter! But it’s perhaps his cartoons that are more enduring and eeriely relevant afte…

Dorothy Counts

04 September, 1957 Dorothy Counts, the first and at the time only black student to enroll in the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School in Charlotte (NC), is mocked by protestors on her first day of school. Bystanders threw rocks and screamed at Dorothy to go back to where she came from. The…

The Conservative Refrain

Starring Ted Cruz. It cannot be anyone else. /misc/w/why-am-i-persecuted.mp4 And there’s the 10-hour version (of course) for when a batshit-crazy, cultist conservative whinges about freedom and liberty and censorship and free markets and privatization and regulation and “corporations are people” and…

On Moochers

Many years ago interviewed an older gentleman as part of a study I was conducting. He said “Republicans are people who will withhold food from 100 people out fear that 1 might not need or deserve it. Democrats will feed 100 out of concern that 1 might really need it. @silvercoug With this foll…

Supply-Side Jesus

Saith The Lord to Socialist Democrats: ha, nice try. healthcare is about consumer choice. get a job and enroll in a market-based plan. no peter i won’t help you that will only create dependency pick yourself up by your own sandal straps it’s called personal responsibility. i would love to give you…

Idiots Out Walking Around

Reynolds said election victories for Republicans in the state this week show Iowans support her approach. “It was a validation of our balanced response to COVID-19, one that is mindful of both public health and economic health,” Reynolds said. Because political victories, not cases or deaths, shou…

Tim Kendall testifies

to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Facebook’s engagement practices and likens them to time-tested strategies used by Big Tobacco before they were somewhat regulated. And he would know. Kendall was the former “Director of Monetization” at Facebook and is currently the CEO of Moment, a c…

Every “safety plan” I’ve seen that would allow public schools to reopen requires that kids behave in ways that no child has ever behaved in the history of children.

Yep. And the tweet was in the context of school openings, but college towns like Ames and Iowa City, are no exceptions (like she continues.) I say we continue to doubt the science, exercise absolutely no discipline in the interest of the economy (because the Communist Kiwis maintain zero interest in…

The Official Response

WOOLEY. What if the Prime Minister insists we help them? SIR APPLEBY. Then we follow the four-stage strategy. WOOLEY. What’s that? SIR WHARTON. Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis. SIR WHARTON. In stage one we say nothing is going to happen. SIR APPLEBY. Stage two, we say something…

The Unborn

“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t…

Apu

From Soutik Biswas’, “The Simpsons: Not all Indians think Apu is a racist stereotype” “As I see it, there are two primary products that second generation Indian American comedians sell - the ridiculousness of their parents’ ‘culture’ (arranged marriage and ‘my son, the doctor’ are the commonest tro…

Orwell

When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases – bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder – one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of du…