Quote of the Day

Fine living . . . a la carte?
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!

LISTEN HUNGRY ONES!
Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the
new Waldorf-Astoria:

“All the luxuries of private home. . . .”
Now, won’t that be charming when the last flop-house
has turned you down this winter?
Furthermore:
“It is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel
world. . . .” It cost twenty-eight million dollars. The fa-
mous Oscar Tschirky is in charge of banqueting.
Alexandre Gastaud is chef. It will be a distinguished
background for society.
So when you’ve no place else to go, homeless and hungry
ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags–
(Or do you still consider the subway after midnight good
enough?)
Continue Reading This Article…

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From DelegateNero on Reddit:

Yesterday, during the Occupy Tampa general assembly, I found myself struggling to hear the crowd as right behind me a drum circle continued to pound away while the group discussed action. People from around the area yelled for them to stop, which they didn’t, continuing on with a relentless drone of drumming, a crowd of dancers wearing long flowing flowery skirts, dirty graying dreadlocks, and carrying signs for pot legalization.

None of which really bothers me. All of which sets me off.

I remarked to my girlfriend ‘I hate fucking Hippies.’ She asked me to clarify, herself a pantheist, pothead, naturist, and somewhat in line with what you might refer to as ‘hippy’.

Most of them looked to be Hippies. Not just Hippies, but Baby Boomers. The whole scene played out exactly as I view that post-war generation. Loud and self-absorbed, demonstrating without doing anything, craving attention while the new activists – anarcho-punks, college reds, unionists, libertarians, the apolitical – struggled with risking arrest, building the message and the movement, getting shit done. During our march they pushed through the crowd, breaking up chants as people lost their own voices trying to shout over the drums. There was no attempt to lead the group by keeping rhythm, just walking along making noise for whatever reason.

My whole view of the Baby Boomers came to a head with the economic meltdown. See, the Baby Boomers will tell you over and over about how they changed the world, how they almost won, how they ended the Vietnam War and spread peace and fought nuclear weapons, etc. They’ll talk about environmental achievements, and how great the music was.

What they don’t tell you is how they nurtured their self-importance until it blossomed in to hyper partisanship. They don’t talk about how they’re the ones fucking us right now. They don’t talk about how Social Security is more important to them than anything, just like cheap education used to be. They don’t talk about about being the ones that put us in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and continued the spread of the US hegemony. They don’t talk about how they’re the ones holding alternative energy back, the ones who coasted by on their parents (a generation who, for all their faults, can say that they survived the worst and defended the defenseless when needed,) and shifted all their failures on to their older kids.

They don’t tell you how afraid they are of us.

They don’t really understand egalitarianism or a fair economy. They don’t understand direct democracy, don’t understand unity.

They don’t understand anything but getting their own way. I hate Hippies because they’re most selfish of the Boomers, who are the most selfish of all generations.

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Let me tell you a wonderful, old joke from Communist times. A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: “Let’s establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.” This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom— war on terror and so on—falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here. You are giving all of us red ink.

- Slavoj Žižek at Occupy Wall Street protests in New York

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Someone, please explain this to me. Donald Issa (R-CA), appearing on Fox News (a News Corp subsidiary) to explain why the House of Representatives won’t investigate the News Corporation hacking scandal:

Well, thank you for being fair and balanced… This is being looked at by the Justice Department. This is being looked at by the Senate, and we’re keeping and eye on it. But at the same time, this is a story about a unit in another country, and we want to make sure we don’t enter the ground that is most inappropriate for us, which is we don’t start picking on media whether they’re the left or the right just because we can.

But at least he can appreciate that Fox is ‘fair and balanced’!

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