“The knowledge that we are slaves being bought by the hour rather than the lifetime has also been lost. We have been wage slaves for so long that we have forgotten there is any other way to live. We have forgotten that once we had land and tools and could live independently, providing for ourselves, without being forced to sell our labor power for wages.”
I’ve linked to him before… and now I’ll do it again. Highly worth reading.
Monday night February 8 at Beat Research (at the Enormous Room in Central Square), dj’s Flack and Wayne’n’Wax are hosting dj/rupture. I’ve mentioned rupture on the blog here before. He was one of the founders of the Toneburst collective, with whom Noise Laboratories had the pleasure of collaborating back when we were all so much younger…
Supporting Democrats who won’t stand up for what we believe in is actually the same as supporting Republicans. Someday we’ll figure that out. Until then, we have Chris Floyd to explain it to us:
I know what it’s like to be hardwired for supporting Democrats, come hell or high water, giving them every benefit of the doubt, turning a blind eye here, making a furious rationalization there. These tribal loyalties are very difficult to lay down; it really can feel like turning your back on your family. And of course the belligerent, bellicose, willfully ignorant Republicans are loathsome and dangerous.
But there comes a time when you must face the truth – or be lost to truth forever. There comes a time to recognize that the Democratic Party and Republican Party are part of the same corrupted entity. There comes a time to recognize that the Democratic Party’s agenda is not only ruinous in itself, unworthy of the support of anyone who cares about justice, peace, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – it is also empowering those very same loathsome and dangerous Republicans. There comes a time for even the most partisan tribalist (and I have been one) to accept the hard judgment of reality: that the Democratic Party is part of the problem, not the solution.
To say that there is no alternative to supporting this locked-in, closed-off, two-faction system of war and greed is an act of craven surrender to that system. To dismiss all hope for forging genuine alternatives to this system — whether these be other political parties or more general movements aiming not for political power but for broader changes in social consciousness — is a counsel of despair. It condemns us, and the world, to yet another generation of violence, chaos and corruption, another long, long journey away from the light. It is, as noted above, a recipe for disaster in every way.
Martha Coakley was the Democratic candidate who referred to Curt Schilling as a Yankees fan and who misspelled the word “Massachusetts” in a campaign ad. As a Massachusetts native, I can tell you that I have not been so uninspired by a candidate since the last time John Kerry was running. When Coakley was asked by the Boston Globe if her campaign was being too passive, she mentioned that she was busy meeting with local leaders rather than choosing, like her Republican rival, to “stand outside of Fenway, shaking hands, in the cold.”
As Jon Stewart pointed out (that’s a Stewart quip in the headline, by the way), with the loss of Kennedy’s seat in the Senate, the Democrats are now down to… “an 18-vote majority in the Senate. Which is way more than George W. Bush ever needed to do whatever the fuck he wanted to do.”
But, hey… bipartisanship, compromise, working together, bridging the divide…
I guess it’s time to modify those old McGovern-era bumper stickers:
The image above is the daily trace of data from the weather station atop the Green Building at MIT (pictured below). The top box shows you the temperature, which dropped from 32°F to 10°F in 24 hours… the second box shows the steadily rising barometric pressure… the third box shows the wind speeds with gusts above 60 MPH and sustained wind speeds well above 40 MPH – the Green Building is about 300 feet tall, so it’s well above any obstructions and hence records higher wind speeds than ground stations.
All of which is to say… Damn it’s cold!
Facebook ads are really weird sometimes:
From NII part-time-blogger Dan comes the story of Matt Penkul, a 31-year-old Lynn resident who scored a record-breaking 514 in three strings of candlepin bowling, rolling 155, 161, and 198.
Unfortunately, the foul line sensors at Metro Bowl in Peabody weren’t turned on that night, and so his record won’t be counted. I stand firmly with the Massachusetts Bowling Association in favor of foul-line sensors, as friend-of-the-blog Shwilly B knows all to well. I agree with Walter, from the film The Big Lebowski:
My favorite quote from the linked article comes around the middle:
The sensors intended to keep a bowler from crossing the foul line were off, making Penkul’s score unofficial, said Al Gangi, president of the Massachusetts Bowling Association.
“No foul lights, no record,” Gangi said.
It is the second time in five years the absence of the foul lights has negated the record. Chris Sargent of Haverhill bowled a 517 at the same alley in 2004, officials said.
“It’s all politics,” Sargent said. “If they want to count it, they’ll count it. Or they’ll say, ‘Too bad.'”
Classic!
Good for Deval Patrick. He was scheduled to give an address to the Clover Club, an all-male membership organization that dates back to the late 1800’s. The address is a tradition for Massachusetts politicians. But Patrick canceled at the last minute:
Club members and their guests, who include many high-powered executives and political leaders, said they were stunned and disappointed.
“I’ve never heard of anybody who thinks it’s inappropriate,” said former House speaker Thomas M. Finneran, who said he has attended about 10 club dinners over the years. “Neither my wife nor my daughter, who are grown and very intelligent women, were ever offended that I was going to a guys-only event.”
Former attorney general and House speaker Robert H. Quinn, who has been attending for three decades, also defended the group.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with men’s clubs,” Quinn said.
Patrick’s office explained his cancellation in a brief statement Sunday, blaming the governor’s staff for failing to alert him to “a full understanding of the club’s traditions” and saying, “When the governor recently found out about the fact that women were not allowed to attend such functions, he expressed his concern to the organizers and decided not to attend.”
For those of you who can’t be here to share it in person, this was the view from the top of the tower in Mt. Auburn Cemetery on Sunday afternoon.
Went for a ride through the Central Artery Tunnel at 10:30 pm on Sunday night, and – as usual – the road was down to just one lane. Several police cars, a few parked construction vehicles, and two workmen standing next to an idle machine that comrade E. assures me is a concrete cutter. I actually can’t recall driving through Boston after 10pm on any night of the week without having the Central Artery either reduced to one lane or closed completely. The maze of on-ramp closures and diversions has, on occasion, been severe enough that I’ve unintentionally ended up in East Boston.
How much does it cost to have a highway that stays open all night long?
How much does it cost to build an integrated urban transit system that actually makes sense? In 1990, the Commonwealth committed to doing things like building the Green Line out to Medford, building the Blue Line out to Lynn, adding walking paths and bicycle trails, and restoring commuter rail service to the southern burbs on the Greenbush Line. If you follow the money, you can guess which ONE of these options has actually come to pass (yes, the Greenbush Line — probably the least useful in terms of passenger-miles, but the most vociferously demanded by relatively wealthier suburbanites).
Another proposal that was prominent throughout the planning stages of the Big Dig related to passenger rail service. Currently, all the rail lines into Boston terminate either at North Station or at South Station. The two stations are about a mile apart, and there is NO direct transit link between them – Amtrak advises passengers with luggage to take a taxi, although they could also walk down to the Red Line platform, and board a Red Line train to Downtown Crossing, then walk up and over and down again to the Orange Line platform and ride the Orange Line to North Station, and then go up two levels and into North Station itself to board their continuing train.
The Big Dig entailed digging a huge tunnel in which to bury the Central Artery highway…eight lanes of traffic underneath downtown Boston, stretching from… yes, you know this by now… North Station to South Station.
People with an ounce of fucking common sense insisted that the planners include a provision for TRAIN TRACKS in the tunnels that would be built from NORTH STATION TO SOUTH STATION.
What happened? Here’s an excerpt from a Boston Globe article from 1994:
Calling a proposed rail link between North and South Stations too expensive, a panel of transportation specialists yesterday threw cold water on a Weld administration plan cherished by supporters as a way to help solve Boston’s vehicular chaos.
The final report of the three-day “Boston Conference: Shaping the Accessible Region,” held last April and May, said alternatives should be sought for the $2 billion to $4 billion link designed to unite Boston’s communter rail systems.
In the report the panel endorsed development of the 14-mile route known as the Urban Ring.
So… in 1994 the Commonwealth killed the idea of linking North and South stations via rail because it would have added $2 billion to the cost of the project.
Fast-forward fifteen years: the Globe estimates that taxpayers will have spent over $22 BILLION on the Big Dig, including debt payments… and that 73% of those costs are borne by Massachusetts alone.
For what it’s worth, the original project estimate was $2.6 billion.