Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Gesundheit


Darkness Is Good

Museo Leon Trotsky

In his first interview outside of the conservative website Breitbart News since the election, Steve Bannon said that he thinks “darkness is good.”

“Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they (liberals) get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”


Dracula confronted in Munich

Catalan Caganer

Friday, November 18, 2016

Sunday, November 13, 2016

A better world......SOON!!!


                                                TRUMP WINS!!!!!
WHITE GUYS FORESEE
IDYLLIC FUTURE!!!!!

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Nina Hagen - Du Hast den Farbfilm Vergessen 1974



High was the sea buckthorn on the beach of the Hidensee
Micha, my Micha, and everything was aching
The rabbits looked shyly out of their home
My sorrow unloaded as loudly as this into this blue sky
My naked foot stamped as badly as this on the sand
And I beat your hand off my shoulder
Micha, my Micha, and everything was aching
Do this once again, Micha, and I go! 

You forgot the colour film my Michael
Nobody will believe us how beautiful it was
You forgot the colour film, by my soul!
Everything blue and white and green,
And later not true anymore. 

Now I sit at your and my home again
And choose the photos for the photo album
Me in this bikini and me at the F.K.K.
Me in the funny mini, landscape is there too, yes,
But how terrible, the tears are rolling hot
Landscape and Nina and everything only black and white
Micha, my Micha, and everything is aching
Do this once again, Micha, and I go!

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Jagd auf Kohlenklau (Hunt the Coal Thief) 1930s

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bibliodyssey/3038442356/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bibliodyssey/albums/72157609277516229/with/3037596443/

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Sunday, October 23, 2016

A hot time in Hungary last night!!!


October Game: "Fury of Dracula"
10/22/16 Saturday   

I played the big SUCKER and lost!
They cornered me in Szeged and fed me STAKE!!!
BLEH!!!
Great fun and we'll be replaying this...
soon!

Monday, October 10, 2016

Okay. He and I haven’t spoken and I disagree.


"Now, she talks tough, she talks really tough against Putin. And against Assad. She talks in favor of the rebels. She doesn’t even know who the rebels are. Every time we take rebels. Whether it's in Iraq or anywhere else. We are arming people. And you know what happens? They end up being worse than the people." -  Donald Trump, 10/9/2016

Mike Pence and Hillary Clinton could, if required, find plenty to argue about on the subject of Syria. But, as full initiates of imperial orthodoxy, they are in agreement on the essentials of American policy. Trump is not. In the debate he quite deliberately stepped outside the bounds of accepted speech when he challenged the identity of the rebel forces under attack in eastern Aleppo. My guess is there are ex-military who have his ear and fill it with their opinions that were frustrated politically during their time in command. Not all generals agree with the prevailing strategy of the empire. Didn't Trump reference MacArthur in the first debate? He may even still be listening to Manafort.

In his lust to discredit his opponent and a Mideast policy that stretches across administrations of both parties he is uncovering facts that are not spoken of at the electoral dinner table. The nature and allegiances of the armies involved in the fighting in Syria are not secret but there is a consensus observed by all candidates in the election but one that, at least at present, the Russians and Syrian state are the bad guys in Aleppo. That Trump would question this, however else he confuses his story, is more than likely the reason his party is deserting him.

The disclosures from the Friday before the debate are ugly but are not the source of the rift between the candidate and his party. They are more in the nature of a escalated warning to him that he must conform in thought, word, and deed to the norms of American politics or he will not be permitted to take office. Had he fallen to his knees and begged forgiveness he would probably been taken back in the fold. That's how powerful is the need for the system to have two anointed candidates. Having refused to do this he is now in open defiance of his nominal party. It's hard to see how this ends well for him. My guess is that Pence will be convinced to pull the plug.

But the forces that have rallied with unquestioning loyalty to this campaign will not dissolve with his exit or defeat. Their relation to the Republican Party will become critical and could destroy it. Clinton sees these political shadows but she is not prepared to fight them. Nor can she be relied upon as an ally when the working class is defending itself.


Friday, October 7, 2016

Rita lines up her shot

Urbs vs. Mountain

The popolus flees

Pompeii

It seems we have a tie

Dennis and Greg

But wait, tribune Dennis is declared victorious

Dennis

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

"And the other leaving that looks good is the stock market"


 Typical politician. All talk no action. Sounds good. Doesn't work. Never going to happen. Our country is suffering because people like Secretary Clinton have made such bad decisions in terms of our jobs and in terms of what is going on. Now look, we have the worst revival of an economy since the Great Depression. 
And believe me, we are in a bubble right now. And the other leaving that looks good is the stock market. But if you raise interest rates even a little bit that is going to come crashing down. 
We are in a big fat ugly bubble. And we better be awfully careful. And we had a Fed that is doing political things. This Janet Yellen of the Fed, the Fed is doing political by keeping interest rates at this level. 
And believe me the day Obama goes off and he leaves and he goes out to the golf course for the rest of his life to play golf, when they raise interest rates, you are going to see some very bad things happen because the Fed is not doing their job. The Fed is being more political than Secretary Clinton.
- Donald Trump, Debate 9-26-2016

Other than one econ commentator and the World Socialist Web Site (Clinton-Trump debate: A degrading spectacle) this outburst received little attention. Hardly surprising given the almost random referential web of Trump's performance in the debate. But the first virtue that is mentioned by his supporters, at least in polite society, is that he is a successful businessman, And here is America's most famous rich man, running for president, and he is alerting his audience that the stock market has nowhere near the worth that its current prices would indicate. Trump has plenty of experience with bubbles and knows where they end. The alarm he is sounding is no joke.

Has he shorted the market, perhaps anticipating an adverse reaction to his election? Is he trying to force a crash to undermine the continuance of Democratic control of the White House which he is claiming is the policy of the Fed? I don't think we have to answer these to get to the ground of what is going on here, to use them to see the political structure of the campaign the Republican Party is using, however it may protest its reluctance to do so.

And there is more that we can regard as symptomatic rather than descriptive. The "political things" that the Fed is doing reminds me of Tracy Powers' vision of "the media" ensuring Obama's election eight years ago (The Media Is Behind All of This). One could get the impression that the Republican Party is feeling more dispensable than it would like. Their role since Nixon has been to provide a politically acceptable avenue to balloon credit through military spending and that role has limited value at present.

Why is Trump criticizing Yellen? Fed policy cannot allow itself to move too far outside the consensus space of the financial powers, that is, it cannot long ignore ruling class opinion. If, indeed, the Fed is trying to avoid upsetting the apple cart at the close of the Obama administration and, therefore, favoring the election of its designated heiress then Trump is not furthering his position by blasting it. It is an even worse strategy than McCain's waffling on TARP. But Trump, swearing fealty to each and every dark power in the Republican universe, does not feel constrained to also genuflect at the altar of capitalist orthodoxy.

He may not be afraid of losing this election and sticking around to pick up the pieces of Clinton's administration when financial crisis re-emerges. Or, if elected after all, he will likely be content to let Yellen have her way and blame her and Obama when it all comes apart. In either case he is offering no alternative policy at all. Not even a bombastic assertion of the power of his indomitable will.

So why is it part of his repertoire? It would not have appeared in the debate if it had not elicited positive feedback on the stump or in bull sessions before hand. Its value, like everything he says as he stabs with his circled thumb and forefinger, lies in a negative charge of truth. Things are bad. As the party in power, the Democrats are loath to admit how bad they are. It is not insignificant that Clinton completely ignored this part of Trump's performance. Nor was it criticized anywhere in the media that I have seen. And that is what gives Trump, a man with no policies at all, purchase with the American electorate.

The Fed has been in the same tight spot for eight years. It would love to return to a pattern of accommodate and squeeze but it cannot. Accommodation, the bubble, is the only thing keeping the financial system afloat. The "political things" the Fed is doing are less to uphold the Democratic Party than to preserve the international financial system, capitalism, in short.

This crisis, climate change, war, everyone is aware of what is happening. Sanders and Trump have been able to convey a sense of solidarity with this general anxiety, Sanders by raising the political banner of the working class, however carefully, and Trump by his pantomime of hatred for all things upsetting to those who continue to take comfort in the structures of power. When voters say they distrust Clinton it is perhaps because they cannot tell whether she is hiding what she knows about how bad things are or is genuinely oblivious.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Donald Trump's America Is Secure



The first commercial of the Trump campaign confirms what I wrote in July, (Trump the Game), that in Trump's political space/time he is no mere candidate, he is the President. Note the tense in the screen cap. What is it in the structure of American politics that allows the Republican candidate to assume the mantle of legitimacy and cast his opponent as usurper? And why is a man who has spent his entire life in the amoral world of big city real estate able to refer to Clinton as "Crooked Hillary" with impunity?

I was reminded of the character of the Republican Party by the recent PBS documentary, The Presidents: Nixon. Nixon's early campaigns for Congress and for the Senate featured smears of his opponents as Communists. It is the same tactic, and one that is fundamental to the party, that is playing a major role in Trump's campaign against Clinton. Its continued foothold has nothing to do with details of the Clintons' political history. Rather it points to an ideological imbalance between Democrats and Republicans since the New Deal.

With FDR the Democratic Party assumed the role of protector of the working class. The contradiction between that role and its status as an essential institution of capitalist rule at home and globally is the source of its strength and its weakness with regards to its rival party. Everyone who has given any thought to the matter understands that socialism, in some fashion, is the political program of the working class. You may oppose it or support it. You may analyze it according to your specialized field. We can only hope you will not ignore the dialectic when you do. 

But you will never hear this acknowledged by the Democratic Party. They will profess support for unions, for public education, for social insurance and so forth. But they will deny this is socialism.They will deny, because it is contrary to the class foundation of the party, that these are expressions of a working class platform that challenges capitalist rule.

The New Deal has always been an exchange of equivalents. The workers trade their support for American capital and empire for what is called a dream. That the terms of this deal are threadbare is hardly noticed in the boardroom but it is completely obvious to the rank and file. The Democratic Party cannot honestly admit that the economic crisis that it has overseen through the last two terms and which its rival party failed to resolve during the previous two terms will not be resolved within the existing economic system.

Why has a holdover from the two previous Democratic administrations been the only credible candidate from the party establishment? Why, given these credentials, was she nevertheless nearly upended by this cycle's outsider? By simply enunciating the forbidden word "socialism" Sanders was able to expose the poverty of the party and nearly succeed in a quest that seems to have been beyond his intentions.

This is the situation where Trump is able to pose as the only legitimate candidate. He is steeped in the most venomous traditions of his party and has an intuitive grasp of his target's vulnerability. Like Nixon, like Bush, he knows that the Democrat can only blush with outrage when baited as "soft on communism, terrorism, etc." while his own party's unashamed adherence to any and all methods of class rule will protect his flank.

Admittedly, Clinton has done little blushing. Her response has been to emphasize her imperial credentials and blast Trump's. But that has not been reassuring It is much easier to see the decline of the empire and the crisis of the economic structure during Obama's administration than to recall the contributions made to this by Bush. In any case, other than the occasional ejaculation to the sacred memory of Reagan, Trump is completely unfettered by American political history. Clinton, on the other hand, is wrapped in the last 24 years and bears the collective sins of both parties.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Escape from Planet X

http://bullyscomics.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-month-of-board-games-day-9-doctor.html

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Friday, August 19, 2016

Suffering Sappho!




















All the world is waiting for you,
And the powers you possess,
In your satin tights,
Fighting for your rights,
And the old red, white and blue!
...
Wonder Woman!
Get us out from under.
Wonder Woman!

All our hopes are pinned upon you,
And the magic that you do.
Stop a bullet cold,
Make the Axis fold,
Change their minds,
And change the world!


Beep Beep


Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Prisoners of the Prefusions

http://bullyscomics.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-month-of-board-games-day-2-get-doctor.html

















This aptly-designed game captures the pure essence of Doctor Who, that is, running down corridors away from rubber monsters. Even tho' the Prefusions are non-canon. Anyway, print out, clip it out, and play and enjoy! 

The Awful Green Things from Outer Space

The Awful Green Things from Outer Space game
Classic TSR alien game from the 70s

Lesa Aldridge - Til The End Of The Day

Thursday, July 21, 2016

The Downfall of Pompeii

Flee!

The Downfall of Pompeii is a game for 2 to 4 players designed by Klaus-Jurgen Wrede. You spend the first half of the game expanding your families throughout the city of Pompeii and the second half fleeing from the lava.


Mick lines up a putt


Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Trump the Game


The supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based wholly upon the competition of the workers among themselves; i.e., upon their want of cohesion.
—  Engels - Condition of the Working Class 1845

Everyone understands the job interview. We are called upon to demonstrate our suitability to the capitalist enterprise. Even being called upon is a sacred trust. We know enough to hide any union sympathies we have. The most suitable of us have killed those sympathies long before we begin the interview. We enter the interview out of need. We comport ourselves as ever-willing providers of surplus value. But who wants to watch that?

To qualify as entertainment the enterprise, with its cogs and assemblies for the proper acquisition of labor, must manifest itself in the persona of the boss. And the pool of applicants must drop their chorus masks of undifferentiated labor power and put on personality. In reality they are always one. They always end up alone. By slaying their competitors they complete their renunciation of the working class. But there will be no induction into the owning class. Whatever the prize for their victory it will not be ownership of the means of production. They may become sacrifice or they may usurp the master. At that point it only matters to the story runner.

Trump's main concern with declaring himself was giving up his Apprentice franchise. Giving up being the boss, the simulacrum of the capitalist. In the world of the show he was the totally free subject, unquestioned, magnificent. Why accept a demotion to candidate? And that is why his campaign has looked all wrong. He isn't running for president, he is president. Fundraising, ad buys, deference to the press, all of it, to what end? I have suspected since his announcement last June that he didn't actually want to be president. I failed to recognize that he had already ascended to that role.

But the boss or the president is only that if there is someone over whom to exercise power. You can't be the boss if you can't fire someone. You can't be the president if you can't throw someone out of the country. That is why the central ritual of the Trump rally is expulsion and assault. The contestants on his show, the aspiring masses at his rallies, profess to be nothing. Their identities have been subverted by others. By pledging fealty to the boss they share his power, they are granted license to reclaim territory which has been lost to political correctness and to trade agreements.

The structures of authority which they wish to restore are embodied in the idea of the wall. Of course there are already walls everywhere. But they don't give a sense of protection because those attending a Trump rally are, like the rest of us, excluded by those walls. If they were truly inside the walls they would have no incentive to attend Trump University, to be contestants on a reality show, or to line up for admission to a stadium to watch their president.

The wall they want is a barrier between themselves and other members of the working class who they can only see as competitors and enemies, not as allies. In the eyes of capital we are all equal as sources of surplus value. It will play the game of setting one against another but it cannot avoid the fact that, once the numbers are in the ledger, nation, gender, and all other marks of distinction are gone. As people the bourgeoisie are as stocked with prejudice as the rest of us. They may even look askance at the suspect manners of Mr. Trump. But as capitalists they know that M = M.

And that is why Trump can campaign against Wall Street. Capital undermines all social structures that don't serve it directly. Whether here or abroad its prescription for us is austerity and insecurity. For the masses who have forsaken any kind of class solidarity Trump can lay all of this at the feet of Clinton and the Democratic Party. Even Bernie Sanders cannot change the fact and the perception that the Democrats serve capital. An interval of eight years since the last Republican administration is also not long enough to erase the memory of who that party serves as well. All mere candidates are now naked.

Left alone is the boss. The limits of his appeal are glaring but enough to control a party that has been hollowed out by its own contradictions. His virtue has been to simplify the lullaby of money and domination for those who wish nothing more than to continue their sleep in the bosom of power.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Make America Great Again

Go Redneckin'

Once more the Kings go slumming in the hollows of Redneck Life. As always red-headed step children abounded (see Darryl's Adventure ) and the sanctity of marriage and NASCAR was unchallenged. And I lost my job at the Ciggy Stand, damn! And this goober ended up with the most teeth.

Has the most teeth