OK, if you are not a Gen Xer, please hear this out, because even though CC might not have been your generations hero, his death says a lot about our era.
Cornell led Soundgarden, a band that was part of the whole "Seattle Grunge" thing, even though he was always more of a traditonal singer than a punk screamer. He had chops, as is shown in this clip:



Soundgarden was always considered more metal, whereas most of the grunge movements kept on saying "we aint metal, we're punk!" To some extent, that was noble, as they did not want to cash in on another era, but to some extent it showed that people wanted to follow easy labels and simply want to tell their boomer parents to fuck off. Cornell had fans, although they were never like the media anointed darlings/spokesmen of their generation, Nirvana, or their good friends Pearl Jam. You see, Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vetter, they knew how to sell the idea of being some tortured soul, so that they could cry all the way to the bank. The Generation X crowd , my group, was so eager to find some way of dealing with real angst, the idea that the last generation really did screw up the world, and left a life where the best chances had faded. Not like they were against all Boomers, indeed, Neil Young joined right in, but that came from the fact that Neil Young really did not care of people loved or hated him, and that is why his career has not died, despite changes in time.

But what happened is that generation X did not know, and indeed, DOES not know, how to deal with it's anger, however justified, in a productive way. That is why so many of the Generation X voices, from Cobain to Layne Stanley to Tupac to now Cornell lived short lives full of "what might have been." Worse, many of them turned conservative, part of that old punk rock "we wanna piss you off" attitude, an attitude that did rear it's ugly head last November when Trump actually used young people and Gen Xers to play Hillary off as the clueless greedy old Baby Boomer.

Now, I offer this to the Millenials and Gen Z. Millennials, you guys are getting a lot of crap, especially from the Boomers and Gen X; ignore it. You beat the Generation Xers are seeing that, unlike them, it is not enough to feel pain and rage, you have to DO something with it, and you are. The Boomers could have been leaders, but too many of them (and yeah Gloria Steinem and Erica Jong, I do include you) choose to demonize you because you would not step in lock, they refused to see that they had to talk TO you, not shout AT you. As far Gen Z, the you tube are already talking about you kids will supposedly be the most conservative geenration ever. All I say is, prove them wrong, because when soem gen Xers bought that from the GOP Boomers, they got screewed, royally, and you do not want to become like the generaion that X'd itself out.

RIP Chris..RIP way too many Gen Xers

you have a choice, get with the 21st century,, or frankly, the rest of the world will look at you as just one more damn backwater. You have many great intellectuals, but you also have many of the same sort of people that immigrated to America and make sure that a bunch of fat old priest could get away with murder,, molestation, and a series of other crimes that your average mafiosi would not dare to touch. You can either prove that you are beyond all that, as you leave England to its own do the upper exit and join the new EU, and option frankly I wish that my nation had.. Or you can be just not a religious backwater that will be drowned in the flood as humanity frankly gets tired of propping up the religious in the world.

in part this is inspired by a thread or got heated arguments with someone who, come election time, would still be considered a comrade in arms. However this person defends the blue dogs that sided with Neil Gorsuch. Time and time again, there is a debate about whether or not the primary people who do stab the party in the back, or to work with them because admittedly they are in a red state where the Republican Party usually has some psychopath to the right of Adolf Hitler ready to run. Because I'm angry at the blue dogs, I usually get labeled as simplistic.

The problem is while we understand that Red America is not democratic, there are some battles that we really could use the support of the blue dogs on, ones that do go ahead and change the way the country works. It's one thing for a certain senator from West Virginia to always cheer for coal mining. Despite the number of black lungs his voters cough up, West Virginia has decided they want coal. Okay, some of us do not have to like that, and if global warming kicks in, some of us will go ahead and point the folks in West Virginia and say" you know it wasn't worth it in the end" but, we can at least see that we can disagree on that for now and try to work on it in a Democratic administration. This Supreme Court justice is long term damage, let me say it again, the damage was done to our constitutional process when the Republicans deliberately try to prevent Pres. Obama from doing his constitutional duty. It was his duty, not just the right. Even if whoever the opposition party picks turned out to be a pink unicorn with a sparkly halo, the damage to the very Constitution of our country has been done. It's one thing to go ahead and debate coal mining, it is another to make the Constitution worthless. That is above and beyond any election.

Now, it certainly does not help the matter that this person that is picked is someone who has been to the right of the current court. this very week, the Supreme Court ruled against him because he felt that disabled students needed barely above the minimum.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/us/politics/gorsuch-education.html?_r=0
http://www.salon.com/2017/03/22/supreme-court-unanimously-overruled-neil-gorsuchs-strict-interpretation-of-a-law-while-he-testified-at-his-scotus-confirmation-hearing/

Now please note the people who made this ruling against him: Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, we are talking about a unanimous rejection, or even the people who were part of the Scalia Vanguard thought this man was to far to the right. Let's also not forget this is the man responsible for the Hobby lobby decision, which gave employers the right to deny birth control on religious grounds. He is a young man, and he is set to go ahead and affect the Supreme Court potentially for decades. Let's put this in on his terms: today's teenage girls will have to deal with this man well into their silver years, and they will be the ones who get hit with the consequences of an abortion ban.

Of course, trying to primary a blue dog is impossible, in part because the very blue dogs often conspire with her GOP friends so that the GOP can have a lot of slack. However, if you are going to go ahead and ask people like myself, but much more importantly, that 18-year-old young woman that is going to go ahead and spend the rest of her life dealing with everything from her body being controlled to the effects of global warming, you need to now answer a question: what mechanism do we have to make sure that on key issues we do not get stabbed in the back, that we at least get half of the mythical loaf rather than no crumbs. I gave a certain senator from West Virginia some leeway, because we can debate about coal and another administration. However, if this Supreme Court justice gets in, not only do we empower a right wing ideologue, we basically tell every Republican Congress out there that even if a Democrat gets elected in 2020, all they have to do is hold their breath and throw a temper tantrum and they will ensure that no Democratic president gets the right to pick a Supreme Court justice. That is not local politics that is the Constitution, and if we cannot defend the the Constitution, if we cannot defend the right of a Democratic president to fulfill the duties under back Constitution, which is also a nice way of saying if we tell the GOP that we can see the right to have any say in picking a Supreme Court justice, then we are worth nothing as a party.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/sports/football/nfl-oakland-raiders-las-vegas.html?_r=0

Normally sports is a distraction from politics, but here we have an opportunity to use the sports world to focus on exactly what is wrong with politics. I'm speaking of the fact that the Oakland Raiders are moving to Las Vegas. First, let's go ahead and focus on the fact that most sports owners are billionaires and that most of them are Republican. However, despite having enough business acumen to be able to pay the salaries of multimillionaires, they always seem to need public funding for stadiums.

Now, let's dig a bit deeper. These billionaire sports team owners make their money from the lower and middle classes. Even those that live nowhere near the people that their team represents still make their money from selling something. However, the politics they pick almost always demands that a community spends less on itself. If community wants to spend on schools, they attack it. If community wants to spend the keep toxins out of its environment, and the words for clean water and keep the trash of the streets, they get mad. But whenever it comes to something that can make them richer, all the sudden they need to be the first priority, because if not this community will be punished because they did not offer precious sacrifices of gold to sports team owners.

First off, if you guys are such geniuses that you can own a sports team and even provide one of the few acceptable outlets for black and brown millionaires in this society, why do you have to keep coming to the public did demand funds? Let's not pretend that you are asking the stadiums to be built for our benefit, you want that stadium to make more money for you, because when a sports team does not make money, you blame the stadium. It's not like a franchise like the Oakland Raiders, a team that had such fan loyalty it might as well have been a religion, was not able to make money. No, the son of the team owner wanted to make more money. After all, it's not like he had his father's talent to make his own fortune, no, he just had to sell the team to make more money. Then again, this country is currently run by a brilliant businessman (sarcasm flag flown way high) who inherited his money from his father, who inherited money from his father, but supposedly is self-made, just as his children will claim that they were self-made, especially his daughter who has an office in the White House.

Of course, all the NFL's sports franchises except one agreed with this, because everywhere from San Diego to Houston to Tennessee a bunch of old sports owners see a chance for their family to make lots of money. Many cities want sports franchises, and are willing to go ahead and hock their children's future to get them. My own Tampa Bay was very much one of the cities, indeed, the construction of my local high school was held hostage as part of the deal to approve a tax to build Raymond James Stadium. Raymond James Stadium is often held up as the example of why city should cave in and give a sports owner a stadium. After all, camp has had a few Super Bowl since then, and the Republican national convention, in part, as a sort of reward for being among the first cities to cave in. Cities like Philadelphia caved in and or to imitate Tampa.

Of course, I can tell you that despite having that new stadium, and despite all these little prizes that we won, our schools are awful, our roads are awful, and thanks in part to this "tax", the sort of tax that we would never use to educate our children or fix our roads, we have even less ability to solve our problems. But we kept the Buccaneers from being stolen by Orlando! When we won our one Super Bowl, against the Oakland, soon to be Las Vegas Raiders, the media pretty much repeated the mantra "if we did not do that stadium deal, we would not have had the Buccaneers when our Super Bowl for us!" The foolishness of those in Tampa Bay that bought that con job is a sad contrast to the strength of those in Oakland who refused to get fooled.

As one of the great rivals of Oakland, as someone who remembers how much greater nation aided in our guts because we stole their coach John "Chucky" Gruden, as someone who saw Oakland fans in Tampa, like an invading army, earning one of the most there are some reputations in professional sports, I will testify that no one, especially Mark Davis, a.k.a. another rich boy pimple on his dad's ass, can dared doubt the strength of greater fandom. It is a shame to see one of the great sports nations outright disrespected and yes punished, emphasize punished, because they did not offer human sacrifice or two in addition to the mound of gold. Oakland, this is going to take a lot for a Buccaneers fan like me to say, but as of right now, you won the bigger game, because you showed guts that we should of showed.

So to sum, sports franchise owners encourage the belief that these billionaires automatically benefit the society, and therefore demand the first cut of our meat, what none Dare call socialism for the rich. The fact that they do this for no other reason than to get richer shows the sheer craven, crass, crude faces behind the mask of gold, or in this case, black and silver. Whenever the billionaires and the pawns that they buying Congress start talking as if they are some Atlas holding up the world, we need to remind them of who pays their salary, and thanks to Trump not even bothering to wear such a mask, we're coming closer, and closer, where the illusion that is held their power no longer works. This is politics, this is the force behind politics.

Postscript: I do not think it is ironic that a team that stole Oakland Raiders is a town like Las Vegas. Hey, I know Nevada went for Trump, and I know many people in Vegas are the sons and daughters of union workers. However, let us be fully honest, Las Vegas is a town that was founded by gangsters that wanted to run casinos, stole money from labor unions to fund those casinos, and built the fairyland of fake Eiffel towers and pyramids to attract the middle-class into spending money there.

Of course, most of the current owners of the casinos are not gangsters who at least understand that if they make mistakes they can end up in a hole in the desert. They are not gangsters who at least had to prove themselves in Chicago or New York before being handed a casino in Vegas. No, most of the owners the casinos now or corporations straight from Wall Street, run by billionaires like a certain current president of the United States. Of course, unlike the gangsters that preceded him, he was allowed to run a casino, go broke running a casino, and wound up getting more money. If Trump was a mafiosi, he would've ended up like Bugsy Siegel by now, a.k.a. the founder of Las Vegas. Bugsy Siegel was in effect executed, even though his Las Vegas idea turned out to be more profitable than any of his fellow mafiosi could've ever dreamed of because he lost money that was a pittance compared to what your average billionaire manages to lose every year and still without a hint of shame attempt to rob taxpayers of the money we need to maintain our roads, maintain our schools and otherwise hold up the society that makes them money.

There's some ugly facts here. Warning this will probably offend a lot of people. You cannot forget one thing about America; this nation was founded by people who had a lot of violence done against them, especially in the United Kingdom. The reason why we have so many Protestants, especially Calvinist like the Baptists, is that European nations treated them like crap. By treating these people like crap, European nations used the idea of charity and aid as a means of social warfare, note I did not say social engineering, I said warfare. If you can feed the sector of society that obeys you, and also point to that of her part of society and say "God wants them to die, aren't you happy you are not them" you have a means of keeping the people who want your head divided. All European nations did this, but you excel that it like England, because they used religion to divide the Celts who they dominated.

Now comes colonialism, which is very good for the kings and queens in two ways: one, it allows you to go ahead and get rid of a lot of those riffraff outcast who would otherwise be staying in your own country and waiting for revolution to happen. It is no accident that England set many of its Calvinist to America, in particular the parts that are now considered red states. It's no accident that the Confederate battle flag is basically a Union Jack modified.

The X-shaped bars represent Saint Patrick and Saint Andrew, the patron saints of Scotland and Ireland who happen to have a lot of those social outcast English liked to kill. The more typical cross is the symbol of St. George, the English saint associated with imperialism and the Church of England, so it's no accident that when the battle flag of Dixie was made, it celebrated the Celtic heritage, and snubbed the English one.

So what is all this bit about Celts and flags have to do with healthcare? The people that made up America were outcast that were used to having to fend for themselves and also who were told they could go from being dirt poor to getting land. All they have to do was kill whoever the home country considered needed killing, take their land, and to remember to send all that sugar tobacco and cotton to the home country. When we kicked the English out, we changed empires into corporations, so that whole generations of people, black and white were always kept in an debt so that a corporation can demand the fruits of their labors, and sadly, many of those churches thought that was a good thing. The system kept people busy, making sure that life have to be as trouble lest they start doing things like reading books.

Does anyone think it is an accident that the Republicans are trying to peel back child labor laws and anything that allows people to avoid and pay debt? A free people will demand respect and accountability, something our lead have avoided since the very founding of the nation. Of course one of the main ways that even middle-class people get in the debt is healthcare. If you can make even rich people fear about one thing can go ahead and make paupers of their children, you have control. I'm not talking about political power, I am talking control. Of course, since many of those people that founded our nation were used to having to take something from each other rather than add it into a pool, you will have people fighting for pennies instead of the dollars they could save. It is the main reason why, as you nation as we are, the government and basic culture has remained the same since 1776, and that's if you don't count the colonial era, which honestly we should.

Think of how many nations have at the same governments since 1776. Think of how many of those nations have not only maintain their original land, but tripled in size and population. I know that the phrase "exceptional nation" is overused and misused, especially when it is set as a compliment (which it is not very often). However, the truth is we cannot overlook the fact that we are different than most nations. Yes Canada and Australia were both colonial Enterprises, however, perhaps by the nature of having very hostile geography, a.k.a. hostile Canadian winters and hostile Australian heat, or by the nature that England did not use them as a direct steam release for the Calvinist movements that were literally threatening to destroy the United Kingdom at the top United States was founded, they were different. It's odd to think that the fact that America was so ready to grow all that sugar tobacco and cotton could've been a cultural pain, but it was.

So to sum it up, America from its founding was made of people were used to looking at each other of some measure of hostility, and they thought of government largess as a political weapon to be used to enslave and control. It's easy to go ahead and judge, the fact is the people who founded this nation as a colonial enterprise did not want various people to trust each other, if the French did not go ahead and do their best to support the Thomas Jefferson's and George Washington's, we might very well still be part of what eventually became Canada. FDR did a lot to undo this sort of culture, but keep my the Democrats only get a chance to speak when the Republican administration has done a terrible job of crashing the car.

Look, I am as happy as everyone else to see Donald Trump have the worst week of his life, the sort of week that would ruin many in administration. His ability to be a deal maker has been shown to be false. Please remember, it was not the Paul Ryan wing of the party, nor was Democrats that brought him down (more on that point later.) Donald was brought down by people who thought his plan was actually not mean enough. No matter how many times he promised in the campaign to "repeal and replace" the the ACA, it turns out that his party did not want to replace anything. They wanted more people to die so that they can keep more of their money and spend it on more of their ego. Even with the far right wing of his party, the ones who are using Trump to do everything from making racism normal to giving cops a hunting license for young black men and Muslims still were not satisfied, they wanted more, the same way crack addicts who know that every hit can be their death blow, wanted more. Nevermind the fact that it makes Trump look awful right out the gate, and brings attention to a lot of things he did not need paid attention to, be it Russia, China, North Korea, Germany you name it. So yes we have every right to celebrate the fact that Trump has egg on his face. Heaven knows we needed a bit of sunshine.

So why am I about to play Cassandra,and warn of dangers to come? bear with me on this.

One: while the media is certainly enjoying yet another Trump provided feeding frenzy, do keep in mind that they are not our friends. They were willing to pillory Obama as he made the ACA, and despite what should be at least a partial vindication of Obama's work, Bill be the first to assist Trump as he plans to demonize and start that program. You will hear the mantra over and over again that Obama care was doomed from the start, and the fact that it will be just in time to try to influence the midterm elections is just a coincidence right? The media may be enjoying free food now, but they know that they can enjoy making us the free dinner in about a year, especially as their coverage of Trump has not evolved one iota,, and they also know it does not need to because the money is rolling in.

Two: in many ways, this is the return of the Coke brothers. Yes the misspelling is intentional, because they put out a lot of addictive money. remember that Trump actually ran to the left of the Coke brothers, something they are still mad about, and please remember this is the family religion is vindictive revenge. they will go ahead and appeal to everyone to the right, and sad to say the deplorables will gladly eat up whatever the Coke brothers serve, because long before Steve Bannon, they wrote the playbook on it. We can actually expect to see a tea party rise that makes the original tea party look like Bernie Sanders, especially as many neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, gun nuts, and every son of Aaron Burr knows that Trump invited them into the party with open arms, and they will use their right to bear arms to threaten second amendment remedies. What's Trump going to do?, Send the feds after a bunch of skinheads?


Three: good old Steve Bannon. Supposedly he has already made a hit list of those who need to be punished for embarrassing Trump. You know he is going to fight even dirtier than he typically does, because he knows that if Trump goes he goes. Pence isn't going to keep him, and you know Paul Ryan won't. And that makes a wonderful laid up to:

Four: Paul Ryan. At this point, he can go ahead and blame Trump and continue his quest to steal the presidency. All he would need to do is join John McCain in the "Trump is a Russian spy " banter and he has a way of not only getting rid of Trump, but of compromising Pence. You can hear it in the smoke-filled rooms now "Mike, if you were to leave, it would give our party a chance to start a new, with a fresh young conservative leader like Paul Ryan."

My point is not to be a downer. My point is that the same problems we had before are not only still around, but now the GOP knows that we can make it bleed. They will step things up. The only thing that is ever been able to stop Trump from doing something bad is intense, consistent pressure. Until the day that any Democrat is inaugurated in January 2021, we cannot let up for a bit. Would sadly brings me to point number five, the worst point.

Five: Democrats. To be honest, I was really offended when Nancy Pelosi was doing a victory lap as if she had somehow managed to win. The Democrats are not putting nearly enough pressure on Trump. Granted, this could be a wonderful lesson on why no Democrats should cross party lines on anything. Yes the house Democrats stayed firm, but we know that Joe Manchin would've crossed the line, as would many have. If someone like Elizabeth Warren can actually vote yes to allow our not so favorite brain surgeon to become the head of HUD, we cannot count on any vote.. Let's also be honest, what we are really saying is that Democrats are very much used to crossing party lines and the pressure will be on them to do more of that. What we need to do is place pressure against them, something which we have been reluctant to do. I don't care if the people whipping them into a frenzy wind up being Obama, Clinton, Sanders, Michael Moore, insert liberal here; we need to make the Democrats actually hold a line, and if that means directly ripping off of the Mitch McConnell playbook, all I have to say is that our goal is to make Trump a one term president. Actually should go for more, our goal is to go ahead and make sure that Trump dies in prison. Lock him up locked him up locked him up!

This was a response to an op, but some people wanted me to post this separately. Here goes:

to the author of the original OP, what I'm going to say is going to sound harsh, but I don't mean it that way. Normalizing Neil is deadly. Yes he is very much not a clown like Trump, that is exactly what makes him deadly. The Heritage foundation picked him, and they knew that they want someone who, even if Trump crashed the clown car in the Washington Monument,, would be slick enough to last and not be challenged. They picked this young, smart, charming fellow who just happens to believe that corporations should be only do whatever the hell they want to their employees and that agencies should not be able to do anything to protect people. Let's not forget, the whole reason of the Chevron ruling, which he opposes, was that when you deal for federal agency, the people who actually are the experts should be deferred to. In other words a judge should not be able to override an astronomer at NASA, a surgeon at the CDC, and other scenarios were frankly you do not want the equivalent of a plumber doing your brain surgery. If Neil gets in, he is going to do his best to make sure that federal agencies have to defer to judges, namely because the judges will be conservative, which means that the billionaires will have already told them what to say or at least made it very clear.

I mean, look at this quote:
In an article titled “Liberals’N’Lawsuits” for National Review, Gorsuch argued that “American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education.”


Let's be attention to the language: he says that liberals have become an "addicted to the courtroom", which coincidentally is the one area where Corporations were and churches can be held accountable. It's no accident he uses the language of addicts, which she of course can easily interpret as criminals, to describe the one area were Corporation can actually lose. He also uses the term "social agenda", as if trying to go ahead and take tax dollars and pay everyone from private Christian schools to private prison companies is not some sort of social agenda. This is a person who does not believe that people who have been failed by their elected leaders, and yes failed at the ballot box, should have any defense. This is not someone we want on the Supreme Court, and yes Trump could've picked a fire breather, but the fact this guy is wrapped in some sort of slick package again makes them more dangerous because we do not pay attention to the actual words he says. Those words will outlive him, they will outlive us, and thereby probably shorten the lives of our children and grandchildren!

No normalizing Neil,.! He needs to be opposed, because even if the short-term fight is not one, thanks to be bought and paid for Congress, an honest critique of them will pave the way to where we can and start to help undo the agenda that the GOP is set in motion.

NO NORMALIZING NEIL! Let's not forget, the very field the GOP is currently playing on is stolen. Remember that they said if Hillary was president, they could hold out for years until they got a chance to nominate the Supreme Court justice they wanted. If they want to go but Mitch McConnell playbook, they need to be accountable to those rules, which means that we do not have to accommodate their desires.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/09/republicans-healthcare-poor-voters-representation-jason-chaffetz

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/frank-rich-no-sympathy-for-the-hillbilly.html

While the right is expert at channeling darker emotions like anger into ruthless political action, the Democrats’ default inclination is still to feel everyone’s pain, hang their hats on hope, and enter the fray in a softened state of unilateral disarmament. “Stronger Together,” the Clinton-campaign slogan, sounded more like an invitation to join a food co-op than a call to arms. After the debacle of 2016, might the time have at last come for Democrats to weaponize their anger instead of swallowing it?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/scotus-nominee-gorsuch-said-women-manipulate-maternity-leave/ar-BBypuMP?li=AA5a8k&ocid=spartandhp

"Sisk said Gorsuch, a visiting professor at Boulder, posed a hypothetical scenario in a Legal Ethics and Professionalism class in April that debated if a married job candidate with student debt should disclose to a potential employer that she wants to start a family.
"He asked the class to raise their hands if they knew of a female who had used a company to get maternity benefits and then left right after having a baby," Sisk wrote.
When only a fraction of the classroom acknowledged such a tactic, Gorsuch scoffed.
"C'mon guys," Gorsuch allegedly replied, adding that more students should have raised their hands.
Sisk claims that Gorsuch said “‘many’ women use their companies for maternity benefits and then leave the company after the baby is born."

geesh