You can never have too many poor people

The Missouri state legislature says you can never have too many poor people. They say this because a surplus of po' folk keeps wages down and reduces demands on Management for better benefits, by keeping the workers fighting amongst themselves for the few available jobs. This legislation is religiosity, not religion or morality. Actually, it's worse than that, it's brazen pandering: these legislators have been bought by industry, to ensure a supply of cheap labor.

And all the while, another wing of the Republican party is encouraging immigration -ostensibly because Americans won't clean up after ourselves (Mexicans are hired to do work we Americans believe is below us), but really for the same reasons as Missouri had for their legislation: a surplus of labor leads to lower wages, which inevitably leads to higher profits and thus higher dividends for the privileged few (so long as the con-game lasts). Something tells me the right hand doesn't know what the -erm- other right hand is doing.

The con. Ah yes, we've come to that. Not a conspiracy, no: a con-game. A confidence game, in which the Player (so called because he is playing us like a cheap drum) wins the confidence of the Rube, then talks Rube into doing something not-in-Rube's-own-best-interest. Player, in our case, is the established class of Industrial Capitalists.

They won our present-day and continuing confidence simply by being on top when we got on the scene. They were simply already King of the Hill, because their parents had been Players before them, and their parents before them, etc. Yes, the occasional Horatio Alger has salmon-squiggled his way up the socio-economic ladder, but he's the exception. The rule is Nepotism- that Money Speaks for Money: we all, always, help and promote those closest to us.

Over the course of centuries, they convinced us rubes that we need them: to lead us, to direct our industry, and most importantly, to determine our worth as workers. "Ownership" itself is the con: the notion that Money has any inherent value, that by itself it is worth something, that it can multiply of its own accord as if by magic (the magic of interest), that it can confer ownership of a time-space event, that it can represent any time-space event and thereby confer control.

No life-form is ever stronger than its respiro-circulatory system. By the same token, no country is ever stronger than its economy. Money is the life-blood of nations; it must circulate to all extremes, or those extremes will atrophy. Just as you would not fare very well if your brain tried to hoard your blood supply, doling it out on the basis of the "value" of work performed, so your country -and your species-- will falter as the Industrial Capitalist class hoards ever more of the money supply. Making more simply won't do, any more than making more blood: you'll just increase the pressure.

Shapes of things to come

Here is something I ran across on the Rigorous Intuition discussion board (I think?). It's dense, sometimes difficult to read, and -well-- possibly bogus, but if it's not, whoaa. Frankly, I think I smell disinformation, broadcast to confuse those investigators who are on the right track, but I'm not entirely sure. It's very interesting, and I'd like to believe it, but the one thing about 911 I absolutely can not believe -that those two planes alone brought the twin towers (and WTC7, which nothing even hit) down like a controlled demolition- stands in the way. This story, however chilling or hokey it might be, only accounts for flying planes into the towers, and every investigator worth his salt knows that the towers were specifically designed to withstand even greater impacts, and that the findings reported on that Nova program have been dismissed.

Oh, and why do we never hear about Pakistan's involvement in the plot? Because they lobbied to keep their name out of the final report. We can't say for sure that this lobbying was the same reason that kept Pakistan out of those few media-sponsored investigative reports of the event, but it's certainly not much of a stretch to think so. This seems to be further evidence that the U.S. media is nothing more than a propaganda organ for the Bush administration: connected at the lip. Listen to AirAmerica Radio on line instead.

Freak windstorms in Hawaii and Kansas (75 mph winds ripped old trees apart in a two-block wide path through Lawrence- but it wasn't a tornado, oh no) on the same day. Coincidence, or shape of things to come?

Demand a paper ballot! Democracy For America is circulating a petition about this. Sign it here!

Right-Wing Pundit Hall of Shame:
(many thanks to the quasi-anonymous Richard)

"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"
(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)


"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America's unrivaled power and how best to use it."
(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)


"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention."
(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)


"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)


"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)


"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back."
(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)


"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)


"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)


"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking."
(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation [stunt]--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)


Mission Accomplished?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."
(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)


"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)


"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)


Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)


"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)


"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"
(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)


"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)


Nagging the "Naysayers"

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"
(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)


"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)


"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, 'The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated.' Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)


"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)


"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)


"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)


"Shouldn't the [Canadian] prime minister and all of us who thought the war was hasty and dangerous and wrongheaded admit that we were wrong? I mean, with the pictures of those Iraqis dancing in the streets, hauling down statues of Saddam Hussein and gushing their thanks to the Americans, isn't it clear that President Bush and Britain's Tony Blair were right all along? If we believe it's a good thing that Hussein's regime has been dismantled, aren't we hypocritical not to acknowledge Bush's superior judgment?... Why can't those of us who thought the war was a bad idea (or, at any rate, a premature one) let it go now and just join in celebrating the victory wrought by our magnificent military forces?"
(Washington Post's William Raspberry, 4/14/03)


"Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)


"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)


Cakewalk?

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer, 3/30/03)


"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)


"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't bargain on a two- or three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks."
(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)


Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't have them beforehand. Nobody.
(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)


"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the dumb and the desperate could ignore it."
(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)


"Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of 'the green mushroom' over Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him before he can achieve notoriety for all time."
(Newsweek, 3/17/03)

--all lif

21st Century Geography

Ah, Nigeria. It's like this: Pretend you own your house. You love it, love living there, love the view, etc. Then someone you don't know or recognize comes along and says, "Hey, we're gonna use that dirt that your house is sitting on. Just the dirt, don't worry; you're not using it." He wrinkles his nose and shakes his head a little. "Just the dirt." Maybe you complain, but they don't care: they wave a little cash and some big menacing weapons in your face and assure you that your life can go on as before, and blah blah bling.

But then you start to see that, while they are in fact just taking the dirt, their doing so is ruining your home. "Oh, yeah," they say. "Wow. Sorry about that. Looks like your house sorta... fell down! We didn't do it, of course- never touched your house." And of course, they didn't: they just undermined it until it collapsed. You have no recourse to these people; your interests are not represented among their decision-makers, your voice can't be heard above the roar of Progress, and your weapons are no match for theirs. Your property has become part of someone else's colony, and you have no say in the matter.

Nigeria -most of Africa, really- has been brutally raped by the pink West for hundreds of years, but most especially since oil was discovered off the Atlantic coast. Their homes have been destroyed to make way for roads -which they didn't need- and pipelines -for which they have no use, and from which they reap no benefit. Their environment has been destroyed by "accidents" in which millions of barrels of oil and its by-products have been spilled; oil rigs have destroyed fisheries, the soil itself has been ruined by exposure to too much petroleum waste. They'd petition their government for grievances, but that government only has ears for money, and the money comes from the oil companies, i.e., indirectly from us. They'd petition the oil companies, but corporations only deal with other organizations, not individuals, and the Nigerians on the ground are too poor to afford the tools to organize broadly (like phones, mail service, or computers). Where else can they turn?

Where else, but to the local leaders and power-structure they've known all along. And to the tactics they've practiced for centuries, tactics practiced by every hopelessly-outnumbered and out-gunned fighting force ever: guerrilla- and gang warfare. You can call this "anarchy" if you want, but what it really is, is governance by organizations that we just don't recognize as governments. Organized crime is only "crime" because the organizers aren't in control of the judiciary. So, you might as well wipe your ass with that political map of Africa: it's about to be outdated.

Oh, and by the way, that's the future of the Arctic, too. Five countries currently share that region: Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the U.S. Every one of these countries has border disputes with the others over the region, an enormous part of which is yet unclaimed. Polar ice is in retreat, so the Northwest Passage will soon be a viable year-round opportunity for travel and transport. Like Africa, the region's indigenous people are governed by foreigners with no cultural or physical ties to the land, which means they get economically and politically marginalized (let's just say they're not all "Eskimos"). And like Nigeria, there are sizeable oil deposits off shore.

Shift back into neutral for a sec here, folks, you'll need it.

Have you heard about the family in Ohio who kept their foster children in cages? This is one supremely messed-up situation. I'll let the story do the talking, but something there caught my eye:

Sharen Gravelle said she met her husband in 1986 at a dinner for a child sex abuse support group. She said she was attending because a relative had been molested. Michael Gravelle was there because he was accused of inappropriate touching, a charge he denies. The couple married two months later.

As if the story isn't strange enough, this little tidbit is almost more than I can wrap my head around. First, support groups. Support groups are great if they're your thing- a great way to find similar experiences among your peers, so you don't feel so excluded/freaked out. Sharen, the future foster-mother, was attending because she presumably, apparently, felt victimized by her relative's molestation. Michael's presence at this function, as an accused molester himself, is so completely inappropriate as to be beyond belief, like holding an AA meeting at a bar. Someone in this picture is a predator, and it seems exceedingly likely that both are lying.

There is FAR more here than meets the eye, and what lies beneath is very, very disturbing.

I only wish this was an isolated case....

Drip...drip...drip...

He knew. Watch the video; he knew.
President Joker instead goes on vacation, while Vice-President Penguin holes up in his secret bunker again. Where's Batman when you need him?

Money Makes Politics Dirty

Have I said this before? Money makes politics dirty. Say it with me: Money makes politics dirty.
We don't tolerate this kind of behavior on playgrounds. Why do we tolerate it in Congress and the White House?

As long as the White House -and the President- can be bought, we're in trouble. We need to get money out of politics, entirely. How would you start? I'd start by publicly funding elections, to the exclusion of private money. Put limits on ad-time, and require that all candidates get equal time (yeah, I said "all candidates," meaning even the kooks; maybe that would get the networks to think a little bit about the way they cover campaigns. Here's a hint to all in the mainstream media: NOT ALL CAMPAIGNING IS NEWS).

"Oh god, this shit is real..." Real, and really scary.

Good essay from Harper's:
Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush.

The new math

We should know how to what?

Nigeria is about to pop. Remember what I said about South America? (I've been prognosticating about a reversal in South American politics for some time now, and I see the elections of people like Brazil's Lula, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Bolivia's Evo Morales, and Chile's Michele Bachelet as significant moves in that regard. These are radical leftists, folks (with the possible exception of Bachelet, who only seems radical in comparison to her predecessors, those guys who kidnapped and killed her father, a General, back in the day), taking power back to the people. I've been following Hugo Chavez most closely (here here here here and here), but Evo Morales may be even cooler. He was a coca farmer, but is now the first indigenous Andean to take power there, and has halved his own salary and declared that no cabinet minister can take home more than he does, as well as preceding his swearing-in with an indigenous religious ceremony. That being said, Michele Bachelet is another very interesting case- the first woman president of Chile, a single mother in a country which only legalized divorce last year, the daughter of an assassinated General of Chile, and once a political prisoner, herself; she's made her cabinet up of at least 50% women, as promised. Keep watching- it could get even livelier: Peru has an election coming up, with self-exiled ex-Pres Fujimori vowing to return this year...wow).

Hey everybody, watch this: 6 = 21. Cool, huh?! It's the new math.

wasn't he that saxophone player guy...

Just ran across this, and think it deserves a wider audience:

Transcript from CNN's Lou Dobbs 2/13/06:

Tonight, the United States is about to allow a United
Arab Emirates company to take operational control of
many of this nation's major seaports. The Bush
administration has OK'd a deal that would allow a
company based on The Emirates it take charge of the
ports. Many of them, most of them, vital to this
nation's security. Bill Tucker reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dubai
Ports World is set to take control of operations in
ports in the United States. Those ports? New Orleans,
Miami, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and New
Jersey. The deal involving a company from the Middle
East is raising security concerns.

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER, (D) NEW YORK: How do we know
what checks they take on their employees? do they do
background checks? If a terrorist organization should
decide to infiltrate this new company, headquartered
in the United Arab Emirates, what would stop them.

TUCKER: The UAE was home to two of the 9/11 hijackers.
The Port Authority of New York/New Jersey says it will
review its lease agreements with P & O before
automatically granting the lease the of The Newark
Terminal to Dubai Ports World.

Defenders of the deal note that Dubai Ports World
operates ports all over the globe and that safe,
smooth, port operation are very much in its business's
interests. Security will remain in the control of
local and federal law enforcement authorities, but --
MICHAEL O'HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Ports are
essentially on the front line in the war on terror and
on homeland security. And so allowing a foreign firm
to operate a port is sort of like allowing a foreign
firm to operate a U.S. military air field in a
traditional conflict.

TUCKER: In other words, the United States should
proceed cautiously. The Committee on Foreign
investment in the United States, the same group which
gave the green light to the takeover of UNOCAL by the
Chinese National Overseas Oil Company has reviewed the
deal of P & O and Dubai Ports World and given it its
blessing.

When called for comment, a spokesman would only say --
no comment.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Now coincidences happened but they're rare. So for
that reason, we thought it was worth noting that the
man nominated by President Bush to run the Maritime
Administration is the director of operations of Europe
and Latin American for Dubai Ports World, Lou. His
name is David Sanborn.

DOBBS: And this coincidence and this program looks to
at coincidences intensely, particularly like this and
particularly with an administration that not for the
first time has interesting coincidences reverberating
throughout it. What do they say about this
coincidence?

TUCKER: They don't have any comment about it. We
weren't able to reach David Sanborn today.

DOBBS: Well, we hope that David would talk to us. We
would hope that anyone in the administration would
like it talk to us about this coincidence. And it
would be fascinating to understand why the same
government that thinks there's no problem, this
administration, with turning over ownership to foreign
corporation and companies of our air carriers sees no
problems with having the United Arab Emirates, a
company based there, take over our vital seaports.
It's remarkable. Excellent job of report, Bill Tucker.
Thank you, sir.

My questions: Who is this David Sanborn, and who is George doing favors for now?

what goes on

scary info about the royal family

So Dick, were ya drunk? Sure looks like you were closer to Harry than you said you were. And why did y'all prevent the local Sheriff from entering the property, after the shooting?

This is apparently not getting much coverage by the U.S. media. Surprise, surprise.

This November, demand a paper ballot!

Life imitates art.

Air America Radio. Just listen. Randi Rhodes is particularly awesome, but I like the Rachel Maddow show, too.

Drop Dead Gorgeous

So, Dick, what the hell? Why'd you shoot your friend? Cheney's been a hunter "for years," he says. In fact, we know he hunts several times a year, preferring 'canned hunts'- on private land, where the game is often tame enough to eat out of human hands -but that's beside the point. He should be familiar with guns and gun rules. Still, accidents happen, I suppose.

All questions about what exactly happened -and-how- and why aside, there is a relationship at play here which is ...very interesting.

See, Harry Whittington is an Austin-based lawyer, and a long-time big-wig Republican. Way back when George was still Governor of Texas, another old Bush family friend, Robert Waltrip got in trouble when hundreds of corpses were found in buildings and woods on the premises of his funeral home and crematorium (Service Corporation International, aka SCI). Yeah, remember Funeralgate?

Well, Eliza May was in charge of the Texas Funeral Services Commission (TFSC) when the bodies were discovered, and felt it was her job to investigate. When she got curious about why so many politicians were pressuring her to drop the investigation, she started to dig up campaign contribution reports, and was promptly fired and replaced with... Harry Whittington (who could not have been ignorant of the situation at SCI). She brought suit against the State of Texas and SCI for being forced out of her job, but the suit was quietly settled out of court -get this-- just weeks before two other SCI funeral homes in Florida were found doing the very same thing, and worse:

In one instance at Menorah Gardens, a Jewish cemetery, SCI desecrated graves and left corpses in the woods where they were devoured by wild hogs.

The general manager of Menorah Gardens, Peter Hartman, died by apparent suicide on December 27, 2001. From Wiki -I didn't want to disturb the original links.

So you'd think they'd be shut down by now, eh? No, silly! Remember- Robert Waltrip is a good, old friend of the Bushes. So what's SCI up to now? They got a no-bid contract to handle the remains of the dead from Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans. Maybe the 'gators will do a better job of cleaning up, than the hogs did?

I think I'm gonna be sick.

Hats off to Jeff at Rigorous Intuition for taking the lead on this side of this story.

Apparent suicide. Remember that one. "Apparent," like Gary Webb's "suicide," perhaps. One wonders how many guns were involved.

George, you got a lot of 'splainin to do...

The president is a FUCKING LIAR. Get it? We've been had.

Lying again!

I am the canary in your coal mine, people, and I am screaming: MOVE! ALL IS NOT WELL! SOMETHING IS TERRIBLY WRONG HERE.

The powers-that-be have us on the wrong path. Our very notions of civility are eroding; we are one natural disaster away from every man for himself.

the tide is turning

Stop everything. Read this now. To the end.
Thank you.
Now you know. Now you can say, "Yeah, I know that speech...." -coz you'll want to, later.

Beat the rush: be terrified now

Way beyond embarrassing: The world knows, while we continue to deny it, in the face of overwhelming evidence. This is an IndiaTimes story about the CIA manual that OKs torture. Folks, we're gonna pay for this.... Note- IndiaTimes is a decent paper, kinda conservative, but they use pop-ups, damn their eyes. Be warned.

Russia is scheduled to have an election in 2008. Here's Russian politics, today. Given Putin's history (KGB career, later (as President) sent Michail Kodorkovsky to Siberia apparently for disagreeing too publicly...?), I don't expect a clean election. Putin has said he won't run again (he's limited to two consecutive terms, by their constitution), but I suspect one or more of the following: 1) election irregularities in Russia will be used to distract us from irregularities in our own polls, 2) terror threats will be used to cancel/disrupt/postpone elections in Russia and/or the U.S., and/or 3), charges will be brought against reformers (in either/both countries) and they will be declared ineligible as candidates or disgraced.

Just a thought.

Breaking news here: Joint Chiefs of Staff in confrontation with the Washington Post -Excuse me, are we in fucking Guatemala or Pakistan or something? Is this a tentative step toward military intervention in the media? Beat the rush: be terrified now.

Oh, and speaking of Pakistan, their last democratically elected leader, Benazir Bhutto, after being ejected in a 1999 coup led by their current leader (and close personal pal of George) Pervez Musharraf, is threatening to return to Pakistan to challenge Musharraf in an upcoming election. She's got massive huevos. To refresh your memory, Musharraf took power in a coup in 1999, then was NOT democratically elected when he took more power in 2001, nor was he elected in the national election that followed in 2002 (I think he said the country was too unstable at that time, or something). Nor was he elected in the national election of 2004, either (he had other things going on. No, he really said words to that effect). Any guesses as to how the '06 or '08 elections might go there? Is that the ISI knocking at my door?

It's a good thing we have guys on our side who are so committed to democracy-ness.

What I find particularly interesting is that he took office in June of 2000, one month before the U.S. announced that it was preparing a strike on Afghanistan, and that Bhutto herself had been strongly opposed to the Taliban government there, most unlike Gen. Musharraf. Does this tell you anything about the "War on Terror"? It should. Remember that Pakistan gets very upset when they think we've crossed their borders -even in hot pursuit of Taliban soldiers- and that Musharraf's very good friend and trafficker in nuclear materials and secrets, A.Q. Khan, got off scot free...

Death comes to Smurftown

I've never seen a Smurfs cartoon, I never owned any Smurf stuff; I just never got bit by the Smurfbug. I'm not a Smurfhater (I reserve that dubious honor for my arch-nemesis, Holly Hobby): I don't have strong feelings about them either way. But--

This made me cry. I wish I was kidding.

Here's the back story.

Who's Holly Hobby? One look from her eyes turns people to stone! That's why she wears that bonnet. With a single power-word, she can stink up an entire house with potpourri... with another word, calico print will infest your walls and furniture! I can't even bring myself to link you directly, she's just that ...evil. One day... one day, Mr. The Goat will join forces with Hello Kitty for a mighty battle and wipe that annoying pout off Holly Hobby's inhuman face forever, to ensure that she and her sinister bonnet never rise again.... Holly Hobby is the death of Art!

Hugo! Hugo! Hugo! Chavez is the man!

The elephant in the corner, is also the only iceberg that's not melting. Think before you bink.

Tough squirrels. Or maybe it's just a few bad seeds....

Do you see a pattern of corruption, influence peddling, conspiracy and fraud? Or are you blind?

Godzilla vs Toxic Avenger at the Bangalore Thunderdome

Evolution happens. If you doubt me, get over it: it is observed fact. Evolution is simply change over time. Anyone remotely connected to the Earth knows this happens, intuitively. We see it every day. Successful critters live to reproduce.

Theories are proposed to explain observations. "Why did that apple fall to the ground? Theory: there must be a force (gravity) that draws objects together." "Why did I get sick, if I didn't eat or drink anything bad? Theory: there are things called germs that can make us sick." "Evolution" is just an oversimplified answer to the question, "where did all these different species come from?"

One way for a new species to develop, is when a portion of a population gets separated somehow -geography, habit, diet choices, whatever- and slowly adapts to the new circumstance, with successful individuals mating and thereby passing their healthy, well-adjusted gene profile along. Those who weren't so successful in the new circumstance, probably won't get that chance. If the new population remains separated for long enough, the chances for successful random genetic mutation increase, eventually to a point at which the members of the distinct populations no longer recognize the other as "like me."

In nature it takes a long time, but we might be watching it happen, as Mc Donalds and Nintendo join forces to create a habitat ideally suited for Homo sapiens couchpotatus.

Successful mutations are the key to new species formation. India seems determined to be a living evolution laboratory, given that exposure to heavy metals and other toxic waste increases the likelihood of mutations in successive generations and apparently causes loss of cognitive abilities in children. Reality TV in twenty years might be "Godzilla vs. Toxic Avenger at the Bangalore Thunderdome!"

Yikes.

Weird.

Weirder.

Aspens?

Interesting resource regarding social networks. They Rule.

Judith Miller is a whore. Sue me: you know it's true. "The aspens are already turning..." Such an interesting statement.
Aspens: thin-skinned, in-bred* white trees. Interesting metaphor, no?

*in-bred? Yeah, they reproduce asexually: little to no genetic variation between parent and child. Like certain upper-crust cliques.

Harriet Miers's "incomplete" and "inadequate" answers "insulted" some Senators. Why is she still even being considered? This is the most ridiculous nominee I can realistically imagine. Who's next, Bugs Bunny?

Exploding the pot myths.

Imagine.

Can a dog have the Buddha nature?

I have always thought so.

Imagine this. Communities will almost have to be more self-sustaining in the future. How far away is that? Is that $4 bucks a gallon? Five? That could be next year...


Y'know, if we could trust everyone to act honestly and without regulation, then we wouldn't need prisons. The very fact that prisons -and punishment in general, as a concept- exist is testament to the idiotic nature of the Republican ideal of a "free market." They just want an excuse to act unethically.

Don't get me wrong: competition is not bad! It's natural, it's inevitable, it drives us to new heights of all kinds. That's not my point. I just think a lot of our problems would disappear if we reinstated the fairness doctrine. The arguments against it are absurd.

Senator Stevens, the American people think you're empty and ugly too, can we drill you for oil? We're not asking why there isn't enough energy (what??). We're wondering how control of all the energy ended up in such few hands. How about you start talking?

Sydney Blumenthal has a somewhat complicated, but complete, digest of the scandals beseiging George's pals and the Republican party. Essential reading for the politically perplexed!

"Amazing."

I can't NOT pass this along. The "Amazing" Randi runs away. What a prick.

And this is very interesting: it seems societies are worse off when they think God is on their side...

I can't keep track of all these Republicans under investigation/indictment anymore, the list just keeps growing too fast. Joe Conason wrote a great reader's digest update, though: check it out. Blows my mind. Staggering.

Who needs horror movies?

If Jesus was a computer,

If Jesus was a computer, this guy would have been his Paul, and this would be his bid to evangelize the world. What's so wrong with that? Ask yourself this: what happens WHEN they break? Cha-ching! goes the computer industry. What happens WHEN they need tech support? Cha-ching! goes the computer industry. What happens WHEN they wear out? Cha-ching! goes the computer industry, and Plop! goes the computer on a trash heap, where the heavy metals leach out into the area water supply and work their way up the food chain. Yum!

Y'know, when Marie Curie discovered Radium, everybody thought it was great. Someone then thought they had a great idea for how to use this new stuff: paint things with it so they'd glow in the dark. Until they realized it was killing the people who were closest to it. Oops! Too little, too late, for too many....

So here we are, with a new idea. We have a device at our disposal, which, like Radium and Uranium and the like, is so far out of our realm of normal experience that we have no precedent for it. Engineers built computers, then found that the things were, and became increasingly, so complex that they needed Scientists -specializing in an entirely new discipline- to help them understand what was going on. To date, Computer Science has been concerned in large part with the study of what computers do, as systems in and of themselves, with almost no research at all on the biological or social-behavioral aspects of their use. Some sparse research has been done on the effects of electromagnetic fields on human bodies, but so far nothing conclusive has really been shown. Just like in the early days of Marie Curie's research, non? Now what happens if we find, ten years down the line, that electromagnetic fields, when placed in close proximity to, say, immature reproductive organs, cause ...say... cancer? infertility? Hmmm? Will Dr. Negroponte's estate be paying for the cleanup? Will MIT? Or will we just turn our backs on the (now-infertile?) Third World (like maybe Appalachia, or bayou country?) like we did to the Radium painters?

Or maybe Negroponte's right, and computers everywhere will make everybody happy and apples will rain from the heavens -er, slowly, of course- and wine will flow in the -er, very clean streets, cleaned by um... robots!- and every computer geek will have a beautiful -and round-headed girlfriend. Who knows, right?

Thank Mammon!

George is a cruel, greedy sonovabitch, whose first decisions about what to do about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina hinged upon the question, "how can I be sure that the money goes to 'higher, tighter, and righter hands'*?
(*Actual quote from Poppy (GHW) Bush)

Billions of dollars go missing from Iraq after we take charge. Negligence? Hell no. Try complicity. Sorry George, but I believe in responsibility, and further, that responsibility and command go hand in hand. So yeah, you are responsible for whatever you command. And so yeah, you are complicit in this mess. So take some fucking responsibility, dumbass. Make your buddies hand back the goods. Don't you think they have enough? Don't you think you have enough?

But it won't stop there, oh no. And this will be the future of New Orleans, Biloxi, Gulf Coast: billions in "recovery" funds lost, missing, or "mis-spent" by Karl Rove's pals. That's right, Karl Rove -political operative who's never held a real job in his life- is directing the reconstruction. You asked for it, America: you f-ing got it. The biggest, baddest racket ever. Enron? Pshht. WorldCom? A trifle. Baghdad? That was just practice. Just watch.

We watched Slaughterhouse Five last night, and one of the characters mentioned Communism. So I started thinking about our situation, how ironic it all is. I mean, since right after WWII, America's raison d'etre has been to fight Communism, because Communism meant that all the money and power would be consolidated in the hands of just a few. And yet, here we are, money and power neatly consolidated (in "higher, tighter and righter hands," remember)... and it's just getting worse. But gosh, aren't we lucky we aren't Godless Communists? Thank Mammon!

Oh, and what the heck, let's talk about Basra. Where two British soldiers, dressed as Arabs, driving a car loaded with explosives, fired on Iraqi police. Where these two British soldiers were arrested and held -but not for long (anxious Occupation Authorities didn't want their secrets getting out under torture, apparently), as the British army drove a (or maybe seven?) tank(s) through the perimeter wall to release their men ...along with over 100 other criminals, coincidentally.

But why talk about Basra just now? Because it was a false flag operation gone wrong: this was to have ended in a massive explosion, blamed on "insurgents," in order to prolong the occupation. Because as long as there's an "insurgency," then we "need" to be there. And apparently Tony Blair needs to maintain a presence there too. I hope you at least get a kiss, Tony, coz this has to hurt. No, let me correct that: I hope it hurts. A lot.

And we want to prolong the occupation because only in such chaotic circumstances could so few unworthy souls make so much cash so easily. So long, New Orleans.

No politics too slimy for Republicans. Never mind "right" and "wrong," or "good" and "bad:" for these guys, it's all about winning. The 2008 election will be decided by a bare-fisted brawl. The DNC will allow the RNC to write the rules, of course.

What's that behind the curtain? Abramoff and other of
George's pals are BUSTED.

OH, and meanwhile: we still don't know who sent the anthrax to news anchors and Democratic congressmen in the fall of 2001,
...and we still haven't caught Osama bin Laden. But he's not really a threat: 911 was an inside job anyway. Sleep well, Osama! You're safe as long as the US needs an enemy to excoriate. (look it up).

Finding my politics hard to swallow? Just ask yourself, whenever you hear about a disaster and it's subsequent reorganization: who benefits? (cui bono?). Follow the money, honey.

"Higher, tighter and righter hands"....

Curioser and curioser!

From the cryptozoology corner (I guess?): Dragons. No, really: here, over Tibet, and here, over China. I'll just say I'm a wide-eyed agnostic, so far.

And from the heresy corner: No Arabs on American Airlines flight 77 (9-11-2001)? Not on the official passenger manifests, anyway. Or the seating chart. And no Arab faces on the videos, for that matter. Old news maybe, but worth checking out. So... where did those "evil-sounding" Arabic names come from?

Another red-hot letter from my current shordurpersav, Congressman John Conyers (D, MI), calling for a congressional investigation in addition to Fitzgerald's FBI investigation. Go, man, go! I wish I could vote for him.

Who's the boss?

Strong words.

"They rode into office in a highly contested election, spouting a message of bipartisanship but determined to undermine the federal government in every way but defense (and, after 9/11, one presumed, homeland security). One with Grover Norquist, they were determined to shrink Washington until it was "small enough to drown in a bathtub." Katrina has stripped the veil from this mean-spirited strategy, exposing the greed, mindlessness and sheer profiteering behind it."
Yep, time to go, George.

I actually think Rumsfeld is more central to the command structure than the President. I believe he has been positioning himself as such since the early 1970's, with the cooperation of one Dick Cheney. But, er, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, of course. Of course.

2008

Paul Krugman wonders, given that the last three elections were essentially stolen, what makes us think the Republicans won't steal the next? He thinks they will.

I'm not so sure. A fourth dubious election would likely put the Republican party in such a shadowy light that investigations -and most likely indictments- would be inevitable. It's difficult for me to imagine high-level Republican strategists endorsing something like that. Rather, it's much easier for me to expect them to throw the next Presidential election (maybe even using that as an excuse to campaign harder for Congressional seats).

On the other hand, recent news is showing us that the Republican party isn't so simple. In fact, results from the last nation-wide election suggest that Republican Party Central might not have had complete control over their minions, and that those minions got their own squirrely ideas into their heads, each one of them trying to be The Hero of 2004, by cheating and conspiring to send Democratic votes to Republican candidates.

Actually, either of these scenarios could work in their favor, if they play their cards right. In the first scenario, Republicans could dismiss such charges as "conspiracy theory," and the media would lap it up like pigs at a trough. And the second scenario would just allow them to dismiss all the charges as "isolated incidents" (sound familiar? it should).

As far as the Republican Party goes, whatever your suspicions are, they're probably well-founded.

it never ends

Chris Floyd sums up my frustration with the bush-cheney administration

Interesting career move.

Hoist the black flag...

Is this creativity? Consciousness?

Good essay on the Strategy of Tension, from the Moscow Times (take it from me: if you're gonna read a Russian paper, Moscow Times is a good place to start. Pravda is still crap). Chris Floyd is often a very interesting observer.

The Rove scandal explained

If you're at all unsatisfied with mainstream media news, this seems like our best place to start. Take back the airwaves.

Oh I'm sorry- the election wasn't stolen, it was bought.

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
-H L Mencken

Zombie dogs

Zombie dogs.

Hello! Asia wants to know when we'll have our stuff out. And they're not just asking. It's a demand. From Russia and China, no less. Tell us, Dr. Brezinski, is this check, or mate?

Cool letter from London, re: the recent bombings. We're through the looking-glass here, folks, but I'm warning you: we're not dreaming ...in any ordinary sense, anyway...

Hey everybody, it's filmstrip day! Yay! Watch, it's only about ten minutes. When was the last time you watched a filmstrip?

Having just watched it myself, I'm struck both by how cheesy and pedantic it seems, and also, ironically, by how radical the information seems today. That's bad. Bad, because the cheesiness of it makes us presume that it's dated, and therefore not relevant anymore. Bad, because it makes us feel we're being talked-down-to, and we tend not to repeat information that we recieve like that. Bad, because the original viewers (who probably also laughed at how cheesy it was) are now teachers and parents (grandparents, even), who are now passing along that affected ennui to their children and students, thereby encouraging further submission to Authority- the authority of Marketing and authority of State. Ironic.

Fear is the mind-killer. Submission is mental death.