PittsburghThoughts

Do you want to resume the war?

Do you want one payer, government run health care?

Do you want charges brought against the Bush administration for war crimes?

Do you want card check?

Do you want to nationalize the banks?

The automobile industry?

Do you want more or less regulations for:

The Credit Card industry?

The Stock Exchange?

Industries that pollute?

Do you want term Limits for politicians?

Should murdering lobbyists be made legal?

Should the government stop recognizing businesses as persons? 

These are lawyer solicitations that I received from New Jersey law firms over a parking ticket. Some they sent twice and one isn't shown for lack of space. Not one mentioned what the violation was except in code terms. Did I kill someone? Did I forget that fatal head on collision the last time I drove in New Jersey? Nope, none of the above. It's a parking ticket, that, at best, was questionable in the first place.   Gene

Today was a wonderful day, don't fuck it by reading my blog and leaving little comments like, "How delightful," or "You're a genius, Gene. " OK?

Like I said it was a marvelous day. Chase bank more that doubled my minimum payment, the minimum payment is all they'll take when you sign up for direct checking account withdrawal, contravening our agreement for a 3.99 interest rate for the life of the loan. I know that in another section it says they can change anything that they want whenever they want but how can they have contradictory lending terms in one agreement in the first place? 

The hard life of a politician,  

Thank to Bernie who sends me all kinds of junk,

     Outside.                                                                                

Inside the one way mirror public bathroom.

Hey, you ancient civilizations, BE LIKE US!

If I were to start blogging now instead of 4 years ago, I'd name my blog; The other shoe is always dropping. Things are never so bad that they can't get worse i.e., what's going on in the country we gutted? You'd think that the bad people in Iraq would all be dead and the country would be enjoying the morbid peace of the grave. Not so. 100 people have been killed in the last 3 days. Juan Cole writes in his blog today:

Bombings and other violence left 30 dead in Iraq on Monday, and the three-day death toll is 100. Monday's strikes included a bombing of a mini-bus with students aboard in Shiite Sadr City.

In my own view,the Shiites won the battle for Baghdad and largely ethnically cleansed the city of Sunni Arabs, who I suspect are now only 10-15% of the capital's population. So this sort of terrorism is now more revenge than anything else, and it is hard to see what political change it could effect. It is just a way of keeping the pot boiling and challenging the ensconcing of the Shiite-dominated al-Maliki government

 

The real danger ahead is Arab-Kurdish conflict in the north. In that regard, the building constitutional crisis between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the al-Maliki government in Baghdad over oil contracts is very bad news.

 

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We've come a long way baby?

Culturally, in my lifetime, the imaginary American dream life has gone from Leave it to Beaver suburban bliss to inner city criminally inspired rap with a misogynistic flavor and an anti-super hero taste.

Guns Are US could should be our mantra. What is a gun beside a killing device? It's instant respect, It's an advantage, it is power for the otherwise powerless. It's the one single thing that you can hold in your hand that has the capacity to forever change things in limitless ways. Is it any wonder that the least empowered should want guns?

One of the major differences between my childhood and now is how we controlled minorities and kept them in housing developments or very impoverished sections of Pittsburgh. That hasn't changed a lot and even though, today, blacks can be found in posh neighborhoods everywhere, we still hit the Apocalypse Now button when a black kid steps out of line or, heaven forbid, brings a gun to school.

So why, today, do white youth emulate all things black? For whatever reasons; fear, hate, peer pressure, black society is still the archetypical underclass society, they make less money, have less opportunities and end up in jail more often than any other race. The white kids who suspect that society doesn't feel any compunction to give them an even break, gravitate to the bottom and the bottom is truly that big tent area that others love to describe as theirs. Irrespective of gang wars, drug wars for dominance and rapper wars, the bottom feeders are forever tied together by the world that they have created and it's dark appeal.

How, in God's name, can we reorder society and bring sanity to the planet? We can't.  Gene

From: Imprecatory Prayer

Imprecatory prayer is a last resort appeal to God for justice. The so called 'curses' are simply the just penalty called for in the scriptures for the alleged crime. Imprecatory prayer is an appeal to the court of divine justice (1) for protection and (2) the appropriate punishment for the criminals. 

Today, we find ourselves thrust into a Christian house of mirrors where moral absolutism reigns and any answer that requires compromise, deductive reasoning or Christlike love is displaced by malevolent pastors praying for people to die.

Text from: Pastor Drake Prays For Obama's Death. I'm not kidding you | Crooks and Liars, slightly altered for clarity. Video from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVMgfDDTQcw

Wiley Drake, a former Southern Baptist Convention officer who on June 2 called the death of abortion provider George Tiller an answer to prayer said later in the day he is also praying "imprecatory prayer" against President Obama.

Pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., and former running mate of American Independent Party presidential candidate Alan Keyes, said June 2 on Fox News Radio he didn't understand why people were upset with his comments quoted by Associated Baptist Press from a webcast of his daily radio talk show.

Drake said he didn't pray for Tiller to be murdered -- only that God would take his life by some method -- but that he "absolutely" believed that God wanted the doctor dead.

Violation:      39:56.5

Description:  Abandonment Of My Subsequent Offense (Public Hwy) 

Gene's axiom : No matter how much information you have armed yourself with, the authoritative party will always require information that you don't have.

What is Dick Cheney but a wailing, flailing windmill of deceit and dishonesty? He's been everywhere asserting justifications and pointing fingers. The CIA was bad now it's good, George Tenent was right now he's wrong, Saddam was involved in 9-11 and now, well, watch the King of Delusion finally admit there wasn't any connection between the two after all:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,”

Obama displays more Bush-like tendencies,

From today's Washington Post Justices Reverse a Rule On Police Questioning - washingtonpost.com:

The Supreme Court overturned a long-standing ruling yesterday that barred police from initiating questions unless a suspect's lawyer was present, a move that will make it easier for prosecutors to interrogate suspects ...

The Michigan v. Jackson [1986]  opinion was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the only current justice who was on the court at the time. He and Justices David H. Souter, Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented from yesterday's ruling, and Stevens read his dissent aloud from the bench. It was the first time this term that a justice had read a dissent aloud.

"The police interrogation in this case clearly violated petitioner's Sixth Amendment right to counsel," Stevens said in the dissent. Overruling Jackson, he said, "can only diminish the public's confidence in the reliability and fairness of our system of justice."

The Obama administration [my bold typeface] had asked the court to overturn Michigan v. Jackson, disappointing civil rights and civil liberties groups.

The Justice Department, in a brief signed by Solicitor General Elena Kagan, said the 1986 decision "serves no real purpose" and offered only "meager benefits." The government said that suspects who don't wish to talk to police don't have to and that officers must respect that decision. But it said there is no reason that a suspect who wants to should not be able to respond to officers' questions.

Raw Story » Military attorney: Waterboarding is ‘tip of the iceberg’

*The U.S. has imprisoned 2,500 children since 9/11 as "enemy combatants", in violation of the Geneva Convention against classifying children as POWs.

Still not disgusted?

Okay . . . Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh says that the U.S. Government has videotapes of boys being raped at Abu Ghraib prison (and see this; see also this - General Taguba discusses the sexual humiliation of a father with his son - this and this).

This doesn't come as a complete surprise, given that assistant deputy Attorney General John Yoo has publicly argued that the president can order the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.

Congratulations, America. This is being done in your name.

If you're not sick to your stomach by learning that your government has been killing and torturing people - including children - then you are a psychopath or a pervert.

Don't try to tell me that torture is a necessary evil. It is well-known by professional interrogators that torture doesn't work. Experts on interrogation say that torture actually interferes with the ability to gather useful information.

Update: An investigation by the Salt Lake Tribune shows that torture in Iraq's locally-run juvenile prisons is also terrible.

How long are you going to continue to enthusiastically support these travesties? YOU have a particular obligation to speak out against this, YOU have been given a format, or "earned " one as you would probably say and yet, you continue to turn a blind eye to the suffering of people that may or may not have committed a crime but we'll never know because they have never been tried have they?  

 REM - Losing My Religion.mp3

The republicans have won, strangely enough, similar to the way that Al-Qaeda has won, by bollixing the system like a computer virus. Everything is jammed and no one can breath, Obama has changed his position so many times he's become a cheap trick.

When I grew up, I knew this song. I don't know how or why, but its message of hope is eternal. Lots of kids today never hear this kind of song. , Since I'm on the subject of inspirational songs sung by dark, handsome men with outrageous sideburns and who both have strong connections to Great Britain, here's another:

Historian Levin B. Murray described the First Red Scare as "a nation-wide anti-radical hysteria provoked by a mounting fear and anxiety that a Bolshevik revolution in America was imminent--a revolution that would destroy property, church, home, marriage, civility, and the American way of Life.

The Second Red Scare took place in the United States after World War II. It coincided with increased fears of espionage by communists and heightened tension from Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe (beginning in 1946), the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Chinese Civil War (1949), and the Korean War (1950–1953). These fears spurred aggressive investigations and the red-baiting, blacklisting, jailing and deportation of people suspected of following communist or other left-wing ideology.

Wikipedia doesn't mention a third or forth wave of Communism gone wild but during the 60's particularly the late 60's, and not coincidentally, corresponding with another war, Vietnam, war protestors and peace activists were jeered and accused of being Communists sympathizers.

Now, another war and surprise, surprise, we're all communists again, or, more precisely socialists. It's the same demon only with a little PR work.

You'd think, having failed to convince the public that anyone that disagrees with their disastrous policies is a fire breathing, wild eyed Communist, that the hard right would find something else in their tool bag to inflame and entice, I mean, besides waterboarding since it's only reserved for foreign nationals, with a few exceptions, unfortunate enough to find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time or being, in many cases, falsely ratted out for money.

They are one-trick phonies and they know it but as long as there's a vacuum that forms between what they provide as logic, strategy and policy and the truth, they'll fill it with all the fear and red-baiting that money will buy and Rupert Murdock has plenty of that.

Now, like a tenatious but demented badger, to try and resuscitate the flames of the cold, dead ashes of the "Red Threat" we have the Republican National Committee's latest PR stunt: at a special meeting next week they will formally rename the Democratic party as the "Democrat Socialist Party."

In the midst of this absurdity some real humor has surfaced, Frank Llewellyn, the national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, in other words, the head socialist, said,

"... they’re giving socialism a bad name by associating it with the Democrats, who are the second-most capitalist party in the world ...”

So, the only ones who really care enough to be offended are the Socialists. Never having it occur to me that comparing something bad with something worse may offend the ones who are the indirect object, I hereby apologize to assholes, jerks, liars, phonies and badgers for having compared republicans to them time and time again. If I failed to mention your particular affiliation, I apologise.  

Gene, who's very sorry and better red than dead ...

What would the news look like if it contained the stories and reports that we long to see? 

U.S. to withdrawal completely from Afghanistan and Iraq, agrees to finance rebuilding and provide compensation to victims.

But wait, that's what I want to see. Someone else, someone like Dick Cheney might want something a little different, something like:

U.S. to escalate wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, will increase drone attacks on Pakistan.

My point is obvious, there is no "We" when it comes to what "we" want. Somehow we stopped agreeing on the basics of who we are, what we are and which factions of us we need to best mollify.

This, of course, in no way makes us unique, what makes us unique is that our nation was founded on the belief that we would be a nation of the people, by the people and for the people, or, if you want to skip the Gettysburg address and go straight to the preamble to the constitution:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

That's pretty straight forward in its intent and the question of who "We" is, is somehow less pressing, less relevant or even irrelevant. I would imagine if you ask the authors, "When you say "We," who do you mean?" They'd look at you quizzically and think to themselves, that poor creature, must be touched in the head.

*Fast forward to railroad times, 1885. In a quick synopsis: the railroad barons of the Southern Pacific Railroad had S.W. Sanderson, a former judge and a man that had made himself wealthy litigating for the nation's largest railroads, decided to defy a government agency over a tax issue and claimed that a railroad was a person under the constitution and couldn't be taxed differently with different laws in different places.

Somehow, although no one knows how, his argument in 1885 before the Supreme Court based on the Fourteenth Amendment managed to make it into the written record even though the Supreme Court never officially ruled on it.

Since then it's been sacrosanct that corporations enjoy the same rights as individuals and a thriving lobby industry evolved around their right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

The villain, as always, is human greed. Whether speaking fictitiously through Gordon Gekko, or a staunch advocate of deregulation, a.k.a. Alan Greenspan, the old curse has never left the human gnome and the haves, have mores and have nots will always be at odds. Gene

* There's a complete account of this travesty and much more in Thom Hartmann's book, Unequal Protection, The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights.

Keb' Mo' - The Glory Of Love.mp3

YouTube teaser, for the full video, and it's a doozy, go to The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

This is Peter Lewis today. He was a member of Moby Grape, one of San Francisco's quintessential rock bands back in the 60s. My early musician friends were the first to "turn me on" to them. In 1969 some of the same friends and I hitchhiked to NYC to hear them play the Fillmore East. They were out of practice, out of tune and pretty much out of time but they still managed to produced a couple more albums. I lost track of them and other life issues took charge.

Jeff Tamarkin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia says it best:

The Grape's saga is one of squandered potential, absurdly misguided decisions, bad-luck, blunders and excruciating heartbreak, all set to the tune of some of the greatest rock and roll ever to emerge from San Francisco. Moby Grape could have had it all, but they ended up with nothing, and less."

Their musical diversity, harmonies and pure talent are legendary. I'm not much for nostalia, but I get a lump in my throat whenever I think of my own personal journey and how in some minor way it was intertwined with theirs.

Video added as per courtesy of Bill and his musical expertise, >

I don't like Condoleeza Rice, I never did. Her looks alone make me ill, plus, she has the demeanour of a bright but awkward child, one who hides her deviousness behind the protection of the mentors that she's cultivated through her obsequious patronage.

Her competence is apparent only in her ability to cement herself in with the illuminati, thereby insuring herself a goodly income and the exclusivity of the highly privileged. Oh, and like most of Bush's ex-appointees; she's a hypocrite and a liar.

In fact, her latest public pronouncements makes me question her ability to have a clearly reasoned position on anything. In a meeting with Stanford students at a dormitory reception on April 27, her arguments were rife with misrepresentations, condescension and just plain craziness, i.e., this question and answer exchange with a student there:

Q:  [we did not torture] Even in World War II facing Nazi Germany, probably the greatest threat that America has ever faced.

RICE: Uh, with all due respect, Nazi Germany never attacked the homeland of the United States.

Q: No, but they bombed our allies

RICE: No, just a second, just a second. Three-thousand Americans died in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

Q: 500,000 died in World War II

RICE: Fighting a war in Europe.

Q: — and yet we did not torture the prisoners of war.

RICE: We didn’t torture anybody here either.

She measures herself, judges herself, by the power and strength of the enemy that she believes she's faced, therefore enemy inflation is essential to her idea of herself and her place in history. She tops it off with a casual denial of torture for good measure. But, what astounds me is that she is willing to state, nay declare, that the threat that we faced on 9-11 trumps WWII. Can she really believe this? *Juan Cole, President of the Global Americana Institute and the author of Informed Comment, in his book, Engaging the Muslim World, argues:

Al-Qaeda is not a mass movement like fascism or communism but rather a small political cult like the American far-right circles that produced Timothy McVeigh.

To compare, let alone to state that Al-Qaeda is a greater threat to us than Nazi Germany was, is so far removed from reality that my mind reels that his woman was Bush's Nation Security Advisor during his first term. Her lies and inaction were monument and this is just the latest in the Condi saga. Why do people go to such lengths to protect a lie? What are they so afraid of? Surely the consequences of her lies will be a greater shame to her than the admission that she was too weak and unable to withstand the truth.     Gene

*Juan R.I. Cole Resume

I'm searching ebay for a chain saw, have been for a couple of days. There are people out there, and as far as I can tell they're all guys, that take a poorly running chainsaw, repair it and sell it for a profit. What a concept.

Polish Chainsaw 

It came and went, the 100 day water mark and Obama, what have you done? You've disappointed no doubt but you've also inspired and brought sanity back to government, except for that fly over NYC debacle staring Air force One and his tag-along buddy, the little fighter jet that could. Are you priming us for a well deserved drone attack someday?

Now why would techniques that succeed in getting false confessions be of use to the administration? As opposed to the traditional and successful psychological interrogation techniques that have a history of working?

That's quite a big question, and the likely answers aren't good -- either they weren't thinking straight; or they actually wanted some false confessions, especially regarding that ever-elusive-because-it-didn't-exist connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

Then asks,

"Why is the best (i.e., most fearless) political analysis coming from playwrights and comedians these days?" 

And his wife, Sue, answers,

"I know that is meant to be a rhetorical question, but in all seriousness, the successful ones are among the few people who can best understand and articulate the human condition and psyche."

I agree, and add, that it's because the great, or as Sue calls them, the best, playwrights and comedians fashion their art in truth. They hold up a mirror and say, "Here, look at yourselves, see not what you think you are or what you've been told you are but what you are."

We've bathed ourselves in comfortable euphemisms to create the illusion of resolve and action while we live these "interesting times" without a clue and without a plan, unless we consider our national run on gun shops a plan.

By the way, don't we get all icky when we hear "Swine Flu"? Can't we dull the knife to our sensibility a little?  How about the porcine humdudgeon? Secondly, lets drop the word torture altogether and call it ... environmentally enhanced information extraction, although I still have a problem with the word "extraction"  it sounds like a dental procedure and if that isn't torture ...

Eventually, the geniuses that love to keep us the dark will come up with something better, they always do. They know that we're all going over the edge and the safest place is in the rear of the train, it's the only time they ever put us first.  Gene

When I'm not enduring my meaningless existence, taking up space and waiting to die, I do stuff. Here's some of it:

I made a lamp using a votive candle hanging thingie that I found at the Salvation army. The rest of the parts are stuff I had laying around. I painted the cheap, plated brass black.  

 I hung up a bunch of power tools for easy access. Some were bought on ebay.

 I organized some shit.

 I built this work table, but that was a while ago.

 I bought this edger and the floor sander below it and refurbished them, I plan n sanding my flloors some day, (yeah, right).

  These sons of bitches are expensive new. This model is over $1000 add another 500 for the edger.

 I finally took the wheelchair ramps that I made for Nancy downstairs. They don't look like much but they're heavy.

 I made a stepper for Nancy's broken ankle therapy, big deal.

 I made a table for my table saw, which sounds redundant. Those levellers on the bottom could hold up a dump truck.

 I bought this home made combination jig saw and planer (I think it's a planer) at the second hand store years ago I just replaced one of the motors. It has a really ingenious wheel lowering system that I tried to incorporate on my work bench, it took over two week to figure out how to adapt it.

 I built this wire brush thing with a heavy duty motor because, once I think 20 years ago, I needed one.

I'm not really industrious, I'm just avoiding the inevitable, YARD WORK. But, on the other hand, weeds grow on the inside too.    Gene

The few, the proud, the inane, The Republicans,

It is now known that in late March, Dick Cheney requested the release of secret documents that indicate that he likes little children and puppies. A Cheney spokesperson said, "We want it on public record." When asked why the documents were classified in the first place the spokesperson looked confused and started crying, " I want my mommy, I want my mommy."

In a related story, the military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against children and puppies referred to the Military plan as " ... a stupid idea." A July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency warned that it would produce unreliable information from the children and that puppies can't talk.

A pentagon spokesperson responded that they were interested in the "Lassie effect" whereas the puppies would pace nervously in circles waiting to be followed to the insurrectionists lair. "I distinctly remember many episodes where it eventually dawned on the Lassie people that Lassie wanted to be followed. "What is it girl? You want me to follow you? Is Timmy in trouble?" They would say. As for the children, the pentagon maintains that they were mostly brats, bad apples and dead enders.

***********************************************************

Meanwhile across the country, "I'm Rooting for Spain" and "Hooray for the Spanish Inquisition Part Deux" bumper stickers are all the rage. Alberto Gonzales is reportedly shitting his pants and John Yoo has undergone extensive facial surgery and hopes to emerge from his bandages as the spitting image of Javier Bardem.

************************************************************

A new product will grace the market next week called the GOPGPS. It's being billed as the missing moral compass for the missing moral majority. A beeper will sound anytime a republican makes a stupid decision of acts hypocritically in anyway. Some on the right are outraged, "That damn thing will be going off constantly ... just what we need another distraction and another reason to feel like the losers we are," GOP spokesman and Minority Whip Eric Cantor said, he added, "I might as well just go to another Brittany Spears concert, what the hell?
At least I get my dick hard."



In his defense, notice Cantor's brilliant response when asked why he opted to attend the Brittany concert rather than Obama's prime time news conference, he said, " I hand it to the performer, she was something ... 24/7 news cycle ... I mean ... come on ..."

**********************************************************

God, I love the inexhaustible supply of low grade humor and ridiculousness that flows from their very pores. Gene

This is my favorite Smother Brother's song. It was written by one of the show's writters, and (for a time, a long time) perenial presidential candidate, Pat Paulson.

During a stump speech, as part of his faux campaign, he once said that he knew things were bad across the country, that his family had to cut back and buy cheaper cuts of meat, "Last night we had chicken faces for supper."

Oh, ignore the stupid video, I don't know how whoever posted it thought it related to the song. Gene

Rage, Rage, Rage against the dying of the right -- with apologies to Dylan Thomas,

Bill sent me this link in the comments yesterday: Drew Westen: The Five Strands of Conservatism: Why the GOP is Unraveling. It's from a Huffington Post piece by Dr. Drew Westen, an amazingly insightful piece about the disparate factions that comprise the modern conservative party and why it's unravelling.

I'll add, that as it unravels and as the outdated, worn republican machine tries to wear smooth its damaged parts, it remains to the core parts, the base, to become louder, bolder and more volatile as they try to dissipate the heat of their internal friction.

Thus, we have the Governor of Texas talking about seceding, gun nuts up in arms (more-so than usual) and more and more republican web sites beginning with sentences like this, from an actual republican web site:

After spending the week in Europe, bowing to the Saudi King and apologizing for America, Barack Obama is back in this country ready to introduce more socialism. It seems that the administration hatches a radical new plan everyday.

And that's mild. There is a palpable wave of hatred permeating the air, land and water, nothing is untouched. I'll give the republicans one thing; they do not go gentle into that good night.

Eventually. though, their machine will crash and all the king's horses and all the king's men will go home but not until the final curse is hurled:

You cursed brat! Look what you've done! I'm melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little [ black president] like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? Oooooh, look out! I'm going! Oooooh! Ooooooh!

But which witch will most appropriately ring the death knell? John, Tan Man, Boehner? Former GOP rising star, Governor Bobby Jindal of Lousiana, dead panning, "I'm melting, I'm melting"? That geek who wants to drown the government in a bathtub, Grover Norquist? There are so many to choose from, each more sardonically comical and bizarre than the next.

Speaking of bizarre, the *Bizarro World Code meshes well with the republican world code.

In the Bizarro world of "Htrae" ("Earth" spelled backwards), society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states "Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!."

Pursuing my own amusement, I went off track. I was talking about Dr. Drew Westen. I searched for the Youtube version of the piece I linked to but couldn't find a video version, and so, I offer this by Dr. Westen       Gene



*

Tea bagging as defined by the Urban Dictionary:

The tea bag parties are over. The people who had a driving compulsion to protest something amorphous and encroaching have gone home to their jobs and lives in a blush of self-congratulatory accomplishment.

Good for them. I'm all for protesting as long as I get to ride on buses and talk to women but I get the feeling that the faux Bostonians, while not dumping their tea in the harbor, at least were glad to have the opportunity to dump their pent up frustration at having tied their fate to the rudderless, clueless, morally bankrupt party of NO!

Whatever it is, if we're for it, they're against it. If Obama proposed some of the exact things that they supported while Bush was in office, and he has, they would vehemently oppose them, which they have.

There's been enough written and discussed about this phony protest that I'd just as soon let it take its rightful place in history's scrape bin, along with the republican party, but isn't it odd that the right-wing noise machine can and will crank up the volume so much for so little? The DC Iraq War protests that I attended, and I suspect nation wide, were given little media attention and the attendence numbers were deliberatly low balled while the attendance numbers of tea baggers were highly inflated. Exactly what does that say about our media at large?

Last night Keith Olbermann showed a clip of Fox's Neil Cavuto at a tea bag protest asking, who he asked isn't clear, how many protesters he thought were there. He was told 5000, minutes later he was on air reporting that there were at least 5000 but probably double or triple that number. And, of course Fox News complains that the rest of the media hasn't been fair with their numbers:

“Apparently these populist protests don’t count that much for them [the other media outlets]. Millions concerned they’re being taxed to death counts even less for them.”

I only wish that the truth counted as much for him as he thinks his inflated numbers should count for the media but that's not going to happen.

Back, God, it was years ago, the hue and cry went up that the media wasn't reporting the good news about Iraq. Fox news, as hard as they tried, eventually gave up trying to find and report it. Even if it was there, the bad news was so overwhelming that they'd have looked like bigger fools tha they already were trying to push that "feel good" bullshit. Fox doesn't retract or apologize and with our teeny, tiny attention spans, why should they?

At least when we, the left, protest, we protest something concrete that has to do with actual principles and social justice, government decisions that kill and displace millions of innocents, policies that make mockeries of our constitution and what we believe we should stand for.

The right hates government but is willing to kill in order to run it. Their obsequious appeals to the common man are laughable. Death tax? Hahahhaha. Laughable. God, guns and gays over and over, the republicans are our autistic doppelgangers incapable of learning from their mistakes and revelling in their moral superiority based on absolutely nothing. Put that in your tea bag and smoke it!   Gene

More on Somalia, piracy, the precipitous drum beat of war or something like war i.e., installing a government sympathetic to resource happy corporate pirates and how the mass media, including NPR (I just heard it this morning) leaves out vital information but, lo and behold, manages to find specious ties between Somali pirates and mid-eastern terrorists. From Why We Don't Condemn Our Pirates in Somalia | | AlterNet:

Why We Don't Condemn Our Pirates in Somalia

By K'Naan , URB Magazine. Posted April 14, 2009.

Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Well in Somalia, the answer is: it's complicated. Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Outside of sea bandits, and young girls fantasizing of Johnny Depp, would anyone with an honest regard for good human conduct really say that they are in support of Sea Robbery? Well in Somalia, the answer is: it's complicated. The news media these days has been covering piracy in the Somali coast, with such lopsided journalism that it's lucky they're not on a ship themselves. It's true that the constant hijacking of vessels in the Gulf of Aden is a major threat to the vibrant trade route between Asia and Europe. It is also true that for most of the pirates operating in this vast shoreline, money is the primary objective. But according to many Somalis, the disruption of Europe's darling of a trade route is just Karma biting a perpetrator in the butt. And if you don't believe in Karma, maybe you believe in recent history. Here is why we Somalis find ourselves slightly shy of condemning our pirates.

Somalia has been without any form of a functioning government since 1991. And despite its failures, like many other toddler governments in Africa, sprung from the wells of post-colonial independence, bad governance and development loan sharks, the specific problem of piracy was put in motion in 1992.

After the overthrow of Siyad Barre, our charmless dictator of twenty-some odd years, two major forces of the Hawiye Clan came to power. At the time, Ali Mahdi, and General Mohamed Farah Aidid, the two leaders of the Hawiye rebels were largely considered liberators. But the unity of the two men and their respective sub-clans was very short-lived. It's as if they were dumbstruck at the advent of ousting the dictator, or that they just forgot to discuss who will be the leader of the country once they defeated their common foe. A disagreement of who will upgrade from militia leader to Mr. President broke up their honeymoon. It's because of this disagreement that we've seen one of the most devastating wars in Somalia's history, leading to millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead. But war is expensive and militias need food for their families, and Jaad (an amphetamine-based stimulant) to stay awake for the fighting. Therefore a good clan-based Warlord must look out for his own fighters. Aidid's men turned to robbing aid trucks carrying food to the starving masses, and reselling it to continue their war. But Ali Mahdi had his sights set on a larger and more unexploited resource, namely: the Indian Ocean.

Already by this time, local fishermen in the coastline of Somalia have been complaining of illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish. And since there was no government to report it to, and since the severity of the violence clumsily overshadowed every other problem, the fishermen went completely unheard. But it was around this same time that a more sinister, a more patronizing practice was being put in motion. A Swiss firm called Achair Parterns, and an Italian waste company called Progresso, made a deal with Ali Mahdi, that they could dump containers of waste material in Somali waters. These European companies were said to be paying Warlords about $3 a ton, where as in to properly dispose of waste in Europe costs about $1000 a ton.

In 2004, after Tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including "Uranium, radioactive waste, lead, cadmium, mercury and chemical waste." But this wasn't just a passing evil from one or two groups taking advantage of our unprotected waters, the UN Convoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia's aquatic life. Now years later, that deterance has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to bury our nation's death trap.

Now Somalia has upped the world's pirate attacks by over 21 percent in one year, and while NATO and the EU are both sending forces to the Somali coast to try and slow down the attacks, Blackwater and all kinds of private security firms are intent on cashing in. But while Europeans are well in their right to protect their trade interest in the region, our pirates were the only deterrent we had from an externally imposed environmental disaster. No one can say for sure that some of the ships they are now holding for ransom were not involved in illegal activity in our waters. The truth is, if you ask any Somali if they think getting rid of the pirates only means the continuous rape of our coast by unmonitored Western vessels, and the production of a new cancerous generation, we would all fly our pirate flags high.

It is time that the world gave the Somali people some assurance that these Western illegal activities will end, if our pirates are to seize their operations. We do not want the EU and NATO serving as a shield for these nuclear waste-dumping hoodlums. It seems to me that this new modern crisis is a question of justice, but also a question of whose justice. As is apparent these days, one man's pirate is another man's coast guard.

K'naan is a Somali-Canadian poet, rapper and musician.

Amidst all the self-congradulatory brough-haha and the establishment of Obama as tough enough, some food for thought. From: Johann Hari: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates:

By Johann Hari

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates

 Puck:
Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover's fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be! -- A Midsummer Nights Dream Act 3, scene 2, 110–115

• Observation: Every swan I've ever seen is white.
• Hypothesis: All swans must be white.
• Test: A random sampling of swans from each continent where swans are indigenous produces only white swans.
• Publication: "My global research has indicated that swans are always white, wherever they are observed."
• Verification: Every swan any other scientist has ever observed in any country has always been white.
• Theory: All swans are white.

Prediction: The next swan I see will be white.

Note, however, that although the prediction is useful, the theory does not absolutely prove that the next swan I see will be white. Thus it is said to be falsifiable. If anyone ever saw a black swan, the theory would have to be tweaked or thrown out. (And yes, there are really black swans. This example was just to illustrate the point.)

Real scientific theories must be falsifiable. So-called "theories" based on religion, such as creationism or intelligent design are, therefore, not scientific theories. They are not falsifiable and they do not follow the scientific method.

Of course, when dealing with the fools that these morals be, nothing is falsifiable since their theories absolutely prove whatever it is they need to prove at the time. Colin Powell made a remarkable case for war with Iraq in front of the United Nations that seemed air tight, except it wasn't. And, how, as long as we're ask to accept on faith, classified documents as justification for whatever predetermined action is deemed appropriate, can we make an educated decision?

There's only one path through the maze and it's a personal journey, thus it was always so, and so, it shall always be thus.  Hmmm, brings to mind a song ... Greatful Dead - Ripple.mp3    Gene & Jerry

In a stunning defense of President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, President Barack Obama has broadened the government's legal argument for immunizing his Administration and government agencies from lawsuits surrounding the National Security Agency's eavesdropping efforts.

In fact, a close read of a government filing last Friday reveals that the Obama Administration has gone beyond any previous legal claims put forth by former President Bush.

Responding to a lawsuit filed by a civil liberties group, the Justice Department argued that the government was protected by "sovereign immunity" from lawsuits because of a little-noticed clause in the Patriot Act. The government's legal filing can be read here (PDF).

 Why do we always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther...

Suskind describes the Cheney doctrine as follows: "Even if there's just a 1 percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty. It's not about 'our analysis,' as Cheney said. It's about 'our response.' … Justified or not, fact-based or not, 'our response' is what matters. As to 'evidence,' the bar was set so low that the word itself almost didn't apply."

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
      Go, go, go like a soldier,
      Go, go, go like a soldier,
      Go, go, go like a soldier,
         So-oldier _of_ the Queen!

But what if Afghanistan is only a jumping off point for Pakistan? Approaching Pakistan directly, post A. Q. Khan and his nuclear arsenal, is as unlikely as it is for us to topple North Korea and kim Jong-il's baby-faced, nuclear armed atrocity of a country.  

Today's New York Times,

LONDON — A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said: Spanish Court Weighs Inquiry on Torture for 6 Bush-Era Officials - NYTimes.com

Ecclesiastes Amended

To everything there is a season, and
a time to every purpose under heaven:

A time to be born, and
a time to die;
a time to plant, and
a time to pluck up that which is planed

A time to insure bundled sub-prime loans
a time for credit default swaps
a time to call them "securities"
a time to sell them to investors

A time to kill, and
a time to heal;
a time to break down, and
a time to build up

A time for sub-prime borrowers to quit paying
a time for investors to quit buying
a time for mortgage backed securities to burst their bubble
a time for shit to flow downhill

A time to weep, and
a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and
a time to dance

A time for downgraded brokerages
a time for brokerages to collapse
a time for CEOs to salvage bonuses
a time to wipeout shareholders

A time to cast away stones, and
a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and
a time to refrain from embracing

A time to cry out for government intervention
a time for financial systems to crash and burn
a time for the Feds to consider nationalization
a time to Nationalize

A time to get, and
a time to lose;
a time to keep, and
a time to cast away

A time to re-regulate
a time to bring back Glass-Steagall
a time to close the loopholes
a time to make the economy serve the people

A time to rend, and
a time to sow;
a time to keep silence, and
a time to speak

A time for clarity
a time to call a spade a spade
a time to expose the liars and thieves
a time for jail

A time to love, and
a time to hate;
a time of war; and
a time of peace.

AIG = PIG,

We all know enough about AIG to hate its disregard for common sense, taxpayer money and mostly its unrepentant greed. Irrespective of Timothy Geithner's fuzzy timelines, Obama's, "You're doin a heck-of-a-job Timmy" attitude, we still get it; some people think it's OK to live large on the backs of people living decreasing smaller and smaller lives.

Talk about your sense of entitlement, isn't that what we hear whenever a pseudo conservative deigns to use his finest demagoguery to villanize a whole class of people? Entitlement? Entitled to what? Food, public services, public housing and a host of other things that the average American takes for granted and at a 8.7 % slice of the budget pie, less than a dime on the dollar? Oh, it's going to go up, but only because jobs that pay a REAL living wage are going down. And who's fault is that? The same wanna-be-conservatives that see nothing wrong on bailing on the American worker whenever a widget can be made a few cents cheaper in a country that outlaws unions, environmental protections and either jails or murders dissenters.

And of course, they all need a banks and of course the banks need insurance and of course the insurance companies that insure these banks charge premiums and that's how they make money, except, AIG's parent company took the profit from its insurance divisions lent them to Wall Street for cash and then invested that cash in ... sub-prime mortgages.

So, of course these righteous fiduciaries deserve bonuses; for their insight and vision, their unflagging dedication to their investors, their investment acumen and because nothing, nothing is sadder than a ex-CEO having to scrape along on millions and millions but without their beloved bonus.

"We have succeeded in creating in the heart of the Middle East a democratically governed Iraq, and that is a big deal, and it is, in fact, what we set out to do,"

 “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.

To attract badly needed investments to increase its oil production, the Iraqi government is considering new incentives for foreign companies, including plans to offer majority stakes in joint ventures to develop the country’s huge oil and gas fields, senior Iraqi officials said Wednesday.

Foreign companies could own as much as 75 percent of the new ventures, the officials said. In its negotiations with dozens of international companies, including Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, Iraq had until now offered stakes of no more than 49 percent in new joint ventures to develop existing and new oil fields.

So, could we say, that in the end, we decimated a country, made refugees of 4 million of it's people, killed, perhaps as many a million, lost over 4000 American soldiers, disabled thousands more and threw away a large percentage of our nation's wealth for a 26% increase in our share of the Iraq oil pie? You bet we could.

It's one of the worst "investments" of all time. There's not enough oil crammed into all of the Earth's substrates to ever pay us back. Like AIG and a host of our other recent financial debacles, we have given away up front money, easily raked off the top, easily hidden through the dark arts of questionable accounting practices, easily excused by saying, " mission accomplished" to an elite class of thieves and murderers, thieves and murderers who have somehow convinced us that their cause is just and that to not cooperate with them is the real crime.   Gene

 "We are on strike," Galt says. "This is the strike of the men of the mind, Miss Taggart...We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another...The mind is evil? We have withdrawn the works of our minds from society, and not a single idea of ours is to be known or used by men...We are giving men everything they've professed to want and to seek as virtue for centuries. Now let them see whether they want it."

Call me a goober but this shit fascinates me,

What can a 1,474 megapixel camera do? See for yourself! Fullscreen Gigapan Viewer My friend Bernie sent that to me and I replied that it reminded me of the 70s short film, YouTube - Powers Of 10 but then, I notice this, YouTube - The Powers of Ten Parody. It's a randy, raunchy romp through relativity, reality and ridiculousness, oh, and it's highly misogynistic.       Gene

Matt Wuerker, resident artist for Politics, Political News - POLITICO.com

 

From Sunday's Pittsburgh Tribune Review: 'Benedict Arlen' plots with enemy,

by Tribune-Review staff

Arlen Specter appears spooked.

At a town hall meeting at Point Park University Thursday, the U.S. senator acknowledged his long political career was in jeopardy because of his vote supporting President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package.

Noting that he barely squeaked by former U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey in the 2004 GOP primary, Specter asked for help in the 2010 primary, which is more than a year away.

He suggested Democrat students in the crowd of about 100 temporarily change their registration to Republican so they could vote for him in the primary, then revert to their previous Democrat registration.

Perhaps Specter -- one of three Senate Republicans to vote for the stimulus bill -- was moved to make the request after meeting some angry voters earlier in the day in Cranberry.

At a press conference announcing federal funding for the expansion of Freedom Road, two people stood behind Specter holding signs that read "Benedict Arlen -- Wait Until 2010."

One woman disrupted the news conference to read a long statement complaining about Specter's "betrayal."

***************************************************

My Response,

Turn off the lights and act like we're not home, those pesky republicans are at the door again,

I've been lax, I haven't been keeping up. But, then again, if keeping up means staying on top of every child rape story and the latest official taser gun murder, I feel vindicated. I thought Judge Dred, judge, jury and executioner, only existed in the movies.

“We want to convey that the modern-day G.O.P. looks like the conservative party that stands on principles,” Mr. Steele said. “But we want to apply them to urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

That'll bring em running Michael. Seriously, Mr. Steele, did you ever see a republican dance?

It's beyond parody what these folks have become. The Religious Right wants a new name. How about the Hip Hop Religious Right? Shawn Hannity was pushing his pal Allen Stanford's Coins & Bullion business on his show saying, "Stanford Coins & Bullion, a member of the Stanford Financial Group, their name as good as gold." It turns out he may have meant, fool's gold. On Tuesday, Stanford was charged with allegedly trying to bilk 50,000 clients out of $8 billion through a scheme involving high-interest-rate CDs.

If, you're a republican Senator, you don't know whether to shit or go blind, or, to take your cut of the latest bailout. They all voted against it, but some, like Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo) want to create the appearance, now that the money is rolling in, that they were somehow responsible for it. Think progress says,  Kit Bond Touts Effects Of Stimulus Bill He Voted Against:

Last week, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) slammed President Obama’s recovery and reinvestment plan. “Hold on to your wallets folks because with the passage of this trillion-dollar baby the Democrats will be poised to spend as much as $3 trillion in your tax dollars,” Bond said. “Unfortunately, this bill stimulates the debt, it stimulates the growth of government, but it doesn’t stimulate jobs,” Bond insisted.

However, today Bond is touring Missouri to tout the very stimulus plan he railed against. In a press release, Bond boasted about an amendment he included in the bill to provide more funding for affordable housing — and that will create jobs.

Eric Cantor, a republican congressman from Virginia who succeeded Roy Blunt as House Whip has opposed the Obama Bailout but voted for the Paulson, Bush fiasco. BuzzFlash has this, Eric Cantor is BuzzFlash.com's GOP Hypocrite of the Week:

Cantor ... has been highly critical of how TARP funds have been spent. In his argument against releasing TARP funds to the Obama Administration, Cantor appeared almost populist in tone, repeatedly railing against greedy financial institutions

But,

Last week, ProPublica.org poked a hole in Cantor's facade of moral superiority. The investigative news Web site revealed that Cantor's wife works for a bank that received $267 million from the first half of the bailout funds. From ProPublica.

Do as I say, not as I do? It's fair for me, not for you? Or, as Sly and the Family Stone said,  It's A Family Affair.mp3

Whatever... but the party of fiscal restraint, solid Ameican values and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is looking real ill right now. Like the walrus of Lewis Carrol's poem, The Walrus and the Carpenter, whom I've oft quoted,

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

Gene

*Bush said in early spring, 'I'm tired of swatting flies.' He wanted a thorough, comprehensive, diplomatic, military, intelligence, law enforcement and financial strategy to go after al-Qaeda," Colin Powell said.

Afghanistan produces two-thirds of the world's heroin from poppies. More than 90 percent of it comes out of Helmand province where the Marines are headed. Currently, the 3rd battalion 8th Marine brigade, also from Camp Lejeune, is in that area.

If this report is true, it is very troubling. There is reason to think that forcible poppy eradication has produced the growing insurgency. Poppies are used to make heroin, and exports of the drug account for over a third of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. But many Afghan farmers are destitute after 30 years of war, and this crop is their one hope of escaping poverty. They grow irate when someone comes in with helicopters and torches to destroy the crop.

Federal authorities examining the early, chaotic days of the $125 billion American-led effort to rebuild Iraq have significantly broadened their inquiry to include senior American military officers who oversaw the program, according to interviews with senior government officials and court documents.

It named two military officers, Col. Anthony B. Bell, Army, and Lt. Col. Ronald W. Hirtle, Air Force, that are being investigated. Oddly, I didn't see it picked up by any other news source.

Temptation is inescapable when it comes to the huge sums of money needed to fight a war, making war perversely attractive to the corrupt and resulting in moral death to the non-corrupt.

I'm sure that our missionless transgressions in the Middle East aren't designed to enrich Obama but he's bought the Bush Doctrine hook, line and sinker. The rest is up to the nameless, faceless officers, troops and support personal entrusted to slog through hell so that in some unexplainable way we may make the world safer. So far our batting average hasn't been so hot either in defying temptation or in eradicating terror but, dig we must, deeper and deeper.

Let's stay home the next time, put national defence on auto pilot, stuff the Hookah with Afghani opium and peacefully drift off to the Land of Nod where sweet little boys and girls give each other flowers and dance naked in the beautiful, endless poppy fields under the warm sun.  I'm so there.   Gene

*Afghanistan’s opium driven GDP — OneWorld South Asia Home

The well-established U.S. citizens in the islands had been there long enough to consider themselves Hawaiian. They believed that they deserved the influence they could exercise, and they were disturbed by what they thought was hostility from non-whites and bad government by King Kalakaua. Common among whites during these times was the belief that non-whites were incapable of good government ...

... The conspirators took power the old fashioned way. They confronted King Kalakaua with weapons, and the king, without an adequate guard or military counterforce, responded by signing a constitution that Thurston [Lorrin Thurston, son of a missionary from the United States, a lawyer and publisher of a newspaper, the Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser] and his group had devised - to be known as the "Bayonet Constitution." The king, according to his sister Liliuokalani, signed the constitution "under absolute compulsion."

 

The Unofficially Official Rules of Calvinball

1.1. All players must wear a Calvinball mask (See Calvinball Equipment - 2.1). No one questions the masks.

*IMPORTANT -- The following rules are subject to be changed, amended, or dismissed by any player(s) involved.

1.2. Any player may declare a new rule at any point in the game. The player may do this audibly or silently depending on what zone (Refer to Rule 1.5) the player is in.

1.3. A player may use the Calvinball (See Calvinball Equipment - 2.2)in any way the player see fits, from causal injury to self-reward.

1.4. Any penalty legislation may be in the form of pain, embarassment, or any other abasement the rulee deems fit to impose on his opponent.

1.5. The Calvinball Field (See Calvinball Equipment - 2.3) should consist of areas, or zones, which are governed by a set of rules declared spontaneously and inconsistently by players. Zones may be appear and disappear as often and wherever the player decides. Zones are often named for their effect. For example, a corollary zone would enable a player to make a corollary (sub-rule) to any rule that has been, will be, or might be declared. A pernicious poem place would require the intruder to do what the name implies. Or an opposite zone would enable a player to declare reverse playibility on the others. (Remember, the player would declare this zone oppositely by not declaring it.)

1.6. Flags (Calvinball Equipment 2.3) shall be named by players whom shall also assign the power and rules which shall govern that flag for particular moment in that particular game.

1.7. Songs are an integral part of Calvinball and verses must be sung spontaneously through the game when randomly assigned events occur. These random events will be named and pointed out after the player causes the event.

1.8. Score may be kept or disregarded. In the event that score is kept, it shall have no bearing on the game nor shall it have any logical consistency to it. (Legal scores include 'Q to 12', 'BW-109 to YU-34, and 'Nosebleed to Trousers'.)

1.9. Any rule above that is carried out during the course of the game may never be used again in the event that it causes the same result as a previous game. Calvinball games may never be played the same way twice.

Calvinball Equipment

2.1. Mask - All participants are required to wear a mask.

2.2. Calvinball - A Calvinball may be a soccerball, volleyball, or any other reasonable or unreasonable, spherical or non-spherical object.

2.3. Calvinball Field - The Calvinball Field should be any well-sized field, preferably with trees, rocks, grass, creeks, and other natural hindrances to health.

2.4. Miscellaneous - Other optional equipment include flags, wickets (especially of the time-fracture variety), and anything else the players wish to include.

** This rulebook is not required, nor necessary to play Calvinball.

By Barb Kucera , Workday Minnesota

March 29, 2008

Edgar Paez considers himself fortunate to be able to campaign across the United States this month against the proposed U.S.-Colombia free trade deal. Twenty-two members of his union – assassinated for their activism – weren’t so lucky.

Employees of Coca-Cola, Nestle and other multinational corporations, “they were killed because they were fighting for workers to be paid better – and that would have resulted in the companies not making as much profit,” he said.

 

Paez, a leader of Sinaltrainal, the National Food Industry Workers Union, spoke in Minneapolis and Rochester last week in programs sponsored by the United Steelworkers, Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition and Witness for Peace. He is touring the country before an upcoming Congressional vote on the free trade agreement with Colombia.

Under pressure, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe agreed to insert some pro-labor provisions into the trade pact’s text. But unions and lawmakers say they’re not good enough to overcome Colombia’s notorious track record of more than 2,000 unionists murdered by Right Wing paramilitaries – some paid off by U.S. multinationals – over the last 15 years, or Uribe’s lack of prosecution of perpetrators ...

Now the granddaddy, or, Great White Father of the free trade pact with Columbia is that guy, what's his name, who just checked out of the White House after shitting on Obama's desk. He left his progenitor, that God awful John Boehmer, behind with political assassination instructions. I think his ace-in-the-hole strategy is to hold his breath until he turns blue if he doesn't get his way in the House and Senate.

John, I can call you John can't I? John, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, GO FUCK YOURSELF!

Future person #1.   Hey, whatever happened to that civilization that couldn't find its ass with both hands?

Future person #2    I think a comet smacked into the Earth.

Future person #1    Thank God.

>

t's quick, it's easy, and beats any other solutions because, IT WORKS!. Obama time to affirm that you are the chosen one, the messiah, the Grand Poobah, call in you chits and "LET'S GET THAT COMET STARTED!"     Gene

I'm a faceless clock With timeless hopes that never stop When I feel that way You know my soul's at stake --Luther Vandross - Going In Circles

Today's theme song; You got me going in circles, except I don't know who "You" is. Obviously for a soulful back man it can be no other than a soulful black woman, check that, a soulful woman, white, black or anywhere in between.

Ahhh ... youthful passion as compared to cruddy post middle age angst and declining physical prowess. Unless you've recently invested with Bernie Maddoff you've probably made your biggest mistakes while you were young, however you define being young. Youth is a bona fide state of madness. It whispers in your ear day and night telling you bold lies that you immediately act on with certainty and, eventually the highly regrettable results come with absolute certainty.

We learn from our mistakes and move on, the perfect Darwinian counterpoints are brought to bear against our fear / faith based belief systems and youthful naivety. I see it in my life, I'm seeing it in Obama's, his good intention trumped by an uncertain future. Rachel Maddow says it best.

Decimus Junius Juvenalis, (55-127 A.D.), better known as Juvenal, a Roman writer, lamented that the Roman Republic was but a distant memory as the power of the emperors grew stronger and stronger. The once proud Senate that had witnessed the splendid orations of Cato and Cicero—dominated and weakened year after year by the succession of dictators—atrophied into a figurehead of an institution. However, Juvenal felt that the populace took the duties of citizenship far more seriously during the days of the Republic than in the virtual dictatorships of the Caesars.

He lamented that "the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now meddle no more and longs eagerly for just two things — bread and circuses."

Zillions of people will stand in the cold for 5 plus hours to see and hear Obama speak, no food allowed, no drink, no strollers and worst of all, no toilet facilities anywhere near the speakers platform where a ticket is required. It's billed as being part of history. It's the cult of Obama. Graceful and articulate, all things to all people.

I don't know where he stands. He seems to have a good heart, but even Bush managed to convinced himself and many of us that he was a good Christian while indiscriminately murdering thousands.

Today, there is no room for humanity in the White House, only gestures of humanity, tokens of empathy. This wasn't Bush's country given to him by the people to be doled back when and if he saw fit and it isn't Obama's.

Pomp and circumstance, bread and circuses, I don't believe in democracy, socialism, a representative republic, I believe in artifice, bait and switch and always being counted on to be the sucker. I sympathize with the capitalist, he keeps the fruits of his labors, albeit at your expense and mine.  

We're in over our head. Obama is in over his head, only a benevolent dictator can turn it around now. It was an evil dictator that got us here in the first place.    Gene

Found this, this morning at http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/open-thread-12:

If that didn't make you go "WOW, maybe this will make you "Yeow!"

Israeli Prime Minister Brags About Giving Orders to Bush | PEEK | AlterNet

I happened upon these videos. The first, Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-American psychologist denounces Islamic violence and defends Israel. The second, an unnamed Muslim Cleric defends Islam and denounces Israel and the United States from a historical perspective. I think the passion, and interpretations given by each may help to understand the insurmountable complexities of the problems faced . Well worth the time and effort required to watch and read the subtitles.