PittsburghThoughts

*There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come-

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:41:00 +0100

Corporate King

Wether or not the king is benevolent and believes in democracy to some small extent or not, he is still king and will extract his homage as he see fits. At least with a king the people had an opportunity to view the Crown Jewels and the ceremonial artifacts known as "Regalia" of his and the lessor royalty.

Here in post Robert's court USA, we can only guess at the riches ensconced in overseas accounts and safety deposit boxes littered throughout the world. Of course, we can always watch Robin Leach on the tube. Homes, nay mansion, nay palaces too glorious to conceive grace secret paradises, paradises that exclude even the moderately wealthy bought with money that had to come from the multitudes in one way or another.

A man may be born rich but somewhere in his lineage someone did something to make a lot of people fork over a lot a cash to him. If he built a better mousetrap all the better but I suspect the wealthy, the extremely wealthy, owe their affluence to cults of personality and either detestable and, or, illegal behaviour. If you don't believe me, witness the pillage of the Amazon Rainforest or just head south less than one hundred miles to West Virginia.

The industrialists had the newspapers in their fold and always at the ready to run with their horrible propaganda while the gendarmes were given dispensations to murder and imprison as they saw fit and they saw fit a lot. They grew rich and diversified. The seven headed Hydra sprang more and more heads and with more heads came more appetite and the means to fulfil that appetite. You, little brother, wonder why you feel small and worthless? You were bought and sold long ago.

None of this is to say that at any time you or I can't join the ranks of the fabulously wealthy, it's more about joining the ranks of fabulously middle class that's becoming largely unattainable. You may hit gold like Bill Gates and the rich will always need a curiosity to hold up to the light for their bedazzlement, the wide spectrum of exceptional black sports figures will always qualify in this regard. I've seen the most racially inspired bigots pleased as punch to slap a black man on the back and share a good laugh at union parties.

And so, it comes into fruition, everything unto it's season. Failed capitalism rather than give the devil it's due and open the door just so slightly ajar for the common man and his dreaded socialism, yields instead to plutocracy. Can dictatorship be far behind? Gene

* Hamlet

Saying goodbye to the lost decade

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:51:00 +0100

The root of good and evil,

Imagine a pile of dollars, a million dollars, broken down, you could separate it into one thousand piles of one thousand dollars each. Now s-t-r-e-t-c-h you imagination to imagine a trillion dollars. "Huh?" You ask. "No one can imagine a trillion dollars." True no one can but by using the above example, imagine one million piles of one million dollars. That's a trillion dollars.

Broken down into thousands again, if you had a conveyor belt transporting piles of one thousand dollars, after one thousand piles passed the counter it would read one million, after one million passed the counter, it would read one billions and then, only after one billion piles of one thousand dollars each passed the counter it would read one trillion.

If a bundle of one thousand passes the counter every second it would take one billion seconds for the whole trillion to pass. Since there are really 365.2422 days in a year, eliminating that nasty leap year, that makes 15, 778, 463 seconds in a year, 15, 778, 463 seconds divided into one billion seconds equals 63.3 years.

Someone would have to hand you one thousand dollars every second for 63.3 year in order to give you one trillion dollars. That's what we've handed over to the nameless, the faceless and the military machine that's been engaged in who-knows-what in Iraq since 2003. It's your money, my money our kids money and probably our kid's kid's money.

We are no safer, people with bombs still board planes, thanks to us Iraq is both a shit hole and a hell hole but the republicans don't like to talk about George W. Bush's war. During his State of the Union Address, when Obama said:

By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door.

John McCain's response was a snide remark calling it the BIOB, Blame It On Bush, routine and says it's "Growing tiresome."

Here, the republicans actually have a point, the democrats, Obama included, voted exclusively for the final conference report presented to the House on June 5, in favor of the 2009 budget which authorized $3.1 trillion in federal outlays along with a projected $400 billion deficit. Not one republican voted for it, but even so, Bush signed it going against his own party.

My point is, rejecting arguments that it's not proper to criticize Bush and his insane preemption policies, which they seem to forget were called the "Bush Doctrine" is unabashedly stupid. No matter how he wrangled congress to wage war, he was a cheer leader don't forget, it was Bush's war in Iraq, he wanted it and he made it happen. Ignoring history post Edmund Burke's (1729-1797) observation, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it," and George Santayana's (1863-1952) slight variation and exhortation, "Those who ignore history are bound (or doomed) to repeat it," is why we are in the pickle we're in.

The money is gone, our democracy is in tatters, isn't it time we called a spade a spade and cleaned up our democracy a little? Gene

This and that

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:42:00 +0100

Didja ever spend about a 100 hours of labor building a fancy box to house an inverter ( a device that converts direct current into alternating current), a car battery, a float charger and two relays; one AC and one DC, designed to come on whenever the power fails because the power fails a lot around this part of West Mifflin which is located a stone's throw from the experimental Betis Atomic Research Laboratory, that, I think, has something to do with it, only to, at the last minute, burn up the inverter on a trial run? If you have you know how I feel.

Not to worry. A new one has been one ordered. If I burn that one up, file me under; too stupid to know when to quit. Here's a picture of the fancy box and some of my new improved shop, note the spray painted boots in the 3rd picture down:

The finish will be black with white trim. It will always be plugged in to keep the battery fully charged and, theoretically, it will automatically switch on when the power goes out. I'll have a lamp and a radio on top of it and it should power them for about 2 hours.

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

Fact Check says that contrary to what the liberals, myself included, have been saying, there's a law on the books that won't allow foreign corporations to donate to political campaigns in this country. From Obama’s State of the Union Address | FactCheck.org:

Foreign Corporations Donating?

The president claimed that "foreign corporations" could begin spending big money to influence U.S. elections under a recent Supreme Court decision.

Obama: Last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections.

Justice Samuel Alito, who with the other justices sat at the very front of the chamber last night, was seen shaking his head and mouthing what appeared to be the words "not true" as Obama said this. Alito joined the majority in the 5-4 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision issued by the Court last week, which knocked down restrictions on corporate spending on elections.

But it’s unclear whether the court’s opinion will lead to allowing foreign-based corporations to buy campaign ads and engage in other electioneering activities. There is still a law barring foreign corporations from spending money in connection with U.S. elections (see 2 U.S.C. 441e(b)(3)), and that’s a matter likely to be litigated further. The court’s most recent decision explicitly didn’t deal with that question. But strictly speaking, Obama couched his claim as something "I believe," making it a statement of opinion and not of fact. So whether his view turns out to be right remains to be seen.

Fact Check also clarifies some of the gargantuan numbers that Obama tossed around.

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

The big news is I may have liver cancer but the doctors are being awful casual about it. In my last CT scan they saw something on my liver, I just assumed it was a mass of scar tissue. They ordered a blood test to see if the fetoprotein levels are elevated, as usually happens with liver cancer. The weird thing is, they didn't say get it right away, they said the next time I get my blood work done. I wonder how casual they'd be if it was their liver? I read a 2002 article that most people diagnoses with liver cancer are dead in a year, prompting me to go on legalzoom.com and make a will. Now I can go casket and cemetery plot shopping, yippee!

Since it's impossible to buy life insurance for anyone in my position and the policies I have may just barely cover my debt should I pass away, everyone's pretty much on their own if I die. Nancy will get at least half of my pension and it's up in the air right now how much social security she'll get, some people say half some say more than half, regardless she won't need his big old house, so you'd think I wouldn't be obsessed with interior design, but I am, it's both my hobby and my passion. It keeps me going. Call me irresponsible, say I'm unreliable, it's undeniably true.

The debt in my name is another story, let them put a lean on the house, the house leans anyway.

I refuse to not live as if I'm going to keep living, I'm just being a little more aware that I'm not. Fuckem. Maybe I don't want to hang around to see if America wises up or not but I'll tell you this; when I see those lousy thieving politicians, Bernie Madoff wannabees, Wall Street Barons, petty dictators and ye generation of vipers choking on hot coals in hell it'll almost be worth it. See the rest of you in purgatory. Gene

Speaking of nine pound hammers ...

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:39:00 +0100

I wanted to post this with my entry yesterday but Youtube was all fucked up, or is it my blog, or is it me?

Further more, speaking of coal, that nasty burning shit that destoys moutain tops and the enviroment, without which we'd be totally screwed, this song sys it all,

The Supreme Court, once again, takes a nine pound hammer to the delicate instrument known as our democracy

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:30:00 +0100

Flashback to the year 2000 when a daffy, partisan ruling by The Supreme Court gave us the worst president in US history and now gives us a daffy, partisan ruling that; placing infringements on the amount of money that corporations, foreign and domestic, (Did you know about the foreign part?) can donate to a politicians's war chest is tantamount to infringing on their free speech and a violation of their 1st amendment rights. Corporations have been considered people since the *Rail Road barons used "equal protection" to evade taxes. This latest ruling turns Congress into one big garage sale and our crooked, thieving, self interested politicians into wards of the wealthy without the need to feel ashamed of their lust for filthy lucre. From It's Not Over: Supreme Court Q&A:

Q: I'm not a lawyer and I don't understand the recent Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. Can you explain it to me?

A: Sure. I'm a lawyer. I read it. It says Bush wins, even if Gore got the most votes.

Q: But wait a second. The US Supreme Court has to give a reason, right?

A: Right.

Q: So Bush wins because hand-counts are illegal?

A: Oh no. Six of the nine justices believed that hand-counts were legal and should count. Indeed, all nine found "Florida's basic command for the count of legally cast votes is to consider 'the intent of the voter.'" "This is unobjectionable as an abstract proposition." In fact, "uniform rules to determine intent" are not only "practicable" but "necessary."

Q: So that's a complicated way of saying "divining the intent of the voter" is perfectly legal?

A: Yes.

Q: Well, if hand counts are fine, why were they stopped? Have the re-counts already tabulated all the legal ballots?

A: No. The five conservative justices clearly held (and all nine justices agreed) "that punch card balloting machines can produce an unfortunate number of ballots which are not punched in a clean, complete way by the voter." So there are legal votes that should be counted but will never be.

Q: Does this have something to do with states' rights? Don't conservatives love that?

A: Yes. These five justices have held that the federal government has no business telling a sovereign state university it can't steal trade secrets just because such stealing is prohibited by law. Nor does the federal government have any business telling a state that it should bar guns in schools. Nor can the federal government use the equal protection clause to force states to take measures to stop violence against women.

Q: Is there an exception in this case?

A: Yes, the "Gore exception." States have no rights to control their own state elections when it can result in Gore being elected President. This decision is limited to only this situation.

Q: C'mon. The Supremes didn't really say that. You're exaggerating.

A: Nope. They held "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, as the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities."

Q: What complexities?

A: They didn't say.

Q: I'll bet I know the reason. I heard Jim Baker say this. The votes can't be counted because the Florida Supreme Court "changed the rules of the election after it was held." Right?

A. Wrong. The US Supreme Court made clear that the Florida Supreme Court did not change the rules of the election. But the US Supreme Court found this failure of the Florida Court to change the rules after the election was wrong.

Q: Huh?

A: The Legislature declared that the only legal standard for counting vote is "clear intent of the voter." The Florida Court was condemned for not adopting a clearer standard after the election.

Q: I thought the Florida Court was not allowed to change the Legislature's law after the election.

A: Right.

Q: So what's the problem?

A: They should have. The US Supreme Court said the Florida Supreme Court should have "adopt[ed] adequate statewide standards for determining what is a legal vote"

Q: I thought only the Legislature could "adopt" new law.

A: Right.

Q: So if the Florida Court had adopted new standards, I thought it would have been overturned.

A: Right. You're catching on.

Q: Wait. If the Florida Court had adopted new standards, it would have been overturned for changing the rules. And since it didn't do it, it's being overturned for not changing the rules? That makes no sense. That means that no matter what the Florida Supreme Court did, legal votes could never be counted if they would end up with a possible Gore victory.

A: Right. Next question.

Q: Wait, wait. I thought the problem was "equal protection," that some counties counted votes differently from others. Isn't that a problem?

A: It sure is. Across the nation, we vote in a hodgepodge of systems. Some, like the optical-scanners in largely Republican-leaning counties record 99.7 percent of the votes. Some, like the punch card systems in largely Democratic-leaning counties, record only 97 percent of the votes. So approximately 3 percent of Democratic-leaning votes are thrown in the trash can.

Q: Aha! That's a severe equal-protection problem!

A: No it's not. The Supreme Court wasn't worried about the 3% of Democratic-leaning ballots (about 170,000) thrown in the trashcan in Florida. That "complexity" was not a problem.

Q: Was it the butterfly ballots that violated Florida law and fooled more than 10,000 Democrats into voting for Buchanan [Pat Buchanan was the nominee of the Reform Party] or both Gore and Buchanan?

A: Nope. The courts have no problem believing that Buchanan got his highest, best support in a precinct consisting of a Jewish old age home with Holocaust survivors, who apparently have changed their mind about Buchanan's view that Hitler was not all that bad.

Q: Yikes. So what was the serious equal protection problem?

A: The problem was neither the butterfly ballot nor the 170,000 or 3 percent of Democratic-leaning voters (largely African-Americans) disenfranchised. The problem is that somewhat less than 0.01 percent of the ballots (less than 600 votes) may have been determined under ever-so-slightly different standards by judges and county officials recording votes under strict public scrutiny, as Americans have done for more than 200 years. The single judge overseeing the entire process might miss a vote or two.

Q: A single judge? I thought the standards were different. I thought that was the whole point of the Supreme Court opinion.

A: Judge Terry Lewis, who received the case upon remand from the Florida Supreme Court, had already ordered each of the counties to fax him their standards so he could be sure they were uniform. Republican activists repeatedly sent junk faxes to Lewis in order to prevent counties from submitting the standards to Lewis in a way that could justify the vote counting. That succeeded in stalling the process until Justice Scalia could stop the count.

Q: Hmmm. Well, even if those less than 600 difficult-to-tell votes are thrown out, you can still count the other 170,000 votes (or just the 60,000 of them that were never counted) where everyone, even Republicans, agrees the voter's intent is clear, right?

A: Nope.

Q: Why not?

A: No time.

Q: I thought the Supreme Court said the Constitution was more important than speed.

A: It did. It said, "The press of time does not diminish the constitutional concern. A desire for speed is not a general excuse for ignoring equal protection guarantees."

Q: Well that makes sense. So there's time to count the votes when the intent is clear and everyone is treated equally then. Right?

A: No. The Supreme Court won't allow it.

Q: But they just said that the constitution is more important than speed!

A: You forget. There is the "Gore exception."

Q: Hold on. No time to count legal votes where everyone, even Republicans, agrees the intent is clear? Why not?

A: Because they issued the opinion at 10 p.m. on December 12.

Q: Is December 12 a deadline for counting votes?

A: No. January 6, 2001 is the deadline. In the Election of 1960, Hawaii's votes weren't counted until January 4, 1961

Q: So why is December 12 important?

A: December 12 is a deadline by which Congress can't challenge the results.

Q: What does the Congressional role have to do with the Supreme Court?

A: Nothing. In fact, as of December 13, 2000, some 20 states still hadn't turned in their results.

Q: But I thought ---

A: The Florida Supreme Court had said earlier it would like to complete its work by December 12 to make things easier for Congress. The United States Supreme Court is trying to "help" the Florida Supreme Court out by reversing it and forcing the Florida court to abide by a deadline that everyone agrees is not binding.

Q: But I thought the Florida Court was going to just barely have the votes counted by December 12.

A: They would have made it, but the five conservative justices stopped the recount on December 9.

Q: Why?

A: Justice Scalia said some of the votes may not be legally counted.

Q: So why not separate the votes into piles -- hanging chads for Gore, indentations for Bush, votes that everyone agrees were intended for Gore or Bush -- so that we know exactly how Florida voted before determining who won? Then, if some ballots (say, indentations) have to be thrown out, the American people will know right away who won Florida. Make sense?

A. Great idea! An intelligent, rational solution to a difficult problem! The US Supreme Court rejected it. They held in stopping the count on December 9 that such counts would be likely to produce election results showing Gore won and that Gore's winning the count would cause "public acceptance" that would "cast a cloud" over Bush's "legitimacy" and thereby harm "democratic stability."

Q: In other words, if America knows the truth that Gore won, they won't accept the US Supreme Court making Bush President?

A: Yes.

Q: Is that a legal reason to stop recounts? or a political one?

A: Let's just say in all of American history and all of American law, this is the first time a court has ever refused to count votes in order to protect one candidate's "legitimacy" over another's.

Q: Aren't these conservative justices against judicial activism?

A: Yes, when liberal judges are perceived to have done it.

Q: Well, if the December 12 deadline is not binding, why not count the votes afterward?

A: The US Supreme Court, after conceding the December 12 deadline is not binding, set December 12 as a binding deadline at 10 p.m. on December 12.

Q: Didn't the US Supreme Court condemn the Florida Supreme Court for arbitrarily setting a deadline?

A: Yes.

Q: But, but --

A: Not to worry. The US Supreme Court does not have to follow laws it sets for other courts.

Q: So who caused Florida to miss the December 12 deadline?

A: The Bush lawyers who, before Gore filed a single lawsuit, went to court to stop the recount. The rent-a-mob in Miami that got free Florida vacations for intimidating officials. The constant request for delay by Bush lawyers in Florida courts. And, primarily, the US Supreme Court, which refused to consider Bush's equal protection claim on November 22, 2000, then stopped the recount entirely on December 9, and then, on December 12 at 10 p.m., suddenly accepted the equal protection claim they had rejected three weeks earlier, but complained there was no time left to count the votes in the two hours left before midnight that evening.

Q: So who is punished for this behavior?

A: Gore. And the 50 million plus Americans that voted for him, some 540,000 more than voted for Bush.

Q: You're telling me Florida election laws and precedents existing for a hundred years are now suddenly unconstitutional?

A: Yes. According to the Supreme Court, the Legislature drafted the law in such a messy way that the Florida votes can never be fairly counted. Since Secretary of State Katherine Harris never got around to setting more definitive standards for counting votes, Gore loses the election.

Q: Does this mean the election laws of any of the other 49 states are unconstitutional as well?

A: Yes, if one logically applies the Supreme Court opinion. The voters of all 50 states use different systems and standards to vote and count votes, and 33 states have the same "clear intent of the voter" standard that the US Supreme Court found illegal in Florida.

Q: Then why aren't the results of these 33 states thrown out?

A: Um. Because . . . um . . . the Supreme Court doesn't say . . .

Q: But if Florida's certification includes counts expressly declared by the US Supreme Court to be unconstitutional, we don't know who really won the election there, right?

A: Right.

Q: But then what makes Bush President?

A: Good question. A careful statistical analysis by the Miami Herald extrapolates from the 170,000 uncounted votes in Florida to show Gore clearly won the state and may have done so by as much as 23,000 votes (excluding the butterfly ballot errors). See http://www.herald.com/thispage.htm?content/archive/news/elect2000/decision/104268.htm

Q: So, answer my question: what makes Bush President?

A: Since there was no time left for a re-count based on the non-binding "deadline," the Supreme Court decided to choose itself who will be President and has picked Bush to win by a vote of 5 to 4, based on the flawed count it just determined to be unconstitutional.

Q: That's completely bizarre! That sounds like rank political favoritism! Did the justices have any financial interest in the case?

A: Scalia's two sons are both lawyers at law firms working for Bush. Thomas's wife is collecting applications for people who want to work in the Bush administration. Q: Why didn't they remove themselves from the case? A: If either had recused himself, the vote would have been 4-4, the Florida Supreme Court decision allowing recounts would have been affirmed, and Scalia said he feared that would mean Gore winning the election. Justices Rehnquist and O'Connor had both said before the election that they wanted to retire but would only do so if a Republican were elected, and when O'Connor heard from early (and, we now know, accurate) exit polls that Gore had won Florida, she responded that was "terrible."

Q: I can't believe the justices acted in such a blatantly political way.

You can't? You ain't seen nothing yet, Gene

*The watershed moment came in 1886 when the Supreme Court ruled on a case called Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. The case itself was not about corporate personhood, although many before it had been, and the Court had ruled that corporations were not persons under the 14th Amendment.

Santa Clara, like many railroad cases, was about taxes. Before the Court delivered its decision, the following statement is attributed to Chief Justice Waite: The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.

The statement appeared in the header of the case in the published version, and the Court made its ruling on other grounds. How this statement appeared in the header of the case is a matter of some mystery and competing theories, but because it was later cited as precedent, corporate personhood became the accepted legal doctrine of the land.

A contemplation on being jerked around

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:41:00 +0100

He who laughs last laffs laffs

Everyone expects you to play endless phone tag. The one with either the most patience or the best issue avoidance skills wins. Lesson to be learned: because you deal with the world fairly and squarely don't expect the same in return. I can't say I'm not paying for past indiscretions of my own, I mean, how would I know? I'm saying that in my case it seems that I have to light a fire under everyone that I deal with. That goes from the big guys on down. I have hired contractors that were initially unknown to me treat me better than people I've developed long term relations with. Why?

If I had a wizened old mentor he'd probably say, it's more important how you deal with the world than how the world deals with you and he'd be right. My efforts are more focused on perfecting my spirit than trying to understand yours, hence this constant sense of self absorption that permeates my life. Once it was easy, I could say, "To hell with it" and then go out and get drunk, thereby reducing every problem to one of substance abuse, then when everything blows up, I'd start the cycle all over. If this wasn't a shitty way to live then I have the wrong idea as to what shitty is. No wonder Hamlet wanted encased in a walnut shell so he could pronounce himself the King of Infinite Space.

The Hindu belief of "Maya" comes to mind. Maya is illusion, it could be said the grand illusion, so grand that you can live and die within it's confines and never know it. In fact it's what we do do. Who can see or experience the Bramhan? The real deal. No one that I know. Maya disguises Bramhan. Why? Why should the ultimate reality be hard to see and comprehend? Maybe it's just the way it is. Maybe there's a lesson of spiritual achievement in play. Maybe you can't experience the Bramhan directly but can only infer it's existence.

A two dimensional being lifted to the higher plane of three dimensions would be able to see the inner workings of things that had only been inferred in his world. He may ask to be delivered to a still higher plane one that the three dimensional creatures had never considered, one in which the three dimensional beings would even wonder at. More than likely they would deny the possibility of a forth dimensional world because, like Bramhan is for us, it's beyond their ken. Why could they not see it in their world? They were born into their world of spheres and cones just like Mr. Two Dimension was born into his world of points and lines. And we were born into ours. To deny something greater is nothing less than sad.

And it's sad that Maya keeps us in this nonsense world of human stupidity where Gods laws and poetic beauty hold true but man is no more than a beast, blood and guts encased in an enchanted machine, able to use tools, seeking: sex, food, light, comfort and immorality in a transient world. Gene

Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:30:00 +0100

I snap my gumband

It's all hey, hey, hey and yeah, yeah, yeah, bebop baby she's the gal for me. It's all screwed, blued and tattooed, jive five, six and seven come eleven, baby needs a new pair of shoes, box cars and snake eyes. Zot and Zap, Zapatista and Zappa's hungry freaks daddy. It's all get your ya ya's except when it's a no-no.

Fly me to the moon daddio. Lay Lady Lay across my big brass band in Electric Ladyland. Oompha Pa, Ompha pa, whipped cream and other delights. Crazy little momma come a knocking on my front door-or.

Birds do it, fish do it, let's do it, let's fall in love with someone else cause you're nobody's baby now. You're not even a cow keep your damn milk and go home where the heart is, home on that range again, the deer and the antelope roam again and no one is alone again.

No use crying over spilt guts, wingnuts or big butts but cry anyway, stick your finger in your eye and tell your mother. Go tell in on the mountain, from the rooftops, from the heavens and from the depths and see if anyone cares. I don't care, you don't care she don't care, we don't care. It's so uncared about it's going away, everything is going away. A-WAY for a day, A-WAY to stay, A-WAY down south in Dixie.

In Dixieland I'm make my stand. Eve made Adam's banana stand. I'll see you in Afghanistan we'll lend a hand, spend a grand and like Marianne, sift sand all fucking day and then we can swap spit and split, POW! After we blow shit up in the name of Democracy, America and Jesus, light of the world, light of the Semtex. BANG ZOOOOOOM to the moon Alice!

I feel good, better best, I never let it rest, until my good is better and until my better's best. I'm one okey dokey hokey pokey. Check and mate, 40-love in Tennessee talk. I could go on all day if it wasn't for the Sanity Clause. You can't fool me there ain't no Sanity Clause! Gene

On not going gentle into that good night

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:10:00 +0100

The way of the warrior

At first you're intensely pissed that the world has the audacity to keep turning once you're dead. It doesn't even flinch. Then you become philosophical; everyone dies, it's the natural order of the universe, life is one big preparation for death, etc., etc. Finally, miracle upon miracle, you become indifferent.

Your indifference spreads, if you can be indifferent to your death, why sweat The small stuff? But, even with the dark, hooded man with the scythe looming, your day to day comfort and intellectual and / or physical pursuits still matter. You are in the game and no matter how much you want to stand aloof in defiance of the man, you can't. He holds the aces, he never gets tired or bored AND he hasn't failed yet that we know of.

The game is rigged. You scream the ancient mantra, Carpe Diem. For your purposes seizing the day and living like tomorrow will never come are the same but they're not. Man was not meant to live with the limited awareness of an amoeba and so it haunts you, behind every rock, every obituary you see in the paper is yours; smiling, youthful, full of life and hope. They were shot down for nothing, for no other reason except that their bodies crapped out, they got hit by a car or they climbed into the lion's den.

You resign yourself. You become bitter but tempered with the knowledge that bitterness is abhorrent to most decent folk and you desperately want to be decent. You want a decent life, a decent long life. You are a being at war with yourself and with nature. Your senses develop, you have a keen edge and it cuts quickly. You become a warrior.

Your fate and your destiny have become one. You understand The Art of War and Zen. You build your fortresses high and fully armed, if it's a battle they want, it's a battle they shall get. You have become dangerous. Not even you know when you will strike and when you will withhold. The situation dictates the result. You become fluid filling some holes and letting other ones pass. You have offered your mind, your free will to the Gods of war. Their gifts will be used to fight a battle that you can't win against an enemy that you can't see. There are no allies or truces, there is only you and your opponent. Gene

Say it with music

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:39:00 +0100

Don't write a blog much anymore, with apologizes to Duke Ellington and Bob Russell

Missed the Saturday deadline

heard they read the words off the page

It's not different without you

I don't write a blog much anymore

Thought I'd take in some news

got as far as the couch

I'd rather practice being dead

I don't write a blog much anymore

Readers I guess, my mind is a mess

but nevertheless, let sleeping dogs lie

been invited on a date

that wasn't true, but what is

since I can't rub two brain cells together

I don't write a blog much anymore

Don't write a blog much anymore

The real skinny: Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington - Don't Get Around Much Anymore - Big Band 110(1).mp3

Republican theme song with video

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:25:00 +0100

Bad news for modern man

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 09:38:00 +0100

Apocalyptic vision

The battle rages like a wildfire out of control. The friction between the right and left in this country has raised the other gobal climate to the combustion point. This is not a temperature measured in degrees of heat but in degrees of madness and fear and neither side is lacking.

Suicide attacks, security breakdowns and dealing with countries whose governments are split on how to deal with their terrorist threats are endemic to our internal politics and external tactics.
>

Killing civilians in Iraq as Blackwater did and then having US District Judge Ricardo Urbina throw out the case against them surely speaks volumes to the Iraqis about our interest in justice for them. If we can't offer them justice in our courts against our mercenaries how can we expect them to bring justice to a country war torn and corrupt?

At the same time we have an escalation of drone attacks against Pakistan. We have and an Army war, a shadowy mercenary war and a totally clandestine CIA war and if recent history proves anything, it's that the various departments of government, intelligence and the military cannot act in concordance. The latest would-be airline bomber, one again, proved how vulnerable we are in coordinating intelligence. Did I say vulnerable? We're just plain inept.

What's to be done? Keep fighting on the premise that somehow, once in a while, a punch will land even if it means destroying the village to save it? We're old hands at that. Walk away? Sure that would be great but the USA walk away from a fight even one it doesn't understand? Not in this lifetime.

What's left? Keep blundering, keeps spending more and more money on arms, weapons and dirty deals? We're not only destroying their village to save it, but our own as well. I take no heart that a large number of people can see clearly and know what's happening. It is beyond prevention and we are beyond redemption.

Bin laden has won but the one thing he didn't figure; he not only brought down the USA but the world with it. In just a couple of generations the war will have expanded to even the most neutral countries. Let's hope that we have at least served as a bad example or a good examplee of what not to do. That may be mankind's only hope. Our country like a warring Jesus hangs on the cross of destiny, sacrificed through stupidity and pride. Father, forgive us, we know not what we do. Gene

Hating me some Lieberman

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:45:00 +0100

Joe "The Hawk" Lieberman certainly must have vast combat experience. He'd send your kid to a foreign country to die in an undeclared, preemptive war just as a precautionary measure, or because the mood strikes him, or because he's got nothing better to do except look for terrorists under the bed. His personal military service to our country includes:

._________________________________________________________________

And

._________________________________________________________________

So, when Sen, Joe Liebernman warns that the Obama administration should pre-emptively attack Yemen and to halt plans to repatriate Yemeni captives in Guantanamo because Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had allegedly tried to set off a suicide bomb on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on December 25, 2009 and had subsequently confessed to being trained and equipped in Yemen, we should do exactly what he says.

Sarcasm aside for a nanosecond, I, myself, was personally disqualified for serving in Vietnam but not because I had a "going to college deferment," or a family deferment, I just lied because I thought going to Vietnam was wrong and I was scared shitless. My point of pride centers on the fact that before or after I never, ever advocated for the terrible policy blunder that killed 50,000 young Americans who should by all rights be enjoying their lives and grandkids this very minute.

Joe, on the other hand, received an educational deferment from the Vietnam War draft when he was an undergraduate and law student from 1960 to 1967. Upon graduating from law school at age 25, Lieberman qualified for a family deferment because he was already married and had one child.

Lieberman loves him some preemptive war. He loves him some contradictory B.S. about the 55 plus set buying into medicare, He loves him some spotlight time. His ego is so all encompassing I can't understand how he stays erect. I'd like to hand him an M-16, sit him on some God forlorn battlefield hillside in Afghanistan along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and watch the shit roll down their legs as they beg and plead with their Gods to spare their miserable lives.

But that's not the way it works is it? They send someone else to fight and die while they pat themselves on the back for their love of God and country.

You can't afford to heat your fucking house and they want to kill people just in case. Lieberman, your smile doesn't fool me, not for a second. You are death and hate, murder and greed. Gene, hating me some Lieberman

A riddle partially solved

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 06:19:00 +0100

A long time ago I worked for an electrical contractor doing hospital work. I and a few other electricians had been on that job, for that contractor, for an inordinate amount of time in relative terms. It wasn't a get in do the job and get out arrangement. For political reasons (What else can they be called? The contractor was a big contributor to the Catholic church and the Catholic church owned and ran the hospital.)

The contractor I worked for did any and all impromptu electrical work that arose in the normal transaction of upgrades, physician's requests, new equipment and from time to time landed major jobs that would involve hiring more men from our hiring hall.

I developed a working relationship with many people at the hospital and that pattern was to repeat itself at other facilities medical and non-medical throughout my 30 plus working years. I knew the cafeteria personnel by name, some of the staff in various departments, maintenance workers, I was even privy to some of the more defamatory inside jokes.

As all hospitals do, particularly ones being run by a charitable foundation, they employed a larger percentage of the disabled than businesses at large. Almost daily I saw a young woman who drove a battery powered "hoveround" type vehicle. She made deliveries. One day I saw her sitting in her vehicle crying. She wasn't moving and I surmised her hoveround had conked out on her. I attempted to talk to her and soon realized that she had emotional problems as well. I looked her vehicle over and saw the problem. A simple electrical connection wasn't being made. I was wearing my tools and fixed in no time. I expected her to be grateful but she didn't even acknowledge me but went happily on her way.

I mused over this for a time and then forgot about it until today. I was in my basement, my sewer had backed up. The stress of Christmas still fresh against my bones and body, the picking up and carrying, the shuffling, the thousand small jobs all done in preparation for a houseful had wore me down. On my best day I'm only half a man with a decaying liver, and now this. I tried to do what I'd been able to do in the past: to run a snake through the sewer to vacuum up shit water, to be oblivious to the stench, but I couldn't, I felt helpless. I understood something that I had so totally forgotten about, why that young lady of oh so many years ago wept, and now, it was my turn to weep, for myself and for my family. I too had become helpless and impotent.

Our lives are swept away when we're not even paying attention. We think the carousel will never stop, that we are the exception to the rule, how remarkable, how perfect in its perversity and justice that our lives should be thus leaving most to consider their arrogance and his fate. The rest either die far too young or are wise. Gene

Reflections during an odd time: between religious and secular holidays

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 10:07:00 +0100

What hath God wrought?

Maybe it's because Christmas is primarily regarded as a "Religious" holiday rather than a secular one such as New Year's, although New Year's has many religious connotations elsewhere, and it's easy to understand why, here it only means another calendar year is upon us, do with it, or, to it, or, because of it, as you will, that I've been thinking of the whole man-God relationship.

First, to even have a man-God relationship you have to assume that there's a God; a huge assumption. It's much easier to accept that there is "man." Once a God is assumed the next question is "what kind of God is he, she or it?" For instance, maybe it's a completely uninvolved God, one that is impartial to man's plight and offers man a world to do with as he see fit. This is, almost, to assume that there is no God at all and is largely rejected because it puts the onus for maintaining and repairing the world on us.

The other concepts of God range from the malevolent to the peacemaker types. The particulars are too confusing and convoluted to do us much good at deciding which one fits us best and are usually handed down to us as a result of tradition, culture and whoever can best control the debate.

Lately, it seems the God question is once again taken primacy due to the political advantage that can be wrought for being on the correct side. This phenomenon alone says worlds about us: that our religious views can be manipulated to concur with our secular views and not the other way around.

A couple of trial balloons are floated in order to determine where we stand and then either derision and scorn issue forth or praise and concurrence. Note: the praise as well as the scorn often come from unlikely places. During the 2008 republican primary to choose a presidential contender, when ask which candidates believed in intelligent design, they all did and to a man rejected evolution. This to me seemed nothing less than shocking.

Next, after completely abrogating their responsibility to see the debate through the eyes of science rather than faith, if indeed it was faith that drove them and not an appeal to the simple minded, robotic voter, comes the question, that, since we're on our way to be born into a world that honors religion above science, what do we do about the unwanted that were accidentally conceived?

The party that prides themselves on the impeccability of their balance sheets say's: let em be born, the more the merrier and then works tirelessly behind the scenes to insure that not one penny of their money goes to help these unwanted offspring mostly of the poor.

Unfortunately, this is all know by anyone that even accidentally picks up a newspaper from time to time. This and the countless other contradictions that make up the republican platform, such as: preferring abstinence over birth control, morality over sterile needles, a race to the bottom over health care and wages all the while finding more and more reasons to enact the foulest, ugliest most counter productive military philosophy ever devised by man, well, one man, George W. Bush, preemption.

This is the baggage that we begrudgingly drag into our new year but not before making such a fuss over that little baby born in December.

Gene

It's poss-i-bull

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:24:00 +0100

Has God made an uglier, more repulsive creature that the possum? This one was at the cat food last night. Three of the cats sat there and watched him eat their food. He looked around, sniffed the air and moved close to one of the them and sniffed him. He was FAT and he had a look about him like he must have been in the bathroom when God passed out brains.

Forget Deputy Dawg and that cool Possible Possum, possums got beat with the ugly stick!

The real deal. Ewwwwwwww!

Two hundred thirty three years plus one day ago

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:14:29 +0100

The Crisis

By Thomas Paine,

December 23, 1776

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER" and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

Need more? Read more: http://www.ushistory.org/PAINE/crisis/c-01.htm

Thank God for small favors

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:17:45 +0100

When I'm down and out, thinking politically and wondering why Obama does what he does in escalating the war, showing little leadership in the health care debacle that has gripped this country and acting as if executive privilege means to him what it meant to Bush, I think just how much worse it would have been under McCain.

Most of us seem to have forgotten that McCain contradicted himself daily, lied as a first resort and was mean, petty and arrogant. Sarah Palin was the best thing that ever happened to him and visa versa. They worked anti-symbiotically exposing one another's stupidity and weaknesses and then denied the obvious.

We'd have that half baked loon in charge of the button that says, "In God's name, please don't push." I can see him at his solemn news conference:

McCain: (Eye's twinkling) "Heh, heh, I pushed the button this morning."

Newsman: What button Mr President?

McCain: You know, THE BUTTON.

Newsman: God have mercy on our souls,

McCain: Heh, heh. Next question ... let's see ... there in the back ....

We'd be so screwed. One thousand more times screwed that now. Obama might not be Jesus or Gandhi but he's not McCain either. Gene, just thinking out loud again....

Knuckle smacking the world for almost 2000 years

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:36:00 +0100

Memory pain,

Yesterday I talked at length to a mattress salesman. He didn't work on commission and made it a point to tell anyone who would listen, the premise being; he didn't care if I bought the most expensive mattress or least expensive mattress, it was all the same to him. Regardless, he seemed to know a hell of a lot about mattresses. He didn't exactly say it, but his conversational implication was that this knowledge extended in all directions in all fields.

Somehow we wandered afoot into the land of culture vs politics and his assertion was; children today were being raised too permissively. I thought I had heard all that before and I assumed it was a dead subject. If it's true and that has yet to go beyond the world of opinion into the world of objective fact, something that I don't think is possible, what are we to do about it?

He used his childhood experience of going to a Catholic school as evidence to back up his argument. It was a better world back then because a Nun could have a good whack at you whenever the mood strike her. In his explanation of the downfall of western civilization, discipline, any discipline is better than no discipline.

I mentioned the other edge of the two edged sword he proposed, that when I was a kid, every adult took it upon himself to correct any behaviour that he thought wasn't appropriate, making every adult a parent of sorts. Well, gosh darn it, some people just shouldn't be parents, especially the ones that enjoy melding out punishment when they have nothing in the game. His argument was weak and for all the intelligence that he ascribed to himself, should have been an embarrassment to him.

He was in fact a nice guy and we were just "shooting the shit" but then he said something ridiculous, something to the effect that, Mister Rodgers had done more to pervert the upbringing of our children than, I assumed, anyone else. Hmmm, Dr. Benjamin Spock must not have been available for the title role of family value destroyer as he had been so often in my memory.

He mocked Mr. Rodgers, saying in an affected tone, "You're special, you're special." "NO, you are NOT special," he said, "you are like everyone else." What a shitty lesson for a kid. I said, some kids don't have anyone in their entire world, not dad, mom, big brother, teacher, tutor or candlestick maker to tell them that they are special, not one person that believes in them enough to say something positive and encouraging to them, Mr. Rodgers filled that gap.

He brushed it off as liberal garbage and I would have been disappointed in him had he had done anything else. I like having his half baked ideas to dispute, otherwise, I might have doubts of my own.

I still liked him though and he was a good Serta representative, but afterward I saw a couple that came in his store while I was there, coming in a second store that I was in, "He didn't sell you a mattress? I asked. "No, he sold me on the Nuns but that's about it." Gene

My latest letter to KDKA radio

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:39:00 +0100

Sirs or Madams,

Re: The most excellent Marty Griffin stand in,

Since your website doesn't acknowledge Mike Romian's or Romine's existence I have no choice but to write directly to you. Don't you think your radio station has enough corporate rah, rah men? Do we need another know nothing clogging the airwaves in the morning?

UPMC was one of the subjects that Mr, Romiian, or Romine touched on this morning. A caller said that UPMC does not treat their employees well. My wife is also a UPMC employee. Mr. Romian or Romine gave a flip answer that employees could seek employment elsewhere if they weren't happy at UPMC. How boorish. You hire him and let him yap on and on and yet he isn't ware of the employment situation in Pittsburgh? This doesn't speak well of you does it?

If the employees of UPMC mounted a major campaign to unionize, you and your monopoly loving hosts would scream the longest and loudest. In your world the issue of employee treatment isn't to be seriously addressed but brushed off until such time that the employees have had enough and then they are to be demonized along with the entire labor movement and its history of struggle against the corporate bosses AND the media. Nice.

His next segment covered health care cost and he used the term "Death panels" to describe part of the democratic platform on health care reform. I'm not at all happy with the Democrats and their inability to muster enough support for a public option but to characterize anything in their plan as containing "Death panels" is just political sleight of hand. I know it, he knows it and you know it.

Go ahead and hide behind your veil of reasonableness. You are safe within the confides of the corporate pocketbook but you must tire of the view from time to time.

Sincerely, Gene D. Zizis

Since we're doomed anyway, let's go out with a bang!

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 07:33:00 +0100

Principles, schminsicles, show me the MONEY,

Tiger Woods falls short, The Health Care bill falls short, the Steelers fell remarkably short. Everyone is busy obfuscating what they said to make it sound like they're not acting in opposition to previous statements. Obama escalates but hates war. Congress really does want to help the little guy but just can't figure out how. It's business as usual here in the good ole USA.

I can't blame them even though I usually do, they make out like fat rats and isn't that what nature ultimately demands for the ones with the right stuff? Under current conditions, eventually, they'll be more of them and natural selection will have once again triumphed. Might make right and not the other way around.

So, as a dying species, note: the Genus is alive and well and supercedes the species in the scientific classification of living creatures, I recommend doing the one thing that our particular Genus can do successfully but most others can not; Interbreed. Yes, grab a rich, powerful person and go forth and procreate. It's the only way to preserve our genes and maybe your particular gene will someday save mankind from the next big plague,

But what interest is it of ours if mankind perishes besides the fact that it's the only one we have? Isn't mankind the problem? So here's the last wrinkle in my plan; make them pay. Yes, become species whores for the rich to insure their future existence and ours. While we're at it, let's make organ sales legal too. What else do we have that the rich may want? That's rhetorical.

Oh, wait they still need cannon fodder. Ok, then if war is our business let's go on strike, "Hell no, we won't go without the dough!" "Support our troops, literally!" "Have gun will travel!"

Blackwater, take note, you have been judged and found wanting. Oh yeah! Gene

Crucial Information

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:24:44 +0100

Thanks to Bernie K,

Pfizer Corp. announced today that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form, and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power beverage suitable for use as a mixer.. It will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one. Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink, and it gives new meaning to the names of "cocktails", "highballs" and just an old fashioned "stiff drink." Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of MOUNT & DO.

Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.

I don't write this stuff, I just pass it along ... Gene

Here come Ninja Jesus swinging his nunchucks and licking his chops!

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:14:00 +0100

C-Street, home for liars and wayward adulterers with one hand in the upper levels of government and the other up Jesus's robe,

Bart Stupak who surely must know what's best for women, witness his Op-Ed in today's New York Times concerning his amendment to the House health care reform bill, Op-Ed Contributor - What My Amendment Won’t Do - NYTimes.com wherein he states:

"Our amendment maintains current law, which says that there should be no federal financing for abortion."

I think that's interesting, an amendment that states the bill it's inserted in should maintain current law. Damn, why shouldn't every bill that comes out of the House have that stipulation? How about a separate bill from the House that says:

"All bills issuing from this House of Congress shall maintain current law unless the nature of the bill is to change current law or unless the bill addresses something not presently covered under current law."

The congressman doth protest too much. methinks. Bart Stupak would have us believe that his intentions are honest and genuine in the Stupak-Ellsworth-Pitts amendment. Hmmmm, three Congressmen to maintain what's already law. Curious and curiouser.

The irony of Stupak's nanny state-ments and the accompanying humor stem, in part, from the ridiculous assertion that, distilled to its essence says, "I know what's best for you but I don't know where I live." I cite the Michigan Messenger http://michiganmessenger.com/23484/stupak-denies-knowledge-of-connections-to-mysterious-c-street-house:

Despite weeks of media attention paid to the now-infamous “C Street” house owned by The Family, a secretive Christian group, U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak — who lives at the house near the U.S. Capitol — denied any knowledge of the nature of the mysterious Washington, D.C., rowhouse and any involvement with the organization that owns it and uses as a seat of influence on Capitol Hill ...

Jeff Sharlet, contributing editor at Harper’s magazine and the author of “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,” lived for a time at Ivanwald, another boarding house owned by the group in Arlington, Va., this one for younger men without political power.

Sharlet said that Stupak’s denial of any knowledge of The Family or its activities is false. “When I lived with The Family at Ivanwald, a house for younger men being groomed for leadership, I was told that Stupak was a regular visitor to the Cedars,” Sharlet said. The Cedars is yet another compound owned by The Family, one that hosts weekly prayer events led by former Reagan-era Attorney General Ed Meese.

EDWARD MEESE? SHEESH! I HATE MEESES TO PIECES!

These pieces of shit decide how we run our Government! Clowns like Stupak turn my stomach but it's nothing compared to the military connections between those who would have Jesus outfitted in an M-16 and the fervently religious psychopaths that we've elected.

For more disturbing information and the shadowy connection Between Sen. James Inhofe, his multiple visits to Uganda and The Family, check out Chris Rodda: "C Street" and the Military but like all Huffington Post online articles, it keep loading, reloading and freezing. This is the second reference I've seen to my own Congressman, Mike Doyle, and the Family, I've come up blank trying to google it. Gene

Christmas

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 05:35:00 +0100

Christmas is sneaking up on some of us, it's a full frontal assault on others, and still, others are oblivious to the approaching storm.

We were buried in snow when I was born two weeks before Christmas in 1950. I wonder if my birth was considered a joyous thing or just one more in a long line of anxiety causing events. I fail to see how me being born added anything positive to the downward vector that was drawing the love, imagination and happiness from my mother's life. We want to believe that all children are happy and that a mother's love is supreme but both of these ideas grate against reality.

My most visited memories are not the ones full off innocence and family, unless it's the family of a different sort, the kind that you create and that creates you. The only thing that mattered to me at a certain nebulous, formative time in my life was making my knuckle head friends laugh and visa versa.

No joke was too stupid to not be hammered to death, no occasion was too solemn to not be turned into a hilarious improbability. Teachers made perfect dupes due to their self seriousness, and so did anyone else that was unfortunate enough to make a mistake in our presence, mispronounce a word or have: parents, hopes and dreams and, especially, anyone that had the vision to look beyond the here and now and try to better himself. They came the closest to shaming us but rather than feel that most instructive of all emotions we let anger do our dirty work and redirected it back to them and the world in general.

It was a cruel existence but we knew that life itself was cruel and so it was our birthright to try to be as outrageous as we could. Our art was to stay out of jail and the hospital. We were the Kings of low expectations.

In actuality we were babies that couldn't separate ourselves from out deadly dealings: booze and drugs, our insipid natures and rather than try, we indulged more and more until the humor was gone, the conviviality, the comradery. We became worlds unto ourselves, egos with endless capacities for self abuse.

And now it's Christmas all over again, those strange Christmas thoughts and dreams have outlived us. US, who swore that we would be the last man standing, the mountain, the permanence, withered and blown away.

Children still sing Silent Night and Deck the Halls and the spirit of Christmas still comes, like Scrooge's ghosts to visit, to teach, to reveal the truth. Life, the world and Christmas were all bigger than allowed for in our puny philosophies and the only true thing that ever really mattered, that we were too proud to see, was trying to love the ones that our despicable natures told us to hate. To hold the ones closest to us even closer and never let go. Gene

I'd rather have a tepid defense of the truth than entertain a resounding lie

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:44:19 +0100

Primarily adapted from Hacked E-Mails Fuel Global Warming Debate | Threat Level | Wired.com. Also see:RealClimate: The CRU hack for more information.

The global warming deniers are in an orgasmic euphoria. Someone hacked the scientific communities emails and released them. They were hiding and destroying data or so anti-warming advocates would have us believe but the scientists readily admit there's much to global warming data that they don't understand. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado said in a hacked email:

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low….

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

But says bloggers are missing the point he’s making in the e-mail by not reading the article cited in it. That article – An Imperative for Climate Change Planning (.pdf) — actually says that global warming is continuing, despite random temperature variations that would seem to suggest otherwise.

“It says we don’t have an observing system adequate to track it, but there are all other kinds of signs aside from global mean temperatures — including melting of Arctic sea ice and rising sea levels and a lot of other indicators — that global warming is continuing,” he says.

Gavin Schmidt, a research scientist with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the e-mails offer no damning indictment of climate researchers, and that bloggers are reading information in them out of context.

“There’s nothing in the e-mails that shows that global warming is a hoax,” he told Threat Level. “There’s no funding by nefarious groups. There’s no politics in any of these things; nobody from the [United Nations] telling people what to do. There’s nothing hidden, no manipulation.

“It’s just scientists talking about science, and they're talking relatively openly as people in private e-mails generally are freer with their thoughts than they would be in a public forum. The few quotes that are being pulled out [are out] of context. People are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way.”

Trenberth agrees.

“If you read all of these e-mails, you will be surprised at the integrity of these scientists,” he says. “The unfortunate thing about this is that people can cherry pick and take things out of context.”

The plumed serpent

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:48:00 +0100

Follow the yellow brick road,

I listened to Obama's speech in front of the West Point Military Academy Cadets this evening. It's the precise speech that a man would give to make his case for escalating a war that the American people are sick of. That's the war we know of that's being fought in Afghanistan to ostensibly keep us safe, here, in the land of the free.

He never mentioned the secret CIA war in Pakistan, the one being fought with drones and a secret agreements with Pakistanis in high places. That war can go on, morph into other wars, stop or continue as per the whims and wiles of unknowable men through unknowable means and with an unknown budget.

If we are so afraid of the wrong element gaining control in Pakistan because Pakistan has nukes, why are we so complacent when it cones to an already hostile government in North Korea that also has nukes and is dead set on acquiring a long range delivery system? I suppose it's because we can't fight everywhere all the time and so we pick and chose our battles. But, other factors, MUST be part of the equation or we might as well throw darts at a board entitled, "Countries that need a whooping."

Let's see ... Afghanistan and the surrounding nations produce more cotton that North Korea? More spices? More chicken? Sugar? No, More heroine perhaps but let's not go to the dark side. It's the oil stupid. Oil is the life's blood of every industrial nation, period. They have it and we want it....or as I implied in the blog yesterday, Afghanistan is uniquely situated to deliver oil from the Caspian sea reserves to India and Pakistan to name a few, wnile North Korea is a paltry 107th in worldwide oil production. From, EIA - International Energy Data and Analysis for Azerbaijan:

Azerbaijan is emerging as an important exporter of oil and natural gas and as a transport corridor between Europe and Central Asia. Its strategic location bordering the Caspian Sea has attracted significant international interest in developing its oil and natural gas reserves.
Oil production in Azerbaijan more than quadrupled between 1997 and 2008 to 875,000 bbl/d and is expected to increase further as new wells come online.

OK, let's be truthful like Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, who, once safely out of office, confessed in his memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, "Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

We shouldn't be shocked at that statement. Wars by third parties are fought to take things away, not to give things to people like, freedom, hope or democracy. If Democracy is so good wouldn't they want it on their own, enough to fight for it themselves? Talk about a "nanny state" that's the ultimate nanny philosophy: to beat someone up to give them something that don't want and aren't prepared to use because you think it's better for them.

It won't sell though. Pumping gas and seeing dead bodies rushing forth from the nozzle isn't a picture we want painted, so we'll live the lie, oh we won't like it, most of us that is, but regardless, we'll live it and talk about becoming: Green, using alternate fuels, electric cars, Don Quixote can fight electric generating wind mills for all we care. Just keep the transition as comfortable as possible and don't ask me for a war tax, whatareyou? Crazy? We're in a recession, Taxes are regressive, how is the free market going to save our sorry asses if we take ridiculous measures?

In ancient Mexico after ingesting certain hallucinogenic and / or euphoric substances, the rich would experience fantastic visions and, for a short while, become Godlike. During celebrations, when they pissed off of their stone terraces, the peasants, waiting in hiding, would try to catch it. Because much of it passed through their systems without being digested, the poor, if they were good piss catchers, could also ride that Quezacotl serpent to the heavens bringing OLD meaning to the trickle down experience that stays with us to this day.

Our real rewards, not some piss concocted visions, await us and our offspring, always down the road a little further. Ignore the endless tableaus of war and death. Like Oz, we will find it. In his speech he said:

For unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours. What we have fought for — and what we continue to fight for — is a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and access opportunity.

Gene and Quezacotl in equal measure

Pipe Dream

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:23:26 +0100

On the eve of Obama's big announcement it's important to remember why we fight,

1998 Unocal Statement:
Suspension of activities related to proposed
natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan

As a result of sharply deteriorating political conditions in the region, Unocal, which serves as the development manager for the Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline consortium, has suspended all activities involving the proposed pipeline project in Afghanistan.

From the 1998 Congressional Record.
Emphasis added to text.

U.S. INTERESTS IN THE CENTRAL ASIAN
REPUBLICS HEARING BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION
FEBRUARY 12, 1998

Next we would like to hear from Mr. John J. Maresca, vice president of international relations, Unocal Corporation. You may proceed as you wish.

STATEMENT OF JOHN J. MARESCA, VICE
PRESIDENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, UNOCAL CORPORATION

Mr. Maresca. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's nice to see you again. I am John Maresca, vice president for international relations of the Unocal Corporation. Unocal, as you know, is one of the world's leading energy resource and project development companies. I appreciate your invitation to speak here today. I believe these hearings are important and timely. I congratulate you for focusing on Central Asia oil and gas reserves and the role they play in shaping U.S. policy.

I would like to focus today on three issues. First, the need for multiple pipeline routes for Central Asian oil and gas resources. Second, the need for U.S. support for international and regional efforts to achieve balanced and lasting political settlements to the conflicts in the region, including Afghanistan. Third, the need for structured assistance to encourage economic reforms and the development of appropriate investment climates in the region. In this regard, we specifically support repeal or removal of section 907 of the Freedom Support Act.

Mr. Chairman, the Caspian region contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves. Just to give an idea of the scale, proven natural gas reserves equal more than 236 trillion cubic feet. The region's total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels. In 1995, the region was producing only 870,000 barrels per day. By 2010, western companies could increase production to about 4.5 million barrels a day, an increase of more than 500 percent in only 15 years. If this occurs, the region would represent about 5 percent of the world's total oil production.

One major problem has yet to be resolved: how to get the region's vast energy resources to the markets where they are needed. Central Asia is isolated. Their natural resources are land locked, both geographically and politically. Each of the countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia faces difficult political challenges. Some have unsettled wars or latent conflicts. Others have evolving systems where the laws and even the courts are dynamic and changing. In addition, a chief technical obstacle which we in the industry face in transporting oil is the region's existing pipeline infrastructure.

Because the region's pipelines were constructed during the Moscow-centered Soviet period, they tend to head north and west toward Russia. There are no connections to the south and east. But Russia is currently unlikely to absorb large new quantities of foreign oil. It's unlikely to be a significant market for new energy in the next decade. It lacks the capacity to deliver it to other markets.

Two major infrastructure projects are seeking to meet the need for additional export capacity. One, under the aegis of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, plans to build a pipeline west from the northern Caspian to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Oil would then go by tanker through the Bosporus to the Mediterranean and world markets.

The other project is sponsored by the Azerbaijan International Operating Company, a consortium of 11 foreign oil companies, including four American companies, Unocal, Amoco, Exxon and Pennzoil. This consortium conceives of two possible routes, one line would angle north and cross the north Caucasus to Novorossiysk. The other route would cross Georgia to a shipping terminal on the Black Sea. This second route could be extended west and south across Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

But even if both pipelines were built, they would not have enough total capacity to transport all the oil expected to flow from the region in the future. Nor would they have the capability to move it to the right markets. Other export pipelines must be built.

At Unocal, we believe that the central factor in planning these pipelines should be the location of the future energy markets that are most likely to need these new supplies. Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union are all slow growth markets where demand will grow at only a half a percent to perhaps 1.2 percent per year during the period 1995 to 2010.

Asia is a different story all together. It will have a rapidly increasing energy consumption need. Prior to the recent turbulence in the Asian Pacific economies, we at Unocal anticipated that this region's demand for oil would almost double by 2010. Although the short-term increase in demand will probably not meet these expectations, we stand behind our long-term estimates.

I should note that it is in everyone's interest that there be adequate supplies for Asia's increasing energy requirements. If Asia's energy needs are not satisfied, they will simply put pressure on all world markets, driving prices upwards everywhere.

The key question then is how the energy resources of Central Asia can be made available to nearby Asian markets. There are two possible solutions, with several variations. One option is to go east across China, but this would mean constructing a pipeline of more than 3,000 kilometers just to reach Central China. In addition, there would have to be a 2,000-kilometer connection to reach the main population centers along the coast. The question then is what will be the cost of transporting oil through this pipeline, and what would be the netback which the producers would receive.

For those who are not familiar with the terminology, the netback is the price which the producer receives for his oil or gas at the well head after all the transportation costs have been deducted. So it's the price he receives for the oil he produces at the well head.

The second option is to build a pipeline south from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. One obvious route south would cross Iran, but this is foreclosed for American companies because of U.S. sanctions legislation. The only other possible route is across Afghanistan, which has of course its own unique challenges. The country has been involved in bitter warfare for almost two decades, and is still divided by civil war. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company.

Mr. Chairman, as you know, we have worked very closely with the University of Nebraska at Omaha in developing a training program for Afghanistan which will be open to both men and women, and which will operate in both parts of the country, the north and south.

Unocal foresees a pipeline which would become part of a regional system that will gather oil from existing pipeline infrastructure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. The 1,040-mile long oil pipeline would extend south through Afghanistan to an export terminal that would be constructed on the Pakistan coast. This 42-inch diameter pipeline will have a shipping capacity of one million barrels of oil per day. The estimated cost of the project, which is similar in scope to the trans-Alaska pipeline, is about $2.5 billion.

Given the plentiful natural gas supplies of Central Asia, our aim is to link gas resources with the nearest viable markets. This is basic for the commercial viability of any gas project. But these projects also face geopolitical challenges. Unocal and the Turkish company Koc Holding are interested in bringing competitive gas supplies to Turkey. The proposed Eurasia natural gas pipeline would transport gas from Turkmenistan directly across the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey. Of course the demarcation of the Caspian remains an issue.

Last October, the Central Asia Gas Pipeline Consortium, called CentGas, in which Unocal holds an interest, was formed to develop a gas pipeline which will link Turkmenistan's vast Dauletabad gas field with markets in Pakistan and possibly India. The proposed 790-mile pipeline will open up new markets for this gas, traveling from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Multan in Pakistan. The proposed extension would move gas on to New Delhi, where it would connect with an existing pipeline. As with the proposed Central Asia oil pipeline, CentGas can not begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan Government is in place.

The Central Asia and Caspian region is blessed with abundant oil and gas that can enhance the lives of the region's residents, and provide energy for growth in both Europe and Asia. The impact of these resources on U.S. commercial interests and U.S. foreign policy is also significant. Without peaceful settlement of the conflicts in the region, cross-border oil and gas pipelines are not likely to be built. We urge the Administration and the Congress to give strong support to the U.N.-led peace process in Afghanistan. The U.S. Government should use its influence to help find solutions to all of the region's conflicts.

U.S. assistance in developing these new economies will be crucial to business success. We thus also encourage strong technical assistance programs throughout the region. Specifically, we urge repeal or removal of section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. This section unfairly restricts U.S. Government assistance to the government of Azerbaijan and limits U.S. influence in the region.

Developing cost-effective export routes for Central Asian resources is a formidable task, but not an impossible one. Unocal and other American companies like it are fully prepared to undertake the job and to make Central Asia once again into the crossroads it has been in the past. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It's just not in the cards

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:44:00 +0100

I'll see your Izzat IBRAHIM al-Duri and raise you a Uday Hussein,

Remember the high profile targets in Iraq? Remember how the Department of Defence, in an act of whimsy not unlike those terrorist warning levels that our (the people of Pennsylvania's) ex-governor supervised and oversaw, that is, until election time rolled around and politics trumped security once again, relegated the Iraq terrorists / targets / evil doers to playing card status? Saddam was none other than the Ace of Spades, what else could he be? He tried to kill W's daddy. But, logically shouldn't bin Laden have been the Ace of Spades aka apex predator?

Google has introduced subtle changes in their search engine and now it's harder to find results when they have to do with sensitive security issues or issues that might embarrass any of a myriad of agencies or people laughingly commissioned to make us safe. Instead of saying, like it used to, contents removed or similar wording, that if nothings else, confirmed that we weren't crazy looking for it in the first place. Now they simply say, "Page not found."

My point being that searching for various histories of governmental programs, such as the, "let's humanize the terrorist but not enough to make them sympathetic figures but enough so that people know we fight a real battle when it comes to fleecing them of their tax money," has become an unnecessarily difficult task. I could add something about the redistribution of wealth from the "people" to the mercenaries who act with dispensational impunity but I won't.

So after the deck of Iraqi terrorists have been mostly been killed or captured, the Iraqis hold their fate in their own hands even thought we wrote a substantial portion of their constitution, after 8 years of war, after 3 OUARTERS of a TRILLION dollars, and after Obama decides to expand out role in another unwinnable war in Afghanistan, we have to be safer, right? I mean Dana Perino recently said on Fox that , During the Bush administration there weren't any terrorist attacks on our soil. Perino: "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term" | Media Matters for America

So, we're safer but not safe? No, not that either. Because the world at large really doesn't give a shit that we made a gesture of fighting terrorism, even fighting dirty. I offer two breaking new reports from my inbox:

Iran's Cabinet OKs building 10 more uranium enrichment plants, state news agency IRNA announces.
Four sheriff's deputies fatally shot in what officials describe as an ambush in a coffee shop near Seattle, Washington.

The first demonstrates our limits in controlling and combating the nations that we don't like and the second reveals that domestic violence, whether you call it A or B, is still, and will always be, with us. The best we can do is to try to offer opportunity and a fair playing field for the American people and pray that we are doing enough to stop the ever increasing waves of senseless violence that sweeps over us.

As long as we see the problem as "out there somewhere," as if, if we just push the right levers and pull the right knobs we'll somehow stop the infection and ameliorate the cancer that's holding us by the throat and balls.

Being held hostage by the banks and lending institutions that we have propped up with our dwindling resources hasn't been a great help either.

I hope the Mayan's are right about 2012. I hope the world ends if not ending means a continuation of the policies of lying and plundering. Hold on if you have any faith, you're going to need it either way. Gene

Junk science and junk politics

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:44:00 +0100

Robert Palmer - Addictions Volume 1 - 08 - Some Like It Hot.mp3

I don't expect much when President Barack Obama goes to Copenhagen next month to participate in a the global climate summit. He'll attend December 9, beat a hasty retreat in order to snatch up his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo and then head home or maybe somewhere else where Obama adulation is thick and expectations low. Most of the other 65 world leaders attending the summit are expected to attend the final days of the Dec. 7-18 conference. He hates to eat and run but a presidents gotta do what a presidents gotta do.

Bad time to skirt the issue, in this country where preemption has preempted more reasonable approaches to governance i. e., debate and compromise, the naysayers have begun. Actually they never stopped. Their clear intention has been and still is to debunk the global warming hypothisis. I'm talking about those darlings of the corporate set, our representatives who never entertained a notion, that, as long as there was money and power behind something that it may be wrong to fling it from the parapet walls, like so many vats of boiling oil, on the unsuspecting. I give you, Coal Industry-Sponsored Fake Letters Focus of House Hearing — U.S. Climate Action Network:

According to testimony yesterday ( October 29, 2009) before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, a temp employee of Bonner & Associates forged 14 letters, making them appear as if they came from community groups and sending them to members of Congress. The letters urged the lawmakers to vote against upcoming cap and trade legislation

He was abruptly fired and we're to believe that a temporary employee took it upon himself to write fake letters to members of Congress, even though, the firm that employed him, was Bonner & Associates who were hired as a subcontractor by the Hawthorn Group, which was in turn hired by coal industry advocate American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

That's regrettable and only involves 14 letters and, unless each included a million dollars in small, unmarked bills with non-sequential serial numbers, I doubt that it's effect could have been substantial.

But, around the same time letters were being forged this too was in the works, Say What? We Need More CO2, Says Oil Industry Exec — U.S. Climate Action Network:

That’s according to H. Leighton Steward, co-author of the “Sugar Busters!” diet books, veteran of the oil industry, honorary director of the American Petroleum Institute, and one of the forces behind the CO2 is Green Web site. His partner in this venture is Corbin J. Robertson Jr., chief executive of and leading shareholder in Natural Resource Partners, an owner of coal resources.

Their argument, in a nutshell: carbon dioxide cannot be a pollutant because we exhale it and plants need it to grow. Their site boasts of a petition signed by 31,478 scientists (9,029 of them with Ph.D.s, the site says), that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be beneficial; more CO2 means better crops, but not necessarily a warmer planet since other factors play a bigger role in heating the planet.

Now comes sanity and reason and science. Dr. Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford and winner of the collective 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with his colleagues on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, asserts: “Fraud is their middle name. These guys lie with impunity. They’re counting on the media to cover it and the average person not to look it up.” Schneider compares these stalling and dissembling tactics of the oil and coal industries on climate change now to what the tobacco companies did in the 1950s. “They know they’re lying, same as tobacco industry did, and they’re getting away with it again.”

It all sounds to me like that fat, female, German commandant in one of the hundreds of holocaust movies that I've seen telling the jews about to be executed in the gas cambers, "Breath deep, it's good for you!" Gene

The world according to Fox

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:22:00 +0100

The peoplem, and they haven't shown any biological signs that they aren't actually people, although, I have my doubts, composed this fine Pie Chart. They are so smart that the percentages add up to 193%, Not only do they go the extra mine when reporting the news, they go the extra 93%. The way I see it is; when you're stupid you're too stupid to know you're stupid, just look at Texas.

To the people that think Fox is a News organization, you're just pulling our leg, right? You're just messing around with our heads right? You're just so far right that you always think your right, right? I mean, you got that God thing going and all. Gene

The investigation industry

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:31:00 +0100

November 24, 2009 Iraq war inquiry: Britain heard US drumbeat for invasion before 9/11 | UK news | The Guardian

Sir John Chilcot opens the inquiry as protesters demand to know who was responsible for taking Britain to war in Iraq. Source: Press Association Link to this video

Tony Blair's government knew that prominent members of the Bush administration wanted to topple Saddam Hussein years before the invasion but initially distanced itself from the prospect knowing it would be unlawful, it was disclosed at the Iraq inquiry today.

British intelligence also dismissed claims by elements in the US administration that the Iraqi leader was linked to Osama bin Laden, it heard.

Evidence given at the opening day of the inquiry, chaired by the former top civil servant Sir John Chilcot, painted a picture of a Whitehall slowly realising the significance of George Bush's election in November 2000 on US policy towards Iraq ...

Since this, the fifth investigation that the British Government has launched into the events that led Britain into war with Iraq and it's been over seven years since Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair was told in July, 2002 that in the United States, through highly questionable means and unsubstantiated intelligence that "the facts and intelligence were being fixed around the policy," the "policy" being to attack Iraq regardless of any actual threat, it's little wonder that the investigation won't be concluded until 2011.

NIne years and six investigations to tell everyone what they already know, that the United States bullied Great Britain into a trap. How did such an awkward flim flam man manage to pull this off? How did well intentioned people in this country, Colin Powell springs to mind, allow themselves to become party to this outrage, an outrage only in the sense of a smoldering fire waiting to leap into flames unless pissed on by the blathering bladders of the CIA, the military, the press and other viscous, think tank hoards that have become abstract impresarios even unto themselves.

I suppose there are stirrings of investigations here too but the general consensus seems to be, let sleeping rabid dogs lie, besides, bringing the rich and powerful to justice just isn't our thing. We don't do it because A knows B and B knows C and C can maybe someday do us a favor though his third hand association with A and so we look on C with impunity and wait for the graciousness of A to trickle down. A well placed favor raises some ships, ours being the primary one, nay, the only one we care about. It's the way of the world. Go along to get along. I didn't make the system and hosts of other rationalizations and compromises with something that we've heard of but have never personally experienced; principles.

The rich do it for lots of money the reporter for job security the rest for an amorphous idea of "Patriotism" and to avoid the worst of all possible social ills; unpopularity.

Strap your gun to you leg boyz, it's looking like a show down, a slow show down, an unperceivable movement that may or may not be a showdown at all, but why take chances? Shoot to kill, we're at war damn it! Deny that we were attacked on 9-11, go ahead, I dare you! Saddam, bin Laden, what's the difference? And if you think that we're going to try those 9-11 murderers in New York then you're one of them too. I don't know what we stand for but whatever it is it's given to us from God and his son Jesus, And if you think fucking with me is rough, wait until Jesus goes upside your head, Just wait. Gene ... looking for America

P.S. Funny, but none of the UK stories tha I've searched have even mention the "Downing Street Memo" by name.

My connection to the guy hanging on the gates of hell wildly swinging back and forth and greeting the condemned in a turrets-like volley of filth and disgusting imagery

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:49:00 +0100

Patton Oswald, whom, by the way, I heard of for the first time 10 minutes ago, Is a foul mouthed, irreverent comedian in the mold of Sam Kinison. In short, he's hilarious, but if you have any sacred cows that moo hell and damnation in your ear, your either afraid to like him or can't suspend YOUR wicked beliefs long enough to entertain someone else's wicked beliefs and have a damn good laugh while you're at it.

My daughter's boyfriend did the animation for this Patton Oswald (is that his real name?) cartoon, and damn-it, I'm proud that she's seeing someone that isn't afraid to go outside the mold of normality and as the Holy Sage of Cartoons, Olive Oil once said, "Oh, Popeye, she's a chip off the old block head." Gene, with a little help from my friends ...

Aging Gracelessly

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:08:00 +0100

Tips For 2010 (Thanks to Bernie)

1. Stay out of trouble.

2. Aim for greater heights.

3. Stay focused on your job.

4. Exercise to maintain good health..

5. Practice team work.

6. Rely on your trusted partner to watch your back.
Take your time trusting others.

7. Save for rainy days.

8. Rest and relax.

9. Always take time to smile.

10. Realize that nothing is impossible.

This should make you smile:

Another casual rant

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:50:00 +0100

Someone comes out with a brilliant book exposing:

The CIA
The Pentagon
The executive branch
The Judicial branch
Congress
The limitless ways that the government has expanded its power to snoop into out lives
Official oppression

Meanwhile in the heartland:

Although highly controversial in the actual trial details, effectively in 2003, a judge ruled in Fox News' favor that lying is constitutionally protected by the first amendment, the right to free speech.
Blackwater wantonly kills civilians
Our cowardly use of drones kill indiscriminately in Pakistan
The same Goldman Sachs executives that drove the free market into the ground are put in charge of fixing it
Tax codes are designed for the wealthy and even though they make higher incomes do not always pay a higher tax based on their adjusted gross income
A neutered, ineffectual Health Care Bill may be passed and if so touted as a success for Democrats
Illiteracy is on the rise
Prisons and homeless shelters are bursting at the seams
Corporations are given sweetheart tax deals nationwide and are viewed with reverence and fervor
We are living under a self -imposed caste system, only this time, the unclean are you and me
The religious right has treated the New Testament like a legal document, inserting loopholes, exclusins and perverting its message.

This happens because people don't read and / or don't understand what they do read and if they read, they do it selectively and opt for the quick fix, i.e., Muslims are evil, war is necessary, guns are good, cracking a few heads during a protest is acceptable as long as it's a protest I disagree with.

You won't wake up. You fell asleep with the prostitutes that line K street. Your stench rises to the heavens. The house on C Street is on fire but you refuse to leave. You have been bankrolled by the legal crime families who import poison and death and export, piece by piece, the America we thought we knew.

Our paid assassins roam the world made acceptable through our cultures of violence, fear and suspicion. There is no shame, no guilt and no atonement. The cancer has metastasised and our pre-existing condition precludes us from salvation.

Is it too late? No. Will we wake up in time to save what's left? I doubt it. Gene

DOOMED TO REPEAT, DOOMED TO REPEAT, DOOMED TO ...

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:59:00 +0100

Sting - ...Nothing like the sun - 04 - History will teach us nothing.mp3

Let's face facts. historians aren't going to know what to do about our epoch. There's a burning desire, enflamed by both sides, to fix blame and they do, but historians? They're supposed to deal in objectivity but how can they when every snot nosed pundit, plutocrat and profession prevaricator takes issue with anything that runs contrary to their ideology of self interest? Maybe if we took the stimulus money and spit it up between the politicians and made each of them fabulously wealthy they'd have less interest in acquiring more and more interest in representing someone other than the ones that keep them fat, dumb and happy while we, the American people become fat, dumber and unhappy.

Historians also have a stake in the ever decreasing money pie. Bill O'Reilly, his Bachelor's degree is in History from Marist College, claims to be a historian for Christ's sake. I don't expect any but maybe a few of the people who specialize in dissecting history, to bluntly state that, the terrible financial ruin of our country began with Ronald Reagan and was exacerbated by a series of self serving Presidents, George the II, being the primary deregulator and senseless war monger, threw our country into receivership and along with like minded free marketeers in Congress, plundered the wealth and prosperity of the country in an unprecedented, antidemocratic immoral orgy of selfishness and fuckyouism.

Yes son, at one time people lived in what they called "houses" and had what they called "jobs". These "jobs" paid money and they enabled people to pay their bills and buy things. It was usually an equitable system and the people who were willing to work harder made more money. But none of that matters now, let's go to the dumpster and see what we can find for your mother's birthday if it isn't already picked over by now ... Gene

It being Sunday and all ...

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:01:00 +0100

In Western Hindostan, 400 miles directly north of Bombay, Mount Abu arises abruptly from the desert. Its inaccessible cliffs are 6000 feet high, and the only practicable approaches to its summits are through steep ravines. Away up on the top of the mountain is a fertile region three miles by six in extent and here in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Jains built this temple of white marble. The building was taking form here in India during the days of the Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals in Europe. The marble must have been quarried three hundred miles away and brought up the precipitous mountain roads.

The Jains of India are native born non-conformists to the prevailing religion of Brahmanism, and their faith dates back five or six centuries B.C. to the time of their leaded Vardhamana, a contemporary of Buddha. They believe in the transmigration of souls but deny the sacredness of caste. The do not worship any one deity as supreme, but pay direct reverence to certain prophets that taught liberality, gentleness and repentance for sin.

This particular temple (called for its merchant builder, Vimala Sah) is dedication to a saintly prophet called Parswanatha, whose seated image is seen yonder on the elaborately carven shrine. There are fifty five shrines or cells in this one building, all are dedicated to the same saint. Repetition is a favorite ceremonial device among the Jains; this curious structure is sort of a litany in stone.

The patient devotion and wonderful skill shown in the lace-like elaboration of the sculptured ornament can hardly be overestimated. Miniature figures of Parswanatha are used over and over as details of the decoration and are intended to remind the faithful of traditional scenes and acts in his life. They are to devout Jains what the images and pictures of Christian saints are to the faithful in the old churches of Europe.

A new feature; old Stereoscope cards that happen to be in my possession

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:42:00 +0100

This is only one of nearly seven hundred rooms in the vast palace of His Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm II. You are on the second floor on the side towards the beautiful public gardens. This room is sometim called the Rittersaal (Knights’ Hall) ; it is a part of the palace which was added in 1681 to the the original castle (1443) of the Elector Frederick II.

>
The sculptured groups over those doors (there
are two more in corresponding positions behind you) represent different quarters of the earth. The magnificent pieces of gold and silver work on that sideboard are chiefly legacies from the early kings of Prussia and are fine specimens of the elaborate decoration for which the old German art workmen were famous. That crystal chandelier hanging fron the ceiling used to belong to the old city of Worms, and hug in the great hall where the Diet or convention met in 1521 to consider the heresies of Martin Luther. It is said that Luther's place was directly under it when he made his celebrated declaration ending, ‘Here I stand. I can do no otherwise. So help me God."

About a hundred years ago the Prussian King Frederick William III bough the chandelier from the city of Worms and had it put here in the palace Throne Room.

>
Many of the most famous men of the last two centuries have stood in this room and walked about under this gorgeously ornamented ceiling — Frederick the Great Bismarek, Von Moltke, The first Kaiser Wilhelm: the most beautiful women in Europe have blossomed here like flowers in the splendor of court toilettes.
>

From Descriptive Bulletin No. 1, copywrited, 1904 by Underwood and Underwood.

President Obama bows to Japanese prime minister

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:03:00 +0100

Oops! Wrong video ...

Let me tell you a story about a man named Jed

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:59:00 +0100

Wizard of Oz, The - If I Only Had A Brain - Ray Bolger & Judy Garland.mp3

I made a personal vow that I'd never watch the Beverly Hillbillies movie and I haven't, but, while I was in frantic search mode at 3:00 AM this morning, looking at digital cameras on ebay, I heard it. The Beverly Hillbillies theme music was coming from the living room television that I had left on so as to trick myself into believing that I wasn't the biggest loser in the world, alone and forgotten, while the rest of the world slept on sleep number beds and memory foam.

I don't have anything against the Hillbillies, in fact, I loved them. I remember as a small child when they came on the sit-com scene. I knew that they were something special and would usher in a whole new era of television counter to the I Love Lucy, Honeymooners model.

The begats: and the Hillbillies begat Green Acres and Green Acres somehow begat Archie Bunker and Archie begat The Jeffersons. TV was maturing and somehow turned the tables on its viewers and it cast a light on who we were and why being who we were was hilarious. Norman Lear was indeed learing at us through the interdimensional porthole known as television.

Jed is dead, he came this close (a very tiny space between the pointer finger and the thumb) to being immortalized as the Scarecrow in The Wizard of OZ, but In a bizarre twist of fate, he contracted aluminium poisoning from the tin man make-up who he was originally cast to play. Ray Bolger was amenable to switching roles and became the tin man while Buddy Ebsen became too sick to play the scarecrow, much to his everlasting chagrin and Jack Haley was brought in for the Scarecrow role and the rest is movie history.

Most of those actors that we loved in the second wave of television sit-comery are dead and it depressed me to watch them young and vital, well Jed and Granny weren't young but they sure as hell were vita, whizzing and pasting and pooting through their careers only to end up as as a meaningless Barnaby Jones robot and, I suppose dying as she lived, Irene Ryan died happily suffering a stroke during a Broadway performance of Pippin.

Dick Van Dyke also ended his career on a down beat as some detective / doctor / wizened old elf that wore a doomed expression that loudly exclaimed, "Is it payday yet?"

I can hardly watch Monty Python. Not only is it dead man walking, he's mocking, talking, joking, and existing forever in some film canister that lays lifelessly on a dusty store room shelf. Ok, it's not a dusty store room shelf, it's a temperature and humidity controlled environment but that's only because they can march them out generation upon generations and make MONEY on them, or, it, or whatever pictures of dead people should be called.

For some reason I'm not prone to apply these standards to movies, maybe because I have such a personal relationship with television, me and Howdy Doody were buds. It's like watching your friends grow old and die, meanwhile your great grandfather and mother, the movies, were dead long before you came on the scene. Gene

As You Like It by William Shakespeare,

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Another attempt to wrest nature into something more manageable

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:59:00 +0100

Plowing my way to happiness, or, She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy.mp3 (Thanks to M for song suggestion)

I had the big idea to fix my tractor and get a snow plow for it. I broke the front spindle off the axle and parked it about 5 years ago. Saturday, I brought up my welder and welded the spindle and axle back together. I cleaned the carburetor, drained the old gas, put in a new battery (electric start) and did some general maintenance on it. AND THEN, it wouldn't start. I narrowed it down to the starting relay and went to Pep Boys and told the guy behind the counter to sell me ANY 12 volt relay because starting relays all do the same thing. He wouldn't or couldn't because he needed NUMBERS. I found a 300 amp 12 volt battery disconnecting switch made for theft protection and used that instead. Still no startie. I have the complete John Deere sevice manual that was written back when manuals were weighty things filled with everything you'd need to do repairs, general maintenance and the complete specifications from tire pressure to bolt torque specs. I adjusted the carburetor as per the manual and success!

I began my Internet search for a plow. Ebay was ridiculous. Lots of snow plows but the sellers weren't sure what make or model of tractor they fit and the ones that were sure wanted an arms and two legs. I sent emails, requested pictures and even found a guy with a plow 16 miles from where my daughter lives in N.J. I ask him if she bought it for me, would he help her load and tie the trunk lid down if necessary, he agreed but I still wasn't satisfied, the choice seemed to be either spend too much money or take a chance buying something that might not work.

I tried Craig's list next and found guy near Cleveland that had the exact plow I needed for 75 bucks. I called him and offered him 60 because I had to drive over 100 miles to get there. He thought I said 50 bucks and agreed! I hope he doesn't read this! Yesterday, my wife and I, took a pleasant trip to the Cleveland suburb of Bedford and I bought the exact plow I needed for 50 bucks, I was in heaven.

It's all fitted up. I had to make a piece of linkage that was missing, I like to think of it as the missing link and now I have a running tractor with snow plow. As Bing Crosby and a host of other iconic singers have sung, Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! Gene

P.S. Note the wheel weights and tire chains!

I know that wascawee wabbit is awound here somewhere

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:43:00 +0100

Two reminders from Thom Hartmann The Ft. Hood Massacre Is George Bush's Fault | | AlterNet:

U.S. rejects Taliban offer to try bin Laden

October 7, 2001 Posted: 11:48 AM EDT (1548 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House on Sunday rejected an offer from Afghanistan's ruling Taliban to try suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan under Islamic law.

The offer came as the United States massed forces in southwest Asia for a possible strike against Afghanistan if the Taliban refuse to surrender bin Laden. A Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, rejected the Taliban offer and repeated U.S. demands that bin Laden be turned over unconditionally.

The Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, made the offer at a news conference in Islamabad. Zaeef said the Taliban would detain bin Laden and try him under Islamic law if the United States makes a formal request and presents them with evidence ...

Diplomats Met With Taliban on Bin Laden

Some Contend U.S. Missed Its Chance

By David B.Ottaway and Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 29, 2001; Page A01

Over three years and on as many continents, U.S. officials met in public and secret at least 20 times with Taliban representatives to discuss ways the regime could bring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice.

Talks continued until just days before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Taliban representatives repeatedly suggested they would hand over bin Laden if their conditions were met, sources close to the discussions said ...

Two of the right wing's finest

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:54:00 +0100

The man who would be Governor of Michigan, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) has a large mouth and small brain. If not completely traitorous he does his little monkey dance right on the edge, someone throw him a banana to shut him up. Rachel Maddow makes quick work of exposing him for the reckless, loose lipped, pandering, egocentric demagogue he is. ****************************************************** Farewell Lou Dobbs. He leaves amidst controversy and contentions of racism and that he was dismissed for allegedly leaving disparaging comments, under an alias, on a stripper's blog. Here's an example of his style. While contending that he 'believes" that Obama is a citizen, he has amassed evidence to the contrary and then innocently asks, "Why doesn't he just produce the birth certificate?" Roland Martin eviscerates Lou Dobbs' argument even with republican Congressman Ted Poe (TX-02) joining the fray against common sense, the will of the American people and displays his own penchant for "soft racism."

Symptoms of a sick society

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:53:00 +0100

Merrily we roll along,

In a land where the rich and powerful rarely suffer the consequence of their crimes or immorality and no one has a greater sense of entitlement than the rich, black children serve life without parole at a rate ten times that of white children, our military is revered even after committing atrocity upon atrocity, cover-up after cover-up, industries poisons oceans, rivers and streams, chicken is produced en masse in pens so small that chickens legs atrophy, fruits and vegetables are dyed for appearance sake because we are such babies that we won't eat a discolored apple, genetic alteration is commonplace and no chemical, antibiotic or hormone is too horrendous to add to our food while caloric content is through the roof, is it any wonder that we react like automatons when we should be seething with outrage?

The teabagges have it half right but their vitriol is so misdirected that they rage against the very ones that they should be forming alliances with. Why would a person on the lower side of middle income defend capitalism and it's vicious hand maidens: union hatred, medical insurers, trickle down economics, disdain for the poor and the dissolution of government and public programs?

The money's there, at least the national credit card is, otherwise how can we keep our trumped up "War on terror" going full tilt? Could it be that we have been snookered so badly that the war must continue in order to forestall any investigations as to why we are fighting in the first place? Blackwater, literally and figuratively, knows where the bodies are buried. Why was Blackwater expelled from Iraq but is still there?

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN):

The State Department's initial report of last month's incident in which Blackwater guards were accused of killing Iraqi civilians was written by a Blackwater contractor working in the embassy security detail, according to government and industry sources. A source involved in diplomatic security at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said a Blackwater contractor, Darren Hanner, drafted the two-page "spot report" on the letterhead of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security for the embassy's Tactical Operations Center.

From The Nation, 11-10-09 Blackwater Attempted to Bribe Iraqi Officials:

Not long after the Iraqi government announced in September 2007 that Blackwater would be banned, top Iraqi officials swiftly changed their tune about the company and began to publicly state that without Blackwater there would be a security crisis for US officials. After the incident, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki quickly found himself under heavy US pressure to back off his initial demands of expulsion and prosecution. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice immediately called the Iraqi prime minister to apologize, she made a point of emphasizing publicly that "we need protection for our diplomats." A few days later, Tahseen Sheikhly, a representative of Maliki's government, stated, "If we drive out this company immediately, there will be a security vacuum...That would cause a big imbalance in the security situation." In a telling 180 degree turn, Maliki swiftly agreed to withhold judgment on Blackwater's status, pending the conclusion of a "joint" US-Iraqi investigation. Ultimately five Blackwater operatives were indicted in a US court on federal manslaughter charges stemming from the Nisour Square shootings, while a sixth pled guilty.

The New York Times, 11-11-09 Blackwater Said to Approve $1 Million in Iraqi Bribes After Shootings - NYTimes.com:

Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

This is one or the many bastard children of this war. The list goes on and on and is so hideous that too look upon that, like a modern day Medusa, it would turn the cruellest heart to stone. So we remain children, squabbling over the presidents syntax or whether he used this word or that. Like a virus we are slowly destroying our host organism along with our childrens future. Gene

The Free market does it again!

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:46:00 +0100

Health (I don't) care,

The house passed a comprised health care bill and Nancy Pelosi is smiling like a Cheshire cat. It's 2000 pages, largely unreadable and giveth on one hand and taketh away on the other. To see the real picture, imagine the insurance companies smiling like Cheshire cats and Nancy Pelosi in stoic resignation.

Here's what the one man who has displayed the rare commodity of consistency throughout the election and the year since, Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich, a leading proponent of a single-payer "Medicare for All" had to say about the house version:

This health care bill continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of America's manufacturing and service economies which suffer from costs other countries do not have to bear, especially the cost of health care. America continues to stand out among all industrialized nations for its privatised health care system. As a result, we are less competitive in steel, automotive, aerospace and shipping while other countries subsidize their exports in these areas through socializing the cost of health care.

Marcia Angell, M.D., Physician, Author, Senior Lecturer, Harvard Medical School wrote in the Huffington Post:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcia-angell-md/is-the-house-health-care_b_350190.html&cp:

To be sure, the bill has a few good provisions (expansion of Medicaid, for example), but they are marginal. It also provides for some regulation of the industry (no denial of coverage because of pre-existing conditions, for example), but since it doesn't regulate premiums, the industry can respond to any regulation that threatens its profits by simply raising its rates. The bill also does very little to curb the perverse incentives that lead doctors to over-treat the well-insured. And quite apart from its content, the bill is so complicated and convoluted that it would take a staggering apparatus to administer it and try to enforce its regulations.

What does the insurance industry get out of it? Tens of millions of new customers, courtesy of the mandate and taxpayer subsidies. And not just any kind of customer, but the youngest, healthiest customers -- those least likely to use their insurance. The bill permits insurers to charge twice as much for older people as for younger ones. So older under-65's will be more likely to go without insurance, even if they have to pay fines. That's OK with the industry, since these would be among their sickest customers. (Shouldn't age be considered a pre-existing condition?)

Sounds pro-insurance lobby if you ask me, but wait, there's more:

Insurers also won't have to cover those younger people most likely to get sick, because they will tend to use the public option (which is not an "option" at all, but a program projected to cover only 6 million uninsured Americans). So instead of the public option providing competition for the insurance industry, as originally envisioned, it's been turned into a dumping ground for a small number of people whom private insurers would rather not have to cover anyway.

And to think, the republicans are opposing this? WHF do THEY want? Human sacrifices to the Gods? Wonderful system, wonderful representation and I wonder what's next. How about a bounty on Muslims? I see a future there. We can boost the economy by creating bounty hunting jobs and kill Muslims at the same time. Oh, and health care? The republicans are right, the market is taking care of that too Looking Abroad for Health Savings - Prescriptions Blog - NYTimes.com:

No matter what Congress does with health care legislation in the next few weeks, one thing is already clear: the result will not do much to control the climbing costs of medical care in the United States.

And that is why many employers and insurance companies may seek savings by encouraging patients to travel abroad for treatment.

Offshore medical care is usually significantly less expensive than in the United States, and the wait times are often shorter. A heart operation that might cost $130,000 in this country could cost $18,500 in Singapore or $10,000 in India.

Estimates of the number of Americans traveling abroad for treatment — “medical tourism,” some call it — vary widely, from 75,000 to 750,000 last year. But many experts consider it a growth industry.

I use to be disgusted now I'm just amused, Gene

Finally, some sanity, no thanks to Lindsey Graham

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:28:00 +0100

From McClatchy Newspapers by James Rosen:

Posted on Thursday, November 5, 2009

Senate rejects effort to block civilian trials for 9/11 suspects

WASHINGTON — After an emotional debate over how to keep Americans safe, the Senate Thursday narrowly defeated an effort to prevent civilian trials in U.S. courts for the accused planners of the 9/11 attacks.

The Senate's 54-45 vote to reject the measure by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., opens the door for President Barack Obama to bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to trial in federal court, rather than the military commissions Graham helped create.

Obama has pledged to shutter the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by January and transfer some of its 220 detainees to the U.S. for trials in civilian courts.

Three Democrats — Jim Webb of Virginia and Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor — and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut joined all 40 Senate Republicans in voting for the measure.

Graham, a military lawyer who's served active duty in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, pleaded with his colleagues to back his amendment to a spending measure for the Justice Department and other federal agencies.

"Tell the president that we're not going to sit by as a body and watch the mastermind of 9/11 go into civilian court and criminalize this war," Graham said. "If he goes to federal court, here's what awaits — a chaos zoo trial."

Graham, who helped craft the 2009 Military Commissions Act, said he wants all the Guantanamo detainees to be tried before military tribunals. He crafted his measure narrowly, however, to focus on Mohammed and five other alleged Sept. 11 plotters at the Guantanamo prison.

"Khalid Sheik Mohammed didn't rob a liquor store," Graham said. "He took this nation to war, and he killed 3,000 of our innocent citizens."

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said federal courts have convicted 195 felons of terror-related crimes since the 2001 attacks, while military tribunals have produced only three convictions.

"The Graham amendment would be an unprecedented intrusion into the authority of the executive branch of our government to combat terrorism," Durbin said. "To argue that we cannot successfully prosecute a terrorist in an American court is to ignore the truth and to ignore history."

The Supreme Court struck down the military commission system set up by President George W. Bush, and in a later ruling put restrictions on revamped tribunals that Congress had subsequently created.

Christopher Anders, the senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, hailed the terrorism vote.

"Thankfully, the Senate has made the right decision by not tying the president's hands when it comes to prosecuting detainees," Anders said. "Making it more difficult to prosecute detainees in our federal courts only serves to delay bringing them to justice."

A bevy of powerful senators joined the nearly three-hour debate, among them the chairmen of the Senate Armed Services and Judiciary committees, 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, and a former federal judge and former prosecutors.

"We're the most powerful nation on earth, with the most tested court system on earth," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. "Are we going to tell the world . . . we're not up to trying the people who have struck at us?"

Nighttime for the Generals

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:02:00 +0100

The Good:

General Eric Shinseki Eric Shinseki - SourceWatch

General Wesly Clark Anti-terrorist expert exposes Bush's weakness on security

The Bad:

General McCaffrey One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex - Series - NYTimes.com

The Ugly:

General Stanley McChrystal Jon Krakauer: McChrystal's Explanation For Pat Tillman Cover-up Is "Preposterous"

Magic Eye 3-D

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:54:00 +0100

This one is good if you can hold the 3-D effect. It comes out of the screen at least two levels. Slightly cross your eyes until you get the 3-D effect and then you can relax them and enjoy.

The state of being me

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:47:00 +0100

Nothing outrageous, insufferable, poorly planned, executed or conceived has happened lately. There have been minor intrusions into the world of peace an quiet but that's to be expected. I've been laying low. There's nothing I want to say, do and no place to go.

My microcosm is shrinking and I'm being sucked down the drain. It's just as well. I have too much junk, too many thoughts and too much time. My life is a library full of used, discounted books that no one cares to read. I don't either.

I keep waiting for that magical moment when I get my shit together, literally and figuratively. I prefer 3-D color dreams where I can fly. Soar over rooftops like Peter Pan. Cross international boundaries, be spotted by radar and play catch me if you can with military missiles. Like Zeus hurling lightning bolts, I'd grab them and send the back from whence they came. I'd have the voice of many waters or of Muddy Waters. I'd race beams of light across the universe.

I'd ride a bicycle across the moon like ET. Walk on air like Wile E. Coyote, Moon walk, shit talk, and rock. Wired, admired and desired. That'd be me.

Until then I'll stay in my disguise, Mr. Anonymous, watching you from the corner of my eye. Gene

Obama, facilitator in chief

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:53:00 +0100

Go along to get along,

On the the 26th, two days ago, The New York Times called For Obama to end the cover-up of possible crimes by the Bush administration. It's pointed view is that, now, they are becoming Obama's crimes and cover-ups. The Obama administration is using the same "Bush-era argument that the executive branch is entitled to have lawsuits shut down whenever it makes a blanket claim of national security." The lawsuits stem from the government’s extraordinary rendition program, under which foreigners were kidnapped and flown to other countries for interrogation and torture.

I think the reason is plain, Obama is afraid of the CIA. He granted immunity to the CIA torturers in April this year and his Alberto Gonzales, Eric Holder said:

"It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department,"

which sounds to many, similar to the Nuremberg Defence; that the defendant was "only following orders."

The war crimes tribunal of Nuremberg established a set of principles, Nuremberg Principle IV states:

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

Our military has never held themselves up to the same standards established at Nuremberg. If we did I doubt that we'd be able to fight wars. Once free will is surrendered to a higher authority, the higher authority has an awesome responsibility, and because we are flawed creatures operating within a corrupt system, there will never arise an incentive to change.

We are being held at the mercy of our killing creations. Worse yet suspicion of government today amounts to meaningless protests by the too few who are easily portrayed as kooks and malcontents.

Now that Obama has adjusted and adapted to his new role as facilitator in chief, those guiding the machine will continue to develop new ways to kill, both literally and politically. We are at the point in our history where even "the most powerful man in the world" has to watch his back and be careful of who he pisses off.

He folds on the big international issues, isn't clear exactly where he stands on the big domestic issues and is loved for his sense of humanity. Gene

Keith rips them a new one but damn, it should have been me

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:58:00 +0100

Since we're the same age and have the same political philosophy, Billy Boy Arnold - It Should Have Been Me.mp3

American Classic

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:32:00 +0100

Thanks, again, to Bernie K,

After a two year loan to the United States, Michelangelo's David is being returned to Italy .

Cow Manure

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:54:00 +0100

Thanks to Bernie K.

Political Science For Dummies

DEMOCRAT	You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You push for higher taxes so the government can provide cows for everyone.
REPUBLICAN	You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?
SOCIALIST	You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.
COMMUNIST	You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE	You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE	You have two cows. Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.
AMERICAN CORPORATION	You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.
FRENCH CORPORATION	You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch and drink wine. Life is good.
JAPANESE CORPORATION	You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.
GERMAN CORPORATION	You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.
ITALIAN CORPORATION	You have two cows but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch. Life is good.
RUSSIAN CORPORATION	You have two cows. You have some vodka. You count them and learn you have five cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.
TALIBAN CORPORATION	You have all the cows in Afghanistan , which are two. You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.
IRAQI CORPORATION	You have two cows. They go into hiding. They send radio tapes of their mooing.
POLISH CORPORATION	You have two bulls Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.
BELGIAN CORPORATION	You have one cow. The cow is schizophrenic. Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish. The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow. The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk. The cow asks permission to be cut in half. The cow dies happy.
FLORIDA CORPORATION	You have a black cow and a brown cow. Everyone votes for the best looking one. Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one. Some people vote for both. Some people vote for neither. Some people can't figure out how to vote at all. Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best looking cow.
CALIFORNIA CORPORATION	You have millions of cows. They make real California cheese. Only five speak English. Most are illegal. Arnold likes the ones with the big udders .

Great Balls of Fire

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:56:00 +0200

If you love it so much, why don't you marry it?

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:12:00 +0200

Olivia Newton-John - I Honestly Love You.mp3

Hello my companion through thick and thin,

Dear Blog, I can't tell you how much you mean to me. You are always there and never judge. While what you give isn't love, I'll take it over love. Love hurts and never seems to be what it should. Love leaves me cold, but you dearest Blog leave me warm, invigorated and fulfilled.

Remember the time we made fun of Tom Delay? We imagined him masturbating in the backseat of a car being driven by George W. Bush. Hahahahah, we called him "Hot tub Tom."

You've helped me through financial issues, medical issues, family issues and issues in general. I don't know where I'd be without you.

You're so darn cute and you're all mine. I love you Blog O' Mine. I love you. Kisses, Gene

I get it DONE!

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:08:00 +0200

It's Monday, time to relax, I've got all the time in the world to get it done. If it doesn't get done today, because I've had one hell of a weekend, tomorrow's only Tuesday and surely I can get it done on Tuesday.

Time rolls on and all those little jobs that I've planned on doing have been set back, it wasn't my fault. I meant well and Wednesday is a reasonable deadline besides I'm broke and nothing gets done without money, gas, postage, food, all cost money, in fact I'm sitting here racking up the bills, the heating and light, water, sewage, damn there's wear and tear on the body, clothes wear out, the car wears out, we're almost out of coffee and Columbian is through the roof. What? I should drink coffee that I don't like as much because it's cheaper? Not on you life.

No one's returning calls. What am I chopper liver? Time to write a nasty letter. Why can't I have a one size fits all nasty letter? Like a "get it off your chest" form letter. Something like:

Sirs,

You have committed the ultimate sin and pissed me off, prepare for the consequences!

Your's truly _________________

Too non-specific. Maybe a categorized selection:

Legal
Personal
Automobile related
Ebay
Utilities
Medical
Political
Stupid, impossible to classify
Banking
Insurance
- Home
- Car
- medical
- Life

Damn, I could subcategorise everything and having all those form letters would be more trouble that writing a specific one. Forgetaboutit.

Getting back to the subject at hand, it's Wednesday and I still have the things that I wanted to get done on Monday plus accumulated things pending. I'm disgusted, it's pushing it, but I'll do it tomorrow.

It's tomorrow and I'm still disgusted only now I'm nervous that things won't get done and no one's returned any calls yet. I don't know whether to shit or go blind.

Friday's here and everyone leaves early or takes Friday off. Why does everyone have a charmed life but me?

After the weekend I'm going to get serious about all this shit. I'm a responsible person and no one's fool. Think you can shit on me? Think again potty boyz. I'm da man, and I'm getting it DONE. Gene

Must fight them over there so the rich can fuck us over here

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:58:00 +0200

Oh, woe is us in this "all or nothing" land. Since only a few at the very top of the food chain, Goldman Sachs jumps to mind, do have it all, the rest of us are left with the shards, scraps and virtual nothings of a country coasting on its glory days, coasting to a stop and a quick reverse.

Goldman Sachs earned $3.2 billion in the third quarter, as revenue from trading rose fourfold from a year ago. "Revenue from trading." Here we go again. No Factories, no steel plants, nothing that would insure employment, wages or health care for the ragged plebeian but "trading". I'd like to do some trading of my own, first, I'd trade all those SEC regulators that cut their teeth at Goldman Sachs for some outside people, maybe put Elliot Spitzer in charge of finding and hiring them. I'd trade the concept of "too big to fail' in for a new phrase, "just too big period", as Robert Reich was so fond of saying. Then I'd make the rich pay, they use more of their share of the public commons than anyone else: the courts, the roads, the air waves the waterways and are all polluted by their stench. If they can't buy it, they lobby to have the regulations made favorable to their selfish usage and of course there's the "good old boy" network to keep things in check should all else fail.

These things are prevalent on all scales of government, but the most heinous are reserved for the federal governmentt, i.e., our shadow operations: the CIA, military intelligence, and a thousand other unknown and unheard of acronyms meaning one thing, find em, round em up, use whatever means to get information and then either bury them or send them of off to foreign prisons where they can struggle like rats to survive.

Billions in boxes shipped to Iraq, October surprises and arms, arms, arms, always arms shipped to the highest bidder, today our ally, tomorrow our enemy. War engenders so many illicit ways to make a fortune, no wonder we never stop finding reasons to keep bombing, killing and in our endless piques of self righteousness, thumb our nose at any international organization that we helped form to keep checks and balances on nations that would do, had they the might, the very things we do.

Am I crazy? Am I seeing conspiracy theories under the bed? I'm afraid not, one needn't look too far to find factual information that most of our babified media won't report. In Harpers this month there's a story of attrtion:The intelligence factory: How America makes its enemies disappear—By Petra Bartosiewicz (Harper's Magazine) about how we winnow away our threats, mistakes and contrivances through the use of force, torture, prematurely faded memories and out and out lies, we condemn, mostly mid-easterners that won't comport to our way of life and may or may not have terrorist connections to beatings, shootings, death and imprisonment all in the name of Home Land Security, that lovely catch-all that we use to legitimise thug mentality. It's happening all over the world and we are behind it.

But here at home we are in Happy, Happy Land at least we try to be and the medical establishment, which has become no more than a high stakes drug pusher, does it's best to insure that we are. Goldman Sachs be damned, rising poverty levels be damned, foreign interloping be damned, our souls? Damned along with the rest.

So we end up poor and hated worldwide. What will the rich do that they haven't already done? Build internment camps? Brand us on our foreheads? No, they will always need us to fight their wars. To propagandise, to see how far they can push the human envelope before it folds. To wave their flags and cry don't shoot until you see the green of their money.

Enlistment for all branches of the military is up from last year. No job, no college, why not spin the wheel of death and see what happens? Can it be worse that living in squalor, without a job, car, money or hope? The boys roll out, the coffins roll in. Some mother in Pakistan just lost her son in a drone attack. Another family will hate us forever and we say our boy died for your freedom, don't you feel guilty, shouldn't it have been you dying for your own freedom? Ashamed and disgusted, Gene

Six year old rides strange cloud

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:22:00 +0200

Six Year old boy rides strange Moscow cloud to father's laboratory in the Bavarian Alps.

Little Eddie Munster climbed aboard his father's cloud sent to bring him back to his laboratory in the Bavarian Alps for a second operation. Eddie was born part vampire and part undead Frankenstein Monster. His father who is all Monster has been trying to infuse Eddie with human stem cells in an effort to check and in some cases reverse his natural tendensies and developemnet towards Monsterism. Little Eddie was surprised by all the fuss and said to our, on the scene reporter, Gene Z., "Man, all this excitment makes me want to bite a neck." Little Eddie was taken into protective custody after he fell through the strange cloud over Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski's forest reserve in Krzemionki.

LIttle Eddie Munster

Professor Munster.

Americans for Prosperity for the Few

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:59:00 +0200

Rachel slaps em down but like an evil "Rocky" they stagger to their feet expecting the other side to throw the fight,

Not a big surprise or even a small one but I've given up on the human race. Oh, individuals are fine for a while until they get under your skin but groups are so bound by "group think" that they negate their own purposes and then have to make personal concessions so that they can live within their group hypocrisy.

A big, for instance, jumps right out at me; all those supposed grass roots organizations that the conservatives or whatever they are like to tout as sprouting from the ground up.

The theory being; people are so tired of the status quo, or so afraid to change the status quo, they will unite around either some charismatic leader or political idea being purposed by less than charismatic followers. Surely, get enough people in a room, vocal and irrepressible, and the ones that haven't made up their minds, or are even opposed to the propositions being put forth, will feel a certain pressure to join the throng. The rest like drawing little Hitler moustaches.

We have millions of empty drums pounding themselves in an effort to express their frustration at the expense of the other 98% of their brain. Here's a perfect example that I watched unfold last night. This man, Tim Philips, is not one iota short of having the chutzpa of a holocaust denier.

Summation: We are grass roots even though we start from the top down and use the American people to fight for rich people's interests at the expense of their own, and "Yes, we can fool all the people all the time."

Correspondence to the Attorney General

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:21:00 +0200

The following is Doman Auto Sales' response to the complaint I filed against them with the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office and Bureau of Consumer Protection. I had to retype their response and my reply because I couldn't get the consistency that I desired through the scanning software.The whole story was relayed in a previous blog that somehow got lost in the chronosynclastic infundibulum of the Internet.

DOMAN AUTO & MARINE SALES, INC.

Dear A. David Etzi,

We have read the above complaint and would like to thank you for the opportunity to preserve goodwill for our business.

We sold Mr. Zizis the vehicle as shown on our sales contract over several days. Mr. Zizis inspected and test drove the vehicle. We believe he took the car to a mechanic to have it looked over before purchase. He noted several things wrong with the vehicle, cosmetic ( dents and interior condition ) and mechanical ( engine oil seepage ) including the air conditioner and made an offer. His offer on the vehicle, which was listed for $2750.00, was $2000.000 plus costs and we were to repair the air conditioning only ( at our expense ). In our opinion, Mr. Zizis knew exactly what he was purchasing. We maintained full disclosure of the vehicle and terms of the sale. You will note that on the contract there are items circled and underlined for emphasis. In addition, the vehicle had current state safety inspection and did not exhibit any of the conditions Mr. Zizis quotes at the time of the sale. We agreed to his offer and repaired the air conditioning. The following day Mr. Zizis returned, test drove and inspected the vehicle again. Finding it satisfactory, he purchased as shown on the sales contract. Mr. Zizis did purchase a service contract and elected not to have the components he refers to be covered components. He declined the additional coverage even though it was available to him.

We find it noteworthy that no documentation for the repairs has been included with the complaint and incomprehensible the Mr. Zizis could pay $2,367.70 for a car and request we pay $2,435.32 for his maintenance. We have no way of rebutting the second hand information he quotes. However, we believe any maintenance costs the vehicle needs have been grossly exaggerated. In addition, we have no means of monitoring the use of the vehicle once it leaves our facility. We understand that maintenance repairs for consumers can be untimely. However, they can be caused or magnified by consumer use, misuse or neglect. Please note on his statement regarding a hydraulic leak, "after a day there were hydraulic leaks in the driveway. I called the dealer the following week. There are a number of questions we will never have an answer to. But, it is entirely the customer's responsibility to maintain the proper operation of the vehicle so that consequential damage does not result. This is especially true at Mr. Zizis' price point. If we were to believe Mr. Zizis that several major components in the braking system were faulty at the point of sale, we believe they would have manifested themselves over the course of the several days while he was test driving and purchasing. Again. we have no way of controlling what happens to a vehicle after it leaves our facility.

As a dealer we feel we have completed our portion of the transaction in good faith. Mr. Zizis, an experienced car buyer, inspected, negotiated price, requested specific repairs and was fully aware the condition of the vehicle before purchasing. We stand by the terms of the sale and in Mr. Zizis' own words "I was satisfied". We also take exception to the use of innuendo in this forum.

If you have any questions or need additional information, I can be reached at the address, telephone number or email address above.

Sincerely,

Chris Pantelis, Doman Auto Sals, Inc.

My rebuttal, also sent to the Attorney General:

Re: Doman Auto& Marine Sales, Inc.

Dear Mr. A David Etzi,

In Doman's response to my complaint against them, the third sentence is a complete fabrication; "[We] believe he [Gene Zizis] took the car to a mechanic to have it looked at before purchase." They know full well this isn't true.

All that I noted that was wrong with the vehicle was the air conditioner wasn't working. I did not make a counter offer. Their salesman, Bob Smith, offered to fix the air conditioner and lower the price.

They say, "In their opinion Mr. Zizis knew exactly what he was purchasing." Yes this is true; I was purchasing a car, which I thought had an operational braking system. They site the underlined portions of the sale contract and the fact that it had a current state inspection sticker as if to indicate that they are relieved of ANY responsibility for selling a car with a leaking corroded brake line system.

I'm to believe, according to them, and so are you and the Bureau of Consumer Protection that a problem of such magnitude developed, in the two days that I took charge of the car, that the brake lines spontaniously corroded and ALL the brake fluid leaked our causing the brake pedal to go to the floor while being driven. I consider the absence of any kind of tangible proof that they didn't know what they were selling as sheer fabrication and an insult to my intelligence.

They mentioned that I purchased a service contract and that I chose one that didn't cover the specific components that were bad. This is completely irrelevant. Addressing the test drive, there was only one, not two as they state in their response, the one I took originally when I first saw he car on their lot. A test drive will not indicate that there's a hydraulic leak until the amount of fluid is at a critical level. They could have simply filled the master cylinder every morning to avoid any test drive braking problems.

Doman's finds it noteworthy that no documentation for the repairs has been included with the complaint. As I stated to you, I originally sent all of my records to the Harrisburg Office and I called you as soon ( today ) as I received Doman's response to ask whether or not they had forwarded the records to you. I also called Harrisburg but they were unable to tell me if they had.

Doman also calls my information second hand information while I suppose theirs is solid gold.

In the third paragraph down, towards the bottom of the page, they assert that "Any maintenance costs the vehicle needs have been grossly exaggerated." Maintenance? Replacing corroded brake lines is maintenance?

They save the disclaimer for last: "We have no means of monitoring the use of the vehicle once it leaves our facility." ( In this case, two days after it leaves their facility ). Then to add salt to the wound, "They [the maintenance costs] can be caused or magnified by consumer use, misuse or neglect." They then quote my statement, "After a day there were hydraulic fluid leaks in the driveway, I called the dealer the following week." It was Saturday when I observed the leaks.

They hammer their maintenance point calling it, "The customer's responsibility to maintain the proper operation of their vehicle so that consequential damage does not result." I know how to maintain a vehicle.

Their final paragraph, they feel that they have completed their portion of the transaction in good faith and take exception of the use of innuendo in this forum. Well, I take exception that someone in my household could have been killed due to their flat out neglect and then when they get caught, hide behind their mumbo jumbo.

Yours truly, Gene

New Jersey Trip Part Deux

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:18:00 +0200

At the risk of being boring, I have MORE PICTUES of our visit to Natalie's,

Housing in Hoboken, Great place and Franks Sinatra's home town.

Cat painting that struck me in the Antique Emporium of Asbury Park.

See, I told you.

The following pictures are more things from the Antique Emporium, Things I like but wouldn't buy because they're expensive and I have no place to put them.

I love this painting and almost did buy it, almost. Uncle Sam getting down and dirty, rolling up his sleeves to do what must be done. If only ...

This is so out of focus and a rather shitty attempt to repair it with the software from my photography program but I'll bet you still get the idea.

This ship's compass was huge, almost a foot across. The actual magnetic part floats in some fluid for mimimal resistance. I didn't even ask, "How much?"

Beautiful hand painted tray.

Loved this unusual clock.

Big Marlins like this used to be everywhere, they are getting rarer and rarer.

The British invasion never sleeps.

It's staying alive. ( These painting were huge maybe 7 or 8 foot tall).

Baby you can drive my car.

Pretty stuff and a half decent photo.

Love the black babies.

We got back to Elizabeth, N.J., where Natalie lives, just in time to wittness the Hermandad del Senor de los Milagros de Elizabeth procession. The long poles are used to lift up the overhead wires.

After a particularly difficult pass under the wires, the spectators clapped.

A band followed behind and some woman pulling up her pants.

The carriers, of the huge, heavy Jesus box.

We said our goodbyes the next morning and were on the road back home. Gene

Our N.J. Trip to Natalie's

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:16:00 +0200

I love New York.

Natalie , Our daughter, looking a little defiant, a little vunerable and cute.

Some old guy sitting with my wife.

Strike a pose.

Grand Central Station where we discovered the secret of the arches; you stand facing a corner in the domed room and talk while someone stands in the ach on the other side of the diagonal facing the corner, you can talk to each other as plain as day.

Street scenes.

We saw this guy later at the subway station with his guitar and a wha-wha pedal, Not a bad Jimmy Hedrix. He did Little Wing and Vodoo Child.

Art for sale. A little vulgar but IT'S NEW YORK CITY!

One of the hundreds of public libraries.

Fire escapes are everywhere.

Natalie and her new Beau, he's an illustrator and cartoonist. How cool is that?

These little bronze guys are on the loose in the subway.

To be continued ...

Chopin, the first, Last Waltz

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:30:00 +0200

No use bullshitting myself, I have to call the doctor today and fess up. My foot is taking its sweet time to beat the infection that's been beating it. Pain sucks, I'm sick-up and fed.

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

I don't know how it's possible but everyday I find something new to drill, hammer and either fix or create. My basement is half delicate repair shop and half industrial complex. I can work on your pocket watch (although, fixing it is a quite a different story) or weld your car frame.

Today's concern is the rug in the room in which I sit. It's ugly and stained. I'll look at each of my 3 rug machines and judge which measures up closest to performing in the manner it was intended.

I could probably sleep the day away. I feel tired and this weekend is the big drive to NJ to see our daughter. We'll spend some of at least two of our days in NYC, like the bumper sticker says, We love NYC but to truly enjoy its idyllic atmosphere you need a goodly supply of any world class city's life-blood; MONEY.

In my youth some knuckle head friends and I hitched hiked to NYC and stayed with a friend's sibling. I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground back then and we bought a bottle of some toxic strawberry Liquor to celebrate our stupidity. We were trying to test the theory put forth by the Band that "You (meaning: you, me, he, she or 'it') just ain't as sweet as my Strawberry wine, no no." The trip sucked, the wine was foul and I returned home neither wiser nor less enthusiastic for doing impromptu, stupid shit.

Why was time so meaningless then and yet so precious today? How could we have destroyed so much over so little?

Adventures are over, nothing stuck except that which has inner life. Here kids, here are my genes, they're pretty good genes, so don't piss them away like I did. Take this gift and build upon it, regard it jealousy, protect it and may you live without regrets. Gene

Dat ol Tar baby got dat Brer Rabbit all bollixed up, sho-nuff

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:44:00 +0200

Gene, The Time traveller has something important to tell you.

Yes, oh mighty Time Traveller?

Do not worry about not being around to see it, it has begun.

Oh, no!

Oh, yes! In a short time Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glen Beck will recant their treasonous, immoral behaviour. Money and powerful friends will fail them. The creator is looking into their soul and they are on the brink. They will writhe in their beds. They shall seek solace but none will come. The devil has come to claim them as per their agreement. They will wail and gouge their eyes on national Television. They will beg forgiveness.

Really?

Really!

And I'm going to see it happen?

Yes.

Cool beans! Thanks, Time Traveller you've made me very happy.

No problemo.

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh my, what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine headin' my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay

A long slough through a long blog

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 05:43:00 +0200

Fuses blow, car in tow and I don't know, or, A crap a nap, and a slap,

Today was a funny, twisted, fucked up day. It was the kind of day that, somehow, everyone seemed to know that I went off my Zoloft and they had decided to test me. It started this morning or rather it didn't start this morning, my daughter's car that is, the one that's hers in name only. She took another vehicle and left me with the problem.

I called AAA before 9:00 AM and they dispatched a tow truck. All I had to do was to figure out who I wanted to make the next donation to, call them and tell them to get ready, the car is on it's way. I opted for the same place that I had recently forked over $2000.00 to, no more than 2-3 weeks ago. Silly me thinking I'd get the A+ treatment simply because I was a fabulous customer. They weren't open yet. A slight panicky feeling was rapidly approaching. My second choice wasn't open yet. Be patient, be patient I told myself, it's almost 9:00 and everything opens at 9:OO.

They did and I was set, they said no problem, that they weren't very busy today. I laughed in the face of almost being made to look like an ass. I laughed into its ass. Its ass was in my face and I was laughing. The tow truck driver came, he hitched up his truck and I told him I'd meet him at the car dealer's service department.

I did, the mileage didn't go over the free allotted mileage so there wasn't any charge at all. I talked to the service desk (man/kid) and drove home, almost. I decided to stop at one of my favorite second hand stores on the way home, The Salvation Army, laugh if you must but my mother was a sales lady for the salvation army for over 20 years. I was born to shop there. I remember, as a small child, Christ-like and everything, going to Christmas dinners there. The men that worked there also lived there, they were on a Salvation Army inspired prolonged self improvements plan and I even grew to know and like a few of them. But that's another story for another blog. or maybe several stories, I'll get back to you.

The first thing I had to do when I arrived at The Salvation Army was to seek some salvation myself and go to the bathroom. At the precise moment I grabbed the men's room key, another fellow was biding his sweetheart farewell. I instinctively knew he was also headed to the men's room. I was walking so close to him we could have been holding hands but truthfully, he wasn't my type. He seemed to be the kind that a lot of men around here have allowed themselves to become, tough guys, men so macho that they sweat testosterone. He was probably headed to the men's room to rid himself of the overflow. We arrived at the door together. I opened the door, holding it ajar, I ask if he wanted to go first, although, what I had to do in there was gaining uregency. He looked dumbfounded and dumb at the same time. He mumbled something about two stalls. I said, "No, there was a commode and that was it."

Then, I did the unforgivable, I said, "I have to shit, if you just have to piss you can go first." He looked at me with pity in his eyes, the contemptible kind, the kind that makes you kill the crippled creature rather than taking it to the Vet's. His disgust with me was immeasurable, he turned and walked away. I stood on the threshold of The Salvation Army men's room, watching him in his superiority and splendor walk away. I yelled, "I was trying to be courteous to you ASSHOLE!" When I was finished I was glad and slightly proud that he and his toothless girlfriend had left the store. I was relieved that I could roam the aisles once again oblivious to a piano wire attack from behind. I bought an interesting toy for my grandson and drove home.

Once home I returned to my current project lying in wait for me in my basement. I had to figure out why the power supply for my rechargeable drill crapped out. Before I could trouble shoot the circuit I had to fix my meter. I replaced the meter's fuse and proceeded. A fuse had also blown in the charger. Hmmm, must be blow a fuse day in heaven. I'll pick up fuses later when I go out.

Nancy, my wife had taken our grandson Tre out and Gina had taken my van to work. I was feeling mean and sick I decided to sleep it off after doing the minimum amount of house work that I could get away with. My foot is still sore, swollen and inflamed. I wanted to call someone and ask what's with all this shit that been happening to me. I ran to my second refuge instead, second only to the sacred napping places: the couch and the leather chair that I love so much, the Internet.

I had some ebay business pending and wrote emails reassuring the customers that their orders were shipped the previous day. I'm not knocking them dead on ebay yet but a few bucks here and a few bucks there and everywhere a buck buck. I checked the tuba section. The frenzy to purchase used ebay tubas hadn't started yet, there was still a day or two to go. I searched for one of Duane's (my son) classmates on google, he went into his father's business and plays the tuba for the River City Brass Band here in Pittsburgh, I called and left a message. Finally the nap.

I was awakened by the phone, it was the car dealer, they couldn't get in the car. Huh? The key didn't work, the door key. I said ok, toke note of the time and called my wife to ask if she knew where the spare set was. She called Gina and then called me back, it was around 2:30 - 3:00. "Gina said,' Her door key is on the key ring I gave the dealer and it's been working fine.'" I called the dealer, no answer. I called and called and called. Finally I got through to "Nick," the guy I had been dealing with. I told him the bad news. He said, "No way." I said, "Way" It went on along those lines for a while and then he said he'd look and try the key again. Dead air. Gina came home and in the middle of the explanation to her, Nick came back on the phone. He said they slim jimmed the door and were in. He said something about looking at the lock and figuring why it didn't work. I said, "Don't worry about the lock! Fix the damn car so we can pick it up! You said it would be done today, you're only open until 5:00 and it almost 4:00 now!" He accused me of yelling at him.

The tow truck driver was the culprit that locked the door. Nick suggested I call triple A and yell at them. The bathroom guy was nothing, now I really did want to kill. He said, "I have the parts and I might be able to fix it before 5:00." I said, "If I knew you guys weren't going to even try to start before 3:00 I would never have taken it to you." I reminded him that I had, 2 or 3 weeks ago, just spent $2000.00 bucks there. He then dropped the bombshell that made everything fall into place. He said he was changing the ignition switch mechanism and lock assembly on the steering column. So when he told me he would look at the lock, he meant the ignition switch lock, not the door lock.

He said to leave soon and be here by 5:00 so he wouldn't have to wait around for me when it was his time to go home. My daughter and I left. He showed me a key machine and said there is a chip in the key. The machine should be able to read the key and give him the code for the blank, one of 15 different blanks so he can cut the key, BUT, our key was damaged and the machine couldn't read the code and therefor couldn't tell him what blank to cut. He could do it manually program each one into the machine and see if it was the right one but each key takes 4 minutes for the computer to spit out the information. So that's an hour just tryint to find the blank, then I remembered. Yesterday Gina gave me her key and said look at this, it was bent. It was bend badly, almost 45 degrees bent, I put it in my vise and force it into trueness and also destroyed the chip.

"Are you sure the steering column components are bad," I ask. He was certain, although I didn't think they were, he was the expert, probably at ballooning the bill, but I had all the fight ground out of me by then. "OK." I said, "Monday?" "Yes, Monday," he said. I told him I had felt offended that he accused me of yelling at him, I said, "If you thought that was yelling at you then you've never been properly yelled at." He conceded that he was a little harsh himself but HE didn't like my use of the word kid when describing what I thought he was. "I've got a college education." Then he said he'd try to knock as much off the bill as he could. I thanked him and like two generations of dipshits frustrated at one another we reconciled and bid one another ado.

We came home and ate, Later that evening, Nancy and I went out, refreshed our vows and bought fuses at Radio Shack. I told her I always wanted to open a combination motel / electronics store and call it Radio Shack Up. Maybe someday, I will. Gene

Killing two blog entries with one automatic weapon

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:03:00 +0200

Pre-Halloween, autumn, tuba blog and we have nothing to fear except fear itself but let's act like a buch scared, out of their mind Lemmings anyway,

I have the unmistakable smell of Ginko Balls on my shoes. It's unmistakable only if you don't have dogs that shit in your yard. Ginko smell = dogshit. I once wrote about our Ginko tree in a poem.

Ode to a Ginko

When Ginkoo balls fall

and that fragrance fills the air

Aromatic Autumn

You smell like old underware

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

I just returned from the secondhand store where, wonder upon wonders, they have a beautiful Yamaha Tuba with case. As soon as I sat down I googled it. They have quite a few listed on ebay the most expensive is almost $2500.00 and it isn't as pristine as the one on the shelf above the worn out shoes.

If I remember correctly I bought an accordion on the same premise; that it was worth a whole lot more that I could buy it for. With the accordion I was wrong, I'd have been lucky just to make my money back, let alone turn a profit. So now there's an accordion tucked away in the bowels of my comfy overstuffed basement. I hope some day some offspring's offspring finds it and thinks I knew how to play it.

I did buy a Pharaoh's head gear though, quite becoming on me I think. They also had a Jonny Depp pirate hat that was also quite lovely. It seemed to be woollen or thick felt (is there a difference?) and who wouldn't want that? I may have hit the Halloween mother load, so many colorful head pieces ... Too bad I have only one head.

So I danced and sang King Tut by Steve Martin for a while and then started to feel puny again. This infection in my foot has me in a dithering malaise.

For the ones that read yesterday's, Make a wish Foundation blog and just didn't think it was funny, like my wife who thought it was alarming. I had just watched a Bruce Willis, Die hard, Kill Harder and eat you victims flesh movie and I felt a little jealous that he can shoot down at least 4 helicopters per movie and I have yet to bring down a single one.

So, as Hamlet said, Tu-ba or not Tu-ba, that is the question. Omp Pa Pa, Omp Pa Pa Omp Pa pa.

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

Because, you, dear reader, deserve only the best, and I wish I could give it to you, I thought I'd include a partial blog entry that I was meandering with. I once again attempted to meld scientific principles metaphorically with our current state of affairs. The funny part is, everyone knows what's wrong we just can't sit down and decide how to fix it. So my metaphor involved smacking something, I'm not sure what, with a metaphorical hammer and rebuilding the whole kit and kaboodle. Or maybe I was just showing off ...

Theoretic magnetic regions are randomly distributed within an iron bar, each having their own north and south poles. Strike the iron bar with a sharp blow from a hammer and the theoretical magnetic regions align. You now have a multitude of norths and corresponding souths magnifying the strength of the magnetic field. The bar has become magnetically polarized. Cut the bar in half and you have two bar magnets, cuts those halves in half and you have four bar magnets, You never lose a pole. When one is present the other is present.

You could bend the bar magnet so that the two poles touch and thereby cancel one another out. You could demagnetise the bar with a second sharp blow or you could heat it, Heating the bar magnet permits the magnetic regions to lose their allegiance to one another and go back to random distribution. No one is sure why any of this works the way but it does and current theories explain it rather well. However, a theory is never proof. A theory is an explanation for certain phenomena based on observation, tests, laws and facts. A theory is a weighty thing. It is not a crack pot idea as certain sects would have us believe.

Numerous sharp blows have polarized factions across the country: the birthers, the death panelists, the preemptive war crowd, the gun slingers, the laissez-faire capitalists, the demagogues and the woefully ill informed Fox viewers.

The blow; was it Watergate? Reagan? A Bush under every rock? Vietnam? Or was it that most damaging sharp blow in recent history, 9-11? Whatever it was, or is, these things are the primary factors in our zeitgeist.

Some, simply need to shake the stupidity that holds them in place and almost everyone thinks that by resisting change, change will never come, They're wrong, the change is here and it reflects our efforts to deny it. Rather that a natural outflow of our justice and good will, the change is as twisted as it is convoluted, trying to jam itself into the space allotted for it.

Strike the bar and allow the magnetic regions to become random again. They will eventually align themselves, but maybe, this time, rather that point to war and hate, a new way will appear. Or, are we too steeped in fear to even take the chance?

Steve Martin - King Tut.mp3

If it's not too much to ask ...

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:20:00 +0200

Dial tone, button punching sounds, and then:

Hello, Make a wish Foundation, how may I assist you?

I have a candidate for you, to grant his wish.

(Sotto voice, Doesn't everyone?)

Hello?

Yes I'm sorry you cut out for a second, you were saying something about a child and making an application to grant a wish?

He's not a child.

This is very irregular, who are we talking about?

Me.

And how old are you?

Fifty eight.

I'm sorry sir but the Make a wish Foundation is only for children.

I'm a child at heart.

Yes I'm sure, You have a nice day.

Wait, wait, I'm going to die.

Aren't we all?

But I mean soon.

How soon?

Real soon, the doctor said I'll never make it to seventy.

And you're fifty eight?

Yes.

You have twelve years to go, enjoy what you have. Now I really ...

It's just a small wish. Probably won't cost as much as

sending a kid and his family to Disney world.

Money isn't the issue.

Can I talk to the supervisor?

One moment.

Hello, I have a child here that I believes qualifies for your Make a wish thingie. There must have been a misunderstanding with the first person I spoke to.

Ok, let's start this way ... What is the child's wish?

Oh, it's going to sound silly after all this hub bub.

The wish please?

I want ... .errrrr ... My son wants to shoot down a helicopter with an automatic weapon before he dies.

Click ...

Subliminal positive reinforcement

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:50:00 +0200

Like sand through the hour glass so are the days of our lives,

I went to see the doctor earlier today. My foot is sore and swollen. The malady seems to emanate from, or, as an accompanying symptom to, the icky, ulcerated spot between my toes that won't heal. I automatically thought diabetes. My blood glucose has been elevated over the last several blood tests, plus, I was sick. My temperature was high and I ached. Thoughts of self immolation seemed reasonable.

The doctor was good enough to see me on short notice and even though I wasn't crazy about going, I think I'm in the mid-hundreds of visits, I went to keep the peace and possibly my toes.

Although the doctor is young, he has the aura of a wizened, ancient man of medicine. He is plain speaking and honest to the point that the patients that need sugar coated prognoses, don't care for him. He also listens, and with both ears.

I mentioned the recent swelling of my ankles due directly to my liver disease.

He answered, " The liver makes ______________ (a big worded protein) that circulates through the bloodstream like the Swiffer (I made the Swiffer references up) mopping up the excess fluids present in the tissues. Your second rate, discount liver isn't making enough Swiffers and the fluid accumulates."

At that point I felt impelled to insert my genital edema joke. It wasn't entirely a joke, I once woke up pre-transplant with a swollen penis. Although I would have preferred the fluid to be equally distributed thereby enhancing my manhood, it listed to the right and looked downright bizarre.

We talked liver transplant for a while. I told him I thought that there must be a protocol that keeps doctors from discussing a second transplant because no liver doctor has broached that subject so far. There wasn't any as far as he knew, but he offered me some hope; transplant clinics are sometimes more inclined to do a second transplant on a patient known to follow their instructions rather that wasting a liver on a crap-shoot, bleary eyed, unrepentant alcoholic.

Yes Virginia, fuck up your life and not learn from the fucking up, and there is no Santa Claus or liver transplant for you.

During the course of our conversation, maybe with the big picture in mind, he looked dead at me and said, "You won't live to seventy." Ouch!

You wanna bet? YOU QUACK! I'll show you who's going to live.

Thanks Doc, I needed that! Gene

P.S. According to the two glucose tests given, I'm not diabetic or pre-diabetic. He also ruled out gout. Yea!

Warring Hummels and other non sequiturs

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:39:00 +0200

Ebay goes to war

I've been selling stuff on ebay ... It's neither fun nor rewarding. Some things you have to guess their value, making it a risky endeavour. Don't bother thinking that you can see what comparable items are selling for, of course I do that.

The part I enjoy is taking pictures and describing stuff. I'd like to say about some stuff..."Here's some real crap," for instance, figurines of babies or dogs. What am I doing with that junk anyway? Oh. I like the receiving money part too.

It's all part of my bigger effort to rid my life of unnecessary baggage.. If' I live long enough to completely shed my outer layer of accumulation, I'll considerate my life a life well lived but I'm going up against a long tradition. My mother loved her junk too. She'd sit in her living room, read romance novels and cover everything with a fine patina of nicotine. If you ever have to detoxify similarly covered candy dishes, wall hangings of anything that won't wilt or dissolve, I highly recommend cleaning them in an ammonia solution, Clorox won't touch it.

Some things are useless from the moment they're conciewved. What did George Carlin say? "My shit's stuff while your stuff's shit?" Oh, but I miss the man.

Maybe we could hold proxy wars. Round up the nation's useless Home Interior stuff, Avon stuff, and stuff of no particular distinction, and place them in a battle field. We could make it a patriotic gesture, like giving up rubber and silk during the big one. Then, after every nation is in, have a world wide seek and destroy mission. Whoever suffers the least casualties to their junk wins that round. No Bunker Busters or Nukes, in fact we'd have to mime hand to hand combat like kids playing with action figure.

When it's over, the winner qualifies for preferred treatment from the IMF and the World bank znd Knick Knack production begins anew. We cold have corporate sponsors pay for the mock melees and travel expenses. We could sell commemorative regalia. Entire evens could be televised and the enemy can always shout, "New guy" and redeem himself as a hummel. Gene

Cats

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:18:00 +0200

Barbra Striesand - Memories (Soundtrack from CATS).mp3

If I was a cat everything would be cool, I'd have no worries, no "situations" no money problems, nothing.

Oh, I'd still be vulnerable to disease and other negativities and seeing a large, looming, kick-ass stray cat would probably scare the shit out of me but these are things that I've endured, in one way or another, as a human as well.

The difference is cats never worry themselves sick, oh wait, there are neurotic house cats and if there can be neurotic house cats why shouldn't there be neurotic feral cats too? Imagine a young Woody Allen cat, or a supremely insecure Richard Lewis cat, who, by the way, had a short lived TV sit-com starring Jamie lLee Curtis. The series was ruined, the whole premise destroyed once they had sex. The show was built around the sexual tension existing between the two characters and... but I digress.

Oh the other hand, in the wild could a Woody Allen cat even evolve? There are bound to be aberrations in every species but maybe the duality of a cat neurosis has a survival benefit; who would ever take in an unrepentant killer cat, love and feed it?

It's quite reasonable to assume that the world is filled with Woody Allen cats, cats seeking redemption, for their murderous ways while suffering the guilt of being who they are. Think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where the mild mannered Dr. Jekyll eventually gives way to Mr Hyde's insidious, criminal tendencies. Cats fighting their inner demons without so much as a comfortable philosophy to assuage them.

I don't want to be a cat after all. It wouldn't be cool, I'd have too many worries, and situational problems. As for the money ... Woody Allen and Richard Lewis cats have both done well for themselves and the venerable Mr, Hyde stills kills for the sheer pleasure. Gene

Choir of small insects

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:30:00 +0200

Two black men and a bug man,

It seems that everyone has something to say. People with no more oratory skill, or knowledge than Sarah Palin are given a world stage to pontificate on things far beyond their ken. Worst still, credentials have been replaced by notoriety: *Tom Delay, **Ken Blackwell and ***Alan Keyes come to mind but the choices are endless and the nation's premier nut house (Washington) is rife with choices.

Like a cricket's stridulation we are incessantly beaming our noises into the ether, but, while Crickets have their "ears" located on the knees of their front legs, we have our heads up our asses., probably accounting for the shitty discourse that passes for normal today. And let us not forget that the most beautiful array of Peacock feathers emanate from his anus.

All this is to say that our sometimes beautiful, floral speeches are as much meant to attract as our outraged screeds are to repel. Although we wish words alone could do the trick, it isn't that easy, words, in no way, necessarily define our thoughts or positions.

What does define our ethos, logos and pathos then? Just like momma used to say, "Our actions speak louder than our words." It's our actions that matter, call it what you will, but our refusal to be civil and moral, check that, a refusal to do what's required of us to be upright human beings, we fail to florish, and while branding it as good policy, it is as selfish and thoughtless as it is expedient and in most situations, ruthlessly discharged.

Man's default position is to be always be stuck in a decreasingly spacious box. Some start off in large boxes and some in small ones. To push back has limited value. Like Obama and his people we can hope to not lose more ground, or, like Alexander the Great we can cut the Gordian knot that ties us to our potential fate and in one decisive, bold stroke free ourselves from the bonds that hold us powerless . . Gene

*In 2005, a Texas grand jury indicted DeLay on criminal charges that he had conspired to violate campaign finance laws during that period. DeLay denied the charges and pled not guilty, saying they were politically motivated and the law he was indicted under did not apply until later,

**Ohio voters sued Blackwell on August 31, 2006 in a case called King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell in which individual voters and three voters' rights groups alleged that, in his capacity as Secretary of State, Blackwell "allocated [2004] election resources in a racially discriminatory manner and instituted racially discriminatory procedures for provisional voting, purging voters from the statewide voter registration database, and maintaining the chain of custody of ballots. The complaint alleged that these actions led to the dilution and/or cancellation of plaintiffs' vote due to ballot cancellation and tampering, long poll lines, mechanical difficulties with voting machines, and unclear precinct boundaries." The complaint claims that plaintiffs reasonably feared these problems would recur in the November, 2006, election, and asked the court to appoint a special master to perform Blackwell's election administration duties in that election.

This is the same Ken Blackwell that wrote, criticizing ACORN:

As negotiations over Congress’s emergency rescue bill continued over the weekend, repeated rumors leaked out that the Democrats were trying to funnel money to a hyper-partisan organization involved in criminal voter fraud. I’m speaking of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — known by its acronym, ACORN. Although ACORN was cut from the final legislation, it’s important to understand this organization and its long history with, of all people, Barack Obama. And it’s important to see how partisan this emergency legislation has become.

***Goofy black bastard:

My email to Fred Honsberger

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:27:24 +0200

Fred, Usually I shake off your hate speech and incitements like a dog shaking off fleas, therefore, I don't write or call. That, coupled with the fact that you personally nauseate me with your myopic views and daily status quo diatribes. Why would you want anything to change? You got yours Fred and, to you, that's all that matters.

I took this exception, although you contradicting yourself is the rule rather than the exception, to ask you why violence is just ducky when it suits your agenda but not when it suits others that don't hold your "capitalism at all cost" views.

You battered your guest, the G-20 summit protestor, because he wouldn't denounce violence. I have to ask, what violence have you ever denounced? I can't think of any. You love waterboarding, you think decimating and dislocating hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq was just dandy.You brushed it off as a necessary casualty of war. Iraq was a war of choice Fred and no matter how many times you say it helped keep us safe, you know that's not true. There's big money in fear Fred, ask your Pimps.

I presume you want us in Afghanistan, Iran and possibly Pakistan. If a General somewhere says it's part of our war on terrorism that's good enough for you, you stand at attention and salute Irregardless that you ran and hid under the bed when it came time for you to serve.

So, tell me comrade, what violence have you denounced? I'm all ears. Gene

I get all bleary eyed

noreply@blogspirit.com (Gene) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:27:00 +0200

Death by one thousand cuts,

I'm waiting to hear back from Blogspirit, the host of this blog. I ask them a simple question about how to retrieve my deleted files. They sent me a minimalist reply that contained zero usable information. I think it was seven words long. The last time I checked ( I never really checked) seven words isn't enough wordage to explain how to open a bottle of Ketchup let alone retrieve blog archives.

I sent them a the same question a second time. They told me they had already answered my question, subtext: Are you stupid or what? I wrote them again, the usual disgruntled consumer complaint garboo, only this time I was a bit more aggressive, either answer my question so that I may retrieve my lost blog entries or refund my money. I haven't heard back yet.

So, I'm running on borrowed time using a service that I don't particularly like but having nothing else to replace it with, for now. Did I mention that the blog host, Blogspirit is a French concern? While I admire the French and their unique national characteristics, what other country could make a French movie as well? In the family of nations, they are the intellectual geezers, woman pleasers, and world renown cheesers. But will they refund my dough?

They, the napoleonic blog police, may use this blog as proof that even thought I asked for my money back I continued to use their product, so therefore your honor, "How dissatisfied could he really be?" "Your honor, may I speak in my defense?" Go powder your wigs you flaming French fags. (If I offended: wigs, flames or fags I apologize.)

Maybe I'll get my refund, big deal, 87 dollars, 57 Euros, but my blogs, my beloved blogs who gets them? Are they meant to wander forever like orphaned thoughts in the purgatory of cyberspace? Someday my children, my MP3 files, my youtube videos and my irreverent, desultory ramblings ...we will meet again ... farewell for now and may flights of Angels sing you to your rest. Gene