Vidiot Speak

Why I’m (we’re?) not blogging any more.

2011-11-21T14:04:00.006-05:00

Update: Bill Arnett wanted to share his thoughts on the closing of this blog.

In the words of Joe Hamilton’s wonderful Carol Burnet theme song…

I’m so glad we had this time together,
Just to have a laugh, or sing a song.
Seems we just get started and before you know it
Comes the time we have to say, “So long".

I know we didn’t sing all that many songs, though many an excellent tune was posted by my friend Sailor and I occasionally posted lyrics, both original and parodied from time to time.

As things do in the cosmos in which we reside that Great Wheel of Life has turned yet again, as it did late last year and again mid year. Unfortunately with each new turn the centrifugal force seemed likely to force insurmountable, undesirable changes upon me. I know that they did on Sailor and the Vidiot as well.

These two people have been a pivotable force in my life. I met Sailor on a different website and when I grew weary of the bickering and the troglodytes there I asked Sailor if I might try my hand blogging for this site. After checking with his partners here he gave me a warm welcome and I immediately felt I had a new family, one that did not judge me nor censor me nor ever do anything but offer me their wholehearted support and the friendship, camaraderie, respect, and love that is often found when least expected, but needed the most.

The Vidiot is one of the most fascinating people I “know,” and she never ceases to surprise and amaze me with her style, wit, and intelligence. Her take on too many issues to count were so close to those beliefs I hold that she often addressed an issue before me and left me unable to add anything!

As to Sailor the bond we had already formed on that other site became cast in stone, irrefutable; I have a new brother from a different mother. Stay in touch my friend. I’m still hoping you can take some vacation time and come out and stay awhile.

I did then, at the beginning so long ago, and do now live trapped in a web of never-ending pain and that pain, combined with the obvious inequities now institutionalized in our government fueled a hatred that eventually threatened to consume me entirely, so I stepped back, reassessed, fought through the influence of the many medications I must take, and decided that for the sake of my mind and self-identity I must renounce the hatred building within me or lose my identity completely. I have never before been a man that hated; I dedicated my life to public service, as I saw it, first in the military, then by hunting bail skips professionally for fifteen, returning thousands of accused felons and misdemeanants to court or custody.

Then I got clobbered with two Agent Orange cancers from my service in Vietnam. I don’t have the heart to recount the travail of those rampaging sicknesses that nearly killed me and left me with neurological damage which means massive pain 24/7/365.

I did also recount much of the story of my Warrior Woman, with whom I fell in love at first site and within the first five minutes of meeting her I told her that she would be mine…oh, yes, she would be mine.

It’s almost 39 years later now and oh, yes she is and will always be mine. True love is an amazing gift; it uplifts you, centers you, shows you the joy of life, and yet somehow keeps you grounded in reality at the same time.

This, probably more than anything else, brought me back from the precipice over which hatred was threatening to drag me. I am grateful for that, but it took the fire out of my writing and I have become more consumed by further major upcoming surgeries that I know worry my Warrior Woman and our wonderful son (who will be getting his BA in psychology next spring) more than they will say. As “they” say, one day at a time.

When I get out from under these new health difficulties and if the blog should happen to still be here and I can ever figure how to log back in directly (the Vidiot is being courteous and sweet enough to post this for me) perhaps I’ll be able to return for second go round.

Thank you, Sailor. Thank you, Vidiot. We’ve had much fun together and I love you both. Let’s get together and do this again sometime soon, eh?

And a special thanks, too, to all our readers with a special farewell to DanD, which whom I have gone round and round with, but always with a measure of civility and good humor.

Farewell for now…my friends.

Bill

I haven’t posted since August and I haven’t been back to even check to see if the guys have posted anything. Mostly, because I didn’t want to see that they weren’t as well. It’s the end of an era, at least for me. I’ve been at this since 9/11, the Sailor has been with me almost from the very beginning and has been an amazing blog partner in every way. And Bill was a welcome addition and became a new family member that we fretted over and from whom we accepted wise advice.

Personally, I’ve lost the steam to blog. For The Sailor, he feels like his “sense of outrage became dulled and it started to seem like 'same shit, different day'.” He also pointed out that when “you go read through our archives, we were covering the same issues we started with, it seemed nothing had changed.”

You’d think that with the OWS movement, I’d have even more steam, but no. I don’t live in NYC anymore, (I really really REALLY wish this had all happened while I was still there though.) and my life has gone off onto a different road. I’ve come to realize a few things about blogging, but mostly, it started to feel like I was spitting into the wind. I hadn’t even wanted to address it, or make a last post, until I read this on Dr. James Petras’s website that so perfectly summed up how I felt:

To address an active assembled public meeting, to formulate ideas, programs and propose programs and strategies through political action defines the role of the public intellectual. To sit at a desk in an office, in splendid isolation, sending out five manifestos per minute defines a “desktop militant”. It is a form pseudo-militancy that isolates the word from the deed. Desktop “militancy” is an act of verbal inaction, of inconsequential “activism”, a make-believe revolution of the mind. The exchange of internet communications becomes a political act when it engages in public social movements that challenge power. By necessity that involves risks for the public intellectual: of police assaults in public spaces and economic reprisals in the private sphere. The desktop “activists” risk nothing and accomplish little. The public intellectual links the private discontents of individuals to the social activism of the collectivity. The academic critic comes to a site of action, speaks and returns to their academic office. The public intellectual speaks and sustains a long-term political educational commitment with the social opposition in the public sphere via the internet and in face to face daily encounters.

I no longer want to be a desktop militant. I’m tired of feeling like I’m contributing and knowing, deep down, that I am not. The blog was necessary for me to get to this point. I am now going to take everything I’ve learned over the years and focus on something more productive. (Hint: I’ve started writing Chapter five) Once that is accomplished, I will be back, only within a different forum.

My days as a “pseudo militant” are over.

Huppy the Anarchist lives!

Why can't they just be straight up with us?

2011-08-20T13:55:00.004-04:00

So, I'm surfing around, and I find a youtube that shows that the rain this AM here in St. Louis was hotter than Hades, radioactively speaking.

ALERT!!! 178 X Background Radiation in Saint Louis Rain

STAY OUT OF THE RAIN!

This data may be indicative of a RECENT SIGNIFICANT radiological event in Fukushima.

The reading was taken at approximately 10:20am on 8/20/11 in Saint Louis Missouri from a vehicle that had driven approximately 4 miles through the trailing edges of a thunderstorm.

The sample returned a reading of 1.786 mR/hr, which equates to ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT times greater than normal background radiation. This reading is almost 3 times greater than are previous high reading of 62x background radiation.

And what does that mean? Well, I'm not entirely sure, but it does SOUND bad. Having worked in a lab that used a lot of radiation, whenever the geiger counter sounded like that, we panicked.

I found an explanation somewhere else that may or may not be correct. I'm hoping it's wrong.

2,400CPM = 1 mR/hr
1.78 mR/hr * 2400 CPM = 4272 CPM

so that would be about 4272 CPM (Counts Per minute)

anything over 100 CPM is considered Alert Level

Now, it could've been cumulative. Who knows. But jeebus. Why does the news totally not cover this? Don't they give a damn? They live here too! When I go to the EPA website, there are huge gaps in the data and the spikes are unexplained. There's no context. I don't know if I should be frightened or terrified.

Like, here's a scary data point for St. Louis:

2011-08-16 12:57:10 132.0000 CPM

Now, keep in mind, anything over 100 is bad. And wouldn't you know it, the data stops on the 17th which means there will probably be no reading for today. The thing always goes down near a storm.

When you listen to the news, there's nada. When you read the news, nada. Nada, nada, nada. The nada is deafening. Obviously, there's something more going on in Japan for this new wave of radiation to be hitting us. But I guess they want us to be concerned with who Perry slept with instead.

Obviously, we're just cannon fodder, or lab rats.

I wanna go back to Peru.

Now!

If you wanna barf

2011-08-19T22:25:00.002-04:00

Watch this:

Paul Gunter, Beyond Nuclear joins Thom Hartmann. Meanwhile, Japan is not out of the danger zone...in fact the nuclear crisis is getting worse and worse! We've recently learned from Japan that the amount of radiation released was more than 20 times that from the Hiroshima bomb, and now it looks they may be experiencing the early stages of a total China Syndrome meltdown. And is the United States in danger too?

We're still spiking here in in St. Louis. Teen Vidiot still won't believe me when I say the rain his hot. It was nice being in S. America where I knew the radiation hadn't spread in mass quantities yet.

Yet.

Keep tabs on what's going on near where you live here.

Aeeya! This crap makes me nuts!

2011-08-18T18:29:00.001-04:00

Excerpt: ThinkProgress has found that a Goldman Sachs vice president changed his name, then quietly went to work for Issa to coordinate his effort to thwart regulations that affect Goldman Sachs’ bottom line.

Does anybody care?

Does anybody see

what I see?

Tobacco Companies Suck

2011-08-17T10:52:00.003-04:00

Because Heaven forbid that anybody who smokes should be reminded of what smoking actually does to a human body.

Four tobacco companies filed a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over what they say are unconstitutional requirements for warning labels on US cigarette packaging.

I'll tell you right now, the warning labels on the cigarettes in South America are far more explicit. In fact, the labels are so large, they nearly obstruct the brand name of whatever cigarette pack you buy AND they're so graphic, they'll turn your stomach. One pack I saw had an emaciated comatose cancer patient, all yellow skinned and dead looking with a ton of tubes sticking out of his body. Jeebus.

The companies only put up a stink here because they can. The US government will always be railroaded by corporate interests.

I'm Baaaack.

2011-08-16T15:39:00.004-04:00

Actually, I've been back for a few weeks, but I had no idea how many i's needed dotting and t's needed crossing after such a long trip. All sorts of things were spiraling out of control, including my credit rating for some odd reason. All of my bills were automatically paid and I'm not overdue on anything. Yet, my credit rating is in the crapper. Once I know why, you'll know why because I suspect it's something so ridiculous it's laughable.

The trip itself was pretty amazing. What we did wasn't for everybody though. We spent one month in Quito, Ecuador studying Spanish. We rented an apartment so I got to actually buy the food I've only ever drooled over in the mercados in Latin America. Dr. Vidiot's Spanish really improved, my Spanish only got a little better. But, in my defense, I only had half the hours a day he did. After Ecuador, we made our way south to Cusco, Peru. Yes, I saw Machu Picchu and boy was it something. And we spent a night with an indigenous family on one of the islands of Lake Titicaca. We stayed in hostels for the most part and though the hot water wasn't always reliable (or even existent) it was all pretty cheap. Two months is a long time to be away though and we really missed our dog.

While there, I ended up sending reports every three or four days to family and friends so they wouldn't worry about us. (Close to half of them were worried we'd be kidnapped. I honestly don't know why. We're just not that interesting.) The reports ended up being pretty lengthy and not half bad to read so I'm going to be self publishing them at some point, just as soon as I can decide if I want to illustrate it with with photos or drawings.

Politically, back here in the States, I didn't miss much. I mean, the whole debt ceiling thing was going on and I guess I missed Wiener's wiener. Both issues were ridiculous. Whatever was decided about the debt ceiling was a done deal way before it entered the public discourse and well, a wiener is a wiener. I couldn't be bothered with any of it.

Of course, I returned to the launching of the Republican primary debacle, otherwise known as the "Ignore Ron Paul" road show. WTF is up with that? Jon Stewart's "Ron Paul is the 13th floor of Republican politics" really says it all.

I shall resume some semblance of regular posting. It seems my blogmates have had busy summers as well.

It's good to be back... sorta.

Getting settled has been almost as much fun as watching the republican teabaggers going thru…

2011-07-06T11:19:00.006-04:00

…Conniption fits with everyone in the party declaring their candidacy except the janitors at the respective campaign headquarters…but I hear they will be declaring before November.

One of the latest to declare is Thaddeus McCotter, a representative of Michigan, that car making state. (I’m not being insulting or facetious here, I like the cars from Michigan.) For the life of me I could not remember ever even hearing of this guy before but he did use all the right buzzwords to satisfy the republican teabaggers.

But really, can you just hear him being announced at public or private events: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Thaddeus McCotter. It’d be like Back to the Future ‘cept instead of going back to 1955 McCotter-McFly would be going back to 1855 or 1755 or anywhere in between.

One thing though, with a name like that growing up must have been a bitch, what with all the teasing from children with names like Peggy Sue or Jim Bob and all those other common American names.

One position he holds is bound to endear him to all lovers of conflict and that is obstinate refusal to allow a Palestinian State.

It is apparently with a great deal of pride that he introduced a resolution in the House, H.R.2261, last month to the effect of:

McCotter Files Legislation re U.N. Acknowledgment of Palestinian “Statehood” 06/22/2011

In response to the Palestinian Authority’s lobbying of United Nations Assembly members to legitimize its claim to international status as a "state," U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter (MI) has introduced H.R.2261, to withhold United States contributions to the United Nations or a United Nations agency if the United Nations or such agency supports the recognition of an independent Palestinian “state.”

How typically republican teabagger can you get? Israel has been ignoring UN Resolution 242, which required Israel to return to within its previous borders and allow everyone else to return to their homelands within the formerly drawn borders since 1967, yet the Palestinians are, in McCotter’s opinion, so unworthy of statehood, much less the return of all the farmland seized or returning the Golan Heights to Syria, that he would use that as a pretext to withhold all American contributions to the UN. As if we pay them anyway…well…from time to time we make payments.

Oh, well, this is standard operating procedure for republican teabaggers.

Hey, I just now remembered that Thaddeus McCotter is a mythical creature who lives in Wonderland where, disguised as a rabbit, he runs around looking at his timepiece exclaiming, “I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!” Why he is running no one knows although speculation has it that he is married to the Red Queen. He, the Red Queen, had no comment.

And as to getting settled in at our new house things are going swimmingly. I’d forgotten the convenience and comfort offered by central heating and air conditioning. This is the first summer in 16 years that I am not suffering extra-terrible chronic pain from the inevitable temperature swings that light up my pain centers like a pin ball machine. Instead I have just my ordinary terrible chronic pain but all-in-all the difference is significantly better.

I also have a room all my own where I can place my 2,500+ DVD collection and I can display on the walls of the room several dozens of my 250+ knives from my knife collection. Years ago (it seems like another lifetime) I had over 500+ knives in my collection (I was making real money then) and it pained me to no end when I got hit with my cancers, couldn’t work, and had to watch them go out my door for pennies on the dollar; but hey, ya do what ya gotta do.

I love limited edition knives, especially those made by Böker in Solingen, Germany. Some of their damascus steel knives are beautiful beyond my ability describe and are made with some very special military grade steels from WWII Leopard Tank barrels, Mauser machine guns that fired 1800 rounds per minute, and the armor plating from the Tirpitz, a battleship second in size only to the Bismarck, that was sunken in the fjords of Norway. All of these are very limited editions of 250, 500, or 1000 made for worldwide distribution.

I have a real predilection for Bowie knives and daggers and I have a wonderful selection of these from around the world. Spain, Germany, Norway, Russia, Sweden, South Africa, Australia, Japan, Argentina, China and American made; all fabulous examples of fine craftsmanship and, most being handmade, no two can ever be identical.

And I can display them as I wish! My Warrior Woman did allow me to hang two special limited edition swords and one elegant display of fully functional traditional katana, wakizashi, and tanto in the living room only because they are so gorgeous they enhance the decoration of the room. But my room is ALL mine and I put up a few knives a day so I don’t overtax myself. I’m in no hurry since we own the joint.

Since the house already had a very fine alarm system I had my “office” heavily protected with heat, motion, glass breakage, door sensors and few specialty devices I won’t describe here. (I still keep tabs on Tom Cruise though.)

So forgive me but I must return to traveling through time and space until I figure out where I am today.

Ciao, Bella ámi.

I wish I had seen this movie, yet another based upon a story by…

2011-06-22T13:14:00.006-04:00

…Philip K Dick, on the giant screen of a theatre. The movie is titled "The Adjustment Bureau" and stars Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Terence Stamp, and a cast of thousands (being shot in New York perforce means a cast of thousands, if not millions) and it surprised me as no other movie has in a long, long time.

Both the trailers and previews seem designed to lead you to the belief that this movie is naught but another Matt Damon action-filled, special effects laden tour de force and I guess by some measures it is. But if that should be all that you draw from this well-told and beautifully shot film I confess that it would somehow sadden me that you missed what I believe to be the point.

This is the most riveting love story of the triumph of love over the circumstances of Man, even if those circumstances be guided by an unseen hand, that it has been my pleasure to watch in many a year. I sincerely hope that those powers that decide which films come to be or not will look upon this film as what movies can bring to its viewers and how our lives can be enriched in the short time during which we experience such a treat.

Call me a hopeless romantic, I've been called much worse, but it brought to mind my true story of the trials and tribulations and suffering and longing and heartfelt agony through which I lived while my Warrior Woman and I were apart for the two years it took for me to obtain the Fiance's Visa by which she was able to rejoin me and we were able to continue the Great Journey Through Life we had begun on the Philippine Island of Luzon. Oh, how we suffered as the world it seemed kept us apart.

During those two years I learned it is indeed possible to survive on Instant Breakfasts, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the rare treat of a McDonald's hamburger or, my god!, a minuscule sirloin steak; leading a life of complete solitude outside of my work setting as I harbored no desire to surround myself with people whom I recognized would leave my life as leaves from the trees of fall.

I also experienced the heartache meted out to me by the government I had served with honor and a country I loved and truly believed welcomed citizens from another land to this great Melting Pot until I spent those two years banging my head up against one obstacle after another as I wrote my congressman, my senators, the members of the Armed Forces Committees in both houses of congress, the State Department and, naively, the President of the United States to get the help I needed to be with my sweetheart. The only real help I received was from the military liaison in the offices of former congressman John Moss, who has a Federal Building bearing his name on the Capitol Mall in Sacramento, California.

Like Matt Damon's character in the movie each contact I made, every door I opened, only sank me deeper into the labyrinths of the government that controlled this part of my fate until one day some jackass in the State Department fucked up and actually told me the truth.

I had called this insipid bureaucrat to relate that a captain with whom I had worked had applied for and received a Fiance's Visa and was happily wed to his German bride in under ninety days. I demanded to know what the difference was between his case and mine and why I had been forced to wait for almost two years.

"Well," the jerkoff said, "Germany is a much more sophisticated, wealthy country with more highly educated citizens on average than the Philippines so the captain's fiance is less likely to become a burden to our welfare systems."

My heart broke, and as it began to sink to the floor and through it to places unknown I got mad. Madder than ever before in my life. Rabid mad, killing mad. So mad I was blind with anger, ready to explode, ready to go to Washington, D.C., find that asshole using every iota of the innate skills I possess to find people and beat him to bloody death with my bare hands and a passion to kill I'd never felt before nor since. I feverishly dialed the number to the congressman's military liaison and still suffused with rage I told him what the ass at the State Department had said and screamed in his ear that my fiance and I were being discriminated against not because of who we actually were but for fact that my fiancee was from a poor country! I screamed, I ranted, I hurled more impersonal invective, raged to the skies, and cried my grief at the inequity of it all to that poor man than I ever had before.

Bless that man whose name I am chagrined to admit I have forgotten; not a single word of reproach passed his lips, never did he raise his voice nor try to stem the flood of the words of pain I howled. No, he listened. He listened and then told me in a voice so gentle and low and reassuring that finally, yes finally, I had gotten the break I had sought so long. That jackass at the State Department who spilled the truth had provided all the ammunition that the liaison needed to carry the matter directly to the congressman and to get results.

And get results he did. Within three weeks my Warrior Woman had the much prayed for visa; two months later (there is a separate story as to why it took that long) my honey and I were reunited, and within the month, wed.

Which brings me back to why I wish I had first seen this movie in a theatre. Because there, in the dark lit only by the passing images on that huge screen, there would I be sitting holding hands with my beloved wife of thirty-seven years, my Warrior Woman, she who speeds my heart and quickens my breath and shares with me my dream of growing old by each others side, together forever till death do us part, knowing beyond certainty that elsewhere in the cosmos we shall again be reunited for all eternity.

But I digress. If you haven't seen this wonderful film, see it. If you saw it alone see it again with someone you love, someone who swells your heart, makes your pulse race and your heart skip a beat and know that it is not only in the movies that love triumphs over all.

It's a great film.

Ciao, bella ámi.

I ask special dispensation (while the Vidiots are on vacation)…

2011-06-22T12:41:00.003-04:00

…For our readers here to consider, perhaps, my greatest fear. As usual when I am frightened or seek to enlighten I somehow seek solace in the rhymed couplets that still come to me without effort as yet, but which I am perfectly aware will someday desert me and my mind will grow bare. In the meantime I'll just rhyme.

Mother Earth Suffers

I weep for Mother Earth as I watch the pain she suffers.
I weep for Mankind as we refuse to provide the buffers
From climate change brought about by we fools
From pollution and using poisonous fossil fuels.

Mother Earth shudders, She cries out in pain,
She sends tornadoes to kill hidden in the rain.
Elsewhere she gives her mantle a mighty shake
And huge cities can do naught but die in the quake.

She rends her surface beneath the seas
Sending tidal waves to bring death and disease
Destroying coastal cities as Her reminder to Man
That He is merely mortal and destroy Him She can.

And precious She alive for billions of years
Sees Her Death at the hands of Man's fears
That could spark the nuclear holocaust
Bringing Her the deathly illness She fears most.

So now Mother Earth reaches out to Man
To warn Him of the destruction She plans
Sign after sign She sends to signal us
That She can and will end all things if She must.

For She knows that She shall always remain
And can rebuild Herself again and again
As She remakes Herself, strengthens Herself,
And renews Herself to prepare for life's health.

I believe the 2012 elections will be hailed as the greatest tragi-comedy in American history…

2011-06-21T13:54:00.007-04:00

…And writing of the political scene over the seemingly interminable period of time up to the elections will be even easier than time travel. I mean there are what, about two-thousand and three republican candidates for the teabagger-gop-ers to lay waste to before they even get around to lashing out against Obama with the renewed vigor of a rabid squirrel trying to crack his nuts or the nuts of someone else. It is laughable and thoroughly entertaining to see so many clowns taking themselves so seriously as they try to hold two inapposite positions on almost every issue.

I am slightly disappointed, as I'm certain Tina Fey is as well, that Sawah Pawin has not entered the race for the conservative, über righteous religious rightwingers who believe her entirely and without question when she recounts the heroic tale of Paul Revere and his stern, shouted, and megaphoned warnings to the British that they had better not even attempt to take away our arms. Let this edify those insipid liberals who actually believed the contrived claptrap of that flaming liberal Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) when he wrote in part:

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,–
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."
…

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

Now I ask you, who the hell would lend any credence to a twisted tale of a legendary event until it has been subjected to review and correction by a historian of Sawah's standing and obvious all-encompassing knowledge and ability to correctly interpret American History? Just because she might have a different understanding of the words "wadsworth" and "longfellow" doesn't mean that she can't shoot wolves, foxes, and small harmless creatures from the comfort of a low and slow flying aircraft using the high powered rifles that Paul Revere warned the British we would not relinquish until the very last liberal was dead.

It is regrettable that old Huckabee and his revisionist comedic rewriting of history to reveal Ronnie Raygun as the true pioneer that discovered America, settled it, expanded it, and wiped out most of the trespassing indigenous populations of Native Americans unable to provide birth certificates and thus prove themselves citizens and landowners won't be running for the nomination. The sheer heroism of Reagan is certain to be revered in comic books everywhere since that medium, also referred to as graphic novels, is the chosen means by which Huckabee has chosen to educate our children, the handicapped, the ill, the infirm, the elderly, and the homeless who perpetuate those lifestyles out of laziness and the desire for America to be a welfare state. Yes sir, he will soon disabuse all the unfortunate and persons in need of the notion that Jesus would do anything whatever to alleviate their plight and aid them in rising out of poverty and into the now perilously-hanging-on-by-the-skin-of-their-teeth "middle class" while simultaneously espousing the destructive policies that are and will continue to ravage that very same middle class.

See what I mean when I say republican teabagger-gop-ers are fully able to hold two inapposite positions at the same time?

And speaking of time, I'm going time traveling for a while now so I'll undoubtedly see you before you see me again.

Ciao, bella ámi.

QUERY: What kind of statement or comment does it make regarding Dylan Ratigan in view of the fact that the theme music for his show is a short track of Uriah Heep's 1972 song Easy Living? He may be living easy but the reality that the majority of his viewers probably aren't just strikes me as ironic. Really, moog synthesizers playing the intro to a serious news program?

I am very much enjoying my newfound ability to travel through time…

2011-06-20T19:23:00.007-04:00

…I find it to be a rather interesting phenomenon. I really had not considered the consequences and not unpleasant side effects of time travel until just the last few days; or where they really the last few days or the first few days or the middle few days? My inquiring mind does not know!

I ask myself this piercing, penetrating, pertinent, probing and possibly perfectly pure philosophic quiry as a result of scrolling down the page after having posted a couple of new musings where, to my surprise, I found that the last postings I made were actually in May of this year. Once on the 3rd [my birthday] and again on the 6th [3 millennia after my birthday] leading to the inescapable conclusion that I am, indeed, a time traveler. Some more skeptical people might allege that it is merely the function of huge amounts of various medications combined with the fact that being 100% disabled does make it impossible for me to work and therefore I have no reason to be cognizant of dates, months, years, or time and my place within it as all that is irrelevant to me. Balderdash!

I think it's great being lost in time and space. Parking is plentiful, crowds are minimal, shopping a thousand years at a time allows me to take advantage of all those sales others may miss, and this expanded timeframe means I will survive to the ripe old age of five or six hundred thousand years. What could possible be better than that? [Only my Warrior Woman, only my Warrior Woman.] [I am using these different brackets for sotto voce notations as I finally learned to speak (parenthetically) only to find that no one could hear me. No wonder it's a dead language; it wasn't even used on the tablets of the Ten Commandments, not even the Charlton Heston version!]

One curiously curious curiosity is that the physical anomalies that led me to this state of ethereal being have resulted in a conditioned response to stress and pain that partly eludes the negative feedback loop, that mean futhermucking Mobias Strip of ever escalating agony and despair. Seemingly my "other" mate for life I needed a brief respite, one I found as I allowed my mind to enjoy the time traveling and learned to enjoy this absence of time from my life. It is actually kind of cool.

I most enjoy the return "trips" through the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties and then skipping over the Nineties and the 00 [double oughts], the years when never-ending pain consumed every bit of sanity I thought I had.

So, as Sawah Pawin would say, "You betcha!…" it's better to be a time traveler any and every day of the week.

I guess I have always possessed this hidden talent as many of my predictions made as off-the-cuff remarks came to be as inexorably as the travel through time itself, especially those made after the election of gwb. The housing market crash, huge corporations claiming poverty and a need for help despite record profits and growth, that the real damage done this country by gwb wouldn't be known until he had been out of office for two years and the bodies had finally floated to the top! It's true! What a hoot! Any other writer here at VidiotSpeak has read some of my statements and predictions that came to fruition, so time travel is really a gas.

I encourage all our readers to become time traveling writers writing about their ~~predilections~~…predictions when some of them prove to be true.

Lately I've taken to much chuckling and large grins as we watch what I believe is the beginning of the end of the republican party. Grover Norquist out of fashion! No longer a power player in the new amalgam of the GOP and the teabagger party. I laugh and laugh now at the shocking number of rethuglicans violating Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans, a mantra no longer sung in four part harmony accompanied by John Williams and the London Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra as the teabaggers drag the GOP so far to the right that even the Elders of the party recognize that they are "going too goddamned far" trying to yet again practice Reaganomics, the failed financial model that holds, "If you give the rich tax breaks they will create more jobs…" without qualifying it as, "…but the jobs will be overseas as the rich take their money, factories, and jobs overseas so they can find labor for a dollar-tewnty-two-ninety-five a day, not have to give them healthcare, where there is no OSHA to prevent a corporation from demanding twenty hour-long workdays in deplorable and unsafe conditions and create a permanent lower class here in America as we turn it into a 'service' nation instead of the monster manufacturing country it used to be." Now we're a third rate banana republic without the bananas.

It is only through the wonder of time travel that I was able to type the above paragraph. Now I'm gonna go back a few hours today and catch Judge Judy. Time travel! Love it!

Robin Williams once said, "Remember…butterflies have wings because they take themselves lightly." I had begun to take the world too seriously, our political system was making me want to puke, so I decided to take myself lightly and really learn to enjoy living outside time as I formerly was prisoner to an artificial reality imposed upon me from without. I like the reality of time-travel as I see and experience it; selfish though it certainly be I'm havin' too much fun to go back and this construct suits me just fine.

Ciao, bella ámi!

I don't know how many readers might remember…

2011-06-19T12:13:00.006-04:00

…the Vidiot and Dr Vidiot's last amazing but bizarre assignment…uh…vacation!…and their daring exploits crossing the then congealed-and-solidified-oil spill spilt in the Gulf of Mexico, which was recounted in some detail by this agent. (Any readers that missed this fascinating tale of their exploits may still enjoy it by searching the archives in, if memory serves, July 2010.) [Actually my memory did not serve, it never even took the order. I had to search feverishly for the search box so I could further search for the material for which I was searching. Got kinda hairy there for a few minutes, or hours, or days. I don't really know as I seem to have lost my ability to be aware of where I am in time and space, but as I do not recall having seen the sunset or sunrise I presume it is still the same day on which I began this post. Bill]

Anyway, this year the Vidiot and Dr Vidiot have really outdone themselves in exciting new adventures, surviving a perilous journey from the civilization of New York to the hinterlands of Midwest America where they have quietly carried on their duties as all good super spies and extraordinary citizens do. It seems that the NY subway tunnel system lacked sufficient space for the installing and concealing of the huge banks of Cray supercomputers and the Apple iPads necessary to fulfill their duties or provide sufficient amusement to keep them entertained in between missions…damn!…VACATIONS!

They now not only have newly dug digs within which to live but to also hide all the vital equipment they need in the miles and miles of freshly excavated tunnels beneath St Louis, with the added advantage of the broadband antennas they surreptitiously installed within and outside of the St Louis Arch of Fame and Renown using a top secret method allowing them to "paint" the antennas upon the arch to keep them invisible and undetectable by any method known or unknown or known to be unknown to Man.

It is through this massive antenna that I am able to monitor and report on their highly confidential communications with the nations top leaders regarding Dr Vidiot's discovery of a technique to force dormant volcanoes to violently erupt after centuries of inactivity which can only be described with a mix of Mandarin Chinese, ancient Mayan, and those little comic cartoons that used to come in all pieces of Bazooka Bubble gum.

The first test of this technique last year at the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano [Note: this is the decoded name of the volcano. I can't even begin to spell the encoded name as I lack the 372-character/pictographic/hieroglyphic coding/decoding keyboard required to do so. Bill] was such an explosive success that a second test using the Grimsvötn Volcano under the Vatnajokull Glacier [also decoded names, as difficult as that may be to believe. Bill] was triggered last May. The Russian judge of the results rated this successful test a 9.5 while the judge's English, French, and American counterparts all gave the eruption a perfect 10, and the Spanish judge gave it a 10.5 for the extra difficulty of causing an eruption below a glacier.

No one to whom I have spoken has yet given me a satisfactory reason for causing the eruption of long dormant volcanoes. All "they" [Black Ops Agents, CIA Snoops, and their secretaries from whom I get most of my information. Bill] will state for the record is that Dr Vidiot's invention is both vital to national security and certain to be a real crowd pleaser at a World Fair to be hosted at an as yet undisclosed location sometime in the near future. I could not get any kind of firm timeline as apparently the government is having great difficulty evicting former president of vice Dick Cheney from the "undisclosed location" he still considers his home despite finally being out of office and relegated to the Trash Bin of History for his disservice to America and into the Guinness Book of World Records as the Man Most Resembling a Rabid Bulldog.

It just positively gives me shivers down me spine, tingling sensations in my outer extremities, a funny little itch right at the exact spot on the scapula where it is impossible to scratch, and a warm, fuzzy feeling of pride to again be associated with this amazing couple: scions of scientific scientists, super-intelligent giants among mental midgets, diminutive denizens, cognitively challenged citizens, disinterested dopers, and other persons of America laboring to survive while true leaders such as the Vidiots continually expand Man's knowledge base, lend newly coined terms to the lexicon of the languages of Man, and giving of their lives and intellect and pioneer spirit to unselfishly share knowledge only they could discover using their proprietary, patented, protected, and perfected techniques to explain the hitherto unexplainable

Once again, dear reader, the task of keeping you apprised of the trials, tribulations, and just plain fun had when the Vidiots go on…vacation…has devolved to me. It is a sacred duty calling for little extra effort, negligible sacrifices, and only a meager understanding of the scientific principles or moral implications involved so it is the least I can do and as always you can count on me to do the least I can.

To the unordained neophytes, new readers, old readers, young readers, old readers again, and those who have dropped by regularly or irregularly through the years, rest assured that when thoroughly rested I will tirelessly endeavor to keep up with and recount here the true nature of the…vacations…taken by the Vidiots as I, too, envy the high-flying lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. And, frankly, that guy in that beer commercial who's supposedly "the most interesting person alive" is bull do-do, the Vidiots are clearly more interesting, informative, and not encumbered by a scraggly, scruffy grey beard.

So, as always, you'll only hear the truth of their exploits here where I, your intrepid reporter, will write of their adventures with an eye toward the truth [This is the same as an "eye" toward a fast approaching city bus or a derailed train. Bill]

And if you really believe the Vidiots are in parts unknown, south of several borders and struggling to learn Spanish, well, now you know the truth as reported from their temporary headquarters carved in the ice of the Vatnajokull Glacier a safe distance from the volcanic eruption and hot ashes, directly to me through the St Louis Arch Antenna Base, the supercomputers and Ipads below the city there, and left as a message on my telephone.

Yes, we do very important research and development here at VidiotSpeak as well as reporting on political happenings, chicanery, corruption, and the humor that normally accompanies politics, even though it is mostly ironic in nature. Maybe especially when it is ironic. You'll have to be the judge.

There will be further updates as I receive them and I am certain that all our readers are cheering for the Vidiots to once again establish new scientifically and painstakingly accurate measurements of man-made events with no apparent purpose other than blowing shit up. Important and fun work indeed!

Ciao, bella ámi.

I've been away for a while, but I'm back now…

2011-06-18T14:16:00.007-04:00

…After a successful mission requiring every bit of my military training, surreptitious black ops, international intrigue, spy craft, and the application of the full power of my mutant brain to accomplish my sacred task: buying the house next door.

It's a long and frightening story; not for the faint of heart nor those with nervous disorders, hives, scabies, rabies, winkin' blinkin' or nod. I knew that it would be a difficult task given the given propensities of banks that finance mortgages to not finance mortgages, complicated further by the fact that it was a short sale purchase wherein the former owner walked away from a one zillion dollar mortgage, which I picked up for a song and a dance and only a mere one-third of a zillion dollars. I am sworn to secrecy and shall never reveal what song I sang nor the dance I danced.

We were forced to make this move for my enemies, who are legion, had discovered my carefully hidden lair, forcing me to establish a new secret headquarters lair where it would be extremely or impossibly difficult for my enemies to ascertain my whereabouts. It's a clever ploy and although I have never really tried this in the past, my main guard dog, Xanatos (pictured in my responses to comments) assures me that the very fact that it took the neighborhood squirrels almost two days to find the dogs after an exploratory leap to our new fence line bodes well for our future security. The squirrels have been unable to penetrate our comprehensive new alarm system, although I do not know if that is because they are just stupid rats with tails, or that they lack digital dexterity, or that squirrels are genetically inclined to non-curiosity regarding alarm systems.

I am happy to be coming in from the cold, which I can do as the regulatory authorities here at VidiotSpeak never sent me a burn notice meaning that they would completely disavow any knowledge of me and/or my activities, which is for the best as I have strange proclivities better not revealed.

Another factor in my return is receipt through diplomatic channels an "eyes only" missive that the Vidiot, now on foreign assignment, is having difficulty learning the native language in her country of temporary assignment. I wanted to relay to her the sage advice given me once by a language expert at Langley (that's Langley, Minnesota, not Virginia) that you know you are truly grasping a language when you have a dream and everyone in the dream is speaking the subject language.

I remember one of my classmates bursting into class one day excitedly proclaiming that he dreamed the night before and everyone in his dream was speaking French, his assigned language.

The instructor, very excited, asked, "That's great! What were they talking about?"

The enthusiastic young agent replied, "I don't know! I couldn't understand a fucking word they were saying!"

I realize that this may not be the most helpful of information I can relay to the Vidiot and Dr. Vidiot in pursuit of their "vacation," but it has always struck me as amusing at the least and truthful at the most.

I will earnestly attempt to continue regular postings as now that my sacred mission, as described above, is no longer sucking all the oxygen from my brain, the political situation, dire as always but not as sheerly overwhelming to my now healthier mind, and the fact that I will face less boredom prompts me to take this action in the hopes of providing edification, pontification, exacerbation, and, as my son says, masturbation, available to the public at large or alternatively the large population.

I must sign off now, but I do harbor some small hope that any of the deranged readers I may have had will return to visiting this site often. Newly deranged readers are always welcome and will be accorded respect and subjected to my bizarre sense of wit and writing.

Ciao, bella ámi.

Bon Voyage!

2011-05-30T20:22:00.003-04:00

I'm not leaving the blog. BUT, I am leaving the country for a while. Hopefully, I'll be able to post.

It's going to be a helluva trip. I'm terrified and excited, all at the same time. We're going to South America. Dr. Vidiot, after years of working two, sometimes three jobs and going to school full-time, is for the first time ever in his adult life, taking a summer off. A once in a lifetime trip. Of course, the parental units are less than pleased. They have all informed us that should we be kidnapped, there'll be no ransom paid. Oh well.

Stay tuned!

Hello from Tornado Land!

2011-05-25T10:34:00.003-04:00

St. Louis may not have the nightlife and the restaurants that New York does, but hell, nothing beats leaving with the perpetual threat of being sucked up over the rainbow! And according to this one youtube blogger that's been pretty accurate with his predictions, we're gonna get something nasty here in the next 24-48 hours. So better post now while I still can.

Also, sorry for the light posting... again.

What has been occupying my time is getting ready for our summer trip down south, waaaay down south, so Dr. Vidiot can finally get himself fluent in Spanish. Toughest part about that is not the packing or the closing down of the apartment, but finding someone to babysit our dog. Plans A, B and C fell through. I'm now working on D, E and F. E MIGHT come through. I'm hoping it does. Otherwise, no trip.

Another thing that's been occupying my time is I've finally gotten through three chapters of the graphic novel I'm working on. Being unemployed really helps with that. (The employment situation in St. Louis for my line of work is, apparently, dismal.)

Also, Dr. Vidiot's recent research is sucking up some time because I do the transcribing of his interviews. Right now he's researching violence in schools and the kids he interviews mumble and use all sorts of weird slang, not to mention the sort of bizarre southern accent they have.

So, have I been paying attention to politics? Not so much. Had a good laugh over the Dominique Strauss-Kahn nonsense. Honestly, why anyone expects someone in the position of power to behave any other way is beyond me. When you're used to looking at those not in power as things, treating them as such is second nature. James Petras has a good spin on it:

The attempted rape and sexual abuse of an African cleaning woman by the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) embodies, in microcosm, the entire historical and contemporary legacy of colonial neo-colonial relations.

The whole rapture thing kind of cracked me up. I also liked that some folks in Seattle left piles of clothes all over the place to make it look like someone had just been raptured.

I've also been keeping an I eye the Japan radiation thing. The news has been light, making everyone feel like the crisis is over. It's not and it won't be for decades, if that.

And do I care that Arnold has a love child or two or three? Oh hell no.

The next time I post will hopefully be from south of the border. I have my activated and charcoal in one hand and cipro in the other.

Whatever your feelings are for Ron Paul...

2011-05-14T11:33:00.004-04:00

Love him, hate him, whatever, I don't care. What I do care about are gross misrepresentations of anybody's viewpoints.

The media are reporting, after this interview of Ron Paul by Chris Matthews, that Ron Paul wouldn't have voted for the Civil Rights Act. The media narrative that they're trying to construct is that Ron Paul is a stealth (or not so stealth) racist. They know full well that the easiest way to discredit anybody these days is to call them a racists or an anti-Semite or some other sort of bigoted fool.

Paul's real stand on the Civil Rights Act is, judging from what he actually said, that governments are the ones that first implemented policies of segregation and racism. He simply wants to repeal those laws that systematically segregate people on the basis of race, ethnicity, etc., and not codify so-called non-discriminatory laws. He trusts that people will do the right thing and they don't need any laws to tell them to do it. What the media is trying to do is go back in history and say oh well, Ron Paul is advocating a return to our racist past. What Ron Paul is really doing is he's looking towards the future. He knows the world wouldn't return to a racist past.

Bottom line, the laws that the US government has passed in the form of the Civil Rights Act did little to end segregation and discrimination. And here's where it become complicated.

Culturally, the American people are not racist. The few who are are irrelevant because racists are generally ostracized by civil society. What is true is that despite whatever laws the government wants to pass or has passed, American apartheid is still very much alive in the United States. Black and other minority groups remain spatially and geographically isolated and, as most sociologists would agree, hyper-segregated from the rest of US society. Hyper-segregation is a term to describe how black and minority groups are segregated -- not just spatially, but culturally, economically, politically, and socially -- from the dominant society. And don't forget, that it's the American government that created laws that segregated and discriminated against people and what Ron Paul understands is that their laws to end their mistakes did not curtail the problem. It was the American people, not the beloved nation state that ended segregation. It wasn't casting votes that ended it, it was the will of black, white and women revolutionaries that took to the streets and demanded government end their racists and discriminatory ways. It was the people that ended it. Not the government.

Ron Paul gets this and so other critical thinkers like Chomsky and Zinn, et al. They, Chomsky, Paul, et al, advocate the end of government interference, whether it's creating racist laws or laws to ameliorate racist laws, because the American people can handle it from here. The government can go home.

When we look at the so-called objective nature of government policies, the managing of all our human social institutions, we can see, under closer inspection, that government laws are far from neutral and objective. In fact, under the cloak of objectivity, lies overt racism. In our educational policies, we see eurocentric, white-dominant, bourgeoisie values that take precedent over values that exist in the many different heterogenous populations and minority groups in the US. We see white-dominant values in our legal system over the values of our hispanic, black, native american and women groups. We see laws of all kinds situated within all our institutions that instill dominant white values that uphold the dominant class at the expense of all other groups. There is nothing objective or neutral about any of our laws.

These laws support an obvious dominant class in the name of democracy, but democracy is far from what we have. The proof is who commands the dominant institutions and how those laws and ideas and values perpetuated by government economic elites make laws that serve their own interests and legitimate their own power. As its very essence, government cannot pass laws that are against its own self- interest. Its preservation is its first priority; the preservation of the status quo and the preservation of the commanders of the dominant institutions.

Though Ron Paul's ideas are progressive, they're not perfect, but at least they are a start.

But those ideas sure as hell don jibe with the media narrative.

And that's my point. Take him or leave him, I don't care, but at least be honest about what they guy says.

I feel the need for a reawakening to shed this country…

2011-05-06T13:36:00.007-04:00

…of all this hatred, bigotry, homophobia, etc., and that's just in politics. Perhaps I was just lucky in my choice of music during my formative years. I think this song, almost revered as a new national anthem by the people with whom I hung out and who hung onto every word of one of the most socially relevant songs ever, now as then.

Would you knock a man down if you don't like the cut of his clothes
Could you put a man away if you don't want to hear what he knows
Well it's happening right here people dying of fear by the droves
And I know most of you
Either don't believe it's true,
Or else you don't know what to do
Or maybe I'm singing about you,
Who knows.
It's incredibly sick, you can feel it, as across the land it flows
Prejudice is slick when it's a word game, it festers and grows,
Move along quick, it furthers one to have somewhere to go
You can feel it as it's rumblin'
Let emotions keep a tumblin'
Then as cities start to crumblin'
Mostly empty bellies grumblin'
Here we go
People see somebody different fear is the first reaction shown
Then they think they've got him licked the barbaric hunt begins and they move in slow
A human spirit is devoured the remains left to carrion crow
I was told that life is change
And yet history remains,
Does it always stay the same
Do we shrug it off and say
Only God knows
By and by, somebody usually goes down to the ghetto
Try and help but they don't know why folks treat them cold
And the rich keep getting richer and the rest of us just keep getting old.
You see one must have a mission
In order to be a good Christian
If you don't you will be missing
High Mass or the evening show
And the well fed masters reap the harvests of the polluted seeds they've sown,
Smug and self-righteous they bitch about people they owe,
And you can't prove them wrong, they're so God damn sure they know
I have seen these things with my very own eyes and defended my battered soul,
It must be too tough to die,
American propaganda, South African lies
Will not force me to take up arms, that's my enemies' pride,
Ands I won't fight by his rules that's foolishness besides,
His ignorance is gonna do him in and nobody's gonna cry,
Because his children they are growing up
With bigots and their silver cups
They're fed up, they might throw up
On you

Stephen Stills Word Games

This is once again as close a description of what's happening in America as when this song was released (in this case) in Still's Electric/Acoustic Album of 1975.

So I seem to have returned to my senses and lucidness, both of which I celebrate. I really let those assholes get under my skin and I'm more than a bit embarrassed and chagrined that I allowed that to happen.

I have never been a hater, and I renounce all hatred again, now. It is a useless emotion, life-draining, quality of life diminishing, bringer of depression and, altogether the wrong reaction to the clowns, buffoons, and carnival barkers that have succeeded in so embarrassing both the teabaggers and the gop that they now see the beginning of their imminent breakdown and abject failure that will leave them the laughingstocks they deserve to be so seen.

I see it now in the eyes of the MSM talking heads the contempt for people who stalwartly espouse positions that are absurd. As this contempt grows, as the political actions of the teagagging gopers grow evermore ridiculous in their positions, Americans are waking up, really listening, and everyday more of them are beginning to feel the same sense of contempt and ridicule and they, too, finally have to laugh at the sheer silliness of a silly party run by silly people seeking wildly insane expansions of authority that will never take hold in my America.

Ya just have to love your country more than you hate its political rabble and losers, and I do.

Love America. Laugh at the loony teabagging-gop-ers and as catching as laughter and the power of satire continue exposing these pitiable people to the public, the louder and further the laughter spreads, the more people of that ilk will stop exposing themselves to ridicule.

We're winning this one quite handily and I have to admit, I'd be scared shitless to play poker with President Obama; I'd laugh all the way through a game of horseshoes (I'm only guessing that would be a game in which they might excel, shoes, ass, all the same to them!) with any gop candidate.

LOVE AMERICA AND AMERICANS, and save your best belly laughs for people like Ryan, Boehner, Mitchell, Trump,
and teabagger-gop-ers in prticular.

One of the main points upon which Obama is to be congratulated…

2011-05-03T14:08:00.003-04:00

…is his highly dignified decision to NOT place his thumb on his nose, waive his fingers to the crowd, and go, "Neener, neener, neener, your C- Princeton cheerleader can kiss my ass! It takes a real, intelligent man to catch a terrist! Neener, neener, neener!"

That is all.

Ciao, bella ámi.

The apex of cynicism

2011-05-01T23:43:00.005-04:00

When I heard that Osama bin Laden had been killed, I thought the following:

Oh really? You mean they killed a guy who has been dead for nearly 10 years? That's a trick.

and

Why announce it now? Why does it make me so uneasy? What are they prepping us for?

and finally

Is this how they're starting off the election year? This is them coming out of the gate at full speed? Seriously?

So, I have to ask, is there anybody more cynical than I?

Update: They dumped his body into the sea? Really? WTF for? Even Che got multiple pictures take of his body, bits and pieces of him cut off and examined. I mean, hell, that's what's supposed to happen to enemies of the State.

No, no, no. It there wasn't something hinky before, there is certainly something hinky now. I almost feel like like Obama didn't order the dumping of the body but now has to deal with it. Why go on about proof if you dump your proof into the sea? Did somebody just screw Obama?

I dunno.

Listen, all we know is that the US government wants us to think they they killed Osama bin Laden. That's all we know for sure. Everything else is just speculation.

I'm not a birther, but....

2011-04-29T10:06:00.009-04:00

Seriously. Dudes. That 'long-form birth certificate' is one f-cked up document. And here's why.

I do graphic work, specifically, print production. That means that for the last 15 years, I have dealt with the nitty gritty of digital file creation and printing. Hell, I've even had to make fake 'official' documents that look good printed as part of an overall designed page. It's not rocket science. It only takes a few extra tweaks to make something look good to the average eye.

After I heard that folks were saying it was a layered file, I had to see for myself. And lo and behold, it DID have 'layers', or rather, subgroups in a group within a single layer in illustrator. Then I heard the possible explanation for why some random chunks were in the file: that whomever had scanned the damn thing had the OCR (object character recognition) software turned on. And I sort of accepted that initially, but then I thought, wait a minute. If that were the case, wouldn't some of the text be editable? And since it's not, why did they bother to only rasterize the type and not the whole document?

Then I saw this video by another graphics person who noticed things like under the oddball text, there was tone, which there shouldn't have been had there been OCR issues, among other things, some of which I agree with, some I don't

So now I'm trying to wrap my head around how they could've made this document, and here's my theory: it's odd appearance, the page with the herringbone pattern was the paper they printed on from what they want us to think is microfilm. I just don't think it was the original microfilm, or the original microfilm image has been tampered with.

If someone gave me a microfilm image and told me to change a lot of the info, I could do it pretty easily. I'd also make sure to use as much as the original artwork as possible so it all looked the same. Trust me, I could do a MUCH better job than this piece of crap. (Though, maybe mine would be too perfect.)

Anyway, my point is it's absolutely f-cking clumsy. If they wanted to negate the entire controversy, they could've just opened the PDF in photoshop, flattened the file, and re-saved it as a photoshop PDF with layers turned off, then reopened it in Adobe Acrobat and saved it as an acrobat PDF. THEN, it wouldn't have any of the digital anomalies. Hell, they could've just rasterized the whole damn thing in Illustrator and be done with it.

And don't get me started on some of the weird info in the document itself. As has been pointed out by more than a few folks, Kenya wasn't called Kenya until 1963, and his father is categorized as African instead of negro which was probably more the custom in 1961, just to point out a few things. I'm just going to leave the info alone. There's too much this and that out there, I don't feel like verifying any of it.

But all of this is neither here nor there. The REAL question is "WHY THE HELL ARE THEY DOING THIS?" It's obviously a manufactured document. There's not a doubt in my mind they tampered with it and what's worse, they WANT you to know they tampered with it.

But why? Why are they feeding the trolls by even releasing such a thing, unless of course they want to keep the trolls fed and alive, which is obviously the case.

What's going on in the world they don't want us talking about? Oh, I can think of about a dozen things, from the economy to the radiation to the undeclared wars. What is this thing? A huge damned distraction is what this thing is.

What will be the result of all of this? At some point, when it looks like he's going to really go into the crapper because of the birther issue (because this latest release was done in such a way that even folks like myself who considered the birthers ridiculous are now giving the documents a second look and the subject a second thought) he will 'be forced to reveal' some embarrassing truth that he was trying to keep secret that not only proves he's a US citizen through and through, but that the other side is playing 'dirty politics' and can't be trusted to do the right thing ever. (Mike Rivero's theory is that Obama's dad wasn't the Kenyan, but that his mother had an affair with some other guy from Chicago and they covered it up for some reason or other. Which would certainly explain how Obama ended up in Chicago after Hawaii, Indonesia and NYC.)

So there you have it. This whole birth certificate nonsense is just a manufactured distraction so that any focus on the real issues and the real let-downs and disappointments are not fully discussed or acknowledged. And The Donald? Of course he's in on it. I wouldn't be surprised if he were a paid employee of the Obama campaign.

Don't get sucked into this stupidity. Yeah, it's bogus. But there's a reason it's bogus. They WANT it to be bogus. They WANT the controversy. Every second spent discussing the certificate is a second NOT discussing the fact that Obama is warmonger of the highest magnitude.

Update: Let me be clear: I do not necessarily think that the damn thing is a forgery. It's certainly possible that it is. I can see exactly how they did if it IS a forgery. The way that Illustrator is looking at it, I've looked at solid scanned images before and they don't pop up with all those vector boxes. HOWEVER, the point is, again, THEY WANT YOU TO THINK IT'S HINKY. IT'S A DISTRACTION. THAT IS ALL.

Focus people, FOCUS!

Stay tuned for the Donald, crowing like the…

2011-04-27T15:32:00.004-04:00

…Cock of the walk while running around like a chicken with its head cutoff.

For his next ~~trick~~ amusing exposé the Donald will prove that Obama is not black since his highly paid investigators (the ones the Donald claims told him Obama's birth certificate did not exist) have also been unable to ascertain any slightest bit of proof that Obama is, indeed, black.

Said the Donald, "The so-called birth certificate of Obama says he is African, not African-American, and it does not claim that he is black. And if he's not black that means he ripped off both Columbia and Harvard Universities by using affirmative action to obtain his education instead of dropping out of high school like most of the Blacks with whom I get along famously well. The Blacks love me."

An additional investigation commenced by the Donald's team of crack, highly paid detectives (or high detectives paid with crack; I can never keep that straight) is whether Obama is really a male impersonator from Thailand, more commonly know for its female impersonators, because, after all, the President has never publicly exposed his genitalia while the entire world knows what a dick the Donald is.

Stay tuned for these and other interesting developments.

Ciao, bella ámi.

Hoppy Easter!

2011-04-24T00:10:00.000-04:00

He dyed for your sins.

A good profile on Ron Paul

2011-04-22T12:47:00.003-04:00

Something to read that ISN'T related to Fukishima, though, I'm sure some folks in politics think his ideas are downright radioactive.

He is a constant in a changing world, an emissary from an older America. A self-styled constitutional purist, he has for forty years been a voice in the wilderness. But now he has sparked a movement that has put him at the center of the struggle over what kind of country we want to be. But is America ready for his radical vision?

I'm so psycho

2011-04-22T09:31:00.003-04:00

Last night, Teen Vidiot wanted to walk outside, in the rain, to get a coke at the store. Now, I wasn't particularly freaked out because he has a cold and he'd get wet. Or that he had a ton of homework to do and hadn't even started it. (Well, both of those things did freak me out.) BUT, this time, I was more worried about him getting radioactive rain on him. He thinks I'm completely crazy for even thinking about it, let alone worry about it. And maybe I am. I dunno.

For one thing, every time I check EPA's radnet, the monitoring station for St. Louis mysteriously goes down when it rains. Now, knowing there is a ton of crap in the atmosphere, and that precipitation travels down through that atmosphere, makes me think they take it offline so people can't follow anything. Yesterday, we had a bad storm pass through here, and sure enough, damn radnet went offline. When I checked it during the day, when they finally DID update the info, turns out that during the middle of the storm, the beta gross count rate, which is the one you gotta' watch to make sure it doesn't get above 130 cpm, topped out at 150 cpm. That's not good. Here in the midwest, we're usually 20-40 cpm. 150??!! Nice. Granted, it only was high for about 3 hours, but still. Having elevated levels for any length of time, who knows what it's doing. (I know, how can I even trust their readings anyway. I mean, in all likelihood, the readings could be waaaaay higher ALL the time and they just take the meters offline to 're-calibrate' them.)

Add to that the fact that there is practically NO TALK on the MSM about any radioactive fallout and I'm more than a little concerned. (Seriously, not one word.)

Not that we needed any more proof of the fact that MSM is a corporate entity that serves its own interests over those of the public they are supposed to be serving, but seriously, if they really did provide a public service, along with the weather, they'd have "Tonight's radiological forecast" with information about what you need to do to protect yourself. Additionally, they'd be running their own independent testing of the rainwater, tap water and food stuffs and doing in-depth reporting on it.

Obviously, they don't do any of that so I have resorted to watching some guy on youtube who DOES bother, with his limited resources (yet, apparently, unlimited time) to parse and research what little information there is from various sources, in the US and abroad. I mean, he could be a complete nut job who barely knows what the outside world looks like and lives in his mother's basement, but the choices are few for real info.

And lord knows we don't want to leave me to my own imagination. Or, lordy, no.

So, until I hear otherwise, I've upped my vitamin C intake, I dunk my dog's wet paws in baking soda and water before she comes in the house, I scream like a shrill harpy at Dr. and Teen Vidiot, reminding them to take off their wet shoes and not to bring the wet umbrella into the house and I've stopped putting milk in my coffee.

Then again, Dr. Vidiot thinks we've ALWAYS been poisoned, things like this have ALWAYS happened, it's just that now, we have more access to information. He makes a pretty solid argument that things haven't changed all that much since March 11th because dozens, if not hundreds, of March 11th-type events have occurred and we were just never informed.

It's an argument I ignore, mind you. But it's a solid argument.

The burden of light posting is not to be carried solely by you…

2011-04-21T12:14:00.004-04:00

…and I know my postings have been very light lately – but I gots an excuse.

Somewhere here couple of months ago I mentioned that my Warrior Woman and I had been house-hunting and that, through sheer serendipity, the Army Girl next door had received orders for a permanent change of duty assignment which opened the nicest house in the neighborhood for sale.

We put in our application along with the 389,764 pages of supporting documentation and finally, finally the bank approved the deal just yesterday. Hooray!

This does not bode well for me making a substantial increase in posting as we try to put the final wrap around this house and make it ours.

Brand new central heating and a/c - this will be the first summer in more years than I can remember where I will be able to control the ambient temperature and thus not have to suffer the 'temperature swings' that cause me so very much additional pain.

I will be very busy the next couple or three weeks so my posting will again be light again, but this is the first house I've ever bought and everything else must be secondary to that for the time being.

Ciao, bella ámi.

I don't care if Sara Palin's baby is hers or her daughters

2011-04-16T12:43:00.003-04:00

Seriously, it's silliness. However, one my mom's girlfriends thinks she might've figured it all out:

This is what I thought all along! Now I know why Donald Trump is trying to divert our attention by joining the Teabag Birthers to focus attention on Obama. He is, in fact, the father of Trig. This will eventually emerge as the truth, of course. He knocked up Bristol during a Republican retreat when Sarah and most of the gang were at bible study. Trump would have divorced Melania and married Bristol, but he found out the fetus had Downs Syndrome and of course he could never sire a retarded kid. Meanwhile, Sarah realized a kid with Downs Syndrome would be an incredible asset with the Right to Life supporters and she could also talk about her struggle in deciding not to have an abortion. The Donald wanted Bristol to fly to Paris for an abortion, but Sarah nixed that. Bristol was pissed off at Sarah so she deliberately had Levi put a bun in her oven. Anything else you'd like to know?

Best explanation I've heard thus far.

I know, light posting, but there's a reason

2011-04-15T12:39:00.004-04:00

I'm depressed as hell over the Japanese nuclear fallout.

Maybe I shouldn't watch stuff like this.

I'm freaked out about the food. Freaked out about my dog walking in wet grass. Freaked out about shoes in the apartment. And I'm not even freaked out for myself. I'm old (kinda') and whatever the effects on me, I'll probably die of old age first (and old age in my family, on the side I take after, is only in about 20-30 years.) But Dr. Vidiot and his kid? Hell, I don't know what to do for them. The kid thinks I'm nuts for not buying milk until I find a good local producer that DOESN'T grass feed. Neither one of them want to give up meat. And Dr. Vidiot is like, "We can't live our lives like we're in a fallout shelter." Which I know, but my instincts, honed over years of studying biochemistry, doing cancer research using highly radioactive materials, my masters in fluid dynamics, my thorough understanding of just how much the elite who control this world DON'T care about us proles, all of that tells me that what they're telling us is NOT what is really going on. They're not telling us what is really going on because IT'S TOO DAMNED AWFUL TO TELL. If they did, there would be mass rioting.

So, I don't know what to do.

That's why I haven't written.

Sorry if this post depresses anybody. And please feel free to think I'm nuts if that makes you feel better. But I think anyone who doesn't realize that life changed after March 11 is either delusional or retarded.

So all that fuss in Egypt was kabuki theater.

2011-04-11T09:05:00.002-04:00

I mean, what the hell was THAT all about? Nothing has changed.

An Egyptian military court on Monday jailed a blogger for three years for criticising the armed forces, the country's rulers since president Hosni Mubarak's ouster in February, his lawyer told AFP.

Does anyone still believe the teabagger-gop-ers are bargaining in good faith, or can we all agree they are liars?…

2011-04-08T14:15:00.004-04:00

…As I noted in my last post we are looking at a last ditch, desperate attempt by the über-rich to finish rending the fabric of our society and destroy the constitutionally-based government of the United States.

Of course, as a matter for debate and to speak to the truth of the matter, the teabagger-gop-ers claim the mantle of responsibility to govern calls for them to disassemble government, eliminate every safety net Americans have painstakingly created, further siphon off every penny in our treasury with tax breaks for the rich, and complete the demoralization of normally optimistic Americans who have come to accept the to and fro of republican/democratic methods of governing but that are in no way ready for what is coming from the teabagger-gop-ers.

In recognition of the upcoming status of being a white minority, and so fearful of the consequences, these gasping, mouth-breathing, holier-than-thou rogues are attempting to consolidate their control by depriving the middle and lower classes of the ability to even feed their families, pay their bills, get or pay for medicines, shop for goods and services or, for many, the denial of a roof over their head, food in their bellies, and a warm, comfortable, safe place to sleep.

AND THE TEABAGGER-GOP-ERS DON'T CARE! WAKE UP, AMERICA!

First the Teabagger-gop-ers were funny. Then they became a danger to our country. I recognize now they are a dying party and why…

2011-04-05T14:02:00.008-04:00

…and the death of such a mean-spirited, evil party should bring about rejoicing.

The funny thing about it is that nothing need be done by democratic leaders, wiser republicans, independent parties, green parties, or any other party except to acknowledge that when swept up in it's death throes any animal or teabagger-gop-er can be at its most dangerous. Here, to me, is why they are so desperate to enact as many draconian legislative bills as possible:

U.S. Population Projections: 2005–2050
Executive Summary

If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and 82% of the increase will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their U.S.-born descendants, according to new projections developed by the Pew Research Center.

Of the 117 million people added to the population during this period due to the effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves and 50 million will be their U.S.-born children or grandchildren.
Among the other key population projections:

• Nearly one in five Americans (19%) will be an immigrant in 2050, compared with one in eight (12%) in 2005. By 2025, the immigrant, or foreign-born, share of the population will surpass the peak during the last great wave of immigration a century ago.
• The major role of immigration in national growth builds on the pattern of recent decades, during which immigrants and their U.S.-born children and grandchildren accounted for most population increase. Immigration’s importance increased as the average number of births to U.S.-born women dropped sharply before leveling off.
• The Latino population, already the nation’s largest minority group, will triple in size and will account for most of the nation’s population growth from 2005 through 2050. Hispanics will make up 29% of the U.S. population in 2050, compared with 14% in 2005.
• Births in the United States will play a growing role in Hispanic and Asian population growth; as a result, a smaller proportion of both groups will be foreign-born in 2050 than is the case now.
• The non-Hispanic white population will increase more slowly than other racial and ethnic groups; whites will become a minority (47%) by 2050.
• The nation’s elderly population will more than double in size from 2005 through 2050, as the baby-boom generation enters the traditional retirement years. The number of working-age Americans and children will grow more slowly than the elderly population, and will shrink as a share of the total population.

It recently dawned on me that the desperation of the teabagger-gop-er is caused by a sea change in the make-up of our population and that it is one of the reasons that the unreasonable side of the immigration nutsos would like to physically round up illegal aliens for deportation, and insure that their American-born children will be deemed 'anchor babies', no longer citizens by virtue of birth as dictated by our Constitution.

Since it is, literally, only a matter of time before the numbers of old, rich, white men become a smaller and smaller segment of society, they will lose their ability to remain in power as the Latino and Black segments grow in such numbers that it will be virtually impossible for a politician who does not directly advocate policies supported by these new majorities to get elected to office.

The days of the 'good ole boy' back-office brokered power deals will come to an end. Lobbyists, should they wish to survive, will have to start buying politicians and putting them to work for the new constituent voting blocks made up by the changing face of America.

Which speaks to why there is all this hysteria in the teabagger-gop-er parties. I guess they feel that if America doesn't revert to the Dark Ages now it will soon be too late, their influence gone, their money buying them far fewer politicians, and the ability to get any of their desperate, evil legislation passed will expire.

I'm sure the new brothers and sisters of color will love America as much as any other citizens and I welcome them; their love of America will eventually smash the hatred of today and return us to being a kinder, gentler society.

So enjoy the show, watch those death throes, prevent the teabagger-gop-ers from doing as much damage as they can, and hope that the winds of time bring us back our former freedoms, expand on the freedoms we have, and bring back the ideas that made America great; the sweet smell of liberty.

Ciao, bella ámi.

Eerie Kurosawa movie clip.

2011-03-28T12:12:00.000-04:00

He knew.

I've been meaning to post something for a while

2011-03-25T20:28:00.003-04:00

But I can't seem to decide what to be pissed at. There's just too much. I can't narrow my focus. The nuclear meltdown in Japan is just freaking me out. I mean, you know, I know, we ALL know that if plutonium gets into the upper atmosphere, chances are the powers that be won't say word one to us. They'll just let us drop like flies and say "Ooops. Must be a plague or something."

Also, on the environmental front, just because they're not reporting on the BP spill doesn't mean it still isn't FUBAR.

Then there's the new war front in Libya, thanks to our warmonger-in-chief. Who's next on the hit list? Syria?

And don't even get me started on the economy.

And I'm just scratching the surface.

{sigh}

I think I'll just sit here and obsess about how many times I've twisted my ankles on the literally millions of spiky sweetgum tree fruit nuts that are littering the streets around here.

I am well aware that the medications I take can give me a skewed perception…

2011-03-22T15:44:00.004-04:00

…sometimes of what's happening and the interpretation of world and national events, but I truly believe that anyone aware of the teabagger-gop-ers policies, statements, and the actions of legislatures under their control really cannot help but recognize that these evil people not only want to reinstitute slavery in America, they want complete control over women and their bodies - after they have taken away a woman's right to vote and return the status of persons of color to being worth three-fifths of a white man.

They are growing ever more desperate as they, too, realize that the Latino and Black populations are rapidly surpassing the whites, meaning that America will have very different voting block majorities within the next fifteen to twenty years which just scares the bejeezus out of them.

Watch as their desperation grows. It would be comical were it not for the fact that so many millions of people will be made to suffer from their despicable plans and goals.

The rest of the world seems to innately grasp this as they sucker America into one misadventure after another and in accord with the statements of bin Laden that he will bankrupt the West ("I can send a single man to the mountaintop to wave the flag of Al-Qaede and the West will spend billions and billions of dollars lashing out at a non-existant threat." Osama bin Laden)

Precisely why the Muslims will ultimately wipe out America: They are smarter than our leaders, and I mean our leaders from the very top to the very bottom.

This grows ever more plain to me.

From the "Are you F-cking Kidding Me?!" Department

2011-03-21T15:05:00.002-04:00

I mean, this is really nuts.

Minnesota Republicans are pushing legislation that would make it a crime for people on public assistance to have more $20 in cash in their pockets any given month. This represents a change from their initial proposal, which banned them from having any money at all.

[Insert primal scream here.]

You know your economic system sucks

2011-03-21T10:59:00.001-04:00

When things like this are said and nobody bats and eye:

Billionaire investor Warren Buffet said Monday that Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, while tragic, do not change the country’s economic outlook. Indeed, he called the chaos and destruction a “buying opportunity” for those who realize the potential behind catastrophe.

Maddow explains nuclear power

2011-03-19T12:53:00.000-04:00

Really, really clear.

The ten most miserable states of America…

2011-03-18T14:24:00.003-04:00

…and the political party that runs them.

1. West Virginia - Earl Ray Tomblin (D)
2. Kentucky - Steven L. Beshear (D)
3. Mississippi - Haley Reeves Barbour (R)
4. Arkansas - Michael Dale Beebe (D)
5. Alabama - Bob Riley (R)
6. Ohio - John Richard Kasich (R)
7. Delaware - Jack A. Markell (D)
8. Nevada - Brian Edward Sandoval (R)
9. Louisiana - Bobbie Jindahl (R)
10. Michigan - Richard D. "Rick" Snyder (R)

I compiled this list from two sources: one I no longer seem to be able to locate regarding the ten most hurtin' states in America and here, a list of state governors.

So six of the ten most miserable states are under Republican governors. HEY! That gives them a majority in misery.

Way to go teabagging-gop-ers.

Speaking of overreaching governors…

2011-03-17T14:05:00.003-04:00

…it should be perfectly clear that the teabagger-gop-ers have declared war against their constituents, the U.S. Constitution, and that they are seeking dictatorial powers that have never existed in America but that, if they are not slapped down (or into irons), they will so radicalize their base that we will soon have open warfare right here on the streets of this once proud land.

The actions of Michigan and Wisconsin, through their elected officials, are so clearly, blatantly, and patently extra-constitutional that if they are not dealt with harshly and those governors removed from office their cancer will spread from statehouse-to-statehouse until America is torn apart by assholes like these.

They don't want to maintain the status quo, they want slaves, people paid so poorly any semblance of a middle class will disappear, the rich will continue to reap vast fortunes off the backs of the poor, and governors will become the modern day potentates overseeing the continuing transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

Anyone that doesn't see this raw power grab for what it is as dumb as a rock. Maybe dumber.

Maybe every union member and everyone working under contract to Michigan and Wisconsin should come down with a dose of "blue flu" for which their doctors can recommend a week of bed rest and absolutely no stressful work during that period. This has worked wonders for police unions, why not there?

Just how long will it take the asinine governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to get one of their children to read to them…

2011-03-17T13:14:00.004-04:00

…just this one teeny-tiny section of the Constitution that says:

Article 1

Section. 10.

Clause 1: No State shall…pass any… Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts…"

So much for trying to go all Rambo with unions and any other groups of persons the Great Pissant Governors wish to cancel contracts with willy-nilly and silly Chicken Little, "The sky is falling!" method of government.

In regards to being able to appoint anyone the governor pleases to void contracts, and force cities and municipalities into bankruptcy, perhaps they could again beseech their children to read this small explanation from Wikipedia:

United States Bankruptcy Courts are legislative courts which were created under Article I of the Constitution. They function as units of the district courts and have subject-matter jurisdiction over bankruptcy cases. Because the federal district courts have original and exclusive jurisdiction over all cases arising under the bankruptcy code, (see 28 U.S.C. § 1334(a)), bankruptcy cases cannot be filed in state court. Each of the 94 federal judicial districts handles bankruptcy matters. The current system of bankruptcy courts was created by United States Congress in 1979.

The bankruptcy judges in each judicial district in regular active service constitute a "unit" of the applicable United States district court (see 28 U.S.C. § 151). The bankruptcy judge is appointed for a term of 14 years by the United States court of appeals for the circuit in which the applicable district is located (see 28 U.S.C. § 152).

Technically, the United States district courts have subject matter jurisdiction over bankruptcy matters (see 28 U.S.C. § 1334(a)). However, each such district court may, by order, "refer" bankruptcy matters to the bankruptcy court (see 28 U.S.C. § 157(a)). As a practical matter, most district courts have a standing "reference" order to that effect, so that all bankruptcy cases in that district are handled, at least initially, by the bankruptcy court. In unusual circumstances, a district court may in a particular case “withdraw the reference” (i.e., take the case or a particular proceeding within the case away from the bankruptcy court and decide the matter itself) under 28 U.S.C. § 157(d).

The overwhelming majority of all proceedings in bankruptcy are held before a United States bankruptcy judge, whose decision in all matters is final, subject to appeals to the district court. In some judicial circuits, appeals may be taken to a Bankruptcy Appellate Panel ("BAP").

The Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure (FRBP) govern procedure in the U.S. bankruptcy courts.

Decisions of the Bankruptcy Courts are not collected and published in an official reporter produced by the government. Instead, the de facto official source for opinions of the Bankruptcy Courts is West's Bankruptcy Reporter, published privately by Thomson West.

In other words, bankruptcies are heard within the exclusive purview of federal and not state courts.

Golly gee Aunt Whiz, I spent a backbreaking ten minutes to completely blow apart the titular fiefdoms Governor Jerk of Wisconsin and Governor Off of Michigan wish to establish.

Does anyone reading these words TRULY believe that the Federal Courts are going to give up a single iota of their authority based upon the clearly unconstitutional and cartoonish order of overreaching governors?

I think not.

Jimmy Kimmel on his 'harrowing' tsunami experience

2011-03-16T11:30:00.003-04:00

Well, 'harrowing' is too strong a word. How about 'non-existent'. But at least it's funny. He was in Bora Bora when the earthquake hit so he had to deal with a tsunami warning, which apparantly, tsunamis are part of a recurring dream he has.

I knew we'd be fine because I operate under the (logical) presumption that tsunamis never strike while one is talking about them or even soon after. So, to keep us safe, from the moment we touched down in Tahiti, I talked about tsunamis non-stop. At least 25 times over five days (ask Molly, she counted).

Much needed comic relief in all of this.

Unbelievable... or rather, TOO believable.

2011-03-16T10:22:00.003-04:00

Jim Cramer, who has a show on CNBC, which is owned by GE, which is the company that designed the nuke plant that is discombobulating as I type said:

Japan's nuclear plants have fail-safe that make a Chernobyl-like explosion unlikely, Cramer explained. There are multiple safeguards that would prevent an event of that magnitude, he added.

OH, well, that settles it then. I trust him. Why would he lie?

I was thinking...

2011-03-16T10:16:00.002-04:00

Shouldn't the folks in California be concerned about their own earthquake happening in the coming year? If you just look at where the big ones have been -- Chile, New Zealand, and Japan -- traveling around that pacific rim in a clockwise direction, the next logical earthquake should be on the eastern edge of that plate which is all along the Pacific coast.

Of course, if that edge of the plate rocks and rolls, no telling what would happened to the New Madrid. Something like that could wake up a sleeping giant.

Good animation of the Japan earthquakes

2011-03-16T10:11:00.003-04:00

The big one happens at around 1:17.

Pretty scary. In retrospect, there was warning, but not that much.

To donate to the folks in Japan go here.

Corporations can do what they want around here

2011-03-16T10:09:00.003-04:00

Now, lobbyists in Iowa have managed to get a bill to the Iowa House that will, if passed,

...prohibits individuals or groups from “interfering with an animal facility or crop operation.” Such interference, as defined in the bill, would include audio and visual recordings and their distribution. Those found guilty of interference would be prosecuted for an aggravated misdemeanor crime on a first offense and of a class D felony on any subsequent offenses.

In addition, the bill makes it a crime (fraud) for an individual to gain access to an animal facility or crop operation under false pretenses. First offenders would face an aggravated misdemeanor charge and subsequent offenses would garner felony prosecution.

This means that they can do whatever they want to the animals with no fear of reprisals.

Corporations have no morality, hence they should not be treated as persons under the law.

FInally someone exlains the mess in Japan

2011-03-15T11:36:00.002-04:00

And of course, it's from AlJazeera.

Finally, someone in the news says what they mean

2011-03-13T14:02:00.003-04:00

At 37 seconds in, Kudlow reveals the true nature of our economic system:

With regards to Japan's earthquake and the stock market:

"The human toll is greater than the economic toll, and we can all be grateful for that."

As one forum participant said: "The reptilian elite have no compassion for their human cattle."

Not to detract from the severity of the disaster in Japan

2011-03-12T20:39:00.003-05:00

But am I the only one to notice that when they talk about the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and they talk about the reactors, they're referred to as FUK-1 and FUK-2, etc.?

So, apparently, WE'RE FUKKED.

I dunno, has to be a message in there for us somewhere.

Shouldn't we, as a species, be reevaluating our dependence on a technology that can kill vast swathes of people and land in a microsecond if things go terribly wrong? The Germans have started to question it. Shouldn't we?

TENS of thousands of activists have protested against Germany's plans to prolong its dependency on nuclear power, as an explosion at a quake-hit plant in Japan fuelled fears of a meltdown.

This animation put the Japan earthquake into perspective

2011-03-11T15:30:00.003-05:00

Scary, huh? Here's the link to the NOAA Center for Tsunami Research.

A friend of my mother's was in Tokyo at the time:

Wanted to let you all know I'm fine. I was seeing BEAUTY AND THE BEAST ...and at the beginning of BE OUR GUEST the theatre started rocking. At first I thought it was ...the audience rocking along to the tune...nope, it really started to shake....and shake....and shake!! 8.9...wow!

Everyone was evacuated...we waited a bit, went back in....a strong aftershock, we were evacuated again. Show canceled! We were given a paper with a number to call to reschedule...wonder if we'll get refunds?? LOL!

The subways stopped running. So, we were getting food and the presenter just happened to spot us and drove us back to the theater. Traffic was horrific, it took 90 minutes. Our show was canceled tonight and both shows tomorrow (Saturday). He then drove us back to the hotel, traffic still bad...just got up to the room now.

For such a huge event it's amazing how ordered and matter-of-fact the Japanese are. While there was some major devastation, it's surprising that there weren't more catastrophes and buildings damaged.

Now, all I can think about is that I'm now living on top of one of the largest fault lines in this hemisphere.

Yikes.

OK, it's time to come home now!

Random quotations from despicable people…

2011-03-10T10:22:00.004-05:00

…“Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.” Eugene McCarthy (Sounds kinda like Herr Field Marshall General Peter King after smoking paraquat-laden weed, man. That shit will fuck up your head, man, and just looking at him proves it. When ya get a head as misshapen as King's there just ain't no room for brains.

“The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.” Eugene McCarthy. This is the true face of a political party run amok. In the Fifties it was a democratic Senator, but now the entire mantra has shifted to the teabagger-gop-er party.

“It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.” Eugene McCarthy
My, my that boy sure did a lot of talking.

“Dollars and guns are no substitutes for brains and will power”. Dwight Eisenhower, the last great republican politician. I'd bet he's spinning like a top in his grave over the heartbreaking shenanigans of todays politicians.

“You don't lead by hitting people over the head-that's assault, not leadership.” Eisenhower again. Too bad the republican party abandoned all pretense at civility and instead devolved into the teabagger-gop-ers.

“To err is human, to blame it on the other party is politics”. Unknown. Strange how the more different we seem, the more we are all the same.

NOTE: Dads get to brag about their sons, so I unblushingly report that my son received a letter and Certificate placing him on the Dean's List at SFSU. I don't think it means he can take charge of California immediately - I think there's something in the fine print requiring him to give our current governor thirty days notice first. And, by the way, he's not cruising along on a light schedule, he's carrying a full boat + extra courses. I think it would be nearly impossible for me to feel anymore proud than I feel right now

A different time, far from here, a fading memory…

2011-03-08T14:44:00.003-05:00

… of a million people or more at Edwards AFB, California, the Air Force Flight Test Center, a carnival atmosphere filled with every type of media -radio, press, TV- and all the "biggie" newscasting stars of the day.

Virtually endless people and vehicles parked in the desert on the other side of the highway running parallel to the main dry lake bed. Circus time: brightly colored umbrellas, beach chairs, barbecue grills, a tangible hum of humanity all waiting for a single event.

A couple of weeks before the Air Force and the Palmdale crew making the space shuttle had blocked all the highway between Edwards and, with the space shuttle secured safely atop its 747, had rolled it to Edwards foot by foot without incident.

This day was quite special. The 747 had already taken its test flights with the shuttle atop, special covers installed over the engines, all had gone well and they were ready to take the shuttle to altitude, blow the bolts holding it to 747, and see what happened. (There were many betting pools as to what would happen, the most popular that it had the glide path of a crowbar and would crash accordingly.)

In this highly-charged, absolutely electric atmosphere, waiting patiently was me - I had the honor of being the chase vehicle to keep everyone else but the Fire Detail the hell away from the shuttle.

They took off, I waited.

As soon as I was advised by radio that the shuttle was headed down I grabbed my binoculars, followed it down visually, chose the spot from which I would be able to afford greatest security, and watched in total jaw-dropping awe when the shuttle came to rest less that 200 feet away, for all the world looking like some kind of souped-up hotrod. Sitting there it still looked looked like it was doing 300 miles-per-hour.

I have been blessed to have lived in interesting times.

I get so mad

2011-03-08T12:33:00.001-05:00

When I think about all the money wasted on wars and greed. Where's the world promised us by "Star Trek"?

Is it just me or does America appear to be…

2011-03-02T14:17:00.003-05:00

…ass deep in every revolution taking place around the world? The Middle East, Northern Africa, Southern Africa, South America (Our cocaine suppliers), Afghanistan (Our heroin dealers), South Korea, India, Pakistan, China, Russia (nuclear suppliers and the latest source of angst for the fear-mongers) and pretty much anywhere else the shit is flying you will find American troops, knowing it is bullshit, holding their noses and following the vile and repugnant orders issued by the vile and repugnant leaders they must serve.

Somewhere over the last sixty years the asses running our government have failed to lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way and let someone competent take their place.

They (teabagger-gop-ers) speak of the need for a highly educated work force - which they will have to import from China, India, and other countries that REALLY educate their citizens.

They claim to have better health care options - as former Rep. Grayson properly identified it: the republican health plan, first, you get sick, then you die.

They don't even bother to speak of peace. No, they will bankrupt the country for defense spending first.

Now Arizona wants to split into a separate state. I say no, make them their own country subject to visa requirements, trade agreements, ambassadors, and make them deal with the USA strictly as a foreign country and not with the benefit of being the "51st" state as they desire.

They want to break away from the union, LET 'EM, and don't allow them to reenter our union for any reason whatever. Let 'em become a Mexican State, the closest foreign border (I am not being flippant here).

That's just my opinion.

Ciao, bella ámi.

If I were a 20-year old artist

2011-03-01T14:09:00.001-05:00

I'd move to Detroit.

Detroit Lives
Once the fourth-largest metropolis in America—some have called it the Death of the American Dream. Today, the young people of the Motor City are making it their own DIY paradise where rules are second to passion and creativity. They are creating the new Detroit on their own terms, against real adversity. We put our boots on and went exploring.

Why Wisconsin

2011-02-28T19:53:00.003-05:00

The media (I think, because I don't really watch it much) would have you believe that the folks in Wisconsin are battling for more money, those greedy bastard teachers. However, they are not. Maybe you knew that, maybe you didn't. Some folks still don't, so you should send them this guy's explanation of what the loss of collective bargaining really means:

Imagine a local school system. Every year, without any negotiation at all, the school board could make a single take-it or leave-it offer, and could hire replacements for all [who] didn't accept the offer.

Even if the offer is to cut wages by 25 percent.

Then the board could require teachers to attend ten weeks of training every summer, paying the tuition out of their pocket.

The list of possibilities goes on and on. In effect, professional teachers would become WalMart employees.

Living in the Midwest

2011-02-28T10:09:00.006-05:00

It's a huge change from New York City for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is when you're in bed and you hear air sirens, you're supposed to pay attention.

Last night at about 10:30 pm. We're laying there and hear the sirens and were thinking, hmmmm, what's that all about then? Then the sirens stopped. So we thought, meh, it's nothing. Then a few minutes later, more sirens. THAT got us out of bed to turn on the TV and we saw the FOX news station going on about how they were on backup generators and were all hiding out in the broadcast booth. A few touched down just a few miles from here.

The only indicator we had that we were going to be fine was that the dog was just sitting there wondering what all the fuss was about. If she wasn't panicking, I wasn't panicking because dogs know better when something like that is happening.

At least, that's what I told myself.

Tornadoes. Jeebus.

On a lighter note, yesterday was Barkus (Mardi Gras Dog Parade) and we took Lagniappe. We tried to dress her up as flashdance but she refused to wear the legwarmers. We beaded her up instead. She looked pretty, no?

But this guy was my favorite:

"That's right. Take my picture 'cause I look fine. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some bitches waiting for me back at my place. And by 'bitches' I mean 'bitches. Alright."

Libya

2011-02-26T16:08:00.004-05:00

If you want to keep up on with the goings on in Libya (and the Middle East in general), don't forget to check out Juan Cole's blog. Always a good starting point. Here's a great map

from this post

But whatever you think of Muammar Al-Gaddafi, you gotta love his clothes and his body guards

I haven't watched regular news for a while...

2011-02-26T15:53:00.003-05:00

...so I couldn't tell you if their coverage of the Christchurch earthquake is any good or not. I'm suspecting not, but that's my my cynicism.

Anyway, I knew it was bad, but how bad, I did NOT know.

What really gets my goat is the BS coming from the parliamentarians. The city is smashed beyong repair - even the Chamber of Commerce CEO has placed a figure of $20 BILLION on reconstruction,which is simply beyond the capacity of 4 million people to fund. It must be at least 25% of our current GDP. Couple this with the fact that with every earth movement there is going to be further liquifaction, and it makes the whole city an uninsurable risk!

Frankly, I don't give a damn about Charlie Sheen

2011-02-26T13:38:00.003-05:00

Some of what he said was completely loopy, and a lot of what he said was hilarious. But the fact that to punish him, the corporation that is Chuck Lorre canned their multibillion dollar enterprise to punish one, piss-ant, spoiled star is shocking. In one punitive swoop, they put tons of people out of a job.

Thin skinned much?

Wow, talk about a dystopic future

2011-02-26T13:09:00.005-05:00

This is some scary stuff.

As the name implies, Cheetah is designed to be a four-legged robot with a flexible spine and articulated head (and potentially a tail) that runs faster than the fastest human. In addition to raw speed, Cheetah’s makers promise that it will have the agility to make tight turns so that it can “zigzag to chase and evade” and be able to stop on a dime.

The project is being run out of Darpa, which should give one pause. Darpa is the kind of place that would build these things and install brain scanners as part of the standard software:

The Malintent system is in its 'test' stage at the moment, but is said to be able to predict whether or not a person will be threatening on a flight, by looking for non-verbal clues.

Hey, if I thought of it, you KNOW they have.

Like Dr. Vidiot says, at some point, they won't have to build any more jails because all of society will be a jail.

Rolling Stone reveals Jedi mind tricks being used to finance Afghanistan War…

2011-02-24T14:12:00.006-05:00

…and has even gone to the extent of naming names, such as Sen. John McCain (need I say more?), Sen. Joe Lieberman (cain't keep an old, well slavered, warhorse like Smokin' Joe from smokin' 'em up on his submarine port), Sen. Jack Reed (some people just need to retire), Rep. Steve Israel (they take 'em young and dumb, too), Sen. Carl Levin and Admiral Mike Mullen (there's that need to retire thing again), and, last on my list and the only dubious candidate, Sen. Al Franken, the only man in the Senate to have watched all six Star Wars flicks and way too smart to fall for an old Jedi mind trick.

I watched Senator Franken (on a speeded-up tape probably two-three minutes long of a much longer event) where, while joking with and responding to the comments of those close to him, he drew a complete map of the United States of America from memory (I actually frantically dug out a map of the U.S. for comparison. 'Twas perfect as hand drawn can be); one of the single-most amazing thing I ever saw and I would bet hard money that no other member of the legislative, judicial, or executive branches of government could duplicate.

I can just see military men in camouflaged ponchos darting from one potted plant to another calling gently, "Joe Lieber-m-a-n-n-n…(slowly trailing off into what sounds like the hiss of a snake).

Sen Lieberman would turn toward the potted plant and kneel in deference, though he would seem to be tying is shoes, and say, "Command me, my Dark Master, bend my mind, my will, my body in any way that you desire…"

"There will be a committee meeting today discussing reducing the funding of our sacred, holy war against simple Afghani people that will impact severely on the heroin trade there."

"What do you desire, my Dark Master, and where did you get that camouflaged poncho? That's slammin', my Master."

"I'll order you one, now shut up and listen, you will do whatever it takes to sustain our funding level…remember, grasshopper, there is no fun without funding, so take one for the team, even if you must abandon the democratic party…do you understand?"

"Yes, my ~~mother~~…uh…Master, yeah, that's it, my Dark Master, I shall obey gladly."

"Great! Now when you stand up from worsh - tying your shoe grab Admiral Mike Mullen and send him to tie his boots here so we can chat long."

"As you command, my Dark Master." Lieberman turns, sees Mullen coming down the hall, and congenially calls him over.

"Well, hey, Joe, what can I do for you," asked the Admiral.

Joe walked over, grabbed Mullen's "package", squeezing it twice, causing the Admiral's eyes to glaze over and his posture to become relaxed. Then Joe told him, "It's your turn at the potted plants, Mike…make it so."

The Admiral slowly replied, as if in a trance, "Yes, Joe, I will go to the plant to tie my boots and I will listen and follow all orders from our Dark Master."

Joe, eyes still glazed gives a simple wave of his hand as the Admiral knelt in supplication to the plant with the soldier in a completely camouflaged poncho.

And you wondered how we finance our wars.

Ciao, bella ámi.

Time to protest

2011-02-21T10:00:00.002-05:00

One of the most daunting things about protesting in the USA is NOT the barbaric cops, though, they suck. No, the most daunting thing is rallying numbers so that they are visible to the general public. Obviously, the most visible cities would be NYC and LA. Unfortunately, those cities have the rents so jacked up that nobody can take time out to protest. Money is WAY too important there and most folks are barely getting by.

I admire what's going on in Wisconsin but keep in mind, they're not fighting for any overthrow. They're just trying to keep what they already have. There will be solidarity rallies in a bunch of cities (not in mine unfortunately) tomorrow. So if you can get to one, go to one.

Review: HBO's Treme

2011-02-21T09:39:00.003-05:00

Just a quick review:

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a 5 or 6.

The reason? The writing was crap. The only character that was well-developed was the city of New Orleans herself. THAT, they got. The Tulane Professor? Not even close. Hell, what they had him do he would've NEVER have done. Nobody in his position would. Now, had they bothered to establish some sort of history of him, then MAYBE, but still, no. There were so many weak points, so many out of character moments.

Here's one that's not a spoiler. There's a character that is a chef. She's hyper hard-core. VERY good at what she does and VERY serious about it. Yet, on Mardi Gras, they had her dancing around in a pink tutu singing "Iko Iko" for heaven's sake. She would NOT have been that whimsical. Perhaps they could've established that she had a whimsical streak, but they didn't.

That's what I'm talking about with the poor character development.

Sure, I'll watch the second season, but only because I'll watch anything having to do with New Orleans.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get the ingredients so I can attempt to make my first Mardi Gras King Cake. St. Louis has a dead serious Mardi Gras so I must prepare.

Now, where the hell did I put all my beads?....

The Devil Made Me Do It

2011-02-19T12:03:00.001-05:00

That's Colin Powell's defense of his WMD claims? Really? Is that his final answer?

Colin Powell's ex-chief of staff said Thursday the former Secretary of State was lied to and manipulated by Vice President Dick Cheney into justifying the US invasion of Iraq.

Way to go Wisconsin!

2011-02-18T11:20:00.003-05:00

Gotta' hand it to them, they're doing it right.

Yesterday, on the third day of protests against Wisconsin’s anti-union legislation, an estimated 25,000 protesters swarmed the capital building.

And it might even be spreading to Ohio:

In what union leaders say is becoming a national fight, protests against legislation to restrict public employees’ collective-bargaining rights spread from Wisconsin to Ohio.

I certainly do hope Chomsky is right when he says he thinks Wisconsin is 'the start' of a revolution here in the US.

It's time for REAL change.

What kinda crap is this that some members of congress…

2011-02-16T14:44:00.004-05:00

…sleep in their government offices supplied to enable their work for their constituents. How many of the lower class citizens they represent are getting free lodging from one of the two or sometimes three different jobs they must work to support their families? NONE, I would wager.

These rich jerkoffs should be required to pay whatever the median, no, strike that, they should be paying the maximum rents paid in Washington in return for taking up lodgings in some of the most famous buildings and offices of all. They should also be taxed or charged the same or greater commuting cost as paid by the lower class employees they employ.

It is outrageous to me that these already rich bastards are seeking to stick it to the state with ever greater privileges that were formerly not even considered to be privileges. Let them pay their own way just as every other American has to do, and if they cannot afford rent in Washington, D.C., let them find a large refrigerator box, a vent blowing hot air, and let them sleep and suffer as far too many of their constituents must do.

This really ticks me off - we've already devolved into just two classes, upper class with tons of money and lower class struggling every day to try and make ends meet. As far as I can discern the middle class has gone the way of the dinosaurs - extinct.

Now comes this where these rich bastards who spent millions to get elected now want taxpayer-supported and paid for lodging in Washington.

My eye.

FOX makes shit up

2011-02-16T10:13:00.002-05:00

But you already knew that.

Why did he win? Watch this banned 20/20 interview he did to see what he has to say. Makes more sense then any of the rest of them.

The weirdest thing about living in the midwest

2011-02-13T16:19:00.005-05:00

Is the noticing the existence of chemtrails. I took these today.

This is the first one I took, driving west in I-70, so that would make it North West of St. Louis

This I took when I was walking the dog. That's North West of St. Louis, but it was blowing towards the East.

And just to show you that the aren't contrails like the government would have you believe,
just as I was talking the pictures, a regular passenger plane (the little black spec
nearly dead center of the image) flew by and, whaddya know, it wasn't spewing a trail.

I don't know what they are or what they do. When someone says "Hey, I don't remember seeing crap like that in the sky when I was a kid back in the 60s and 70s," (Try it. Go look at some old family photos. You'll not find one chem-trailed sky.)the powers that be usually say, "Well, air traffic is heavier now. There's just so much more of it and that's why you see as so much of it now." Which, as I showed above, a regular airliner was NOT spewing crap.

Are they weather modification? HAARP? Military radar testing? Geoengineering? What's in it, Aluminum and Barium? Does Monsanto have anything to do with it?

I can tell you the first time I noticed them here was a day or so before that terrible snow storm hit the area. One possible explanation:

Before a storm there is a front, the front clears the air before a storm, pushing particulate matter ahead of it, leaving a space relatively clear of particulate matter. UV radiation levels rise in these areas, sometimes to dangerous levels. The shield must be maintained. Since barium absorbs water as well as carbon dioxide, precipitation has been affected. Other kinds of sprays are in development and testing which may reduce the affects on precipitation. As I stated above, this is a new technology we are working with, it is still in its infancy and there are some problems with it.

I'm not saying the chemtrails caused the storm, but I it seemed like an odd coincidence. I'll be curious to see what these line up with. Weather storm? Solar storm? Who knows?

They certainly are striking though. Didn't see that much of it in NYC. Sometimes I saw it, but it was infrequent and sparse.

Here in the midwest, it's huge and covers the entire sky.

UPDATE: Well, it could be because a solar storm is coming/has happened:

"On February 13, a faint Earth directed CME was detected. It was associated with a M6.6 flare from NOAA AR 1158, peaking at 17:38 UT and related to a type II and a type IV radio bursts. The CME is expected to arrive to the Earth on, or around, February 16. "

The most amazing thing made evident by this recent upheaval…

2011-02-11T13:48:00.005-05:00

…in Egypt is that a nation state with really active citizens can accomplish more in a scant few days than America can get done after years of legislative party games, spinning the bottle (of Jack Daniels), filibusters that aren't filibusters, republican senators unafraid to stop all progress in America by using a senator's absolute privilege to put the screaming skids to any piece of legislation they chose, while chickenhearted democratic senators are seemingly unaware of this privilege or, for some reason, deathly afraid to use it.

The rightfully proud people of Egypt have disposed peacefully of a corrupt government supported by other corrupt governments such as the government here in America.

By showing unity, determination, resolve to change the status quo, even by violence if need be, these people accomplished a greater feat even than the creation of the United States of America - a change of power in a bloodless coup.

We Americans seem to have lost the ability to settle affairs, whether internal or external, without extreme talk of violence or installing a so-called democracy at the point of our guns, beneath our dropping bombs, our cruise missiles blasting lasered targets with pinpoint accuracy, committing genocide, and causing many of the worst human disasters in the history of man in the manner of war criminals seeking total annihilation of forces so much weaker than our forces.

It seems to me that in this regard the Egyptian people are, and were, better aware of the power of peaceful or relatively peaceful civil uprising in changing the course of governments and that they have comported themselves in a manner we Americans are no longer able.

I think all we Americans can hope for is that when the time comes, and it draws nearer everyday, that the teabagger-gop-ers believe they have a lock on our government and can run roughshod right over the will of the people that we Americans will have the courage to follow the example of the Egyptians.

But I ask you all to remember that we are Americans, that Americans live to be free of the harness of government, and that our government was formed by and for the citizens of our once great country and that we can only regain our prestigious position in the world by regaining control of our government and not by government controlling us for the evil ends of so few.

Egypt: The Aftermath

2011-02-11T12:27:00.003-05:00

My favorite image. Don't know where its' from though so I can't give credit. Wish I could.

It's wonderful to be an Egyptian right now. They succeeded. They got Mubarak to go. But, as we all know, the Nation State will not be denied. It will continue. Already, the media is taking charge of the dominate discourse. There is some potential with youtube and twitter to subvert this, but what you see in the coverage is the legitimacy of a person (Mubarak) has eroded, but the legitimacy of the Nation State is still upheld. The movement has been validated and now the power structures will take over. Even though they will have a 'democratic elections,' they will still be choosing a leader, and they will still be choosing that leader from a handpicked few, handpicked by those in power.

The most wonderful thing about what happened in Egypt is that it was leaderless. The PEOPLE did it, and right now, they are empowered. They don't need a Nation State. Nobody does. It is shame that at the end of this process, the PEOPLE will give up their power to a leader, one most likely chosen by the already existing power structures.

The King is dead. Long live the King.

"It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood, A beautiful day for a neighbor.…

2011-02-10T14:14:00.005-05:00

…Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?...

Y'know, sometimes I get lost within my mind searching for memories of a better time, struggling to break the artificial boundaries imposed by those whom we would call leaders, those whom would restrict our freedoms in the name of fighting wars against terror, drugs, poverty, abortion or whatever else they have set their sights upon that day.

And it strikes me that it is true that most of us have learned all we really need to know by the time we leave kindergarten if not before. It also could be true that many of us never needed kindergarten to learn the basics.

In support of this position I would like to reintroduce you to someone I believe to be one of the great philosophers of my short time on earth, a man whose identity cannot be concealed from most Americans who grew up listening and hanging onto his every word, Mr. Fred Rogers, perhaps one of the kindest and most loving people ever.

So here are just a few quotations, but I urge everyone to seek out more:

"Part of the problem with the word 'disabilities' is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can't feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren't able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities."
— Fred Rogers (The World According to Mister Rogers)

"When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed."
— Fred Rogers

"Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me. "
— Fred Rogers

"Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives."
— Fred Rogers

"It's very dramatic when two people come together to work something out. It's easy to take a gun and annihilate your opposition, but what is really exciting to me is to see people with differing views come together and finally respect each other."
— Fred Rogers (The World According to Mister Rogers)

"In the external scheme of things, shining moments are as brief as the twinkling of an eye, yet such twinklings are what eternity is made of -- moments when we human beings can say, "I love you," "I'm proud of you," "I forgive you," "I'm grateful for you." That's what eternity is made of: invisible imperishable good stuff."
— Fred Rogers (The World According to Mister Rogers)

[And, of course, his signature song.]

"It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?...

It's a neighborly day in this beauty wood,
A neighborly day for a beauty.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?...

I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you.
I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

So, let's make the most of this beautiful day.
Since we're together we might as well say:
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won't you be my neighbor?

Won't you please,
Won't you please?
Please won't you be my neighbor?"
— Fred Rogers

I do hope many of you will like this walk down memory lane and consider, perhaps for the first time, what a gentle, genuinely nice man was Fred Rogers, whom also happened to be a great philosopher as well. I wish for you all "invisible imperishable good stuff."

Ciao, bella ámi

WTF does this mean?

2011-02-07T14:57:00.000-05:00

It may be nothing, but it may be something. Who knows?

In an unprecedented move, apparently one that has never happened before, nearly all U.S. Ambassadors to all nations have been called back to Washington for a summit conference this week.

Welcome back to our ongoing 24/7/365 coverage of Egypt…Yes, all Egypt, all the time…

2011-02-07T14:13:00.005-05:00

…and boy howdy do we have exciting new developments to report to you today friends and readers, or just friendly readers.

This exciting news was brought to me by my friend Bobby Briggs, my inside confidential informant working with the throngs of other negotiators and can therefore give me the news firsthand. However, due to his important position he has requested total anonymity which was ok'd by my editors so I will not identify him.

Anyway, in the most exciting development yet since the difficulties began for President Mubarak I can now reveal that an anonymous source has informed this reporter that former boy king, Tutankhamun, has agreed to be rehydrated, have all his organs replaced within his body, and receive the blood transfusions necessary to come out of his mummy status to regain control of his subjects by showering the entire country with millions of solid gold trinkets the King had retained in his still hidden, location unknown, carefully concealed, booby-trapped and cursed treasury that has remained undiscovered since King Tut, as the people of Egypt fondly refer to him before he passed away.

It is the King's theory that his people will be too busy collecting enough gold to make them forever self-sufficient and able to live like a pharaoh the rest of their natural lives, and that they will no longer have the time nor the inclination to protest any further.

Let's take a moment here to check on other newsworthy events elsewhere in the world. There is nothing happening in the rest of the world so we will now return to our 24/7/365 coverage of events as they happen on the ground in Egypt.

We can now report, based upon information provided by our anonymous source, that there has been what is being called a "minor snag" in the negotiations for the return of King Tut. The boy King, in return for saving the country of his birth, has demanded telepathically (the only means by which he can communicate with the negotiation team) that former queen Nefertiti, his former mother-in-law and seven-time winner of the "Babe from Babylonia" beauty contest also be revived as King Tut had secretly lusted for her for years before settling for her daughter.

Former Queen Nefertiti is still, perhaps, most infamous for telling the stonecutters to inscribe above the main entrance to her tomb that she could, "See Saudi Arabia from the top of the pyramids."

Now for a brief break to bring you on-going events in the U.S. financial situation…uh…wait, I have just been informed that there is nothing happening in America's financial community today so we now return to our coverage of Egyptian events.

The reported efforts to revive King Tut and Queen Nefertiti has suffered a hugh setback as the Mummy Revival and Stonecutters Union, Local 904, has gone on strike demanding higher wages, more vacation time, and to be forever released from responsibility for building the new pyramids that the King and Queen will undoubtedly order upon revival.

The king, according to my sources, has telepathically advised the negotiation team to agree to the demands of the unions involved as he will have them all fed to his dogs after they've had a brief trip through cobra-filled snake pits. Related to this is the King's demand that all Egyptian asps must be caught and killed, hunted to the point of extinction.

The negotiation team has advised that Sarah Palin would be hired to scour the country shooting every snake on sight from the safety of her low and slow flying airplane. When contacted for comment former Gov. Palin was heard to comment that just a few perfectly placed nuclear weapons would, upon detonation, guarantee the death of every asp in Egypt, including ,"…all those Egyptian asp-holes…".

Our Foreign Affairs Division report reveals that there is nothing happening anywhere involving foreign affairs.

So in bringing to a close my segment of the 24/7/365 coverage of Egypt I want to assure all our readers that our "All Egypt, All the Time," will continue in thirty seconds and will continue unabated until we can bring you the news that the King, and the Queen he lusts for, are again in charge, barring any surreptitious, sneaky, lowdown, underhanded, improper, and vicious acts by the American CIA, which was once again caught with their pants down, their male members in hand, and without the faintest idea that there had even been an uprising in Egypt.

In news from America today it has been reported that that there is no news from America today.

Well, time to sign off now, so to all my readers and friends (I think sometimes that only my friends read me!), I say to you:

Ciao, bella ámi.

Ruh-Oh

2011-02-07T11:26:00.001-05:00

They're starting to wave the WMD flag:

Egypt eventually acknowledged that it had not fully disclosed the extent of its nuclear facilities, failed to declare the pilot plant used for the plutonium and uranium-separation experiments and did not provide design information for a new facility under construction, also at Inshas.

I don't even want to think about what this means.

That's what I've been saying

2011-02-06T12:31:00.001-05:00

Watch it to the end please:

The scripted finish for Egypt

2011-02-05T13:16:00.002-05:00

From the outset, when Mubarak saw the writing on the wall, you know he began working with his handlers to make sure that whoever replaced him was just a 'second verse, same as the first."

The Obama administration on Saturday formally threw its weight behind a gradual transition in Egypt, backing attempts by the country’s vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman, to broker a compromise with opposition groups and prepare for new elections in September.

Surely, a Suleiman presidency was the plan all along.

Good luck with that.

The 7th Seal

2011-02-04T14:02:00.000-05:00

The Guff is empty:

The global warehouse for Internet addresses ran empty on Thursday.

But hey, look at how stirred up (I think the word is "incited") people are getting all over the place courtesy of the teabaggers…

2011-02-03T12:19:00.009-05:00

…whom somehow have discovered the secret to releasing their oral death-grip on the particular teabag they happened to be sucking on and taking all that energy to continue wreakin', freakin', tweakin', and creatin' the mayhem and misery that is their stock in trade. They have become so expert at sucking that blowing hot air gives them both respite and the time for large groups of teabaggers to string together a grammatically correct sentence of more than four words, provided those four words have nothing to do with honesty, commonsense, nor morality.

Let's showcase a fine example of how mean-spirited, cruel, unpatriotic, stupid, shortsighted, and foul these bastards are:

1: The teabagging-rethug-gop-ers were just days ago crowing from the rooftops that the House had succeeded in repealing that awful, communistic, socialist, Satanist health law of the despotic, wanna-be-President/Dictator/Muslim sympathizer Hussein Obama and his surreptitious democratic health care co-conspirators. A teabagger-rethug-gop-er activist judge managed to declare the legislation unconstitutional and thus ensured that 33 Million more of their fellow Americans, the mortal enemies they wish to crush, see driven before them (into the Gulf of Mexico if it's still there), and to hear the lamentations of democratic women as they, their children, and families die horrible deaths choking on the oil the teabaggers-rethugs-gop-ers are all too happy to provide at any cost.

The reason for the overturning of the statute? The courts claim that the government cannot force people to PAY for that insurance!

2. Within two days these same teabagger-rethugs-gop-ers proposed legislation that would not only require EVERYBODY to have a gun, THE LAW STATES CITIZENS HAVE TO PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW! PRECISELY the grounds that merited overturning health care reform. AND citizens would have to break their already-stretched budgets to buy very expensive guns!

Now, now. I don't want any teabaggers out there to drop into their characteristically insipid and rapidly disappearing intelligence mode (as if they ever possessed any intelligence in the first place) and start talking that wild-eyed crazy bat shit that the governments (federal and state) can't and don't make citizens pay for everything the government does, i.e., taxes for infrastructure, licenses for hunting, driving a car, licensing a car, boat, or motorcycle, getting a driver's license, sales taxes on virtually everything that is bought or sold, food, gas, electricity, water, ever higher tuitions to pursue a decent education. Hell one of their major sources of income are the fines, levies, and assessments ordered everyday by courts just like the courts where this teabagging piece of shit judge sit, and thousands of other like-minded jurists breathing our air in their sandcastles in the sky and trying to figure out how to tax oxygen.

Hello…hello…anyone home? bueller…buellar…bueller…oh hell, he's out with his girlfriend so we can levy even more fines, penalties, and he's having unprotected sex so his girl will become just another welfare queen driving her 1973 Buick down to pick up her Midas-like check and blow it on all the many, many drugs we have to bust her on now and in the future when she buys her state-ordered Cadillac at taxpayers expense. She'll be a permanent cog in the government money making schemes run by the courts that rule against her and her family.

What? Say it can't happen? Shit it was the God of the rethuglican party, Ronnie Raygun, that identified this existential threat to our republic. And everyone knows he was just kidding when, on national television, he admitted trading military-grade weaponry to TERRORISTS in order to get the Iranians to hold all the hostages so Ronnie would become a mythic, god-like…no…better than god-like statesman when immediately after Carter left office all the hostages were released on inauguration day after Ronnie was erected…uh, ELECTED, that's it! The erection came later when he was alone in the Oval Office…and he didn't need no Monica!

This is a neat little paradox or dichotomy or paradoxical dichotomy or whatever. Never could get the relationship of those words. It'll be fun watching those teabaggers talk out both sides of their mouth at the same time, dontchaknow.

Ciao, bella ámi.

This is what fascism looks like

2011-02-02T17:30:00.004-05:00

When the government does the bidding of large corporate interests, then folks, you have fascism. The big sports corporations, the NFL, NBA, etc., have called on the feds to shut down sites that stream their sports.

The seizure of the site is particularly controversial because Rojadirecta, a Spanish site, was found by Spanish courts to be operating legally. The domain's closure has been accompanied by a spate of other crackdowns by the government: Other sports-streaming websites such as ATDHE.net, Firstrow.net, ChannelSurfing.net, and Ilemi.com have also been seized by the authorities. It's a controversial move that comes just ahead of the Super Bowl.

Honestly, can the number of people who actually 'ripoff' the big monied interests be so great that this was necessary? No, of course not. It's like the mythology behind illegal music downloads. Not that much music was downloaded and in fact, downloaded music led to more legitimate purchases of music.

Who you gonna' believe?

2011-02-01T11:34:00.003-05:00

The crowd estimates are varied.

AP:

More than a quarter-million people flooded Cairo's main square Tuesday in a stunning and jubilant array of young and old, urban poor and middle class professionals, mounting by far the largest protest yet in a week of unrelenting demands for President Hosni Mubarak to leave after nearly 30 years in power.

Al Jazeera:

More than a million protesters have flooded into central Cairo, turning Tahrir Square in the Egyptian capital, into a sea of humanity in a massive show of protest against Hosni Mubarak, the country's president for three decades.

Hmmmm.

Gotta Lovett

2011-02-01T03:47:00.000-05:00

If You Were to Wake Up:

Does a second Mea Culpa nullify the first?…

2011-01-31T18:30:00.004-05:00

…a question that has troubled me greatly lately. I may have my answer.

I've been corresponding with my best friend and brother-in-arms and he told me we had missed a blogiversary here, something I did not know and had not even considered in the midst of my recent, very well-known (to our readers), utter and complete blowout in my mind, the worst in at least five years and one well-documented dementia falling four-square within the very definition (dementia - dementia |diˈmen sh ə| noun Medicine | a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning); it ain't no picnic and there's nothing but ever greater and rising higher pain when it finally clobbers me every few years.

It dawned on me, as I slowly began to recover, just how bad this episode was, and the people who mean the most to me, those I respect most highly, managed, with very sparse but meaningful messages helped me ground myself again and, with my brother from a another mother, Sailor, telling me we had missed a blogiverary it was the last little reminder of my humanity, or lack thereof, that brought to my attention that this break and the kind words of DanD and the wonderful people with whom I write convinced me that I should again start doing that which brings me happiness and that warm, fuzzy feeling, and that would be, of course, writing for you all, the most cathartic activity I know.

So, having demonstrated beyond doubt that I sometimes go full-goose Bozo and explode, out-of-control, it's time to show that the years of therapy, psychiatrists, the tons of medications I consume, and the love of my family and friends to give me hope that someday I will no longer experience these breakdowns - it's highly unlikely, but clearly possible - so hang with me if you dare and join me on this maniacal roller coaster as it rockets me through the twists and turns of my damaged mind at a dizzyingly frantic, white-knuckled-hold-on-for-your-life, furious pace with no one at the brakes.

So HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY (Sailor or the Vidiot will need to say what number it is) and thank you.

Ciao for now, bella ámi.

Egyptian Wrath

2011-01-31T14:40:00.005-05:00

It's practically biblical and I have to hand it to them, those folks know how to protest.

I'm still in the throws of trying to find a job and settle in here in the Midwest, meanwhile, we're going to get pummeled by yet ANOTHER snow storm here. Ugh.

So, I'm still a little off the radar as far as news goes. Hell, I only knew about the impending storm because I overheard someone talking about it at the grocery store. That's what you get when you don't watch TV I suppose.

But I am watching the events in Egypt whenever I can sit down for a few moments.

For excellent coverage, go over to the English broadcast of Al Jazeera. (I too agree that the Arabic network's coverage is cable's "Sputnik Moment.")

Robert Fisk is there covering it for the Independent.

For good analysis, check out Juan Cole's blog. This article in particular explained very well some of the underpinnings of the protests.

Excerpt: The Nasserist state, for all its flaws, gained legitimacy because it was seen as a state for the mass of Egyptians, whether abroad or domestically. The present regime is widely seen in Egypt as a state for the others– for the US, Israel, France and the UK– and as a state for the few– the Neoliberal nouveau riche. Islam plays no role in this analysis because it is not an independent variable. Muslim movements have served to protest the withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities, and to provide services. But they are a symptom, not the cause. All this is why Mubarak’s appointment of military men as vice president and prime minister cannot in and of itself tamp down the crisis. They, as men of the System, do not have more legitimacy than does the president– and perhaps less.

And for heaven's sake, don't even bother with the American media. When Mohamed ElBaradei was giving his speech, CNN was talking about Michelle Bachman and I think FOX was going on about Charlie Sheen's cocaine addiction.

And if you just want to watch a perfect "RAH RAH" moment, watch hundreds of ARMED Egyptian riot police run for their lives from protesters:

Ain't it sweet?

To my brother from a different mother…

2011-01-25T14:32:00.006-05:00

…I send my condolences for your loss. I had feared something disastrous had happened to that member of your family whose identity will remain anonymous as I would never break your trust by revealing it.

Instead I opened up the computer I had been ever so willing to abandon last week to find that you had been struggling with love found, love lost, love found again, then lost again as it seemed you were on a cosmic roller coaster spinning ever faster, ever closer to losing control as you hurled past memories, scenes of old, and yet still thrilled that the next turn of this maniacally cosmic 'coaster might still yet return your true love to you.

Alas, that did not happen, and your true love perished, my heart cries out with yours for a reason, any reason that it should be thus. It's not fair that you, my friend, should be denied the opportunity to see her just one last time so that you could express your obvious love for her with the hope and desire that she feel the same about you.

It is too sad that the finality of her death will forever deprive you of the opportunity to reconcile with her, to hear her voice caress your ears as, surely, your voice would have been equally caressing to hers.

Take heart my good friend and brother and cherish the moments when, in her presence, time and space were suspended, all laws of nature and science broken, and know that she, too, shared with you memories and the absence of anything else in life but you. during those close, intimate moments in time.

I will absolutely respect your request that no one call you, but I'm here for you bro, and so shall I remain. Call anytime, day or night, it makes no difference

But I always thought that I'd see you again

2011-01-24T18:28:00.001-05:00

So there's this girl I met in 7th grade and we went to the movies and stuff, and dated and fought, and stuff. And I saw her again a few years later and we dated and fought and stuff. And we lived together, and dated, and fought and stuff.

In between times she and I moved a thousand miles apart, she got married, I got tours, she got un-married and I got her. And we dated and lived together and stuff, and fought.

Over the years I proposed to her twice. Years apart. She was right to turn me down, I ain't, or at least wasn't, husband material. Smart girl, smart woman. I probably broke her heart more than she broke mine, but I never forgot about her. Years later, when I lived 3 thousand miles away I heard she got married again and moved a thousand miles away.

In the last few years I've been trying to contact her, mainly just to apologize for being a jerk, but kinda maybe hoping somehow in the back of mind that maybe she was un-married again. Hell, I even joined FaceBook just in case she ... but it's hard to find your friend on FB if you don't even know her last name.

But then I got a call from a mutual FB friend that she had died 3 years ago in an accident. I called that person a liar. Then I got angry at that person. The Kubler-Ross steps aren't quite as defined as they look in print. But if this a joke, it's a pretty fucking elaborate one to put a headstone in the ground.

Of course I'm handling it in the mature way that I've now grown up in. Fist sized holes in the wall, and "I ain't drunk, I'm just drinkin'" For my friends who are tempted to call me? Please don't, I don't feel like talking. I'm OK, just going thru the shit we all do.

For Debbie, I'm sorry, you deserved better than me for years, I hope you found him. "But I always thought that I'd see you again"

Ron Paul

2011-01-20T12:05:00.002-05:00

Here's a great speech he just did. He basically called Congress a bunch of crooked and spineless idiots to their face. Awesome.

Greetings from St. Louis!

2011-01-19T09:30:00.005-05:00

We finally made it and what an odyssey it was.

We were supposed to leave Brooklyn the day after the blizzard hit. Unfortunately, neither Bloomberg nor the Department of Sanitation complied with our repeated demands to plow our street.

On the night of the blizzard, at about 3am, the dog had to pee, but the snow had drifted up both doorways and being as we were in the garden apartment, we couldn't get out. Teen Vidiot was up (He's convinced he's an insomniac so he acts the part. He's very "method.") so I made him shovel a path in the back patio so the dog could go. The dog, frightened by the walls of snow, scooted out, peed, and promptly scooted back in with a sort of "WTF?" look on her face. Once I saw how heavy the snow was and how much of it there was, I knew we weren't leaving that day. I called the movers and the U-Haul to postpone to maybe later that day.

Later that same morning, Monday, we tried to get out the front door and couldn't do it. We had to go upstairs and climb out and down the snowy stairs. Once out, we saw the devastation; the streets were all not plowed, even the major thoroughfares, sans one. On that one street, some guy in a pickup truck with a plow lived on that street and so he plowed it himself. We saw stuck sanitation trucks, some just sitting there, others being pulled out by other sanitation trucks. Lots of cars just parked/stuck in the middle many of the streets. (Teen Vidiot made a killing helping folks dig out their cars.) The most surreal part of it all was the silence; not only were there no cars and buses, but there were no airplanes either. I called the movers and the U-Haul to postpone to Tuesday.

The next day, Tuesday, we thought, OK, maybe they'll clear it today. But no. They'd gotten to the major streets, but the side streets were still not snowplowed. We awoke to find an abandoned taxi stuck in the middle of the street, right next to our car. Some idiot driver dropped off his fare and then tried to drive down the street, realized it wasn't plowed, tried to back out and got stuck. It was there all day. We spoke with someone at the funeral home on the corner and she said that it was Bloomberg's fault the streets were a mess since he didn't call the snow emergency on Sunday when he should've because he didn't want to pay for the weekend overtime. That was the first I'd heard that one. (Later, someone else said the sanitation workers had staged a slow-down to make Bloomberg look bad because of all the budget cuts to their department. I'm more likely to believe the first story than the second, only because the second provides too perfect a cover for Bloomberg.)

That afternoon, Dr. Vidiot and Teen Vidiot, along with a few other neighborhood guys, helped push one of the cars on our street out, clearing the way for our car. Dr. Vidiot contemplated digging out our car, but talked himself out of it because there was just so much snow and even if we could maneuver the car around the abandoned taxi to go get the U-Haul, loading it would be impossible. I called the movers and the U-Haul to postpone.

The NEXT day, Wednesday, the side streets were STILL not plowed, not that they could plow our street with the abandoned taxi in the middle of it anyway. However, the funeral director had hired a backhoe to clear his end of the street since he said, "Folks die, blizzard or no, and we need the street for the mourners." He also had the backhoe clear as much of the snow it could behind our car, but by then, some idiot yuppie SUV owner had parked behind our car so now we had to wriggle the car out between that SUV and the abandoned Taxi, no easy feat with the snow and ice. By late afternoon, the taxi company showed up to get their vehicle. They tried to dig it out, but apparently, the driver had burned out the transmission trying to back out. The car had no reverse so even though they had dug it all out, the car couldn't be backed out of it's spot. They had to wait for a tow truck.

At this point, I'm a complete and utter wreck. I'd been living with boxes for a couple of weeks, I was exhausted from the packing, I still had packing of last minute stuff that I couldn't do because I had no idea when 'last minute' was going to be, everything was in complete disorder, I had to stop cooking because all the pots and pans were packed so we had to eat out every night which became difficult since, during the blizzard, a lot of the restaurants were unable to open, it just seemed to drag on forever with no end in sight. If you'd have seen me, you'd have seen that my eyes were little spinning saucers of insanity.

Dr. Vidiot said, "That's it! I can't take it anymore!" and he ordered Teen Vidiot to grab the shovel, he handed me a shovel, and he marched out the door with his shovel and we got to digging out the car. It took several hours. One neighbor egged us on because her car was in front of ours and she wanted out too, but she didn't have a husband or a teenager to do the digging. Finally, at about 5pm on Wednesday night, we got the car out. People were cheering and applauding. The funeral guy said we were welcome to park our U-haul overnight in front of his place as long as we were out by morning, I called the movers and we stuffed that damn truck to the gills in record time. The next day, after we got the mattresses and plants loaded up, we were back at the U-haul to load the car onto the trailer and we were off.

The drive was fairly uneventful. We only got stuck at the first gas station when we underestimated the distance the trailer was from the pump. The dog was cool all the way up until the last few hours of Day One. Then, she started to pant and shiver uncontrollably. She knew something big was happening but couldn't put her paw on it. Dr. Vidiot had to be reigned in a bit. He was doing the guy thing, "We're making great time!" and, "Just one more exit, then we'll stop." We ended up in Washington, PA for the night. We brought in our luggage and the plants. We ordered a pizza because we were starving and Dr. Vidiot and I promptly made a bee-line for the hotel bar to suck down some relaxant. We waited and waited for that pizza and it never showed up. It was late and we were exhausted, so we went to tell Teen Vidiot that the pizza wasn't coming. When we got to the room however, we caught him in mid-bite, with what apparantly was his fifth piece of pizza in his mouth. He was all, "What? I thought it was for me." I contemplated killing him.

The next morning, we piled back into the truck, though not after one of the plant boxes broke and dumped dirt all over the hotel floor. The dog was still twitching and panting. I was worried she was going to stroke out. When we stopped for gas, I got her some benedryl. Thank god for such a simple solution. She went from Ozzie Osbourne to Siddhartha in about 15 minutes. For the rest of the ride, she just sat on my lap, looked around, eyes half open, lips curled up in a barely discernible, buddahesque grin.

We pulled into St. Louis on New Year's eve night, tired, exhausted and a bit stressed out, but we made it. We celebrated the new year in our new city.

We've been here two weeks now, the first five days spent in hotel room, the rest, in our new apartment in a suburb of St. Louis. We're not really suburb types, but the schools in St. Louis are so horrendous that we had to move out here. Teen Vidiot's grades aren't good enough for a magnate school and Dr. Vidiot's salary isn't big enough to pay for private school. So, while we wanted to move to the Soulard neighborhood, we're out here in Clayton.

It's not half bad as suburbs go. I can walk to a great grocery store, the high school is just across the street, as is the community center which has pools, gyms, classes and anything else you can think of for almost no membership fee for residents. The dog doesn't have a back yard, but she gets lots of walks where she gets to chase lots of birds and squirrels in the park. I can walk around my apartment without bumping into any furniture. For the first time in 25 years, my thighs don't have bruises! The kitchen, while not ideal, is 500% better than the last nightmare, so I'm happy with that. Dr. Vidiot's folks bought us a new washer (kiss kiss!) and we found a used dryer for a $100 and for the first time in 25 years, I can do laundry like a normal person! We have central air and heat and the parking is free and easy. Dr. Vidiot no longer has to wake up early to go to a job that he hates. He's now an assistant professor at a big state school. He only teaches 2/3 classes a semester and has the rest of the time to do research. In his entire adult life, he's never had time to do his research. He's always had to work several jobs, go to school and squeeze in his research between jobs. He's been sleep deprived since he was 17, so, you know, he's happy. Teen Vidiot is 15. Whether or not he's happy is a mystery.

People here are dead pleasant. I mean, wow. Maybe a bit too outgoing late at night though. Dr. Vidiot's head of perfectly curly hair seems to attract a lot of attention, usually sometime after midnight. Right around then, all the inhibitions are thoroughly lubricated and hands just start reaching out to touch it. The nightlife is pretty good; live music everywhere you go, decent restaurants, quaint neighborhoods. It's a cross between New Orleans and Chicago. The worst thing about living here is to get everything you need, you need to go to strip malls and mini-malls. There's no way around going to big-box stores (though I still will not allow myself to go to a Walmart) but it's easy to get around and their idea of a traffic jam is laughable.

All in all, it's a great palate cleanser after years of NYC life. We may be back in NYC eventually, if that tenure track line is ever opened up again (the one he got, but then the school cut the funding for right before they offered him the position.) but until then, I'm going to chill out just fine here.

Political blogging will resume shortly, just as soon as reacquaint myself with current events. I've been in the moving bubble for a while and I'm not even sure who the speaker of the House is anymore.

Mea culpa, mea culpa…

2011-01-16T14:39:00.002-05:00

…I have apparently driven away large numbers of our former readers and to them I extend my heartfelt apologies and best wishes.

My good friend, Sailor, my brother from a another mother, once told me that when I was writing the readership increased dramatically, sometime double previous levels, which I did not believe until I actually compared the figures Sailor regularly emails me. The most recent report showed a hugh loss of readership and buried deep within the twisted world of my brain the only objective reasons I can discern for this lies within the posts below, my posts.

I cannot bear the thought that I have, by being myself, which is no picnic, driven away even a single reader that the fine people of this site labored long to attract.

I am filled with sorrow at the mere thought that I have wrought damage where none should have been wrought and so I am compelled to gracefully resign; I wish you all the very best in life.

Thank you all, Sailor, Vidiot, Dr. Vidiot, Teen vidiot, and Vidiot Mom, everyone who ever read my ramblings, and to DanD, with whom I have engaged in much banter I found to really be a lot of fun.

Ciao, bella ámi. (Good-bye, beautiful people)

Physician Heal Thyself…

2011-01-13T03:02:00.004-05:00

…as Bill's medical and mental health physician I follow the postings he makes here at VidiotSpeak as a vital diagnostic tool to ascertain whether he is on an even keel, so to speak, or whether he is a more likely to have left a sail hanging overboard, slowly filling and sinking the ship of state of mind from the adhesive property of water molecules slowly 'climbing' the sail through the miracle of osmosis, only to continue its trip downward, after death threats from the Gravity Union, through the sail into the boat itself. After an undetermined length of time requiring a separate determination of the determinative nature of this undetermined length of the determined time for this process the boat sank.

My name is Horatio Hornblower Luxuryyacht, Rhodes Scholar, graduated top of class from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Penn State, and Ohio. I attended, though I did not graduate, several all women universities. I received my several Phd s in Ohio when there were tin soldiers and Nixon coming to my graduation ceremony that was interrupted when a car backfired and the National Guards killed several hundred thousand college students, including Raul and Fidel Castro of children's TV fame (F-I-D-E-L C-A-S-T-R-O, FIDEL CASTRO, Fidel Castro, long may you live in memory, born on a mountain top in Tennessee, killed him a bar when he was only three, he and Paul Bunyan sure chopped down a lot of trees, until an injury to their ACLs blew out both their knees).

I will give you an update on his condition and his prognosis, yes, yes, YEAH, YOU IN THE FUCKIN' CORNER! Whatta you want? Wow, that is a very good question, but, no, we don't think years of wild partying, debauchery, orgiastic sex parties, heavy drug use, and rapid withdrawal of drugs used for decades to calm him had any affect at all. Although Bill did quit smoking, having sex, using drugs, and drinkin' alcohol for the helluvit, and now tells me it was absolutely the scariest twenty minutes of his life. Next? Oh, thanks for that question, but no, Bill has no knowledge whatever that he is I and I is he and we are all together. We can all poo-poo any other opinions on Bill's mental health except to say that he can't locate it at this time We are certain it will turn up as soon as he removes all the excess business cards from his wallet so he can get his wife's number and ask her where it is. This may prove to be time consuming since Bill, like Ronnie Raygun, will soon announce his complicity is trading Smores for hostages in the Smores-Contra administration of the goofy old pricks at the GOP Headquarters.

Next? Bill likes to blow off steam by singing in the rain when its plain Spain will not give us rain or good drugs again and again and that causes him much pain. What's that, Bill? Oh, awright, does anyone have any drugs with them? Bill never does them unless he is alone or with someone. O, Yeah, it's true - and he never lies unless he is alone or with somebody either. Hey I ought to know, being one of the three of us

Last question - that rockin' hot, hardbodied, obvious wild child there on her knees…uh…yes, Bill is available tonight but if his hard-on remains for more than four hours you must promptly call the hospital to get three nurses or more there to help beat his manly member into submission. Last time we went through twelve nurses before the Kraken was called to drive it away because Bill don't play that; it's so embarrassing to watch professional nurses reduced to babbling, quivering, satiated, sweat covered, and totally wild sex fiends. Sex Lives ruined forever. How tragic.

The reason I called this press conference is to confirm that Bill, me, and I had been without the drugs that protects us from panic attacks, anxiety paralysis, and all sorts of crap because the VA pharmacy told us in… October? that we we had no refills. Through the miracle of compound time we were able to land our ship long enough to get the meds but still escape all those nurses. Boy! Time must fly when you're that high.

But to fill in the gaps and say that which could not be said before I had to relearn the language, having forgotten both Swahili and pig-den Latin, which I/we had heard was a dead language but no one can tell us where its fucking buried and we have seen no definitive, or non-definitive newspaper reports on the matter. Anyway, after further reflection and before the mirror broke we just wanted to step back through the looking glass, which is smaller, more elongated, and has a tighter crawl space than the typical mirror to reassess our reassessment. To connect our ravings of late and attempt to show how my twisted mind still possesses some modicom of intelligence and insight

Sick people, those truly sick, can only partially control criminal urges. This is because even a sick man recognizes sick cops that TASER without necessity and use the TASER to torture. Torture has been brought back, clandestinely at first, notoriously, well known now is that our leaders order surreptitious assassinations, kidnappings, and torturing citizens who cannot be proven to have committed any crime 'cept self-defense or being Muslim. gwb also ordered extreme torture, lied about it, was found out, and these heinous acts continue under Obama. Drones are launched with Hellfire missiles that inject true hell into wedding parties, village gatherings, children's birthday parties, and even people just walking down the street. The United States became the laughingstock and major disappointment to countries unaware that we had no intentions of honoring their laws, our laws, several treaties, and the world learned that America is no longer an honest broker of peace and instead now commits warcrimes so horrific hundreds of thousands of people died and millions more were displace from there ancestral homes by America and its armed forces.

Domestic police, as I described in my earlier ramblings, follow the example of their leaders and thus torture, too, demand immediate response and if they respond 1/4 second late you can depend on being beaten and shocked senseless by every cop on the scene. The perp here is clearly insane as all personal accounts of people who knew him state; he will not be convicted because he is clearly insane and easily slipped through the system because though people were afraid and thought him looney, no one to the time to report him to authorities who may have been able to intercede.

No help from the schools, none from his parents, so the opportunity presented was guaranteed at least partial results; the police could not possibly respond swiftly enough to stop this entirely and the perp knows it. He will enjoy the trial as one witness after another is forced to tell they thought him crazy. IT's true and will resonate with a jury.

Unknown to police or mental health authorities his actions are further provoked by teabagger-gop-ers and their excessively puerile mentality."There (was) a killer on the road…His brain (was) squirming like a toad…Take a long holiday…Let the children play…If you give this man a ride sweet families will die…Riders on the Storm(The Doors).

So every component of this tragedy was obvious to SOMEONE along the way…but none acted. The stage set, the execution of its elements were all too easy to carry out, and ALL society is to blame. I/we/Bill wanted to complete our analysis.

His parents didn't help him; the schools didn't help him or ID him to the police; army recruiters who rejected him but, again, did nothing. The politicians are too busy with their dual monologues to have a proper dialog, the media megaphone, to me, have never helped anyone so no safety net there. A logical progression leading to murder and mayhem. A straight line to my eye; causes and effects.

Forgive me, please, for not making that clearer, though in the small fraction my functioning brain I saw repeated a scenario we have seen time and again and will see again in the future. If more people trained themselves to make intuitive calls as to whom exactly is dangerous, we would all sleep easier.

NOTE: I know I make a lot of drug references. What can I say? I'm a genuine sixties hippy and grew up in that era where drug use was common, but more common still was the humor generated by people like Cheech & Chong, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, SNL (original cast), and on and on. I found that type of humor funny then and, if properly executed, funny still. I personally take far too many serious and deleterious prescription drugs to use street drugs that would blow up my heart, chop off my legs and throw them into the fire, enable me to leave the planet, or something; I forget which. But those are the only drugs I do, period.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me…

2011-01-11T13:50:00.008-05:00

…is the adage of old that has guided countless aspects of my life.

When I served as a law enforcement supervisor making an arrest there was no way possible for a suspect to provoke me to violence short of actually committing violent acts and never by words alone.

That was my moral grounding long before enlisting, I learned it as a child, it was part of my training after enlisting, it was a point of unspoken personal pride that I could not be provoked to violence by mere words, no matter the circumstances.

I would be too ashamed to belong to many, many L.E. organizations or police departments in today's world where all to often the first response to any real or imagined insult or even the slightest hesitancy to respond to an officer is the use of TASERs, often and repeatedly, upon the person doing so.

I saw news coverage of three or more officers approaching a baseball fan, from behind in a stadium almost half empty, who had gone down several rows to speak to others. The guy kept talking and I could see no sign that he had even heard the approaching officers when, shockingly (absolutely no pun intended), the officers began TASERing him over and over until they ultimately took the man into custody.

Neither the cops, nor anyone else, were in any apparent danger nor under threat of violence, the guy was simply talking to other fans and I reckon someone might have taken offense at something the laughing, garrulous fan said, but there appeared to be absolutely no cause to violate that man in such a barbaric manner.

Many of you may have seen the incident of a college student protesting the presence of Karl Rove with words alone. As he turned and saw the approaching officers and with despair in his voice quietly pleaded, "Oh, no. Please don't TASER me," which of course, is precisely what the three or four officers promptly did. The man quite obviously recognized the threat posed by the officers themselves whose conduct was itself, to my mind, a criminal assault and battery on the student.

Here in California a man was recently shot in the head and killed while laying on the ground, surrounded by several officers, the arresting officer, who clearly had the man under control with lots of backup and the subject clearly in control, discharged his service revolver and killed a man merely suspected of an offense.

When convicted of murder the officer, in his defense, alleged that he thought he had his TASER in hand, not his service weapon. Bullshit. Any officer unable to tell, blindfolded, whether he was holding a semi-automatic handgun or a TASER is either stupid beyond belief or lying. The jury got it right.

Why this reliance on torture, which is absolutely and without question what is happening when someone is TASED five, ten, fifteen times by several officers aiding and abetting the crime against uncharged persons?

Is there no longer any pride, training, and professionalism being taught in police academies? Is willingness to attack and torture non-responsive suspects now a prerequisite for becoming a law enforcement agent? Are they recruiting and retaining officers that are so cowardly or so ill-trained or so lacking in judgment that an officers FIRST action is to assault, batter, and torture rather than to protect, serve, and seek non-violent resolutions for any slight, real or imagined? Even if an incident leads to or calls for apprehension of a citizen do they so lack the skill and sense of pride and duty that those upon whom we rely to prevent violence are themselves now the instigators and executioners of unneeded and/or uncalled for violence?

I grieve for all the victims of this mentally deranged man and for all our citizens and our once great nation.

In my two previous rants, which is of course what they were, I myself used much profanity and vitriol in expressing my opinion. I do not regret using such language or expressing my opinion as I did. Nor will I apologize for those rants. They are my words, my opinion, the way I chose to use the words. If anyone was offended I recommend that you just not read my writings.

I have many times stated here that I am aware that I suffer from mental illness after suffering years, more than a decade + six years, of intractable, unrelenting 24/7/365 neurological pain from the full radical neck dissection (a medical term of art and beyond common understanding or interpretation of the plain words) required to remove two different Agent Orange caused cancers that well nigh killed me.

I suffered endlessly afterword from the nerve damage, but it wasn't until I realized that every night I fell asleep with tears of despair in my eyes and awakened each and every morning with tears in my eyes at the realization that I had to face yet another day of pain smothering all reason, all desire to live, the will to carry on that I knew I must seek help.

I am not now, nor have I ever been suicidal. I value life, love, family, and duty to ever take a life without cause and I was compelled to keep on going aided by the love of my Warrior Woman and beloved son, without either of whom I would surely have perished.

But I did recognize that I was, and still am, mentally ill and sought help from my doctors at the local VA clinic. I have another continuation of care appointment today as a matter of fact so I will be closing this post soon.

I have covered a lot of ground here on a meandering path that to me seems to be fairly straight. Many of our readers here will intuitively discern this. Others won't, but that's o.k., too. I am no longer in full control of my faculties, blocks of memory rotate in and out of view, some that have never returned, others remain or come and go that are crystal clear. I remain lost in time and space and can rarely tell anyone, even myself, what time, date, month, year, or decade in which I am living at any given point. I simply don't know. My vocabulary, ability to spell, handwriting, and sense of logic and expression have all been reduced to a small fraction from that I previously enjoyed, but I know it and live with it. To me this last horrific round of lunatics and gun happened…a week? Ten days? A month ago? I couldn't remember or figure out why this seemed so long ago; imagine my surprise when I found that this incident happened only two days ago. It isn't possible.

I have always had a memory bordering on the photographic since age four I got my first library card. I would check out 10 to 15 books, read fifty pages of one, fifty of another an so on until my mind was trained to be able to switch to any book and instantly recall everything, plot, characters, relationships, names, dates and times of events, etc.; it took less than a few months (In my third grade year testing showed my reading and comprehension levels exceeded those of a college graduate entering post graduate studies. That's also gone and affects me in very not-so-subtle ways as I lament the loss, the joy of reading, the challenges to memory that would prospectively ensure I became a firt class, very expensive to hire bounty hunter that worked on a "no locate, no pay basis" and that worked maybe four to six months a year (during winter) and then took the rest of the year off to spend on the beach with the love of my life. Now I am unable to work at all and, in fact, was told by the VA that I am now permanently medically retired and forbidden to work. Another loss. More stuff I can never do again. It hurts me but I retain jut enough commonsense to know they are right.

I had to stop riding very powerful, very fast motorcycles; my neck, shoulder, winged scapula, and constant pain deprived me of a lifelong love for riding to fly at 150 mph where safe. Now I must consume so much medicine that I no longer drive a car for fear of accidentally losing control and injuring someone or anyone. My Warrior Woman or my son drive me wherever I need or want to go. Yet another depressing loss of something I enjoyed doing and for which I had considerable skills, abilities. Gone now. But I made the choice to do this VOLUNTARILY, to ensure my conditions and maladies didn't lead to irresponsible behaviors and violations of law.

Everyone, please, if you see the signs of mental illness or incapacity within yourself, family, friends, or anyone else, try, then try again and don't stop trying to encourage them to seek professional help.

It really does help.

Psycho Killer, Qu'est-ce que c'est?

2011-01-10T18:38:00.000-05:00

Excerpted via Coalition to Stop Gun Violence:

July 27, 2008—Jim Adkisson shoots and kills two people at a progressive church in Knoxville, Tennessee, wounding two. Adkisson calls it “a symbolic killing” because he really “wanted to kill…every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book,” but was unable to gain access to them.

December 9, 2008—FBI teams investigating the murder of white supremacist James Cumming, 29, a resident of Belfast, Maine, find supplies for a crude radiological dispersal dervice and other explosives in his home. Cumming's wife, who shot him to death after being abused by him repeatedly, explains, "His intentions were to construct a dirty bomb and take it to Washington to kill President Obama. He was planning to hide it in the undercarriage of our moter home."

April 4, 2009—Neo-Nazi Richard Poplawski shoots and kills three police officers responding to a 911 call to his home in Pittsburgh. His friend Edward Perkovic tells reporters that Poplawski feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on its way” and “didn’t like our rights being infringed upon.” Perkovic also commented that Poplawski carried out the shooting because “if anyone tried to take his firearms, he was gonna’ stand by what his forefathers told him to do.”

April 25, 2009—Joshua Cartwright, 28, a member of the Florida National Guard, shoots and kills two Okaloosa County sheriff's deputies attempting to arrest him on a domestic abuse charge. Cartwright is killed in an enusing gun battle with police. Cartwright's wife reports that he was "severely disturbed" that Barack Obama had been elected president. Okaloosa County Sheriff Edward Spooner states that Cartrwight was "interested in militia groups and weapons training."

May 31, 2009—Scott P. Roeder shoots and kills Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas. The FBI lists Roeder as a member of the Montana Freemen, a radical anti-government group. In April 1996, he had been pulled over in Topeka, Kansas, for driving with a homemade license plate. Police found a military-style rifle, ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder, and two 9-volt batteries in his car.

February 18, 2010—Joseph Stack of Austin, Texas, flies a single-engine plane into an office building containing nearly 200 IRS employees, killing one and wounding 13. In a suicide note, Stack lays out his grievances with the federal tax agency, stating, "The law 'requires' a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that's not 'duress' than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is ... Violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer."

March 4, 2010—John Patrick Bedell, a California resident, travels to Arlington, Virginia, and opens fire on police officers at the entrance to the Pentagon. Bedell is armed with two semiautomatic firearms and "many [ammunition] magazines." Bedell injures two officers before he is killed by return fire. Reports reveals Bedell to be a Truther who believed that the U.S. government had been taken over by a criminal organization in a 1963 coup.

May 20, 2010—Jerry Kane, Jr., 45, and his son Joseph Kane, 16, fatally shoot two Arkansas police officers with AK-47 assault rifles during a routine traffic stop on Interstate 40 in West Memphis. The Kanes are killed during an exchange of gunfire with police in a Walmart parking lot 90 minutes later. Jerry Kane, an Ohio resident and anti-government activist, had a long history with police and had recently spent three days in jail for driving with an expired license plate and no seat belt. Kane considered himself a "sovereign citizen" and ran a business that centered on debt-avoidance scams.

July 18, 2010—California Highway Patrol officers arrest Byron Williams, 45, after a shootout on I-580 in which more than 60 rounds are fired. Officers had pulled Williams over in his pick-up for speeding and weaving in and out of traffic when he opened fire on them with a handgun and a long gun. Williams, a convicted felon, is shot several times, but survives because he is wearing body armor. Williams, a convicted felon, reveals that he was on his way to San Francisco to "start a revolution" by killing employees of the ACLU and Tides Foundation.

July 30, 2010—Camp Hill prison guard Raymond Peake, 64, is charged with robbery and the murder of Todd Getgen. Peake allegedly shot Getgen to death at a local shooting range and stole Getgen's custom, silenced AR-15 rifle. Investigators follow Peake to a storage unit when they find three firearms: Getgen's AR-15 rifle, a scoped Remington rifle that had been reported stolen from the range in May, and a second AR-15 rifle. Thomas Tuso is also arrested and charged with conspiracy, receiving stolen property and other crimes. Peake tells police that he and Tuso had been stealing guns "for the purpose of overthrowing the federal government."

August 17, 2010—Patrick Gray Sharp, 29, opens fire on the Department of Public Safety in McKinney, Texas, and unsuccessfully attempts to ignite gasoline and ammonium nitrate in a trailer hitched to his truck. Sharp is armed with an assault rifle, a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol, and a 12-gauge shotgun. He is killed after an exchange of gunfire with police arriving on the scene. Miraculously, no one else is hurt. Sharp's roommate, Eric McClellan describes him as "a great guy" and states, "We're Texans. We have a right to bear arms."

January 8, 2011—Jared Lee Loughner, 22, shoots U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 others at a "Congress in Your Corner" event at a Safeway supermarket in Tuscon, Arizona. He kills six, including federal judge John Roll, and wounds 14, including Giffords, who is shot in the head. Loughner has an extensive history of mental illness and substance abuse, yet is able to purchase two handguns and a high-capacity ammunition magazine legally at Sportsman's Warehouse on November 30, 2010. In a YouTube video posted in December 2010, Loughner states, "You don’t have to accept the federalist laws ... Nonetheless, read the United States of America’s Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws."

These are just the incidents where someone died. I guess they could all be just lone wackos, but their speech and writing have an awful lot in common with that broadcast by Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Ruch Limbaugh and Michael Savage to name a few.

It's also very similar to that by Republican candidates and office holders.

March 21-22, 2009—Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) states that she wants residents of her state to be “armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people—we the people—are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country.”

July 15, 2009—Katherine Crabill, a Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates in the state’s 99th District makes headlines by calling on Americans to resist the course President Obama has set for the country. Appearing at a “Tea Party” rally, Crabill quotes a 1775 speech by Patrick Henry and then states, “We have a chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box. But that's the beauty of our Second Amendment right.

September 28, 2009—Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), the Chairman of the Second Amendment Task Force in the U.S. House of Representatives, calls House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “domestic enemy of the Constitution” at a health care reform town hall meeting.

May 30, 2010—Sharron Angle, a candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator in Nevada, tells the Reno Gazette-Journal that a recent increase in gun sales nationwide "tells me that the nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn't that they are so distrustful of government? They're afraid they'll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways.

October 21, 2010—Pastor Stephen Broden, the Republican candidate for U.S. Representative in Texas' 30th Congressional District, tells WFAA-TV in Dallas that the violent overthrow of the government is an "option" that remains "on the table."

November 9, 2010—U.S. Representative-Elect Allen West of Florida's 22nd Congressional District hires conservative radio talk show host Joyce Kaufman as his Chief of Staff. On July 3, Kaufman told a crowd of Tea Party supporters, “I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendments rights was they gave me a Second Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will."

November 29, 2010—U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, circulates a PowerPoint presentation to his colleagues in which he compares the Obama administration to the Nazi regime in Germany and likens himself to Gen. George Patton, bragging, "Put anything in my scope and I will shoot it."

June 12,2010-Jesse Kelly, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords opponent wrote "Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly"

I'll ignore Sarah Palin, as everyone should, but this is not an isolated incidence, it is a trend.

Do I think such speech should be illegal? No.

But if a high school student had put cross hairs on their opponents and continually wrote about revolution and 2nd Amendment solutions, they'd be arrested. If an American Muslim had done it they'd be in GITMO, if they weren't targeted for death first. If the New Black Panther Party had showed up at political rallies carrying assault rifles, they'd be in prison and have congressional committees saying they should be in GITMO.

So let's please be consistent when we apply the Constitution and the PATRIOT Acts?

"Our thoughts go out to those impacted…" The White House (according to MSNBC)…

2011-01-10T13:58:00.005-05:00

…IMHO (oh, all right, I've never been humble about expressing my opinion nor do I consider my opinion to be humble), there could not be a more mealy-mouthed, evasive, non-expression of grief absent any mention or acceptance of responsibility by federal or state, so-called, authorities. Maybe somethin' more like this:

To Gabrielle Giffords, her family, friends, those innocents engaging in civil discourse, their families, friends, and those expecting to dump off responsibility for this travesty of justice and blame a clearly mentally ill man that has long been the subject of many queries and investigations by your local schools and so clearly unfit to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Armed Forces that he was rejected, despite the thousands of waivers given to convicted dope dealers, violent offenders, gang members (most of whom were required to kill someone to join the gang) convicted criminals of almost every stripe, and others that, historically, would also have been summarily rejected as unfit to kill in the name of the United States of America.

Each and every partition of government that viewed, dealt with, spoke to, and observed this obviously demented man FAILED YOU, not for any good nor acceptable nor even necessary reason except that every branch of this formerly great country and government and most every arrogant elected or appointed asshole has become so engaged in consolidating their maniacal base of power to engage in international warcrimes, clandestine murders ordered with all the conscience, pride, and dementia of Hannibal Lecter that NO ONE in or of the bigoted, radically, racially, and socially effete snobs of the 'better than thou' rightwing government of Arizona nor anyone in the federal government could get off their hairy asses to protect the very person of a DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE or the innocents of Arizona, being so consumed with puffing up their emaciated minds and bodies trying to outlaw people different than themselves that they CHOSE TO DO NOTHING; accessories before the fact these diseased despots willfully, deliberately, and shamelessly permitted this to happen as surely as if your governor and state legislature, all harbingers of hate, had purchased the high-powered guns, high capacity clips, and devastatingly destructive ammunition and then with malice aforethought taken aim and started shooting.

Had this sick, sick man vocalized targeting a teabagger-gop-er representative the site of this tragedy would undoubtedly have been blanketed with trigger happy guardians of the status quo just itching to open fire and show the world how well rethuglicans protect, harbor, enable, and provide security for their fellow rethuglicans and just how easy it is to conspire, create, and then watch their political enemies die from GOP malfeasance in office and their willing, criminal negligence, BUT YOU'LL HEAR NO APOLOGIES NOR ACCEPTANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY FROM ANY BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT OR PERSON THEREIN.

You will instead hear every rehashed, mealy-mouthed excuse and the pointing of fingers at a demented man identified previously and repeatedly by those responsible for your safety who chose to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut rather than fulfilling the duties for which they were elected or appointed or hired to do. The games of denial have begun, the law enforcement authorities, military recruiters and others will obfuscate as much as they wish until the attorney who has apparently lost every death penalty case she's handled, i.e., Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, and others, loses this case and society as a whole cheers as a mentally ill man is put to death as a salve for the collective conscience or confine under circumstances in which he is totally unable to protect himself from political zealots already in a prison or mental institution that will kill him to curry favor for a possible pardon.

So, my fellow Americans, the dead, the wounded, those traumatized for life, possibly, as your president it is incumbent upon me to tell you now and with certainty that America is now and for the foreseeable future, perhaps forever, UNGOVERNABLE. NO ONE IN FEDERAL OR STATE GOVERNMENT GIVES A SHIT ABOUT ANYTHING EXCEPT BEING REELECTED IN ORDER TO CONTINUE THEIR PERSONAL CRUSADES TO ACCUMULATE THE POWER NOW AND FOREVER TO SEIZE YOUR FORTUNES, PERSONS, THOUGHTS, DREAMS, AND ASPIRATIONS AND THEY WILL KILL YOU, WHETHER THROUGH ACTION OR INACTION, TO REMAIN IN POWER, SO Y'KNOW WHAT? FUCK ALL OF YOU. DO NOT ask for nor expect the apologies of this openly rogue group of power mad politicians more willing to pick your pockets, shame, embarrass, or kill you than any government in American history AND YOU ARE POWERLESS TO STOP THEM OR US from doing as we fucking well please.

Any questions? MSM puppets…newsreaders…Bueller…Bueller…the republican with the high powered assault rifle…anyone…anyone?

Representative Gabrielle Giffords shot in head, 9-year old girl among others killed- And now,…

2011-01-09T11:35:00.008-05:00

…you fucking evil, mean-spirited, wicked, arrogant, instigators-of-violence-by-praying-to-whatever-putrid-and-foul-deity you lying pack of hyenas making-up the republican, teabagger, GOP, conservative, religious rightwing tools of social disintegration, tyrannical assholes of wartime regimes bringing home the brutality, viciousness, and utter insanity of political assassinations as you have practiced time and again; the hundreds of thousands murdered in war crimes in the Middle East, and the millions displaced in one of the greatest man-made debacles of all time and the repeated calls by by teabagger-gop-ers to "ensure Obama fails," the calls to carry arms to Obama rallies, the baseless charges equating Obama and the Democratic Party with socialists, Nazis, fictional characters such as The Joker of Batman lore and fame (can any of you differentiate between fiction/fictional characters and REAL, LIVE, PEOPLE EVERY BIT AS ENTITLED TO EXIST, SPEAK, DREAM, HAVE FAMILIES, AND WORK TO HELP AMERICA AS ANY OF YOU JERK-OFFS?)

And to any/all who would purport that by these very words I, too, am debasing the FORMER American tradition of open, civil, political debate as much as the GOP you are entitled to hold any inaccurate or wrong opinion that you wish:

I am not now, nor will I ever be a holder of elected office.
I am entitled to my opinion, right or wrong, appealing or repugnant.
I do not call for, wish to see in operation, nor condone political assassinations or attempts in America or outside America, whether it is "ok'd" by our president or not, clandestinely or publicly.
I have no power to write or repeal statutes allowing or prohibiting the carrying of guns by citizens in public places where emotions in this charged political environment may, and can, result in senseless shootings and murders.
I do not have the bully pulpit of a president or the pit of slime occupied by teabagger-gop-ers in Congress to play the MSM for the fools they are.
Not once, re-read and check, have I ever called for the death of any person, but,
I sure as hell advocate for the immediate dissolution of any political party shown to be advocating political assassination in any way, shape, or form, and no matter how benign or ridiculous appeals for "killing, shooting, assassinating, threatening, attempting even by innuendo to bring about an assassination," (doesn't that sound obscenely stupid on the face of it? To tolerate ANY repeated calls for violence?)

Yes, yes, of course I know how we will hear of mentally ill kids, out-of-control-crazies looking for infamy, coulda happened anywhere (THAT much is true) and I know I'll only feel more and more sick at heart upon hearing the mealy-mouthed excuses for mindless butchers driven to vent their incomprehensible madness upon the innocent.

And the sham calls for action from the teabagger-gop-ers will ring as false as their preening and posing and lamenting the loss of a political enemy ('though, of course, no one in that party will be forthright enough to point out to the public that,"…the democrats just lost a vote in congress!" and, "…thank our lucky stars we can cancel that stupid vote on the even more insipid and violence provoking bill the title and subject of which is overturning the 'job-killing health care bill'; killing, destroying, ensuring failure of a sitting U.S. President, openly advocating his death, and stoking crowds to a killing frenzy by using the language of provoking war against a foreign force instead of seeking peace by reasoned, sensible, and productive debate to benefit America.

Not fair to only blame teabagger-gop-ers? Name the last democrat you or anyone else can name and provide the citation where any democrat ever called for the assassination of a republican in the last 170yrs or so. Say since Lincoln was assassinated. Name any prominent democrat religious leader ever calling for a presidential assassination.

I'm pissed. I do so hope many of you are as well.

My heart goes out to the families of Representative Gifford, the several dead and wounded, and especially the mother and family of the nine year-old child senselessly gunned down - in a state moving forward with legislation to ACTUALLY PERMIT students and teachers to CARRY GUNS TO SCHOOL, courtesy of the teabagger-gop-er gutless cowards that will never admit their duplicity is a large part of the root cause of this incident. Merely voting to enable and, to my mind certainly, exponentially increase the numbers of such attacks by placing guns into the hands of their lunatic fringe base should alone be sufficient to revoke the charter of the political party advocating such insanity.

Prepare yourself for much regurgitation as you witness the crocodile tears of teabagger-gop-ers that will affirmatively state and argue this incident happened because there weren't ENOUGH GUNS for a citizen to have shot the perp and "stopped" the slaughter of innocents their words and deeds inspired.

Come on baby, eat the rich

2011-01-07T19:11:00.001-05:00

(Most links are provided in footnotes.)
There are death panels, no, not the "death panels" lie Palin & other republicans used, (the 2009 Lie of the Year), but actual death panels. The death panel? It's Jan Brewer. (Donner, party of one? [/snark])

Gov. Jan Brewer has sentenced 100 people in Arizona to die. What was their crime? They were sick and needed a transplant. 2 have already died. The money was already allocated, AZ already was ready to receive 2x as much Fed money as they would have to provide, and reneged. Brewer and her Republican legislature said the state couldn't afford 1.4 million dollars. They were willing to spend that much to save 5 squirrels (I'm not kidding.)

But she still wants the Medicare money from the Federal coffers, (that would be our tax money) even tho she and AZ repubs reneged.

And she's not alone, 33 other republican governors also want our tax dollars to also renege on their duty to their fellow citizens. Somehow these bastards that ran on fiscal responsibility and states rights (like Gov Christie of NJ who was vacationing in Disneyworld during the snowpocalypse) suddenly think the Feds should bail them out.

And right now, the US House of ~~Republicans~~ Representatives, says that their can only be cuts in social services, and not defense, to balance the Fed budget.

Do you need any more proof that these people are trying, and succeeding, to kill us?

The majority of Americans say increase the taxes on the rich to help balance the budget. The majority of Americans don't want health care repealed, they just think it didn't go far enough.

But republicans are ignoring the will of the people.

I have a modest proposal; If you're out of work? If your family is hungry? EAT THE RICH.

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Sorry for my absence as the VA assisted the military devise new dental tortures…

2011-01-07T14:31:00.004-05:00

…ostensibly applied to provide relief this diabolically cruel method of inflicting unbearable pain grows evermore efficient in the hands of the masked men with shiny, metallic tools with curls, swirls, sharp points, wide, flat steel levers to rip the mouth asunder while keeping their subject anesthetized and unaware of the crushing pain until the "patient" comes out from under.

True story: The only person whom I ever told I was going to kill and quite literally meant it was a dentist.

I was on duty with a terrible tooth ache when my supervisor came by my post, noticed the swelling on the right side of my jaw, immediately relieved me from duty and, since it was almost 8am I was taken directly to the base dentist on an emergency basis.

This young Captain came in, looked, told me it was an impacted lower wisdom tooth. Then he jammed a hugh needle into my gum and squirted some awful "irrigation" fluid (despite my twisting, turning, and muffled cries of pain) then placed a chisel on the tooth raised a big ass mallet and told me,"You're going to feel some pressure here," and then whacked the chisel very hard and broke the tooth into about fifty splinters; it felt like he had torn my jaw right out of my face. He then spent about a half-hour pulling the splinters, put a couple of stitches in there and then hustled me out the door without a word about painkillers.

I bore the most incredible pain of my life for about an hour-and-a-half, got a ride back to the clinic, marched in to the Captain's office, sat down, pushed his paperwork to the side and leaned over his desk trying to get nose-to-nose with him. He got pissed, demanding to know what I wanted, threatening courts-martial, and THAT'S when I put myself in the most severe jeopardy of my career: I grabbed him by his lapels, pulled him up out of his chair, got nose-to-nose and very quietly told him that,"You ARE going to give me something for my pain you bastard or I will leave here, walk down to the armory (only a short distance), draw my weapons, and I will then return and KILL YOU, UNDERSTAND?

I didn't allow the Captain to move while his clerk called the Colonel in command of the dental unit. He came storming into the room yelling something about NOBODY threatening one of his dentists, saw the Captain, still in my grasp, and then the Colonel calmed himself as I began to explain. He came over, coaxed me into letting the Captain go, and then gently shoved me into a dental chair. He took a cursory look, turned to the Captain, obviously pissed, and asked him,"Did you do this work? And didn't put him under while you missed an inch of severed gum that should have been stitched, and THEN SENT HIM OUT WITH NOTHING FOR HIS PAIN?" The Captain that had started to regain his confidence, expecting the Colonel to back him at all cost kinda deflated real quick as he answered in the affirmative.

The Colonel sent the Captain to await him at his office, worked on me VERY gently for almost an hour, and then gave me all sorts of pain relievers, the best of which for me was codeine - except that codeine puts me way O.D. (Out Dere), so he gave me four days off, called my first sergeant and told him to assign "handlers" to watch out for me and to safeguard me, 'cause for those four days I could make the wrong turn in my own barracks and find myself hopelessly lost.

They followed me to the shower, to the chow hall, to the mail room, from my bunk to a nice sunny spot where the houseboys shining shoes and stuff could help watch me.

NO ONE anywhere along the chain of command, from dental commanders, to my first sergeant, commander, NCOIC, NO ONE ever breathed a single word about courts-martials or even non-judicial Article 15 charges being filed against me for this incident.

The Captain that so obviously butchered me turned out to be a reserve Captain, was written up in a career ending letter by the Colonel, and was shipped home no longer a reserve captain.

The above story is entirely true, no names have been changed to protect the innocent as no names were used and none were innocent.

So Tell Me, Who Are You?

2011-01-04T21:40:00.000-05:00

Ohh, a poow wittle NYT columnist got his feewings hurt, again, about us anonymous bloggers. Never mind the fact that the NYT joyfully quotes 'anonymous' sources all the time that lie and lie and lie to them, just so they can have 'access' to people that lie to them? Hmmf!

Anonymity and the Dark Side of the Internet

Read the whole thing if you want, but all you need to know is that Stanley Fish, wrote a book called "There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing, Too."

Yet somehow he gets the free speech to declare there shouldn't be free speech. Hmmf again, because no one just gives me the right to have a giant megaphone like the NYT, because it's only wittle fwoks who can't afford a GIANT MEGAPHONE.
****************
In related news:
The Queen of Liars, Judith Miller, who helped drive a nation into war with her stenography and lies gets all upset that someone who revealed the truth is getting more press than her:

Reporter behind WMD claims calls Assange ‘bad journalist’

A former [Judith Miller] New York Times reporter assailed for her incorrect reports about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction is criticizing Julian Assange for being a "bad journalist."
[...]
Miller once defended her reporting with the argument that it is not a journalist's job to verify -- only to report inform readers of what they had been told.

I think that's the definition of a stenographer.

And just for facts sake, Wikileaks has vetted the leaks; when the US MIL and State dept refused to help, they went to the NYT, The Guardian and other papers. It was not a dump of 250,000 US State Dept cables, it's been a very careful release of only 2500 cables ... so far.

Judy, Judy, Judy, has more excuses, but that's a tale for a different day.

[insert The Who footage here]

Grim Tales for the New Century Fairy…

2010-12-31T16:40:00.005-05:00

I’m Goin’ Huntin’ for New Year’s Supper

I didn’t get nuttin’ for Christmas and I’m really pissed off at Mom and Dad,
Many other kids living in dry, big boxes got presents; for us there was naught to be had.

So I grabbed Daddy’s shotgun and told my parents, “There ain’t gonna be no repeat
Of the Christmas Day spent watching the other kids eat; while we kids watched, they ate meat!”

Daddy got real quiet, Mom sobbed out of control, only my brothers and sisters asked what I’d do.
I began and when I could see I had their full attention, I said, “I’m goin’ huntin’ at the zoo!”

This was far easier than a boy of eleven like me could ever had imagined, “Food, I see food!”
I exclaimed, as I climbed a half-dead tree to the top of the fence, jumped over and there I stood,

Wild animals everywhere, lions, leopards, tigers, cheetahs, jaguars and all the big cats,
Lemurs, warthogs, boars, wombats, wolverines, and hey! Giant snakes! Look at all that!

I was feeling both cocky and confident and had set my sights on the one human resident,
The Ranger that lived there to protect the animals, be on fire watch, and do it all from his tent.

There he had radar, sonar, all sorts of listening and spying gear; enough to create and instill dread,
Believe me, I felt that awful dread, right before loading the shotgun and shooting him dead.

You can imagine the consternation when I brought the Ranger home minus all his internals,
Daddy yelled at me, Momma just held onto me, my siblings ran screamin’ from the animals,

Those big cats, unhurt, must have decided to follow me home, not knowing what to do after
The big cats caught my brothers and sisters, one-by-one, playing till I thought of calling NAFTA,

NAFTA responded with alacrity, sirens blarin’, lights flarin’, arrested one-by-one, oh, what to do?
“Wait!,” I cried,”I called you!” “You’re an enemy combatant now due to your acts at the zoo,”

Dad waved bye-bye, Mom’s tears continued to flow, I kept laughing until Mom just had to know,
“Why the laughter, why so carefree?”
“Because, mom, the judge trying this case is the one Dad most appeared before,” I said, “and all that time you thought I was behind the bench playing at the Judge’s knee,

I was blowing that S.O.B. till he was blind and could not see. Just wait, surprised you’ll be.”
Sure enough, after the bailiff called my case and the Judge saw my face all he said was,”Set those people free! Bring that boy over to sit at my knee!”

A happy ending was had by all as the judge told me there was to be no more hunting at the zoo,
No charges were filed for killing the park keeper, he’d been a lecher, a pedophile, a molester, too.

He is buried behind the courthouse, left unclothed to rot as worm food; the animals put in the zoo.
The judge invited us to a fabulous repast, my siblings gone, Dad depressed, but Mom knew exactly what to do.

Standing and tapping her glass of wine like I’ve seen them in do movies to make a toast,
Slyly she caught her husband’s eye, raised her glass to speak, saying,“This has been a terrible Christmas so allow me a quick toast, thank you for your kindness judge, but with only a single child left I certainly know now, what we’ll eat on Christmas next, so here and now I’m announcing a very special roast…” stopping to look at my face,“Why, it’s our one remaining child, the one with a face as white as a ghost!”

This is the…E-N-D.

Grim Tales for the New Century Fairy…

2010-12-31T04:58:00.004-05:00

… The First Few Days After Christmas

‘Twas a few days after Christmas and the house was quiet as a dead mouse,
Though it was to be expected; it had been foreclosed upon by some banker louse,
Who snidely told the evictees that being unemployed they didn’t deserve a home,
“So just go back to the homeless shelter and pray there remain some bones,
Leftover from the Christmas repast of vermin, roaches, bedbugs, maybe even a grouse!”

Each year the numbers of the financially-challenged poverty class continues to grow,
The rich grow richer faster than before, looking ahead to profits that never slow.
As usual there will be a group of softhearted, touched-in-the-head troublemakers.
They refuse to belief that not all people are malingerers, not all are welfare queens and takers.
“Bah! Humbug! Next election all America will know the true path these people follow!”

The hungry keep getting more hungry as they eye their medicines and cans of various food,
Mulling their chances and deciding whether to choose between two things, both good,
Forced to choose between death from untreated illness or death from slow starvation,
The rich won’t care, don’t bother them, it’s unseemly and rude to disturb the rich on vacation,
Despite the mounting death rates for babies and dead veterans stacked like cords of wood.

It is easy to see the rich teaching the fate of every boy; teaching them women are toys,
With phony GOP claims that Democrats are bringers and doers of “evil” and out to “destroy!”
republicans, are using ancient methods found to be tried and true by gwb and Big Dick Cheney,
Breaking men’s minds one gray matter whorl at a time till it is wet, gray, mushy and grainy,
Look there! 2012 storm clouds already spinning faster to ready and steady the running boy.

Then come’s the elected’s swearing in, oaths to protect America and Americans are made again,
Oaths we now know without doubt will never be kept, partisanship overrides country and kin,
535 people now have jobs with generous benefits, vacation, medical care; all are ready to fly,
No airplanes to go buy, this corporate option must be enough, how would you pick and why?
I’d pick a Radio Flyer Wagon with four Secret Service Men to push me uphill again, my friend.

Until they drop like flies.

Grim Tales for the New Century Fairy…

2010-12-31T04:19:00.006-05:00

Today my Daddy came home happier than a long, long time, a smile on his face.
Standing tall again, a glitter in his eye, a look toward Ma, she teasing him by concealing herself with lace.
Demurely, her skin flushing that special red color denoting arousal of sexual kinds,
That very special shade of red that end’s with the rending of clothes, out of your mutual minds,

They called each their love, speaking as lovers till he called out in climax her beautiful name,
She slid from the bed, lay down her garment, slowly, with erotic grace, till it came into view,
An .870 Remington shotgun she fired and fired, killing him dead, turned, bringing children into view,
She told them, “It’s Frederica! My name is Frederica! Is it too much to ask?” she asked as she slowly slid to the floor, sweet tender calls to, “ I begged thee, please God, my name is Frederica.
Frederica! FREDERICA, not FRED you dead bastard! Dead! Oh! Oh, if Frederick could only have remembered my name!”

NOTE: I thought I'd try something different: I cannot dance, my singing kills small animals, the only beings that hang off my every word are all Boston Terriers (they are a riot!), I'm nowhere near a world class athlete any longer, I can no longer pursue, catch, and incarcerate bailskips, and, frankly, I have been having lots of writer's block lately, accounting for the paucity of my writing lately.

In addition to these Grim Fairy Tales for the New Century I am open to suggestions submitted by our readers about different issues to which you might want another point of view; I'm here. I cannot guarantee I will address the specifics of your issue (some just require too much research), but factually or funnily, I will make every attempt to entertain you - especially if you bear in mind my extreme constant pain and the effects of all the drugs I am prescribed - and taking - and a special thanks to all those who chose to completely ignore them (as I wish I could!). Enjoy yourself, be happy, and drop me a line in a comment section if you'd like more.

Fire And Ice

2010-12-29T14:37:00.000-05:00

"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice."

Robert Frost

That's about all I have to say about love and politics today. And, as usual, someone else said it first and best.

Another version of Fire And Ice below.

Ahh Brooklyn, Brooklyn take me in, Are you aware the shape I’m in?

2010-12-24T00:18:00.003-05:00

Just some songs before you go: