The Daily Bleat: 12/13/12

Woody Sez: The people's man, St. Barry, the Pale, the bright beacon for hope and change, the "First Black American President," seems to be fine with this (though there are mutterings that the Dims may fiond spine enough to resist it.): raising the eligibility age for Medicare to 67. But what the FUCK? Extending the eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 67 is, effectively, a death sentence for MANY of those forced to wait. Is he gonna count those bodies as part of his "legacy," too, along with the central Asian drone-kill?

"Naked Capitalism on Death by Medicare:
"Remember, this isn’t a story of heartbreak and sadness.It’s a story of murder by policy. Medicare isn’t a welfare system where people are getting charity from the state, it’s a social insurance system that these people have already paid for. Increasing the eligibility age for Medicare isn’t shared sacrifice is simply confiscating the property that people prepaid for and that they need to stay alive. Morally, it’s no different than choosing 1261 people aged 65 and 66, disproportionately picking more black and/or poor people, and killing them so that you don’t have to honor the promise they paid for that they would get health care at 65."

Did you REALLY not know that this skeevy shitstick was gonna fuck you when you elected him? Really??

And then I wrote:
Will SOMEONE please explain why so many folks seem to think that the next 4 years are gonna be different from the LAST four years?

The GOPhux still hold the House with a 35-seat majority BEFORE you factor in the Blue Dawgs. Harry Reid says he's got the votes to modify the filibuster rule in the Senate; but he had that in the LAST term too, and chickened out.

Obamster is NOT stronger this term than last. His "mandate" is SMALLER, if anything: he won by FEWER electoral votes than in '08, and with a SMALLER percentage of the popular vote.

So, riddle me this: WHY do people think it will be "better" this term? On what evidence do they base their claims? I'm really, really curious.
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Recrudescence: In an effort, lame for even his lame ass, to broach like a festering gobbet of sludge, propelled surfaceward from the very depths of the cesspool that is Righttard, wackloon fucknozzle bloggery, by its own corruption and decay, rises Glenn Reynolds, aka "Instapundit," like a feculent white wail, with retrospective advice for the lackluster GOPhux to remind us again why we ignore him in the first place.
The GOP didn't spend enough time, energy and money attracting the Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, cosmo crowd, condeding them the the Feminist "mean Girls." No, really:

In her 2004 book, “Spin Sisters: How the Women of The Media Sell Unhappiness — and Liberalism — to the Women of America,” Myrna Blyth (a former Ladies Home Journal editor) explained in considerable detail the variety of “Mean Girls” feminism that the women’s media aim at their readers with every issue. The message: There’s one way that women should think; people who don’t think that way are bad and stupid — and if you think the wrong way, women won’t like you.

It doesn't improve.
N.B: He, too, is a "law professor."

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There was a nifty moment in the FA Cup replay of the tie between Hastings and Harrow Town, today, when the side from the lower league, Level 8 Hastings, advanced into the Third Round for the first time ever, and ousted Level 6 side Harrow on penalty kicks after regular and extra time left 'em locked up at 1.
The exuberance and jubilation of the victors, on home ground, was absolutely PALPABLE. The side had never made it even into Round 2 before. Next opponents: Middleborough, formerly a Premier League side who now compete in the second division of the FA, the Championship. They meet in January. +~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

The Daily Bleat: 12/12/12

ITEM: Here's that "tolerate private power" bullshit again!

Wadda load o'crap. Who da fuuk does he think he's kidding?

We don't "tolerate" these fuckers. Who "tolerates" usurping assholes?

They never pay us any mind.

They just do whatever the fuck they wanna do, which is always "legal," and we take it in the shorts!

Tolerate? Fuck me! We have NO FUCKING CHOICE!@!!
 Chuy, jodido!

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ITEM: Don't be fucking naive, people.

These folks NEVER do anything for the "good" of anyone but themselves.

If they're dropping opposition, it's because they know they'll never have to pay 'em, anyway, after they hire the next battaliuon of MBA and former Cabinet officials to evade and/or avoid 'em.

Some of the nation's leading executives drop opposition to boosting taxes on wealthiest Americans

www.dailykos.com

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ITEM: Your job-site benefits--all of them: weekends, paid vacation, health care, 40 hr week, overtime, work place safety, everything--were bought with the blood of workers, your parents and ancestors. Nothing was "given." People bled and died for 'em.

So now, if the motherfucking Bosses are gonna rescind the deal, it ought to cost them a full measure of that same blood that was spillled to win them.

Make them PAY, like for like, if they're gonna to renege,

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ITEM: BOTH were correct:Big Brother's jackboots only await the moment when the Soma wears off.

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ITEM: This is an apocryphal, unsourced statement of which, though it could well have been made, there is no reliable record. 

Regardless, Poppi's murderous, conniving, anti-democratic fucking CIA thug whose passing should be wished for by ANY sentient citizen. 

Oh, yeah. I forgot treasonous.

He and Bill Casey negotiated with the Iranian Mullahs in Paris, in 1980, to prevent the release of the Embassy hostages before the 1980 election, to deprive Carter of his October surprise, in direct contravention of Section 2 of the US Constitution. He should be stood against a fucking wall and shot.:
http://bit.ly/TheAwakeningOnFB

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Nobody in elected office wants there to ever be MORE voters than the ones who were eligible when THEY got elected.

They may claim to want to expand the franchise, but they lie in their rotting teeth.

And election officials in all 50 states are also elected.

So it aintagunnahapun...

Eric Holder: Time To Consider National Voting Standards

tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com

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Woody thinkz: An ostensibly "democratic" society/culture in which people/workers spend between a third and a half of their WHOLE lifetimes sniveling and groveling for pathetic crumbs at the feet of totalitarian Bosses--even more when you consider the intrusive, coercive surveillance the Bosses exert over us even when we're NOT at work: THIS is not a "free" society.
Here speaks the authentic voice of the "True Fucktard Intelligentsia." Read it and weep.

Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

By: Human Events
5/31/2005 03:00 AM

HUMAN EVENTS asked a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders to help us compile a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Each panelist nominated a number of titles and then voted on a ballot including all books nominated. A title received a score of 10 points for being listed No. 1 by one of our panelists, 9 points for being listed No. 2, etc. Appropriately, The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, earned the highest aggregate score and the No. 1 listing.
1. The Communist Manifesto

Authors: Karl Marx and Freidrich (sic) Engels
Publication date: 1848
Score: 74
Summary: Marx and Engels, born in Germany in 1818 and 1820, respectively, were the intellectual godfathers of communism. Engels was the original limousine leftist: A wealthy textile heir, he financed Marx for much of his life. In 1848, the two co-authored The Communist Manifesto as a platform for a group they belonged to called the Communist League. The Manifesto envisions history as a class struggle between oppressed workers and oppressive owners, calling for a workers’ revolution so property, family and nation-states can be abolished and a proletarian Utopia established. The Evil Empire of the Soviet Union put the Manifesto into practice.

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2. Mein Kampf
Author: Adolf Hitler
Publication date: 1925-26
Score: 41
Summary: Mein Kampf (My Struggle) was initially published in two parts in 1925 and 1926 after Hitler was imprisoned for leading Nazi Brown Shirts in the so-called “Beer Hall Putsch” that tried to overthrow the Bavarian government. Here Hitler explained his racist, anti-Semitic vision for Germany, laying out a Nazi program pointing directly to World War II and the Holocaust. He envisioned the mass murder of Jews, and a war against France to precede a war against Russia to carve out “lebensraum” (“living room”) for Germans in Eastern Europe. The book was originally ignored. But not after Hitler rose to power. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, there were 10 million copies in circulation by 1945.

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3. Quotations from Chairman Mao
Author: Mao Zedong
Publication date: 1966
Score: 38
Summary: Mao, who died in 1976, was the leader of the Red Army in the fight for control of China against the anti-Communist forces of Chiang Kai-shek before, during and after World War II. Victorious, in 1949, he founded the People’s Republic of China, enslaving the world’s most populous nation in communism. In 1966, he published Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, otherwise known as The Little Red Book, as a tool in the “Cultural Revolution” he launched to push the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese society back in his ideological direction. Aided by compulsory distribution in China, billions were printed. Western leftists were enamored with its Marxist anti-Americanism. “It is the task of the people of the whole world to put an end to the aggression and oppression perpetrated by imperialism, and chiefly by U.S. imperialism,” wrote Mao.

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4. The Kinsey Report
Author: Alfred Kinsey
Publication date: 1948
Score: 37
Summary: Alfred Kinsey was a zoologist at Indiana University who, in 1948, published a study called Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, commonly known as The Kinsey Report. Five years later, he published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. The reports were designed to give a scientific gloss to the normalization of promiscuity and deviancy. “Kinsey’s initial report, released in 1948 . . . stunned the nation by saying that American men were so sexually wild that 95% of them could be accused of some kind of sexual offense under 1940s laws,” the Washington Times reported last year when a movie on Kinsey was released. “The report included reports of sexual activity by boys–even babies–and said that 37% of adult males had had at least one homosexual experience. . . . The 1953 book also included reports of sexual activity involving girls younger than age 4, and suggested that sex between adults and children could be beneficial.”

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5. Democracy and Education

Author: John Dewey
Publication date: 1916
Score: 36
Summary: John Dewey, who lived from 1859 until 1952, was a “progressive” philosopher and leading advocate for secular humanism in American life, who taught at the University of Chicago and at Columbia. He signed the Humanist Manifesto and rejected traditional religion and moral absolutes. In Democracy and Education, in pompous and opaque prose, he disparaged schooling that focused on traditional character development and endowing children with hard knowledge, and encouraged the teaching of thinking “skills” instead. His views had great influence on the direction of American education–particularly in public schools–and helped nurture the Clinton generation.

http://www.humanevents.com/2005/05/31/ten-most-harmful-books-of-the-19th-and-20th-centuries/
And THAT's just the top FIVE? Doesn't it read as if it were composed by Johah ("J-Load," aka 'the Doughy Pantload') Goldberg?

Tax the rich.

And if they get snotty about it, kill 'em

.This video, which illustrates just how effectively the 1% dropped this country to its knees has obviously struck a raw nerve with the folks at FoxNews. They are attempting to do some pre-emptive strikes because they know it will be watched and understood by the typical FoxNews viewer. Hannity was about to jump out of his skin over it, pulling segments of it to attack. But he is only going to bring more attention to it and more FoxNews viewers are going to watch it and understand just exactly how the 1% took control of the country's wealth.... including how buying up media outlets and news organizations in order to spread the message of the obscenely-wealthy has contributed to it all. (cough... FoxNews.. cough)

Tax the rich: An animated fairy tale, is narrated by Ed Asner, with animation by Mike Konopacki. Written and directed by Fred Glass for the California Federation of Teachers. An 8 minute video about how we arrived at this moment of poorly funded public services and widening economic inequality. Things go downhill in a happy and prosperous land after the rich decide they don't want to pay taxes anymore. They tell the people that there is no alternative, but the people aren't so sure. This land bears a startling resemblance to our land. For more info, www.cft.org.

El Differente's Cumples!

Today is Tommy Maccione Day in Santa Fe. The New Mexican had a nice story. It would have been his 105th birthday. He was an authentic Santa Fe character, a small, skinny fellow often dramatically attired in flowing hats and scarves and billowing coats; he wore wildly long, flowing hair, and a long beard--as well as what seemed to have been a perpetually runny nose--standing at his easel, en plein air, at various, splendid vistas and locations around the city. In "The City Different," Tommy was "El Differente." He ran for every office imaginable, and frequently addressed the City Council, especially if people were hassling him about his dogs. He ALWAYS had at least one dog asleep at his feet, and at LEAST a dozen more at home. One place he favored was the corner of Camino Santander and Camino Monte Sol, for its unobstructed view straight up into the Sangres, over a fairly deep arroyo. That was where my grandparents' house stood/stands, and I would see him often when we spent summers there in the '50s.

"Jeez, RIchard! Tell Us How You REALLY Feel..."

Escape Fire: Desperate Metaphor For Desperate Times

"An "escape fire" is a fire set intentionally around otherwise trapped fire-fighters to consume the fuel in a small space in advance of the larger wildfire that will surely kill them. It was proven effective in a famous blaze in the '50s, when several men of a fire-fighting crew, following advice from a member of the party, tried it and lived while others, who fled, were killed.

It's a powerful metaphor, because it evokes such a ferocious crisis, such immediate and mortal danger, and such desperate survival measures."
ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare (Trailer) from Our Time Projects on Vimeo.

HERE's the Link, since they're being pissy about it

"The Deposit Model": Friere's Educational Critique

My old Curriculum Theory pal, BIll Reynolds, down in Georgia, found and posted this. It's WELL worth the 15 minutes or so that it occupies.

Maybe I should just turn this page over to Lee Camp?

Lee Camp: More Immanent Contradictions

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian, Interviews Mrs. Ann Romney, NOT America's Best Anything

America's Best Christian, Mrs. Betty Bowers, Explains God's will About Abortion! Yay!

Huelga! Si se puedes...

This image, and this whole Spanish miners' strike, and their confrontation with the police,encapsulates, perfectly, the universal dilemma of formulating a social policy to climate change, even beyond the matter of profit-driven CorpoRat exploitation, in a fucking nutshell....

"We" need ever-more energy.

Burning coal is just about the worst way, from an environmentally responsible perspective, to make usable energy.

But these coal miners' jobs and livelihoods (and probably their macho egos, too), and their union's strength and influence, too, all depend on the continued use of this destructive substance in ways which continue to damage the entire ecosphere.

And the workers must fight to DEFEND the exploitation which ultimately falls the hardest on them and their families.

I think these are some more examples of hat Marx called the "immanent contradictions of Capital."

The Myth of Sustainability: A Commitment To A Chimera

It's sheerest, vainest, brazenest fantasy! Carbon-based "development" is NOT POSSIBLE, NOT SUSTAINABLE.
Period.
But the Owners will ensure that the world is trapped in that sticky mess as long as there is ONE, SINGLE, UNAMORTIZED DOLLAR of "investment"to recoup.
There is no way to reduce the foot-print of modernity soon enough or sizably enough to forestall the eventual (foreseeable) collapse of the part of the bio-sphere that sustains us.
 We've fucked it up beyond repair.
I SINCERELY hope I am no longer among the living when the blow falls.
 We are ALREADY edging closer and closer to Hobbes' "war of all against all," when civic life reverts the "the state of nature: poor, lonely, nasty, bruitish, and short."

Lee Camp: For want of an olive...

They put 12 imbecilic fart-lickers between you and a refund...

America's Most Respectable Marxist on "Debt."

Lee Camp's MoC: The Economic Hitmen Bring It Home

Vertigo! Phil Polizatto Goes All Hitchcock!

The very sounds of the STOOPIT can set a person off:

"This is what happens to me when I see someone bristling at the words “socialism,” “progressivism,” or anything that might sound like it is for the “greater good of the people.” They bristle with fear and ignorance because they have been manipulated by words and phrases that have no substance. Words and phrases made up by an elite corps of wealthy people with vested interests. They and their ad agencies make up slogans. “Show the birth certificate.” “Obama is a Fascist.” “Take our country back!” What the hell does that really mean? How far back? Pre-toilet paper? Or just pre-Civil Rights?

I look carefully for the theories and philosophies the Tea Partiers put forth which are worthy of debate. And I do mean debate in its purest form, namely, logical debate, in which the arguments derive from an axiom, are free from rhetoric and strategy, and based solely on substantiated facts. I ask Tea Partiers to describe in detail how their political theory and philosophy would be implemented. I am only answered with inanities and name-calling. But the more I drill down on my own to discover the details, the more frightening the Tea Party Platform becomes in its insidiousness. Its well-honed use of double-speak is downright scary. Add to the mix the awful reality of, “Say it often enough and it’s true,” (at least to many brain dead couch potatoes,) and the rhetoric really begins to smell."

My colleague on WWH is a very erudite, interesting fellow; slide on by World Wide Hippies

for the rest.

Lifting the Veils...

It's close to two hours long, but you should indulge yourselves.

"A system of Elite rule, which is a little more soft-core than the type of Elite rule we would see under a military dictatorship for instance, but what we are under - a Polyarchy is that the basic socioeconomic system does not change, it does not become democratised, wealth is not redistributed downward. You don't see a more equitable distribution of wealth and resources.

So that is the key: Socioeconomic Dictatorship and Free Elections."

Lifting the Veil from S DN on Vimeo.

Lee Camp's Jobs Program

#1: Cause cancer--preferably the curable kind--in #EVERYONE# Lots of jobs in treating and curing cancer!

'Cente! Nuestro "Cuate"

I didn't know him very well. He was a couple of years my senior (I knew his (late) brother, Reuben, a lot better. We were in HS and dated some of the same girls). 'Cente died doing what he loved: dancing.

TDS w/JS: Judgmentalism, in III Parts

In the end, the most terrifying thing about Goldstein's summation is that he's so besotted with the propaganda that he doesn't SEE that the SCROTUS OPUS DEISTS/Fucktards represent a complete and irreversible alteration to the whole jurisprudence of the Court, unless he (goldstein) that subsequent/future Justices will be as cazvalier about "stare decisis" as the current majority is and has been.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

And speaking of the SCROTUS/Opus Deists jamming itself/themselves up our asses:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Part II: Totalitarianism Coming, the second part. WATCH THIS!

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

If Bats Went Extinct, Insects Would Smother Humanity W/in 5 Years

Without bats, humanity would be in a world of BUGS:

There’s this great story out of Pennsylvania about a group of 4th graders that have decided to hold a bake sale and donate the money to support research efforts on the fungal disease, white-nose syndrome, that is devastating bat populations in the eastern US.

There is a wonderful audio link with the story of an interview with their teacher that is well worth a listen, but if you don’t have the chance a few of the best parts are when the teacher is asked why her students chose to support this particular cause. She replies,

Once the (students) started researching it and finding out that we are going to be affected – we are affected by it in Pennsylvania –the idea is that we could have too many insects, we could have farmers with problems with too many worms, we could actually have like an epidemic if you will so - they got very interested because somehow it affects us personally.

And what are the students hopes?

They want to see a cure for white-nose syndrome. They want to have a healthy bat population. They are concerned about the overpopulation of insects and worms. They are even concerned about the food chain… the idea that we have to take care of the environment and make sure the animals are safe and as a result of that, that we’re safe as well.

And how did the rest of the school respond?

Normally people are squeamish about bats. In fact when the signs were first put up about the bake sale some of the kids almost said like, you know, ‘Why would we be raising money for bats?’ But the (students) have really informed the school and they almost look like more than leaders – they look like heroes.

They sound like bat heroes to me!

As white-nose syndrome continues to spread, the 4th graders are right – more money is needed for research efforts to determine whether there is anything we can do to slow or stop the spread of this terrible disease. NRDC is continuing its efforts to secure federal funding for this research and this past year we and our partners were successful in getting Congress to direct $4 million towards research and management of white-nose syndrome. But this simply isn’t enough when scientists have estimated they would need around $50 million to address basic scientific questions about the fungus. We need more money however we can get it.

We can’t all go to Pennsylvania and buy cookies from these 4th graders, but there are a number of other ways for each of us to support the effort:

Contact your Congressional representatives and tell them that you support funding to address white-nose syndrome
Learn more about the issue and educate your friends and family
Donate money to the organizations that are working to support solutions for white-nose syndrome. Our partners at Bat Conservation International and the National Speleological Society, for example, both have funds set up specifically for addressing white-nose syndrome.
Or follow the 4th graders lead and hold your own bat bake-sale!

Understanding Modern Dance

Lee Camp: Operation Murdering William

There is a virus destroying us from the inside. Why would let it grow? Why would we foster and nurture it?

Funny or Die: "Women's Reproductive Health Panel"

Women's Health Experts Speak Out from Judd Nelson

Lee Camp -- "They Weren't Using Them, Anyway"

Lee Camp/MoC: "...Nothing"

Judas Priest, Under God!

The sanctimonious, berobed pederastic fucknozzles of the Roman Church's hierarchy have entered the political fray once again with complaints about supplying birth-control to their employees.

At the same time, there are fresh reevelations about sexual abuse of children by religious folks in ANOTHER diocese, this one in Milwaukee.

But I haven't seen ANYBODY reply to the mackerel-snappers' intrusion into the birth-control debate in the way in which I would, which would be to say:

"You vile, foul, filthy fucking hypocrites.
"You DARE to rail and rage about contraception, which even 90 percent of your on confession regards as sane, and sensible, while in EVERY diocese in the focking COUNTRY, and in MOST of them around the world, you skeevy fuckers CANNOT keep your grasping paws out of little children's underclothes?
"Fuck off.
"You can rejoin the conversation when your fucking pope and half the fucking college of Cardinals, and most of the bishops are in jail for rape."

The RC Hierarchs--anyone above the level of parish priest--should be required to register as "agents of a foreign power," and parish priests ought to be required to file a DNA sample with their local constabularies.

How Do You Spell Charlatan"? M O R M O N

Richard Dawkins on Bill Maher's show a hundred or so THOUSAND hits ago.

"Money Can't Buy 'Happiness'" ~~ The CorpoR8 Beatitudes

They ask, disingenuously: Do you agree?
Frankly, no, I don't.

No matter how "happy" you think you are now, adding a Million Buck$ would improve things, significantly.
It would make my year, fer sher...

Does it EVER occur to "poor" folks that these "positive thinking" aphorisms & feel-good bromides were composed by the rich fuckers to persuade you poor suckers to be content--even grateful-- with the scraps, rags, and crumbs they leave us?

Monopoly!

Today is the 77th anniversary of the one of the most cynical game introduction of all time: the unveiling of the 'game' into the teeth of the Great Depression. They alleged at the time it was an "instructional" tool by which people could learn to understand 'capitalism.' Telling, ainit, the TITLE they chose? Since--in the 'final analysis,' as ol' Karl usta say, the ultimate, end-state of Capitalism is always exactly that: monopoly.

As my pal, Stephen Banks (aka, "Dirk Gently"), acutely observed:

"Life IS like a game of Monopoly.

"But not a game that starts at the beginning, where everyone starts with the same bankroll and the whole world is an open board, waiting for the cleverest and luckiest to make his fortune.

No, life starts in the last 20 minutes if the game, where one guy owns everything, and he lets all the losers slide in the rent a little or makes deals that slowly bleed them just to keep them in the game a little longer; after all, he will inevitably win, and he's the only one still having fun.

Imagine if every time you played, everyone started out with the same properties they had at the end of the last game - and if someone left, his kid took his place. After a while, you might not not want to play any more."

I mean, it's just a game. It wouldn't do to make it TOO life-like, would it?

The Cartoon Conspiracy Contra The FED

Part One:

Part Two:

Have you ever wondered how in the world you can explain complicated topics such as the Federal Reserve, fractional reserve banking and the creation of money in a way that your family and friends will actually understand?
Well, the other day I was made aware of an amazing new 30 minute animated documentary entitled The American Dream. Considering the fact that this column is called "The American Dream", that definitely got my attention, and when I sat down and watched the documentary I was absolutely amazed. What Tad Lumpkin and Harold Uhl have done is that they have created a very funny, very entertaining 30 minute cartoon that does an excellent job of explaining how our financial system really works and why the Federal Reserve is bad for America.

Or, at least, why they thinks so...

Re: The Decalogue -- IS It The Basis Of "Our" Laws?

Short answer: No bloody fuukin way.
Go take a look at 'em, compare 'em, in their original contexts:

King James
Douey-Rheims (RC)
Jewish

What one observes is that the MAJORITY Of the discourses deal with RELIGIOUS ORTHODOXY, rather than seular behavior, which gets five sorta "afterthoughts": Oh, yeah, don't kill each other, don't steal from each other, don't slander one another, don't fuck around, and don't lust after the possessions of others.

Now, while one has to admit that those five 'commandments' are fundamental for a smoothly functioning tribe, the first five are ONLY about 'spiritual' purity, which is a joke, no matter who proclaims it.

Atheism on Sunday

OR: To put it another way:

(CLICK OVER Image to enlarge)

Drenched In Cover-Up Residue: Obama, EPA & BP All Stink of Expediency, Not Remedy.

Catch the BP EWWWWwave...

Has ANYONE or ANY CORPORAT been indicted for crimes associated with this abomination?
The "dispersant" was only EVER meant to sink the surface slicks and remove the 'visuals,' both by St. Barry's EPA and BP. They just threw up their hands and said fuck it: Get it out of SIGHT!
There was NEVER going to be the kind of expenditure to repair the damage that there was to "perfect" the technique that failed.
There should be heads on pikes around Jackson Square, slowly rotting in the tepid, oily air...Instead, their smiling faces are extolling tourism...

Oh, yes. St. Barry and his designated emanation in the EPA, Mother Lisa Jackson were 'tarred' in the sludge so deeply one is surprised that they don't still reek of it.

January 18, 2012: Stop PIPA/SOPA Day

January 18, 2012: Stop PIPA/SOPA Day

It is probably unrealistic in the EXTREME to imagine that a functioning oligarchy in full cry might permit the continued, unmodified, uninterfered operation of so fundamentally liberating a technology as the Intertubez has become, and still remains. We need only regard how television was co-opted, and its liberatory poitential was turned aside, to become--along with the rest of its flickering-screened scions--the most POTENT agent of propaganda promulgation ever invented.

I regard the present structure of the Intertubez as I regard the Constitution: It works pretty well as it stands, and fucking around with it pretty much invites the bullies in, so leave it the fuck alone.

--Woody, Jan 18, 2012

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Lee Camp Contra ALEC (or maybe Stephen)

PBS Shows INCREDIBLE Bravery and Links Bad Weather to "Climate Change"

Watch How 2011 Became a 'Mind-Boggling' Year of Extreme Weather on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Christmas Eve On the Levee

This clip illustrats an old, seasonal tradition on the Mississippi river in south Louisiana. On Christmas Eve, mostly in the "River Parishes" (St. James, St. John and St. Charles parishes) and on the east side of river, the residents of the small towns and villages along the River build, and then incinerate, elaborate bon-fire structures, preceded and accompanied by lavish feasting, drinking and celebrations. Folks come from MILES around. Gumbo, etouffe, jambalaya, you NAME it! chers...



Depending on who is explaining it, the fires are lit to point the way for Papa Noel (cajun french Santa figure). Others say it is to help guide ships on the river, during December fog in Louisiana, while others say it is to help guide the faithful Catholics to Midnight Mass on Christmas. The probable trueroot of the practices is linked to the Roman Catholic rituals around what's called "la Posada," lighting the way to a room for the so-called Holy Family when they sought shelter, and wound up bunking in a barn.

Whatever the belief, it is still a strong tradition, every year on Christmas eve. The River parishes are located between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. When we lived in Baton Rouge, groups of us went every year, to a different village, for the gumbo, beer, and good times. The bonfires can get quite large and really detailed and ALOT of work goes into them.

Ceremonies utilizing fire are universal, these longest nights of the year, nest paw?

So if you're ever in the vicinity, be sure to find a party, and laissez le bon temps rouller, cher...

John McCutcheon ~~ "Christmas in the Trenches"

Garth Brooks has bought his oh-so-sincere whine to a new release for Christmas called "Belleau Wood," about an alleged rapprochement between German and American troops in that famed forest. It must have been the winter of 1917, cuz the war ended in Nov. '18.

It's not that I doubt the tale, exactly. It's just that, well I'd never heard it before, but I had/have heard John McCutcheon talk about and sing his trenchant (sigh) ballad, Christmas in the Trenches, about a real event in the FIRST winter of the war, the first Christmas, in 1915, when it all might yet have ended.

"My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same...

"

The Greendale Experience (Cuz We're Prohibited From Calling It "Education")

This is funny, but 'for-profit' education, the pretensions of which this "ad" is a send-up, is not funny. When people talk about "student debt, they're not mainly talking about people who got loans to attend the local state college or university. The VAST majority of student indebtedness is owed to "proprietary" so-called "schools," like Kaplan, and Phoenix, and the rest, who sell credentials the same way GM sells cars...
With a financing plan!

The War On "X-Mas!"

War On Christmas PSA

Whaddaya Mean By "Work?"

Capitalism works AMAZINGLY well--STUNNINGLY EFFICIENTLY-- as the instrument for transferring wealth from the bottom to the top.
For "democracy?" Not so much. Capitalism is an intrinsically monopolistic program. Monopolies are contrary to democratic governance.
So wadda YOU think?

In Honor of Imaginary Beings

Probably the BEST thing one can say about peoples' devotion to"Imaginary Beings" is that it does produce some lovely and evocative imagery. Old Santa Fe friend María Móntez-Skolnik captured this image recently, around Thanksgiving, at the little "Santuario" in the village of Chimayo, in the mountains east and north of Santa Fe.

The Santuario has gained renown for the curative powers of the mud made from dirt of the Chapel floor. It's been regarded as a "healing" place for four Centuries, or so. And there started to be a problem, cuz LOTS penitents came to acquire the miraculous mud, and the floor of the chapel was continually being gouged out. So now they bring the dirt in from somewhere out in the hills, and the priest blesses it. I guess this 'works' just as well.

The lights with which the structures are festooned are called "luminarias." They're paper bags with the "novena" candles bedded in sand in the bottom. They are ubiquitous this time of year, out here.

Another seasonal/religious tradition is to build small "bonfires" in the streets on Xmas eve, for a pageant the call "Las Posadas," re-enacting the search by the Jesus family for a place to stay, ending at/in the manger. The faithful--and those playing along--light the "farolitos" to guide the "holy family" on its way.

Fyeieio: The tradition of the farolitos/bonfires is exaggerated hugely, and currently is outrageously misinterpreted, down in south Louisiana where I spoent 10 years in the '80s/90s: there, on Xmas eve, the Cajun folks spend weeks constructing HUGE, intricate, fabulous structures on the Mississippi River levees, only to set them alight, on Xmas eve, and dance, eat hugely, and drink and celebrate in the garish light of the flaming structures. It's in honor of the "Posadas" tradition, also, of course. But the (philistine) local media announce faithfully that they do it to "guide Santa" up to Baton Rouge.

Back at the Santuario: Every year, on Good Friday (before Easter), the faithful flock to make the pilgrimage to the Santuario from Santa Fe, a distance of some 20 miles, and even further. Throngs of pilgrims come from all over to visit the site and ask forgiveness for their sins. I have seen people on their knees, moving along the road-side, slowly, painfully. The SHOULDERS on the highways north out of Santa Fe and south from Espanola, and from the west, from the direction of Los Alamos, are always thick with folks walking alongside the traffic, starting on (Holy) Thursday, and going on through the night, and through the next day.

The State and local law, and the tribal cops from the Pueblos over which the pilgrims traverse (and there are several: Tesuque, Pojoaque, and Nambe', at least), keep EAGLE eyes on it. There has been violence associated with or linked to pilgrims, increasingly. One year--2002, iirc--there were even check-points with pat-down searches.

In addition to the "Santuario," the village of Chimayo is home to a large family of Hispanic weavers, the Ortegas, whose work is known and valued in folk art collections around the world. It is also the home of the renowned eatery, Rancho de Chimayo, established on the old (18th Century) family hacienda of the Jaramillo family, who once farmed the valley. They now operate a B&B there, too. My dad and the owner/proprietor, Arturo Jaramillo, were pals. The restaurant became the de facto celebration station for my family from almost the day it opened. The food is delicious (though not cheap), and available in varying degrees of capsaicin-enhancement.

If you happen to dine there, you may want to try the Chimayo Cocktail. I "invented" it, chatting with the owner (at the time), Arturo Jaramillo, after a family gatherning/meal there in the late '60s. It's basically a tequila sunrise with apple cider instead of orange juice, and a dash of creme de cassis instead of the Gran Marnier. Served up, with an apple slice garnish, and cinnamon-sugar around the rim.

¡Su salud! (y pesetas, y amor, y tiempo para gustarlos).

Something, Something, History, Something, Re-Live It

Cops are PIGS.

When did we forget this?

You coulda asked Woody...

I remember from the LAST time.

It's not true what they say...I DO remember...still bear a few momentos.

Cops are the enforcers of the Owners, the gunsels of the State.

A lot of 'em are former military. They love this shit.

They no longer 'serve & protect." Now it's "search & destroy. "

ops don't get into it for the money.

They LOVE what they do.

Mebbe not ALL are sadistic sociopaths, but enough are that tie mkes little difference.

I have said for the last 40 years that ALL citizens should have the experience of being rousted by cops who rezlly think you're a "perp," to see what 'rights' they give themselves to deal with you: a good cop (such as they are) on a bad day; or a bad cop (most of 'em) any day.

Lee Camp -- "Blowing Up A Car-ful of Clowns? Just Sport!"

Hot Realty: Selling Britain

A funny take on conquest, with a nudge at all the "flip it" and "home-buyer" cabloid shows around.

"The Web Of Debt," Parts One and Two

Anonymous, for Hemp

One acre of hemp creats the same biomass, with the same amount of resource use, as 4 acres of trees.

Eleven/Eleven: How About A National "PEACE" Day?

By
John Konopak (Sgt, USAF, 1964-68)

ARE YOU READY for the GINORMOUS "Veterans' Day" Appliance, Winter Clothing, Carpet and Flooring, Used AND NEW car SALE! happening THIS weekend at a Mall near you?

Whilst you're out there shopping to save the economy, I'd like to say little something about "peace." And the celebration of National--hell, why stop there--INTERNATIONAL "Peace Day!" Eleven Eleven, from now on...

Remember that November 11, 1918 (the "11/11" we now recognize) was the date on which the Armistice ending the "Great War" was signed, officially ending the carnage that had lain waste to the best parts of France, Belgium, Holland, a lot of Italy, the Balkans, and a good chunk Russia and of the Middle East.

Literally, millions of people--soldiers and civilians--perished.

But on Nov. 11, 1918, the guns--which could be heard in England, though they were fired in France--fell silent for the first time in more than four, long, brutal, bloody, ruinous years--and that kind of dying stopped, if only for a while...

It was a MOMENTOUS day. People were WILD with joy, in capitals and villages across the continent. NOBODY in all of Europe escaped the consequences. Everyone knew or was related to SOMEONE who'd lost a limb, or a lung, or had been carried off in some bizarre charge into the teeth of the first machine guns across some blood-drenched, decay-filled, shit-soaked trench. During those years, more people had died than in any comparable period of time since the Black Plague. It was, they fervently hoped, the end of all that.

From our perspective, almost a century on, it's probably well to recall, in all honesty, that the last veterans who actually did give their all for 'freedom, liberty, apple pie and Chevrolet, have mostly already left us. All the WW I vets are gone, long since; a majority of the so-called "Greatest Generation" have already signed out, too.

Since then, we vets have largely been participants in America's "wars of choice" in Asia--Southeast AND Southwest--as well as those military efforts to prop up friendly regimes in this Hemisphere. We've done what we were told. But such honor as there is in that is somewhat vitiated in my mind by the costs inflicted upon the murdered and mutilaterd victims we left--and still are leaving--in our neo-colonialist/Imperialist wake.

So I think, if 11/11 were going to be a date for commemorating and memorializing, then it should be celebrated as International PEACE Day, since it was the day the "Great War" ended and "peace" returned (to Western Europe, anyway).

And NOW is a good time to start. None Better!

We've got ALL kinds of holidays honoring and celebrating the glorious military past of our Nation and the sacrifices of its military: Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Pearl Harbor Day, and now, perversely, also "9-11," too is draped in military regalia. If we were going to remember "veterans," these should be enough.

But there is NO day in our national calendar on which we actually celebrate the sceuclar phenomenon of "peace."

And I, for one, think Veteran's day, with its echoes of those silenced guns, should be it.

It's the time of the year when the "poppies" appear on the lapels of folks of the (former) British empire, in commemoration of the hundreds of thousands of lives which were spent in so ghastly a fashion in Flanders' fields. It should be a day on which we pledge NOT to repeat those awful lessons.

That's what seems to me to be forgotten amid all the patriotic/jingoistic folderol, to say NOTHING of the commercial hype attending the "official" holiday.

* * * * * * * * * *
Dulce et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

That last line? The Old Lie?

"It is sweet and good to die for your County."

Bill Moyers On Ralph Nader: "Our FOREMOST Public Citizen"

As The Cookie Crumbles: No, No "Con-Con" Do, Dood!

Morning, hippies. Happy Weekend. Remember, if you HAVE a weekend, thank a Union!

As the desperation among the average citizens of the USofA becomes more palplable, cries for reform grow louder and more varied. Decisions by the SCROTUS such as Citizens United, which effectively turned Corporations into 'citizens,' and other set-backs limiting the range of legal redress through class actions, have l;ed people to propose a variety of theoretically possible but practicably impossible remedies, the latest being a Contstitutional Convention.

Y'r Ob'd't S'v't will vehemently oppose any proposal for remedying our current social ills and dilemmas which includes a Constitutional Convention.

I sympathize deeply with the sentiment, but, man, think about it!

Unless you want--or are at least prepared-- to see the ENTIRE Constitution scrapped, a ConCon is a really, terribly, terrifically, horrifically, horribly BAD fucking idea.

I understand the impetus to "do" something.

But in this hyper-mediated, public environment, direct democracy isn't a practicable alternative.

Why? Or rather, "Why not?"

Think "Prop 8." In California, a couple of years ago, amending the CA Constitution by initiative--direct democracy--to exclude gays from the rights accorded BY THE STATE to 'straight' couples. It passed, due in most part--most people rightly believe--to massive, focussed expenditures of disinformation cash by political interests OUTSIDE California. It was enough to sway the results, which are STILL being adjudicated, and the big outside money is still bankrolling the obstructionists, who may ultimately fail, but in doing so will have STILL have collected MILLIONS in donations.

Now multiply the influence of outside money in CA on Prop 8 expo-fuuking-NENTIALLY!

Then remember that, as influential as that interference has been, it is still WITHOUT the HUGE tidal-waves of cash the CorpoRats will be able to unleash through their wholly-owned, lap-dog CorpoRat/SCUM "press" to sway any such deliberations in the context of a Constitutional Convention or any other venue in the future.

And you cannot limit what may be discussed, reformed, or eliminated. You can't have a ConCon and say, well, we're only gonna talk about corporate citizenship. Everything's on the table. Every year, some Poli Sci class at Dear Ol' Siwash U conducts 'man-on-the-street interviews in which they translate the 18th Century diction of the COnstitution and rewrite it in more contemporary vernacular, and ask people if they'd accept it, or the Bill of Rights, and routinely about half of them are rejected by citizens today.

It's what the Greeks usta call an "apoeria," an irresolvable contradiction: The people cannot order their representatives to over-ride the power that placed their representatives in office in the first place. The CorpoRats, as "persons," have the "right" to expend ANY resources in ANY amount to secure the end they desire. And their resources are essentially endless and boundless.

The CorpoRats would/WILL have a fuuking FIELD DAY with direct democracy. They own ALL the media through which it would necessarily be conducted.

You do NOT think the CorpoRats wouldn't use the ALL power that CU gives them to defeat any effort to revoke or repeal it, by WHATEVER means?

And there would be no way to prohibit it.

Or do you really, truly, truly BELEEVE! there REALLY IS a difference between Miller and Bud?

See the problem?

We'll talk when I see ya at the beach!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's the vid in which Cenk Uygir leads the appeal for donations:

The Race To The Bottom, Chap. 22

To keep industries from forsaking frigid Illinois for wamer--and less unionized--climates, the State of Illinois has given certain big employers the authority to withhold "state income taxes" from workers' checks, but then to pocket those taxes themselves.

Could it fucking BEEEE anymore corrupt?

Andrew Breitbart: On The "Penis" Beat

Hi-Way Fucking Robbery!

The Daily Show
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Here's MY Idea of an "Oath-Keeper"!!!

The Sarge has 50 combat missions, a MESS of non-trivial medals and decorations, and the RIGHT ATTITUDE!
Semper FI!

Tom Hartmann Fucks Up "Anosognothously"

Anosognosia is the condition of being unaware/in complete denial about a given disability.

No, really.

"THE CONDITION IN WHICH A PERSON WHO SUFFERS ILLNESS OR DISABILITY SEEMS UNAWARE OF OR DENIES THE EXISTENCE OF HIS OR HER ILLNESS/DISABILITY; MAY INCLUDE UNAWARENESS OF QUITE DRAMATIC IMPAIRMENTS, SUCH AS BLINDNESS OR PARALYSIS."

Which perfectly describes the Rightard/Wackloon/Cristo-fasci­szt contingent as WELL as a majority of the remaining O'bots

The Front Fell Off--"This was a very unusual event."

The World Economy, In Three Minutes

"What Little Girls Are Made Of"

The nay-sayers have a vested interest in denying the corrosive role of mediated 'reality' on the capacity of people to interpret properly the phenomena behind the mediated "present" in which the omnipresent 'media' immerse them. Women are particular targets of media objectification, both as consumers and as shills for the corpoRat insecurity machines. It's the same motivation that's behind the climate-change deniers' rejection of science.

Health Care For Millions of Murkins Is STILL Impossible? Really? O, Fudge!

WAIT, WAIT. STILL? REALLY?
Woody's confused!
What about Obamacare?
I thought St. Barry had FIXED all that?
You mean there are STILL people dying for wont of care?
How could that be?
I thought St. Barry had set that aright.
You mean he didn't?
O, fiddlesticks...I just don't know WHAT to believe anymore.

"IT" Came From Beneath The SEC!!!! Aiiiiyyeee!

You SHOULD Know What You Are Buying & Eating!

It's becoming a kind of tragicomic ritual to compare what St. Barry, the Pale, PROMISED in his campaign to become president and what he has delivered AS president.

While on the campaign trail in 2007, Barack Obama promised to label GMO foods if elected. Now's the time! Today, an estimated 80% of processed foods contain GMOs. Tell President Obama you agree that the U.S. needs GMO labeling "because Americans should know what they're buying".

For the past 20 years, Americans have been denied the right to know what's in their food. Help make this the Change We Can Believe In: Label GMOs!

Link to the petition here, if you think it will do any good.

Breaking: Obama Promised to Label GMOs from Food Democracy Now! on Vimeo.

Glen Ford (Black Agenda Report): "Who's Real & Who's Frontin'?"

Cornell West's Obama Shocking "Epiphany": O's NOT With Us!

Poor Cornell. He thought Obama was actually a "BLACK"-American man.

I can understand his confusion.

ALL Fossils Are "Transitional" Forms

Evolution for Dummies!

Keep It To Yourself, Okay?

F-book correspondent Tracy Knauss posted this image today, along with the following commentary:

Mike Treder, a friend of mine who's the Managing Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies in New York sent me this wonderful quote he penned and asked me if I would design an image fitting of his prose. I was glad to accept. Here's what we came up with. Enjoy and share.

Woody likes this plenty; wishes more people would treat their faith like their genitals and not go shoving it in the faces of folks who haven't asked about it.

I mean: There was an image going around the other day of the lower abdomen/upper groin area of a fellow who'd had the face of the Disney character Pinocchio tattooed on him so that his dick was where the puppet's nose should have been.

(*Presumably, he didn't intend to imply that the bigger his dick grew, the more hew was lying, but you never know: it is a remarkably accurate metaphor, imho.)

>So it's the experience of a lot of non-believers that fiercely proselytizing Believers' perform their testimonies of faith very much to resemble the importunings of someone with a Pinocchio-tattoo on his groin, whose dick is where the nose should be, and goes around telling people about it, in great detail, with great enthusiasm, inviting them to take a look and SEE if it isn't the coolest tattoo fucking EVAR!

And then go all huffy about it if you decline the invitation.

There is a "Dicho" to that effect inscribed in the eponymous part of the right-hand margin, below, along with an assortment of others of my rendering.

Red-State Update Tackles the Booing GOPhux, and the Rest of the Clown Car Crazies

Colbert: Clouds of Mind-smoke?

The Colbert Report
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You Don't Have To "Disprove" Scientific Claims, If...

If you can merely cast doubt upon them. The same tactic is being employed, to great effect, by mostly the same people, today, in the Great Climate Change "debate."

Btw: I am a fierce opponent of tobacco consumption in any form other than soup. I smoked like a fucking chimney for 35 years. Both my parents succumbed to COPD (too young), which was the consequence of their life-long addictions. Some such fate probably awaits me, even though it has been 17 years since my last cigaret/cigar.

I would cheerfully strangle ANY tobacco executive I met.

DOUBT from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.

Conspiracy? Really?

How Low Can You Go?

How deluded are YOU? 10,000+ = "Crazy as a shit-house rat!"

I (HEART) Banksy

Frye & Laurie Pilot The "For-Pay" Police Service

Don't laugh...

Ogden Nash, Reading "Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man"

The High (And True) Cost Of Voodoo Economix

Fallacy-B-Gone

Lee Camp: One Swing of the Sock

What It Means To Be "Pwned"

If you thought the debt ceiling deal was a compromise, you gotta believe Grant "compromised" with Lee. No suh! That fuckuh was PWNED!

The Colbert Report
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