The Palin emails are why Sarah resigned as Governor of Alaska...

WWW--The fun has only just begun. She does NOT want to run for president or any elected office with this shit in her past. Just sayin'. Maybe some of them will show she did in fact blow Ted Stevens...

http://palinemail.crivellawest.net/

On the upcoming 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan...

I think this was a terrible and heinous act on the part of Hinckley...for missing the heart, lungs, and other vital organs that would have done the job properly. I also want to excoriate the idiot for doing it for all the wrong reasons--to impress Jody Foster, a lesbian. In addition to that, it gave Reagan a second term since Americans are sentimental assholes who cry at a John Williams string-swell on command like Pavolv's fucking dogs.

In addition to that addition of their house of cards, that of the myth-makers, I want to say that we need to face that fact that President Reagan--the construct--was so fucking dumb he couldn't even be assassinated correctly or impressively like President Kennedy, McKinley, or Lincoln, and had no idea he'd been shot for several minutes since he was barely sentient, like the people that voted for him. Hey, at least Booth had some kind of ideology and some reasons that made more sense, Lincoln really did act like a dictator during the American Civil War.

And McKinley? He was in the pocket of the Trusts and the Monopolies, people like Rockefeller and Carnegie. Kennedy? We don't even know why he was fucking whacked. It's a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, rolled into some club papers, and smoked by some fucking hippies somewhere...

Postscript on Sarah Palin...

Not only does Palin fakes orgasms, but also that she's part of the same species as the rest of us.

On Sarah Palin, generally...

WWW--Don't think for a second that Sarah Palin, this moronic bitch, this cunt, is anything but a fucking stupid and emotionally retarded child, much like her supporters. You all give her far too much credit. Yes, she has a nice rack and a great num-num ass that's she's used for ages to get ahead, but don't give her credit when she barely rises above an Anchorage hooker in wit, intellect, and basic smarts. OK, that was unfair to Anchorage hookers, all ten of them. Comedian Lewis Black put it well that our political class is a "bowl of shit having to look at itself in the mirror" right now, but that would make Palin a bowl of diseased sexual emissions. Seward's (ice) box indeed...

The Rapture sounds better to me now...

Hey, with all the Christian extremists gone, we'd have housing freed-up for the poor, the homeless. Jesus would be proud. Needless-to-say, I'd go grab a stereo system (their music collection would be LEFT BEHIND). Take that Emperor Constantine, and emperor penguins too!

The lay of the land...

WWW--From a source. Thanks source! ;0) I'm not sure about the veracity of the Iranian information and make no claims to the veracity of the rest, but this seems about right.

CONNECTICUT (1130 EST):

EXP: "Multiple" x KIA/// +200 WIA (Kleen Enerby Facilty)

Blast shockwave: +/- 10 Miles///Blast soundwave: +/- 20 Miles

SYRIA:

Israel informed US, EU & UN of Syria transfer to Hezbollah in Lebanon of Iranian Fateh110 SRBMs (short-range ballistic missiles) (variant of Russian SS-1 and Chinese DF11) and of right to strike Syria if Hezbollah fires SRBMs

IRAN:

Iran informed UN, IAEA & EU of increased number of missile & uranium enrichment facilities

02 FEB 2010 "Khavoshagar test number 3" (ICBM development)

Missile - Safir2 (Shehab IRBM)

Satellite - Omid (MIRV warhead development) (space orbit - 245.5 km perigee and 381.2 km apogee)

United Nations Secretary General Moon (South Korea - Troops: Iraq & Afghan)

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Amano (Japan - Troops: Iraq & Afghan)

NATO Secretary General Rasmussen (Denmark - Troops: Iraq & Afghan)

Amnesty International General Secretary Shetty (India - largest labour at U.S. base's: Iraq & Afghan)

SRBM: <>

MRBM: <>

IRBM: <>

ICBM: > 6,000km intercontinental-range (> 3,000 miles)

SLBM: submarine-launched ballistic missile

Coming eventually: Comcast, race-baiter Tony Zirkle, and campaign ads

WWW--There will be mud, in the face, and in the direction of Zirkle and Comcast.

Why we should be happy that the racists are out of the closet

WWW--There's a theme I keep coming across with some of my compatriots on the progressive left, and I think that it's unnecessary: the fear of traditional American racism coming out of the closet. These people are literally the lunatic fringe now, but they're white and they're loud, if not proud (OK, they're that too, just without any basis). The problem--mainly--is our reaction to them, and reaction in itself is the problem, there's too much of it. We need to be more proactive about these people rather than reactive, and that's not an endorsement of Scientology. That's why I support the legal actions of the SPLC and its director, Morris Dees. His targets seem to understand intuitively, as some of the mentally ill do, that he's got their number and that he's using the proper cure. This provokes very dramatic responses.

Just looking at the words behind the anagram tells you where they're coming from at the SPLC: The Southern Poverty Legal Center. I have had great admiration for Mr. Dees and his work for ages, and the key to his work and that of his great staff has been in tracking these groups and bringing them to the attention of the public while going after the very worst, the most dangerous of them, in the courts rather than in the streets where they're only going to be emboldened by physical attacks. Hate movements thrive on the victim mentality, but we should also remember that these folks are victims in their own right, frequently victims of poverty that breeds this form of mental dysfunction. Dees knows that this isn't simply a Southern problem, but an American one, and while it is a bit alarming that these groups have grown in numbers since the election of a black president, it's also a reason to be thankful for the fact that we have one. They're out of hiding and easy targets again, just as they became so in the 1960s. They were always out there, their number haven't really grown.

The Civil Rights movement of that decade (really beginning in the mid-1950s and cresting roughly ten years later) brought the flat-heads out of the woodwork. The ranks of the KKK swelled as they had with the great influx of European immigration during the 1920s and "White Citizens Council" offices sprang-up everywhere...and they lost, badly, to the civil rights workers and activists because history and moral authority weren't on their side. Crucially, the federal government was pressured into action and the FBI unwillingly had to conduct a barely submerged war on the Klan and other hate groups. Indeed, non-violence proved to be a vital tactic, but so too did African-American groups like the Deacons for Justice and the original Black Panthers in the South with their militancy and their rifle clubs, meant to protect black communities from terror tactics. But the real fight was won in the legislative arena and the courts and the laws are still on the books to this day and aren't likely to be rolled-back anytime soon. That's not to say we shouldn't be vigilant, however.

In the 1990s, the late Stokely Carmichael, one of the founders of SNCC and one of the central players in the rise of black nationalism said that the problem had become deeper, that racism had "gone into hiding" and was therefore harder to combat, and he was right. Racism became institutionalized and very much a phantasm, a free-floating force that was almost impossible to pinpoint, let alone to fight with traditional methods. That has changed now that the loons have come out of the woodwork and are now shooting their mouths off, not to mention committing some very heinous acts of violence again. But that's what people do when they're desperate and feel they have no other options. They'd better enjoy the fun while it lasts, because it's not going to for very long.

In other words, they feel very threatened in their racist beliefs and identities, and that's a good thing since those culturally pathogenic personalities can ultimately be isolated and marginalized out of existence. These small, reactive faux-personalities--once again--intuit this and that's when the fear comes, when the ego externalizes its innermost and darkest tendencies. The shadow side externalizing itself can be dealt with by civil society more easily. Now they're visible targets, even their goons they've embedded within the military. But we tend to take these revelations the wrong way, we react, and we become part of the fear. This is a mistake. We know who they are now, we have their number, and it's time to go round-'em-up when they misbehave. We can also make sure that they never come into being by fighting for social and economic justice. Poverty is a breeding ground for this kind of faux-personality.

A recent cross-burning in my community has had some alarmed, but I'm not especially worried. As much as I have a problem with the FBI on other issues, they're good at criminal investigations like this and they're likely to find out who was behind it. When-and-if they do, the perpetrators are going to be dragged into court and could face real jail time if not civil penalties, meaning heavy fines that have shut them down in the past. We should also keep in mind that not all rabid racists are poor and that this is a pathogenic cultural stream predicated on keeping things as they've been in America since the beginning: oligarchical and unequal. The name Tony Zirkle should come as a good example of the privileged racist flake.

Economic elites must become racists by-definition in order to hold onto that power, something that they're more-than-willing to do. The reality is that they're more frightened of the rest of us, these groups, and while it makes them dangerous, they're still marginal. Nonetheless, vigilance and awareness is the key, and now we have the added advantage of visible targets.

What is love?

What is love? What is this feeling, this sensation, this tide?
Love is that indefinable thing, that irresistible force that binds us all.
Love is the most beautiful feeling in this life, and the most painful.
Love upends the world, and makes life possible.
But what is love? What is this indefinable thing?

"Life is like a wild-pack-o'-Baptists"

WWW--That it is, Bubba, that it is.

Do it for Karl Marx baby, do it for Bakunin...

“You make me feel like Emma Goldman with all of your ratiocinations! Dialectical materialism never felt so good, and I don’t even understand it, but it’s time, it’s time!” she purred.

"That's OK, he said with the copyrighted voice of authority, "I don't either, and neither do any of the readers out there." Their radical studies sessions had gone on for months and months and it was becoming clear that a very hot, sweaty, wet, and prolonged Hegelian synthesis was inevitable. Their vent worm ancestors smiled.

He grabbed her by her long, flowing hair, stroked her swan-like neck, and caressed her fulsome breasts: “Look—woman—Marxist-Leninist forced production never made for a worker’s paradise! What difference is there between Taylorist assembly-lines in the West and the moldering Taylorist factories of the former Soviet Union?” She looked up at him with her saucer-eyes and their daffodil-eyelashes, all coy and childlike, and could have been the French symbol for Liberty.

It could have been the very first time a woman gazed at a lover in adoration, and he returned it with the very same passion. Her gaze was so innocent--but focused--with constructive intent rather than the predictable power play found in human social groupings. She grabbed him and held him in the palm of her hand like all good comrades do. His excitement rose and he thought his heart would rip out of his chest and his face went flush. Beads of perspiration instantaneously formed on his brow. Revolution never felt so good, at least not since 1968 when the fluids were flying over the barricades.

“Women’s lives have been circumscribed by confining gender-roles and have only been truly able to join the fight in recent times, the last one hundred years. But women have been and embody an even greater dialectical potential for constructive subversion of hierarchy.” He smiled at that, and moved his hand towards her venus mounds, gently caressing her and stroking her back at the same time. She shivered and giggled, purred again.

“Give it up for Bakunin baby, give it up for Marx, haw-haw-haw!” chortled the thirty-something leftist to his radical studies partner. It all began with books, but like the rest of life, it ended in fucking.

“Now give it to me like a fucking man!” she screamed, and they dropped all their books for a time, all the bound-essays, and returned to the Garden, like children, like glorious children. Could this be? Could a relationship without an alpha, without a leader, a peaceful coexistence, compete in a market driven world? The revolution had begun, under cover of night, and things would never be the same.

So, the president grew a pair of balls, briefly...

So what? Granted, he has more balls than the last president who couldn't deal with an "unfriendly" audience that wasn't hand-picked, but does this make him a "good guy" now when we all know he's not going to do the right thing for the common good unless we nearly break his arm off? Where's the will? None of this talk at the GOP's retreat signals a real change, just one in image. Results are what count. Without a public option with real muscle, he can forget it. Without an ending of two worthless wars, he can forget it. Without closing Guantanamo, he can forget it. Without creating an independent commission to charge the last administration with a gauntlet of crimes, forget it, he's the same as the last brew, so are his advisers, and Congress needs to be flushed.

Campaign manager David Plouffe and the Obama administration aren't inspired by genius

Washington D.C.--The Obama administration's David Plouffe has written a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post (the January 24, "November doesn't need to be a nightmare for Democrats") that should ring familiar since the public wrote it first: the Democrats need to deliver on the promises of the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama, that of genuine progressive reform, real change. Most Americans know such promises coming from either party aren't going to happen without incredible demands or from the fact that events have left the political and economic establishment with few options.

"Progress" has never been a gift, yet Plouffe's read his Machiavelli and understands that you have to throw the mob something:

...After two election cycles in which Democrats won most of the close races and almost all of the big ones, Democrats have much more fragile turf to defend this year than usual. Add to that a historic economic crisis, stubborn unemployment and the pain that both have inflicted on millions of Americans, and you have a recipe for a white-knuckled ride for many of our candidates.

But not if Democrats do what the American people sent them to Washington to do. ...

It all sounds good, but which Obama are we going to get, and which Democrats? What amount of arm-twisting is the current administration willing to do? Even LBJ, once called "the King of the Senate," understood the power of the presidency, and he flexed it. It's sad to admit it, but in some respects, the 2008 McCain campaign (and Obama's other running-mates and opponents) were correct that the president isn't experienced enough with the ins-and-outs of the legislative process and what it takes to get things done. His rather feeble and continuing outreach to the GOP incumbency is one obvious indicator of this.

The public wants leadership. The public wants someone who's really on their side.

The President's ongoing desire for bipartisanship masks what should be clear to all: he's to-the-right of Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon, just not to the extremists in the House and the Senate. His recent talk of freezing social spending in the midst of an almost unprecedented economic crisis has been roundly criticized by eminent economists who have all-but-given-up on him, it being just another capitulation to the minority party, a curious stance if ever there was one. Ploufee understands this perception--an accurate one--when he writes these agenda headers:

...--Pass a meaningful health insurance reform package without delay...

--We need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them. ...

-- Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy. ...

-- Don't accept any lectures on spending. ...

-- "Change" is not just about policies. ...

-- Run great campaigns. ...

-- No bed-wetting. ...

This all sounds good, as most campaign rhetoric does, but what about the reality? Is it really a matter of perception? It is, but not the way that Plouffe paints it.

First, "Pass a meaningful health insurance reform package without delay": Plouffe is more than a little dishonest here, which is to be expected from a mainstream campaign manager. When the truth isn't on your side, divert. The Democratic Party and the Obama administration specifically and willfully dropped the ball on socialized medicine and capitulated to big medicine, pharma, and the health insurance lobby. How they're going to reverse this past behavior is a great question, but the Senate version of the health care reform bill is slanted to reward insurance companies with billions of dollars and a captive consumer base. Presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel has been instrumental in some of these problems, but so have "blue dog" Democratic incumbents in Congress. Nonetheless, the White House shares the greatest blame here. The GOP's role goes without saying, it's not progressive or constructive.

Second, "We need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them": This is where the Obama administration has--once again--not done even remotely enough. International, world class economists have chided the president and Congress for the smallness of the initial $700 Billion stimulus program, an "impetus" that isn't especially higher than the appropriations for the needless wars in the Middle East which are being fought for petroleum corporations and aren't in the interest of the public, let alone promote a safer world or our national security. Don't expect the Obama administration or Congress to be receptive to demands over this. Public works projects only go so far, and we've had a scanty investment considering the desperate need to repair our national infrastructure, including real world (meaning adequate) investments in high tech and green infrastructure and mass transportation. However, I hear the military is now hiring, but hurry, their quotas are nearly met now.

At the rate jobs are vanishing, they're not even remotely doing enough.

Third, "Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy": This is Plouffe being redundant. Yes, we probably averted another Great Depression...for now. Without real reform in the financial sectors--which the Obama administration is fighting--we're likely to have one anyway, or very likely so, according to academic economists.

Fourth, "Don't accept any lectures on spending": This is true, except that much of the self-inflicted damage has been done. This would allow the Democrats more leverage in fixing the economy and getting us out of the mess we're in, but that doesn't translate into the will to do it, or even the ability, when you've already compromised yourselves on several fronts and handed the opposition all their talking points. The public kept telling the Obama administration this again and again over the last year and they wouldn't listen. That's called a leadership vacuum.

Fifth, "'Change' is not just about policies": Well, duh, but please explain why passing reasonable health care reform (meaning having a system like Canada's, the UK's, or France's) has been so hard then? We can talk about campaign reform and ethics reforms all we want, but my experience--and it's direct--is that Democrats aren't especially interested in it anymore than Republicans are, they just talk a better talk. The Democratic record for ethics enforcement is monaural and poor.

Sixth, "Run great campaigns": Considering the number of Obama/DNC supporters and volunteers that I know and know of who are angry over the last year and who feel used, this shit's not going to cut it, not even remotely. So what? More "appearances are everything" thinking.

Seventh, "No bed-wetting": This is just more hyperbole, more rhetoric. Right, stick to the script, grow a pair. Too late? Probably...

About all I was convinced of from Plouffe's opinion piece is that he understands a groundswell is coming if Democratic incumbents don't start delivering on a bare-minimum of their promises, that they must at least appear to show leadership qualities where they have shown almost none at all, instead bending over backwards for corporate interests and Wall Street. They've known for over a year that the public has wanted more and substantial action from them to fix the mess of the last administration and beyond, but they've refused to and won't listen to the public, the majority. Now, they claim, they want to listen, but only when it appears that they're going to lose their majority. How is this going to translate into leadership? Plouffe offers no answers.

From this, it seems obvious to this writer that they've learned nothing at all and will continue down the same path regardless. Americans might consider breaking their two-party addiction, and quick. Rhetoric isn't going to cut it anymore, results will. While the vote in Massachusetts for Scott Brown to fill the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat is being called a "referendum," there's another side to it: people simply wanted change, any change, and "renegade" candidates without an obvious connection to the political establishment have a real opening. To some extent, the outcome there was more about moving on from the Kennedy dynasty and the generalizations about its significance have been overstated, first by Republicans, then by just about everyone else (except me, it seems).

Voters in Massachusetts may have been voting against their interests (though it should be remembered that Brown was only elected to finish Kennedy's term), but the message that they want new faces in office is crystal clear. Democrats got complacent and arrogant, but the backlash in Massachusetts was a longtime coming. Simply running a "good campaign" and shaping perceptions does not a leader make. What's needed is a real opposition party that's actually different from the GOP and has the common good in mind. Best of luck with that one.

"November doesn't need to be a nightmare for Democrats," The Washington Post, 01.24.2010: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012204216.html

On this date: CNN's Rick Sanchez is spot-on truthful, unbiased, and accurate!

CNNiverse--Yes, on this day, this wonderous day, CNN talking neck Rick Sanchez stated emphatically: "I'm a pseudo-intellectual." The waters parted. The clouds lifted. The birds sang from the highest trees and the prophets-in-hiding cried out from the mountaintops that truth had been spoken. Then things went back to normal with the usual leading questions and ignoring all the elephants in the room...

Who got to Haiti first?

Port-au-Prince, Haiti--Who got there first? The Cubans, many-of-whom were already there in their usual form: as doctors. Why were they already there? Because the developed world is on their neck in Haiti and the place has been mismanaged before the earthquake and since the time of Columbus when the island of Hispaniola was first conquered and settled, primarily for exploitation. Cuba is part of this same legacy of colonialism and understands its effects, say what you will about the regime there. Hispaniola has been a hellhole for centuries, ever since the first white men planted their flags on its shores. The abuse is ongoing.

That's the part that never changes in poor Haiti, that first black republic, something they've been punished for ever since. Don't let anyone fool you on this central point: Haiti was a disaster before the earthquakes, a prototypical example of where the rest of us might be headed, including the centuries of ecological devastation spurred-on by the desire to exploit, to profit, from the misery of enslaved others. What the world should be doing is pledging to rebuild Haiti and its economy and to leave the place alone. We know that's not going to happen anytime soon.

But make no mistake: The Cubans made it to the Haitian-side of Hispaniola first, and not simply thanks to proximity. Will we have a rerun of Katrina? We already have, and under a black president. It took American forces three days to reach Haiti in significant numbers, just more abuse and negligence, the depriving of people of basic human rights.

Who's in Haiti right now? From a private security source (update)...

OPERATION UNIFIED RESPONSE (+ 20,000 U.S. FORCES):

US SOUTHERN COMMAND [http://www.southcom.mil]
GEN Fraser (Commander)///LT GEN Keen (Dep. Commander)

US NAVY CARRIER STRIKE GROUP (USS VINSON AIRCRAFT CARRIER)
US NAVY EXPEDITIONARY STRIKE GROUP (USS BATAAN AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP)
US NAVY EXPEDITIONARY STRIKE GROUP (USS NASSAU AMPHIBOUS ASSAULT SHIP)
US NAVY HOSPITAL SHIP (USNS COMFORT)

US MARINE CORPS 22ND MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT (MEU)
US MARINE CORPS 24TH MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT (MEU)

US COAST GUARD CUTTER (USCGC VALIANT)
US COAST GUARD CUTTER (USCGC MOHAWK)
US COAST GUARD CUTTER (USCGC TOMAHAW)
US COAST GUARD CUTTER (USCGC FORWARD)
US COAST GUARD TENDER (USCGC OAK)

US AIR FORCE [Toussaint Louverture International Airport (PAP)]

US ARMY 82ND AIRBORNE DIVISION///2ND BRIGADE COMBAT TEAM

======================================================================

EUROPEAN UNION (NATO):

MARINE MILITARE ITALIA AIRCRAFT CARRIER (MMI CAVOUR)[En-route]

FRENCH MARINE NATIONALE AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP (SIROCO)
FRENCH MARINE NATIONALE BATRAL (FRANCIS GARNIER)

CANADIAN NAVY DESTROYER (HMCS ATHABASKAN)
CANADIAN NAVY FRIGATE (HMCS HALIFAX)

UNITED KINGDOM NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (HMS RFA LARGS BAY)[En-route]

[http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/operations-and-support/royal-fleet-auxiliary/rfa-flotilla/bay-class-landing-ships/rfa-largs-bay/]

ROYAL NETHERLANDS NAVY SPECIAL MISSON SHIP (HNLMS PELIKAAN)

NAVAL ARMADA DE SPAIN DOCK LANDING SHIP (SNS CASTILLE)[En-route]
NAVAL ARMADA DE SPAIN AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP (GALICIA)

====================================================================
UNITED NATIONS STABILIZATION MISSION IN HAITI (MINUSTAH) [http://minustah.org/]
====================================================================

CENTRAL/SOUTH AMERICA:

NAVAL ARMADA DE MEXICO AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP (ARM PAPALOAPAN)
NAVAL ARMADA DE MEXICO HOSPITAL SHIP (ARM HUASTECO)

NAVAL ARMADA DE VENEZUELA SHIP (NAME)
NAVAL ARMADA DE VENEZUELA SHIP (NAME)

BRAZILIAN NAVY SHIP (NAME)

===================================================================

U.S. OPERATION UNIFIED RESPONSE (NAVY continued)

US NAVY GUIDED MISSILE DESTROYER (USS HIGGINS)
US NAVY GUIDED MISSILE CRUISER (USS BUNKER HILL)
US NAVY GUIDED MISSILE CRUISER (USS NORMANDY)
US NAVY GUIDED MISSILE FRIGATE (USS UNDERWOOD)
US NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (USS MESA VERDE)
US NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (USS ASHLAND)
US NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (USS FORT MCHENRY)
US NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (USS CARTER HALL)
US NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (USS GUNSTON HALL)
US NAVY SPECIAL MISSION SHIP (USNS HENSON)
US NAVY SPECIAL MISSION SHIP (USNS SUMNER)
US NAVY SEALIFT SHIP (USNS SACAGAWEA)
US NAVY PREPOSITIONING SHIP (USNS LUMMUS)
US NAVY AUXILLARY SHIP (USNS BIG HORN)
US NAVY SALVAGE SHIP (USNS GRASP)

==================================================================

82ND AIR DIV Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) (http://www.bragg.army.mil/82dv/):
1st BCT (IRAQ/AFGHAN)
2nd BCT (GLOBAL RESPONSE FORCE)(1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th BATTALIONS)(HAITI)
3rd BCT (IRAQ/AFGHAN)
4th BCT (IRAQ/AFGHAN)

Corps
Division (4 x Brigades): 15000 soldiers
Brigade (4 x Battalions): 5000 soldiers
Battalion (4 x Companys): 1000 soldiers
Company (4 x Platoons): 200 soldiers
Platoon: 40 soldiers

A healthy reminder: David Corn's 9/11 truth article from March 2002 and some personal observations

WWW--This is an oldie but a goodie and is still sadly relevant. Corn had this op ed out in the March 2002 issue of the Nation, the publication he still edits from Washington.

Corn wrote presciently at the time:

There are always national security misdeeds to be mad about. They may not be as cinematic in nature as a plot in which shady, unidentified U.S. officials scheme to blow up the World Trade Towers to gain control of an oil pipeline in Central Asia. But dozens of dead Hondurans or twenty or so Afghans wrongly killed ought to provoke anger and protest. In fact, out-there conspiracy theorizing serves the interests of the powers-that-be by making their real transgressions seem tame in comparison. (What's a few dead in Central America, compared to thousands in New York City? Why worry about Negroponte, when unidentified U.S. officials are slaughtering American civilians to trigger war?)

Perhaps there's a Pentagon or CIA office that churns out this material. Its mission: distract people from the real wrongdoing. Now there's a conspiracy theory worth exploring. Doesn't it make sense? Doesn't it all fit together? I challenge anyone to disprove it. ("When 9/11 conspiracy theories go bad," The Nation, 03.02.2002)

Good luck proving him wrong! You know, I had a kind of lame experience during the DC Madam scandal with Corn, but I don't fault him these days (at the time, it was quite the opposite). He asked me about the presence of Ronald Roughead in the late madam's records and why it was relevant. He was skeptical, and that's fine, as he should have been. I remarked that it was relevant since Roughead was violating the terms of his security clearance at the time he made the calls in late 2005. Such an activity is forbidden. Corn never replied back. Palfrey had hooked-me-up with him, lamely, and without any good context. She would continue to do such things as time bore on.

A ll that said, he wasn't willing to move forward on it, and who can blame him when you look at Palfrey's behavior during all of that saga towards the press? She jerked everyone around and tried to use jornalists and bloggers to do the investigating for her, to exonerate her. That's fine, but you don't send people down blind alleys, you have something relevant to tell them. That's not to excuse their laziness and jadedness in the mainstream media, but Corn, as an editor, had to prioritize where to put his limited resources to investigate a story. The Nation--in case you didn't notice--isn't made of money. Yes, he'd found Roughead in the phone records but probably knew he and his staff could investigate the whole mess for years without that many real breakthroughs, and besides, people like me can grind away at finding the primary historical documents that they and others can examine in the aftermath (or vice versa). Surely, he had to know that Roughead was the brother of CNO Gary Roughead! No, it wasn't simply about "big names," there were other issues at play.

What do I think the significance of SAIC's Ronald Roughead was, his being in the DC Madam's phone records, a former Defense Attache, former director of the Iraqi Media Network, an investigator at the Kenya Embassy bombing, and likely an employee of defense/intelligence contractor SAIC? I can't draw any final conclusions, but it's pointing towards illegal lobbying practices, not that he would be a final indicator or it. His very presence is the answer. Corn hasn't had access to the defense materials I and others have, but he surely knew that it would practically take a congressional inquiry to get to the bottom of what appeared to be evidence of corruption beyond the mere issues of government and elected officials frequenting hookers.

In short, he asked me the wrong question, but not out of malice or apathy when he mistakenly focused on one man. The patterns are what count in this story, but again, he hasn't seen everything I have. A lot of people have dismissed this 2002 article as being jaded, but it's not, he's right. People have been wasting an incredible amount of time and energy chasing ghosts. I have done my share of this, but that's part of these times and part of investigating events like the DC Madam story where there have been a number of blind alleys. Even the House Judiciary Committee was interested in investigating whether Palfrey's 6th Amendment rights were being violated during the proceedings; but as happened again and again, they got cold-feet and gave no answers as to why.

It's almost hopelessly complicated and obscured, but there were a few peeks behind the curtain that were more than tantalizing and even a little revealing, about how business is done in Washington D.C. But a conspiracy? All I saw was incredible incompetence from the prosecution and the Court, and even from the investigators that likely created the whole mess to begin with.

"When 9/11 conspiracy theories go bad," The Nation, 03.02.2002http://www.alternet.org/story/12536

Who's in Haiti right now? From a private security source...

Haiti--I recently received some of this via my email account from an old source. Most of it is probably already online, but it's a good condensation. Also, private security are streaming into Haiti as expected (see link).

Part I:

EUROPEAN UNION (NATO):

MARINE MILITARE ITALIA AIRCRAFT CARRIER (MMI CAVOUR)[En-route]

FRENCH MARINE NATIONALE AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP (SIROCO)
FRENCH MARINE NATIONALE BATRAL (FRANCIS GARNIER)

CANADIAN NAVY DESTROYER (HMCS ATHABASKAN)
CANADIAN NAVY FRIGATE (HMCS HALIFAX)

ROYAL NETHERLANDS NAVY SPECIAL MISSON SHIP (HNLMS PELIKAAN)

NAVAL ARMADA DE SPAIN DOCK LANDING SHIP (SNS CASTILLE)[En-route]

(NEW ITALIAN AIRCRAFT CARRIER COMMISSIONED 2008///OPERATIONAL 2009)

[http://www.marina.difesa.it/programmi/portaerei.asp]

Part II:

OPERATION UNIFIED RESPONSE

Commander, LT GEN Keen (US SOUTHERN COMMAND, MIAMI - http://www.southcom.mil)

US COAST GUARD CUTTER USCGC VALIANT
US COAST GUARD CUTTER USCGC MOHAWK
US COAST GUARD CUTTER USCGC TOMAHAW
US COAST GUARD CUTTER USCGC FORWARD

US ARMY 82ND AIRBORNE DIVISION (2ND BCT) 1ST BATTALION (Haiti) [Presidential Palace/General Hospital/Other]
US ARMY 82ND AIRBORNE DIVISION (2ND BCT) 2ND/3RD/4TH BATTALIONS (En-route to Haiti)

US MARINE CORPS 22nd MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT (MEU) [Port au Prince Seaport/Other]

US AIR FORCE [Toussaint Louverture International Airport (PAP)]

US NAVY CARRIER STRIKE GROUP CSG (USS VINSON AIRCRAFT CARRIER)
US NAVY EXPEDITIONARY STRIKE GROUP ESG (USS BATAAN AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP)
US NAVY HOSPITAL SHIP (USS COMFORT)
US NAVY GUIDED MISSILE DESTROYER (USS HIGGINS)
US NAVY GUIDED MISSILE CRUISER (USS NORMANDY)
US NAVY GUIDED MISSILE FRIGATE (USS UNDERWOOD)
US NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (USS FORT MCHENRY)
US NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (USS CARTER HALL)
US NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (USS GUNSTON HALL)
US NAVY SALVAGE SHIP (USNS GRASP)

==========================

=============================

OFFICIAL MILITARY DEPLOYMENTS (unit rescue teams of various nations not listed)

UNITED NATIONS STABILIZATION MISSION IN HAITI (MINUSTAH)

FRENCH MARINE NATIONALE AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP (SIROCO)
FRENCH MARINE NATIONALE BATRAL (FRANCIS GARNIER)

CANADIAN NAVY DESTROYER (HMCS ATHABASKAN)
CANADIAN NAVY FRIGATE (HMCS HALIFAX)

NAVAL ARMADA DE MEXICO AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP (ARM PAPALOAPAN)
NAVAL ARMADA DE MEXICO HOSPITAL SHIP (ARM HUASTECO)

NAVAL ARMADA DE VENEZUELA (UKNOWN NAME)
NAVAL ARMADA DE VENEZUELA (UKNOWN NAME)

============================================================

82nd AIR DIV Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) (http://www.bragg.army.mil/82dv/):
1st BCT (IRAQ/AFGHAN)
2nd BCT (GLOBAL RESPONSE FORCE)(1st Battalion in Haiti. 2nd, 3rd & 4th Battalions en-route to Haiti)
3rd BCT (IRAQ/AFGHAN)
4th BCT (IRAQ/AFGHAN)

Corps
Division (4 x Brigades): 15000 soldiers
Brigade (4 x Battalions): 5000 soldiers
Battalion (4 x Companys): 1000 soldiers
Company (4 x Platoons): 200 soldiers
Platoon: 40 soldiers

After the failure of Katrina, you'd want to call it " OPERATION UNIFIED RESPONSE" too. What I'd like to know is why Doctors Without Borders' planes are being turned away at the Port Au Prince airport, not being allowed to land. At least that's the word going around now.

The jobs they promised us! http://www.haiti-security.com/Employment_-_Guards.html

Has the Poe Toaster called it quits?

Baltimore, Maryland--I think the Poe Toaster--whoever they were over the years--made the right choice in calling it quits. Why? It keeps the memory and the mystery intact and ends things on a good foot. There was good reason to. With the problems of nitwits trying to unmask the shadowy figure who each year made a toast of cognac to Poe, his aunt, and his wife, and left roses to their memory, or senile old men claiming they were that person, it was time to close the curtain. Why make any changes with a legend? Why let someone finally ruin it?

Just three years ago, a self-proclaimed "Poe scholar" named Sam Popora claimed that he was the Poe Toaster stating that he began in 1967, but forgetting that back issues of Baltimore papers record it as having begun around 1949. That's an incredibly bad lie, yet the press swallowed it, sending-out dozens of journalists and video crews to speak with him. A brief search of the Internet would have told them all they needed to know, that Popora was full of shit! Hit on the Poe-labels for more, I was thanked by the director of the Poe house at the time in my comments section during the Popora mishap.

The mystery is very much intact and I hope that the individual who began this journey in 1949 and his family take the facts to the grave. One of the points to life is that there should be mystery to it or it's boring. We need these symbols to feed our souls. Our souls will remain fed on this count, at least for the foreseeable future. I don't expect everyone who reads this to understand why all of this is important, but let sleeping dogs lie, and let the dead finally have their rest.

Mr. Poe's life was a troubled one, and fighting over his remains and trying to attach oneself to his legacy as his literary executors in the 19th century did; Popora in this one attempted to do and also failed; as well as Philadelphia and Boston have during this decade; is undignified. The great American writer is never leaving his resting place in Baltimore, it's never going to happen. Poe died in that city and belongs buried there. Richmond--perhaps--has some claim to him, but Poe lived in Baltimore and has been interred there for well over a century without contest. He is our national treasure, and the man who introduced many of us to mystery. Fitting then that this mystery related to him should remain one, hopefully for all time.

Al Haig for adult diapers...

Al Haig: "I'm in control now."

Whatever happened to the former DC Madam escort who contacted Ken Silverstein over Shirlington Limo and Hookergate?

Washington D.C.--Inquiring minds want to know! I don't think Mr. Silverstein or Harper's were lying when he posted in early May 2007 that an intern lost the phone number of this woman-in-question, but surely they could have checked their own phone bills for the call that day? Perhaps it all got lost in the shuffle? That's the most likely reason, and considering the level of intimidation the government's investigators and prosecutors were putting out with former escorts of Pamela Martin & Associates, she probably got cold-feet and went into hiding.

She should know that I have her name and the names of virtually every escort that ever worked for the late Ms. Palfrey.

I want to talk to you--any of you--who worked for Jeane at one time. I will not divulge your identities without your express permission, my word is my bond. But this is a missing piece-of-the-puzzle here, this Shirlington lead, because it probably exposes illegal lobbying practices in the nation's capital and might even bring Palfrey a little justice, some vindication.

Give it some thought.

"Red Lights on Capitol Hill?", Harper's Magazine, 04.27.2006: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/04/sb-red-lights-on-capitol-hill

"Missed Connection," Harper's, 05.09.2007:http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/05/hbc-90000031

Sourcewatch's page on Shirlington Limo and Transportation, Inc: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Shirlington_Limousine_and_Transportation,_Inc.

Is Facebook censoring Cindy Sheehan and putting out misinformation over her upcoming CIA protest at Langley?

WWW--Either Facebook is messing-up big time (usually the case), or they're lying and telling people on their service (used on communications airspace owned by the public) that the upcoming protest by Cindy Sheehan and other activists at CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia is canceled. According to a journalist I just communicated with, it is not.

Sheehan and her people had a Facebook page up announcing the visit with a link to Googlemaps for directions (possibly from former VP Dick Cheney's property). Journalists who are attending have told me that they expect arrests even though the event itself is completely legal. We'll see, but I think the time to call the lawyers is at hand.

If Facebook has done what I think they've done, it's going to be a PR problem for them to put it mildly.

Facebook's "Event Cancelled" notice as of this evening: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=195727044034

The event route from Cheney's home to the CIA: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=115218600321747535998.00047c286d22dfd43cfae&ll=38.94757

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009) review

Hermeneutics n,-The study of hidden meanings in sacred texts.

For fans of Monty Python's Terry Gilliam, this is a triumphant return to his more fantastical side, but also a sad look back on the last few hundred years of post-Enlightenment disenchantment, war, and the death of nature, therefore, of magic. We have lost a sense of the enchanted, and that loss is seen in our most daemonic and destructive behaviors over the last few hundred years. The repressed always return one day, and the toll has been profound. While the Enlightenment brought with it classical Liberalism, democracy, and the expansion of the rights of the average person (along with more material comfort), the price has been a high one: for the most part, we have forgotten how to imagine and to dream and have lost our symbols and meaning. We have lost ourselves.

This loss of meaning is a recurrent theme in Gilliam's body of work since his first movie, Time Bandits (1981), and has carried through in some form or another in practically every one since, even in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1997), yet another quest for "the dream." In that case it was the "American dream," which the characters never really find. Modernity doesn't tend to deliver on dreams but does its best to repress and eradicate them, while at the same time dazzling us with illusion devoid of meaning.

The modern world has liberated us from discomfort to a great extent, but it has also robbed us of the symbols, the archetypes, and the stories that feed the human soul. People used to dream and imagine things we no longer can as a culture, at least in a general sense, and it's beyond tragic. Now, it's down to artists like Gilliam and he himself is part of a "dying breed" of maverick filmmakers. It has also robbed us of the "quiet times" of contemplation that greeted our peasant ancestors with the harvesting and the turning of the seasons; Blake's "Satanic mills" came, the human mind fragmented, and nothing has been quite the same since. Gilliam has been acutely aware of this problem for some time and shares this feeling with director/storytellers like Werner Herzog who has stated emphatically that life cannot go on for much longer without these meanings, these symbolical signposts that are supposed to punctuate our lives. It should be said again and again: human beings were meant to dream and to yearn for a better world. The fact that we do--and the "whys"--is one of the great mysteries of this life.

Without giving too much away, Dr. Parnassus (taken from the name of the mount from which the Greek Oracle of Delphi spake) is a centuries-old Magus and Secret Chief whose last days have finally come, and the Devil had come to get what's due to him--literally. Like the suppressed inner tradition of the West, Parnassus has been with us for thousands of years, fighting the darkness, the ignorance, lack, and yes, the Devil himself ("Mr. Nick," an appropriately dapper1920s-festooned pimp in the great Tom Waits). Like the songs of the Troubadours (their Cathar verses preserved by Dante), and the hidden symbology of the Tarot, the subterranean transmission of esoteric knowledge has been embodied in Parnassus, a sage and a prophet with a mission to save souls throughout the millennia from crass materialism and jaded cynicism. He is a bringer of light in the best sense, just like a filmmaker is in his own way if he's doing the medium any justice. From Georges Méliès to Terry Gilliam, cinema has always been about magic--the trick that reveals a truth and nourishes the soul of mankind, that special place where imagination is supposed to rein.

There are more than a few jabs at the Vatican in the film, and Gilliam is definitely coming from an anti-clerical position. In one scene, the good doctor shows another character a scrapbook of his battles with Old Nick through the ages in works of art: one shows Parnassus as a Christ-like redeemer and illuminator preaching to the masses, while another is an "illuminated" page showing Waits' Devil character leading a procession of priests carrying an open-Bible. The message there is very, very clear, and the Devil's always in the details--the fine print--if you look closely and "see with eyes that see, and hear with ears that hear." Filmmakers know that bringing dreams to life has nearly always been a Faustian bargain, and the myth of Simon Magus and Faust is where this tale originates from; indeed, Faust originates from the story of Simon Magus, an early Gnostic thinker and "redeemer" who cast a few illusions and spells in his time. One could argue reasonably that Gilliam is telling us, "This is what the inner traditions have been reduced to--a rickety form of show business--but that's OK, we still need them and the eternal symbols. So be it." For this reason and others, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is also autobiographical.

The illuminated procession is not the only example of anti-clericalism within the plot and its imagery: Gilliam and his co-writer Charles McKeown (one of his co-writers on Brazil) have based the Tony/Heath Ledger character partly on the murdered Vatican banker, Roberto Calvi! How do I know? The bricks in the pockets and the role of organized crime in the plotline for one. To make a very complicated and long story short and comprehensible, Tony is a man that Parnassus's daughter and his helper Anton ( the other side of the coin since they share the same name) find hanging from a bridge the moment the good doctor is reading from his Tarot and pulls the hanged man card from the deck. Anton plays the god Mercury on the Parnassus stage, the god of commerce, trade, and profit, but really the god Hermes in Roman clothing. What better analogy of the movie industry could one have, that uneasy combination of vision and commerce? Hermes was the bringer of dreams, of knowledge, the guide to the underworld, a trickster, and messenger between the deathless gods and the human race. That is Anton.

Tony is a lost soul who has allegedly forgotten who he is--which is true and false--but true enough as he's lost his identity in the modern world and is as adrift as Parnassus and his struggling theater company that grants the deepest fantasies of the chosen (those they think have good hearts and who are genuine). On the other side of their mirrored-gateway into imagination, they offer one's greatest dreams, but as a test of one's true self. Mr. Nick is always waiting inside to tempt the dreamers towards their destruction, and time's running out for Parnassus who has made a series of bets with the Dark Lord with his sixteen year old daughter as the prize. In a sense, then, his daughter Valentina (played by the luminous Lily Cole) is Parnassus's final chance at redemption and mortality; he's tired of living and wants to be a normal man. He isn't alone in the traveling cosmological theater troupe: Tony is Valentina's temptation, her desire for a normal life.

Sadly, like many of the cynical and lost today, Tony has an agenda of his own and is a betrayer. This adds a measure of sorrow to the film because of the fate of Ledger, but it also lends the film a poetic quality that otherwise might not have been as powerful. This is a film no-less about the inner traditions than it is about the wrecked spiritual and natural landscape of our era, so it's not exactly going to be one of Gilliam's more uplifting tales, but since when have we come to his films for that? Christopher Plummer has probably never been so great in cinema, and were this his final role, few actors could be so proud of their work. Gilliam is a mirror, as most good artists are, of his time, and our time. Dream your dreams, because without them, there is no human race and no future. Make your dreams a reality, but be sure that those dreams are worthy of dreaming and bringing into fruition in this very material world.

Product review: "Throwback" Pepsi™

How long ago was it since I had a real Pepsi ™ or a real Coke ™, or any other kind of soft drink for that matter? It must have been the early 1980s, but no later than 1986. When did the onslaught of HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) begin? Under Reagan ™, when else would it have begun? Well, OK, as usual, it's not as simple as that. It took successive administrations of Republicans.

For close to an entire generation American soft drinks, and many other beverages, have had this garbage pumped into it, contributing to making many in that generation sick and obese. The soft drink corporations wanted to sell us more of their fizzy-liquids and there were incentives all over the place for corn farmers to implement corn syrup production for use as an all-purpose sweetener (of bottom lines). Note the next time trade agreements between the United States and other nations occur. The recriminations over subsidized American agricultural commodities are sound.

So began one part of this trend so that King corn could thrive at the taxpayer's expense:

Previously neglected because of low yields and bad coloring, HFCS became an industrial reality in the 1960s, when a xylose isomerase enzyme was successfully used to convert glucose into fructose at levels of 42% fructose and higher (Landis 86). That breakthrough, in conjunction with the fact that corn is both planted on nearly 80 million acres (Baker) and is subsidized in the USA (Hopkins), led to a huge gain in HFCS’s popularity because HFSC soon became cheaper than actual sugar. In fact, the “use of HFCS grew rapidly, from less than three million short tons in 1980 to almost 8 million short tons in 1995” (Forristal). Furthermore, “during the late 1990s, [the] use of sugar actually declined as it was eclipsed by HFCS… [And] today Americans consume more HFCS than sugar” (Forristal). ("HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP: HISTORY, SPREAD, and CONSUMPTION," Cosmos Cluster 7, 25 July, 2009, UC Davis.edu, P.2)

The links to adult and even child diabetes and obesity are gradually coming in from academic studies and are sure to continue coming in; but just take a look around the social landscape. We've gotten fatter. The worst part of all of this is the sheer number of sources that Americans get HFCS from, but one of the most jam-packed ones is from soft drinks. The average American gets 200 calories-per-day from HFCS. No one ever accused Ronald Reagan's administration--or subsequent ones--correctly that they were against subsidies for large-scale farmers and agribusiness. Reagan was all for it. So was most of Congress during the 1980s, and selling to grain to the former Soviet Union didn't bother them either. Pork? Don't get me started.

Just a few years ago I was shopping at a local supermarket chain and lo-and-behold, in the Mexican foods section was a real find--Mexican Cokes. Who cares, right? Me! Other shoppers, other households, who remembered what soft drinks used to taste like previous to the 1980s! The truth is, the problems really began--as they often did--under Richard Nixon:

In 1973, Earl "Rusty" Butz, President Nixon's USDA chief, did away with the agricultural price supports introduced by the Roosevelt administration. These supports were intended to protect farmers' finances by limiting supply when bumper crops would have otherwise flooded the market and to avoid squeezing consumers by releasing the warehoused grain when crop yields were low and prices would naturally spike. Butz ginned up political support for the administration by encouraging farmers to plant "fencerow to fencerow" while the government provided them with subsidies to cover the difference between market prices and production costs.

Of course, growing "fencerow to fencerow" did exactly what one would expect: production exceeded demand, and prices took a dive. This didn't sit too well with Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the nation's largest corn refiner.

Now, there's only so much corn one person can eat. ADM suddenly needed to figure out how to somehow stimulate sales of all that excess food. ("America's Crazed Corn Habit," Mises Institute, 12.22.2009)

Thanks again Dick! Indeed, we are "all Keynesians now," and so was Reagan! I could have told you that, and I'm not even remotely an economist.

The best part about those Mexican Cokes™ was that they were in glass-bottles, so icing them up wasn't going to be a problem, that taste was coming, and those coveted bottles didn't disappoint at all. Why? Because Mexico doesn't have the kinds of crop subsidies we do on corn, they don't put HFCS in everything for that and a variety of other reasons, they got it right. I bought-up as many of them as I could that summer, it was a real treat, and it ended quickly. The local bottler had them pulled, they're gone.

But how did throwback Pepsi™ taste to these buds? Coupled with the vintage packaging, it was like being rocketed back to better times--or at least better than now, the 1970s. I was literally taken aback at how familiar it tasted, I hadn't forgotten after decades of HFCS film on the surface of every soft drink (and the roof of my mouth), even in fruit juices! Childhood memories and images flooded into my brain after that first sip. It was truly refreshing in the best sense of the word. I could recall some blistering summer days that were punctuated with a Pepsi™ or a Coke™, and they tasted so much better back then because they were made with cane sugar rather than HFCS.

I didn't notice as much of a change with their throwback Mountain Dew™ (before there was meth...), but the Pepsi was perfect, and the throwback packaging really takes me back to another America. Not necessarily a better one, but one before the fall of America to Reaganism and a slimmer public!

Oh yeah, and early in 2009 it was found that mercury is often found in trace amounts in HFCS.

http://www.pepsithrowbackhub.com/

Biased, but in a reasoned sense (better to err on the side that HFCS's bad): http://www.highfructosecornsyrup.org/

"America's Crazed Corn Habit," Mises Institute, 12.22.2009: http://mises.org/daily/3934

We don't need most of the intelligence community

WWW--After this Detroit "attack" (get real folks), if you think the threat of terrorism is especially potent or real, you're basically lower than an animal. Animals generally understand the real threat to themselves as a biological imperative and react appropriately. Granted, when they don't, they die, and sometimes die-out as a species.

If we should have learned anything from the Detroit attempt on flight 253 by a rich Nigerian it's that for the tens-of-billions wasted on these highly-politicized institutions that are really predicated on shaping public opinion towards an imperial-agenda, we're not being protected or defended at all, and that money is being wasted. Even in so-called "flush" economic times, this is galling, a total waste of a nation's treasure, and while millions of Americans are being foreclosed on thanks to incredible economic mismanagement at the highest levels.

But this is exactly why they're going to call for more money: the economic and political establishment know that they're the greatest single threat to our national security and are building a bulwark to protect themselves from the coming groundswell, maybe even a total breakdown of order thanks to their policies. This is the purpose of the war on terror. That's why we're going to keep hearing that such an infinitesimally-small threat is actually significant when it's not. The real threat comes from above--from Wall Street, from the corporate board rooms, from the lobbyists, the politicians, and their appointees. That's not an anti-government stance, incidentally.

The war on terror is just like the war on drugs in that it's a war on the public. Terrorists aren't going to be nearly as affected by it, which is the point.

The time Digger Phelps saved Christmas Eve (a true story)...

It was that special night--Christmas--and Zofia and her daddy were headed home through the back streets adjacent to Notre Dame's golf course and campus. The neighborhoods were built, in most cases, around the time of the Great War and its aftermath, mostly populated with professors, former Notre Dame coaches, and even a few celebrities, like the comedian Martin Short, a home he bought for his children while they attended the university's prestigious law school.

The law school itself is run by the notable Robert Blakey, former chair of the House Assassinations Committee that was convened in the late 1970s to investigate the killings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, and John Kennedy.

But it had snowed and melted overnight before Zofia and her daddy went out to run errands for when grandma and her uncle were coming over to celebrate Christmas eve with them and they had forgotten how icy the neighborhoods could get! The moment they hit the patch of ice, it was over: they slid very quickly into one of the neighborhood yards; it was shocking and jarring, but they were alright when it was over. But they were stuck. What to do?

Help was on the way! A grumpy old man who appeared to have been born with a jelly-doughnut in his mouth ambled-up to the side of the car. Daddy had already gotten out. The man said nothing, just grunted, and motioned. He took the jelly-doughnut out his mouth and said, "Move it over that way and you'll be able to get out."Daddy did what the man said, and it worked. Daddy waved to the man with no response who was headed home, eating his jelly-doughnut he'd been born with. Funny how people can overcome their shadow side, being kind and grumpy all at the same time. Grumpy!

But the fact remains: Digger Phelps saved Christmas eve. Thank you Digger.

Songs from the Site Meter: All roads lead to San Diego III...

WWW--They're baaaaaaaaaaacccccckkkk!

Domain Name		saic.com ? (Commercial)
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The 7 CIA KIAs in Afghanistan: When revenge really means reprisal

Occupied Afghanistan--Remember all those WWII movies where the Nazis are being attacked by partisans and members of the resistance? This is what's happening in Afghanistan.
This doesn't mean the Afghans are "good guys," they're just reacting naturally, and they have their own issues. We're worse in our behavior at this historical moment.

The CIA are calling for "revenge" in an illegal war and remembering that this is an illegal occupation is the key (wars of aggression are illegal under international law): they're already kidnapping, torturing, and even slaughtering Afghan nationals, and now, someone they thought was going to be their "snitch" (informant) got into a military facility knowing seven of them were going to be there and blew himself and them up with a bomb strapped to his torso. That's desperation under a bloody occupation, not some arbitrary act for the hell of it, and it's not even necessarily extreme. It's what happens under bloody occupations.

What the CIA should have used was the term "reprisal," the one that the Nazis and their victims frequently used when they retaliated for deaths within their own ranks. The problem in their logic at Langley--and our own if we accept such arguments--is obvious. We're the wrong side, and we're the aggressors, not the Afghans. This kind of wrong-headed thinking is only going to keep us digging our own hole, and eventually, we're probably going to get our own Stalingrad in some form or another. This "revenge" is really reprisal, don't kid yourself. We're the bad guys. We're the wrong side. The Afghan that did this killed people who might have been there to torture in his mind, and certainly came as bringers of death.

The Northwest flight tard who blew his balls off (blues)

It seemed poetic, didn't it? The ruins of Detroit and the rest of America now needed to be protected once again from rich Nigerian tards with a screw loose (definitely not Fela Kuti material) and Gulf state professionals (easily indoctrinated with a middle-class education), and this would then require things like a "Department of Homeland Security for the Department of Homeland Security," it being that corrupt and worthless government institution created by "anti-government conservatives" inspired by the laughably sad likes of Grover Norquist. Thanks for the inaction with FEMA during Katrina. Point taken: government doesn't work...when you're in charge.

Yes, Washington D.C. really is Hollywood for ugly, stupid weaklings, and a more byzantine route to sex hasn't existed since the Mandarins. It's called "dysfunctional" for reason.

We're told with a straight face by Republicans, pundits (usually the same thing), and even the White House, that this is all serious when it's not. There's nothing serious or even remotely threatening about a retard blowing his balls off on a crowded airliner. This is all that he accomplished. This is the threat of terrorism, creole bourgeois extremists. That's not a very real threat at all. The real threat is how compromised our elected leaders--a euphemism--are to the paymasters in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states. This is that infinitesimal chance that you'll slip in the shower and break your neck. This is the fear of one's shadow, the time of the hollow men. They will build palaces to this stupidity and this fear that will stand less than a generation, because you can't build a solid foundation on quivering shit.

To be afraid of a gaggle of clowns; to hand over any rights whatsoever over this; to think that the threat of terrorism is especially great and will affect you; is madness. The threat--I repeat--the threat is not real, and the war on terror is theater. No, I don't think this was "planned"--once again, like the events of September 11th, 2001, this is one more case of profound bureaucratic incompetence, piled one-upon-another and opportunism after-the-fact. I repeat: this is not a confirmation that government does not work. It's a confirmation that conservatives and corporatist influence within government do not work, and can never work to protect us or even to provide a livable society. In other words, any State-corporate nexus is the problem, and this comes from the revolving-door of appointees from the corporate world, something this current president has done plenty of, just like the last. Why would he fire all these Bush II appointees when he's the same? Quit fooling yourself.

But if stupid young men blowing their balls off scares you enough to hand over your liberty, you don't deserve any. If you allow the herd to stampede us there without a fight, you don't deserve any. Cowardice comes in many forms, and Americans do plenty of talking and no walking. I could take these bastards on any flight, any time, any day. I am not afraid. Cowards are afraid of their own shadow, and that's exactly what's happening in the American mind (or what's left of it) right now: we know our wars are illegal and immoral and that we have something coming to us. We know we are complicit. This is collective-guilt writ large. Did he blow off your balls, or his?

A very special fundraiser: Send me--Matt Janovic--to Los Angeles to tell Arianna Huffington she's full of shit!

Any assistance in prearranging the meeting-of-minds (I only promise to utter, "You're full of shit!" the rest should be history) would be greatly appreciated! This is a non-profit deal here, and if there's a story in it, you'll be reading it right here, at this location...well, not this exact location, meaning this post, but this site! Will we discuss Marxist philosophy afterward, or will I get kneed-in-the-groin? I think she's done enough of that to the American public.

But who knows? In the spirit of Gandhi, she might just have someone else kick my ass all over a parking lot. No kisses, though, no tongue, she wears brown-lipstick to hide that ass-kissing of people richer than she is. Mmm-hmm, hanging-out with billionaires, that's really going to accomplish a lot. You know, they're just the core-problem in America, these horrible people she tends to associate with...

Look, either she's a fool or a liar.

She believed that Gingrich and the GOP "would help the poor" in America with the "contract for America," which coming from a Cambridge graduate is bizarre. Had she never read about or experienced the last 80 years of our history? That's crap, and it's back-peddling. She knew they wouldn't do anything to "help" the subproletarian classes anymore than they were going to help the eroding middle-class. Why would she believe them, ever? This is the same kind of flawed-logic that kept the original progressive era from being truly progressive, giving us the Great Depression down the road, this cow-towing. At the very least, this stupid woman owes it to all of us to help clean-up the mess she and others helped create during the 1990s and get her hands dirty. She is not a member of the working-class or the general public. She runs with the rich, the privileged, the connected. Why would she "believe" them, the GOP back in the 1990s thinking they wanted to service the common good (and this is giving her far too much credit)?

The answer is a pretty simple one: she identified with them and thought she was "part of the club." Either she was fooled, partly-fooled and really just cynical, completely cynical and with them 100% (my take), or she's just incredibly confused and probably a dumbass with an Ivy League degree. My feeling is that she's just another social climber, those people who are actually worse than the rich themselves, and trust me, I've seen it in action with relatives in Chicago on a smaller scale, it's nauseating. The worst people in the world are the ones who want to be like the powerful people, the rich people. Scum.

Very little of Arianna Huffington's life speaks well of her, and now, we're supposed to believe that she was "fooled" by the Obama campaign as well. Her biography is a good work of fiction. Considering how cozy she was letting the Brothers Emanuel write on her website, and how much she helped the Obama campaign, it doesn't really matter whether her motives have been pure, misguided, or patently evil and cynical. The results--what results?--speak for themselves. This stupid woman has royally screwed-up and screwed the rest of us and should be booted-out of the progressive constellation yesterday. While millions are starving across the globe, being disenfranchised, losing their homes here in America, being slaughtered in a multi-front war, and while our rights are being rolled-back, this dumbass is sipping champagne and eating canapes with billionaires who don't want to be bothered with paying their fair share in taxes.

She's arch-conservative, she's a fraud, and she's got to change or go, and she's hardly alone. Send me to Los Angeles for one day (won't go until I'm certain I'll find her), and I'll give her exposure to a clue.

"Arianna," my one act play on Lady MacDumbo: http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2009/01/arianna-satirical-play-by-matt-janovic_31.html

Alex Jones has been backpeddling about Charlie Sheen this week by taking a vow of silence (please extend it to all utterances)...

WWW--Yesterday, syndicated conspiracy nut radio jock Alex Jones [GASP!] was making some really baseless about the also completely wacko Charlie Sheen being "innocent" when it's pretty clear that something's incredibly amiss about this recent incident with his new wife, the fact that they were both dangerously drunk, and that he was definitely wielding a knife yelling, "I'm going to kill you!" at her and had to be restrained by others. The 911 call is online and on television today, it's everywhere, and it gives a new layer of meaning to "911" once again since Jones has been fobbing the always-intoxicated Sheen as a "truther," meaning someone who thinks the WTC was felled by alien technology...

Let's not forget that Sheen has a very prolonged history of sexual and substance-addictions and has even had to come under intervention from his poor family, poor Martin Sheen, a man who I assume is very ashamed of his son right now. Jones certainly knew about Sheen's problems before becoming associated with him., something we can safely presume that he did to suck-off some of the troubled star's fame to bolster site hits and merch sales on his constellation of websites and other media. In other words, the mugs, t-shirts, poorly produced DVD documentaries, and crypto-racist posters and shirts of the current president, weren't selling briskly enough to keep the new Father Coughlin afloat in the kind of luxury he's been used to. He has a lot of mouths to feed, and besides, he's fat.

But yesterday, Jones was trying to "minimize" the damage against Sheen without much basis or luck. Not that that's anything new, but today...nothing, nada, he's moved on from the subject with nary-a-comment of explanation. There's an pretty obvious reason for this silence having to do with sticking one's foot in one's mouth: Expect Sheen to become so radioactive--as radioactive as Fatty Arbuckle or D.C. Stephenson--that Jones stops talking about the movie star almost entirely, if not altogether. Why did Jones ever want an association with Sheen? That's obvious. Charlie Sheen's famous and it props-up Jones's own absurd conservative, anti-government line that's mistaken as genuinely progressive and populist, it "mainstreams" him, a trick possibly learned from Ron Paul. He's not "mainstream," he's a far-right demagogue who's been given too much rope, but with some luck, he's going to hang himself with it before long.

So, what happened between yesterday and today? The dumbass (who has more-than-adequate resources to discover the truth) probably actually read the Colorado police reports or had someone like Kurt Nimmo hand him copies of the reports out of concern, and he stopped talking about it altogether today. Wise move, but the statements stand and were heard. Note that the facts have never stood in the way of Alex Jones and that there was never an objective truth he wasn't willing to avoid or to accuse of being part of "the conspiracy." He and Kurt Nimmo had no problem whatsoever in claiming that the DC Madam was "suicided" by imaginary government operatives when there was and is no evidence whatsoever to conclude it. Reportedly, in March of this year, Jones fired erstwhile compatriot and shill, Jeff Rense, one of the other twits peddling this hollow meme that also fosters the impression of an ubiquitous police state (something supporters of one would want out there) while at the same time reviling it, a neat trick.

The objective truth never stopped him from yelling the sky was falling in the run-up to Y2K, so to keep listening to him and thinking he has a shred of credibility because he's singing your tune is simply intellectually dishonest, a lie to oneself, that deepest-of-cuts. The late (Milton) William Cooper--author of Behold a Pale Horse--even saw Jones as a fraud and a liar, as he would have known having beheld one in the mirror the majority of his short life. A wolf knows a wolf. I have to assume that the radio show's site has the show archived from yesterday, so hit it, I'm not going to listen that crap, it's infotainment for the terminally paranoid bigot (including people with a predisposition for psychosis who smoked too much pot, took one-too-many hits of LSD).

The dead speak, again and again, accusing the living, even when they were the same kind of fraud--especially because they were the same kind of a fraud. Jones could be caught in lies and mistakes forever and his moronic crowd would keep believing, like the flock led by another man with the same last name...

Behold, the persistence of stupidity: flogging a stale horse.

Listen, at your own peril: http://www.thealexjonesshow.com/listen.html

(Milton) William Cooper disussing Jones's December 31st, 1999 Y2K sham: http://www.archive.org/details/WilliamCooperDiscussesAlexJonesY2kHoax

"Twenty lines with the President," a fictional fiction, fictionally, by Charlie Sheen:

http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2009/09/twenty-lines-with-president-fictional.html

Coming soon: Digger Phelps saves Christmas eve!

South Bend, Indiana--A true, but very brief anecdote on the former N.D. coach saving the day!

Arlen Specter surprises again: Reintroduces legislation to allow 9/11 lawsuits against Saudi ruling-class to move forward

Washington D.C.--If there's anything one can say about the senator from Pennsylvania, it's that he's unpredictable and probably really does have this nation's best interests at-heart--in his own mind at least. We'll set aside the magic-bullet theory for a moment...

This week--on December 21st--Specter called on the floor of the Senate for the passage of legislation that would allow lawsuits initiated by thousands of survivors (as well as the families of those killed and insurance companies) of the terrorists attacks on September 11, 2001 to move forward, and introduced the proposed bill with bipartisan support from no less a non-man than Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), although I'm sure it's purely a political move on his part since it's not likely to pass, at least not on his watch.

That would require will and real support, something Graham and others in both major parties aren't inclined to do since there's a lot of money at stake, never mind the destabilizing effects actual justice directed at the Saudi ruling-clans would have on the world's oil supply and the global economy. The coverage in the mainstream media--once again--has been virtually non-existent.

It's not his first time, and he began this road in late 2003 with roughly the same reaction, meaning indifference if not obstructionism. On October 25th, 2007, Specter introduced the "Saudi Arabia Accountability Act" that was designed to accomplish essentially the same aims, meaning dragging the Saudi government and various institutions and charities into the light and allowing lawsuits to proceed that are currently being barred by the State Department (the executive branch) and questionable Federal Circuit Court rulings, more recently in the 2nd Circuit:

Specter (D., Pa.) said the legislation would clarify that lawsuits by U.S. citizens could go forward without a sign-off from the State Department.

A federal appeals court in Manhattan last year dismissed claims against the Saudi government, saying such litigation can proceed only if the State Department finds that the Saudis provided financial aid and other assistance to terrorist groups.

Besides clarifying the law, the bill would reinstate those lawsuits.

The Philadelphia law firm Cozen O'Connor has sued Saudi Arabia, members of the Saudi royal family, and more than a dozen Islamic charities, alleging responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. The Cozen lawsuit, on behalf of dozens of U.S. and international insurers that lost billions of dollars at ground zero, accuses the Saudi government of financing charities that in turn laundered money into al-Qaeda. ("Specter looks to revive 9/11 suits against Saudis," Philadelphia Inquirer, 12.24.2009)

This is all very new since Americans have never been allowed to sue a foreign power without the permission of the executive branch through established channels at the State Department. In other words, this is a new right that Senator Specter is proposing, an expansion of legal recourse for the American people that should have been in-place generations ago.

Granted, this is just a new submission of essentially the same legislation he's been proposing since as early as 2003, but he's not giving up, and neither should anyone concerned at getting to the bottom of what happened. The problem for the "truther" movement is that this doesn't fit the anti-government agenda or many of their theories that go in the same direction (nowhere), so we can expect a general lack-of-enthusiasm let alone any noise over this from them. They're hardly alone in the business: there are extremely powerful players in the financial and political sectors whose ties to the Saudi regime run deep. Instead, hundreds-of-thousands are running around in denial with their science fiction theories that would never stand the legal test in a court of law.

This is why the last administration did everything it could to keep these things from going anywhere, and likewise for the new one. Rather than actually protecting the American people then, what we have is a sham in the so-called war on terror, making it blatantly reminiscent of that other failed war, the war on drugs. Who's side are they on anyway? Do we really want to get to the truth at all? If not, we need to stop talking about concern over the victims and using them as a political hot-potato, now. Frankly, it was always distasteful, but this is probably another reason that Graham signed-on with Specter as a co-sponsor, to cover his and the GOP's ass for the next elections hoping everyone's forgotten their real role in all of this.

Here are a few things remarked on by Specter when he introduced a similar bill in 2007 that "truthers" (their "truth" being highly-selective) tend to ignore:

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, evidence has emerged indicating that support for al-Qaeda, Ramas, and other organizations has come from Saudi Arabia.

Testimony presented to several Congressional committees, including the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Judiciary Committee, and Intelligence committees in both houses, has indicated that Saudi Arabia is an epicenter for terrorist financing. These committees have also found the Saudi government's cooperation in investigations into the al-Qaeda terrorist network has been lackluster.

In the 108 Congress, as a member of the Governmental Affairs Committee and as a member of the Judiciary Committee, we worked to establish a basic point that anybody who knowingly contributes to a terrorist organization is an accessory before the fact to murder; so when people contribute to al-Qaeda or Hamas, knowing that both organizations employ suicide bombers, they are accessories to murder.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, adopted in 2001, mandates that all States "refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts,'' take "the necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist acts,'' and "deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts.'' There is mounting evidence that Saudi Arabia has not been compliant with this resolution.

The 9/11 Commission interviewed numerous military officers and government officials who repeatedly listed Saudi Arabia as a prime place for terrorists to set up bases and found that "Saudi Arabia's society was a place where al-Qaeda raised money directly from individuals through charities.''

The Council on Foreign Relations concluded in a 2002 report that "for years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for al-Qaeda, and for years, Saudi officials have turned a blind eye.''

There are indications that, since the May 12, 2003, suicide bombings in Riyadh, the Government of Saudi Arabia is making a more serious effort to combat terrorism. That said, I would like to draw attention to the following findings recanted by organizations which have studied the record of the Saudis.

In a June 2004 report entitled "Update on the Global Campaign Against Terrorist Financing,'' the Council on Foreign Relations reported that "we find it regrettable and unacceptable that since September 11, 2001, we know of not a single Saudi donor of funds to terrorist groups who have been publicly punished.''

A joint committee of the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives issued a report on July 24, 2003, that quotes various U.S. Government personnel who complained that the Saudis refused to cooperate in the investigation of Osama bin Laden and his network both before and after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It should be remembered that the Saudi regime executes their own citizens publicly in Riyadh with beheadings and amputations for violations of religious laws in what is a theocratic dictatorship. Interestingly, there's no entry for the legislation for either December 21st or the 24th (the date of the Philadelphia Inquirer coverage) on his own web page, but the story is gradually getting out there. This pretty much spells-it-out in a clear and basic form that should be understandable to anyone who can read and comprehend, and Specter is hardly a radical.

Neither is Charles Schumer (D-NY). What's radical in the current political culture, however, is for this legislation to go anywhere at all. Is this about justice or agendas? Go ask Alex Jones. Go ask the Obama administration. They're against any such moves that the senator from Pennsylvania is suggesting. But Specter appears to feel that the prospects for the bill and its main-thrust are good, stating, "I think it will pass." Let's hope so since the Saudis aren't about to stand down anytime soon without sanctions. Think what you want, but government is the only answer in all of this, surely not oil companies and trusts.

"Specter looks to revive 9/11 suits against Saudis," Philadelphia Inquirer, 12.24.2009: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/homepage/20091224_Specter_looks_to_revive_9_11_suits_against_Saudis.html

Arlen Specter's Floor Statement on the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2007, introduced October 25, 2007: http://specter.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=NewsRoom.ArlenSpecterSpeaks&ContentRecord_id=f6853748-1321-0e36-baae-0e4b60c0cd96&Region_id=&Issue_id=bd50d272-7e9c-9af9-72de-559d0e9aeed9

Why the conspiracy view of history?

It's an American tradition going back to right before the "revolution," or what Marx accurately described as "a slaveholder's rebellion." What was the conspiracy then? That a "papist" takeover of the colonies was coming and that the Vatican was going to install a government through dictatorship to force Catholicism on protestants, and it was commonly-held. Many believed it was real at the time.

But never mind that the conspiracy view of history has been debunked over-and-over again by academic historians throughout the world (then, bringing the predictable counter-claim that they're "part of the conspiracy"), the people who think "it's all a conspiracy" are rarely ever going to listen to reason. I won't reiterate the ones going around these days among the fringes, they don't even deserve repeating. The fact is, we know generally what's going on, and that's not to say that it's comforting.

But a friend recently made the observation that, "Everyone wants to be a victim," and therein lies the crux of this form of unthinking: it's part of the personal narrative to paint ourselves as the victim, especially when we are not. The fact is, we made the mess that is America because we tolerate the way things are. We are complacent. We are lazy. We are jaded. We are spoiled, and more-than-a-few of us are nuts. The witticism that, "Americans get the government they deserve," applies here and to our common era. For those who fight against this, I believe they're simply intellectually dishonest, possibly disturbed. Make no mistake: we know the face of tyranny when it stares at us, and often, it is us, our shadow side, our own shade, the sum-total of our own loathsomeness.

The GOP: Party of can-don't!

GOPland--You can't say they're the party of non-sequitters! Well, OK, actually you can. Like Sarah Palin, they've quit being relevant, human, and a solution to our nation's problems. In fact, they are our nation's problem along with the rest of the two-party non-system, soon to be on the same scrapheap as the former Soviet Union! Soon, very soon, Yakov Smirnoff will begin all of his jokes down in Branson, Missouri with, "In America..."

America gets the politicians it deserves, don't kid yourselves. And soon--sooner than you might think--we'll all be in the streets! Well yeah, because we're already going to be there! Wheeee!!!! Quit believe that the GOP is behind all the problems getting a decent health care system created through actual reform. The Democrats are falling on their own swords in the name of profit, of greed. OK, keep fooling yourselves and wait-and-see.

Some observations on them thar' "FEMA internement camps" (that'll learn ya'!)

WWW--Let me make this crystal clear: if you believe this meme, you're probably either gullible, crazy, or both, but you're assuredly rocketing towards crankdom, even with the mess we're in right now, and it's a big mess brought to us from many of the same people making these claims. The first time I ever heard of this stupid meme was in a poorly produced and heavily-slanted videotape from the nefarious and long ago discredited Linda Thompson, a former Indianapolis attorney who cranked-out a few documentaries on Waco that were--to put it politely--conflated alarmist crap.

There was an earlier example during Iran-Contra: "leftist" anti-intervention activists were running around with their heads cut-off when it was revealed that Oliver North had considered arresting and detaining some of them in the event of an invasion of Nicaragua. It never amounted to anything, and never would have, it was North being G. Gordon Liddy, meaning batshit crazy. The overreaction was equally nuts and added to the hyped post-Watergate paranoia infecting the body politic, and it has continued into today. Thompson continued this meme in a way that could only be of benefit to Republicans, and didn't invent it, but popularized it in a way unlike ever before, and when the Internet was primarily the domain (pun intended) of geeks and IT wackos (like elements of the Legion of Doom) who thought like herself.

According to the SPLC, Thompson is currently living in North Carolina right now, where she must feel right at home. After calling for a militia attack on the nation's capital in 1995, she was thoroughly discredited, even among her "allies"on the right and throughout the militia movement in the Midwest. Her time was up at the mic. If you live in N.C., tell her hello, photograph her, and post it online. She deserves further scrutiny for the mess she left behind, now spreading like syphilis all over the Internet, but again, she didn't invent this meme, but she exploited it and popularized it further. It never surprised me that Thompson was working out of Indianapolis at the time, and she was good for a time, very clever. But it got out of hand as it tends to. For a few minutes, she had me fooled, but I was in college at the time and young (naive). But unlike the people who still cling to this pathetic belief, I grew out of it quickly.

Working out of a strip mall next to a Dominoe's Pizza (shades of the wacko Jack T. Chick who's been making similar claims for decades along with the John Birch Society), she had created her garbage anti-government propaganda, garnering as much as $300,000 from over-credulous meth-addicts and down-on-their-luck farmers. Thompson truly was a darling of the Libertarian/militia right. In some ways she still is a kind of a "shade" or "phantasm" since her part of the meme has outlived her time in the spotlight. Just today, someone on Facebook told me with a sense of utmost certainty about (I'm paraphrasing), "FEMA camps being set-up to incarcerate American dissidents throughout the nation in time of a national emergency." Sound familiar? They might want to quit smoking dope and pull their head out of their ass, it's pointing rightwards.

Yes, there was something called CABLE SPLICER, GARDEN PLOT, COINTELPRO, and several other programs of the same kind during the chaos of the 1960s-70s, they were unconstitutional, and at least as far as we know, they were shuttered. Is this a good excuse to disengage from the political process? Who generally benefits from that? It tends to be the GOP. A takeover doesn't work as these people describe it, it comes in increments, and with them running around chasing ghosts they certainly aren't any threat to one. Great, they know hot to cut-and-paste, maybe even read.

What's interesting is that unless it fits their anti-government meme, Libertarians are generally unmotivated or silent on similar threats found in specific provisions of the Patriot Act and have yet to put up an even remotely workable or sustained fight against it at all, just more of their conspiracy theory yammering that would never stand up in a court of law or lead to the creation of any investigative commissions. When you believe this garbage, the very notion of political participation is out the window, and it's pathetic. Never mind that Libertarians (including Alex Jones in their nexus) and the militias were/are part of the far right. Never mind that they're not fighting the actual "good fight" against all of these post-9/11 attacks on our rights as groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), CREW, or the ACLU are; they just talk, write, and bloviate like the ineffectual children that they always were and are. None of what they do is ever going to reach a court of law unless it's them who has misbehaved, just look at Jones--just not if you've eaten recently.

Thompson did quite a job on some very ignorant and immature people throughout the Midwest and even the former Confederacy, and she chose her marks well. She was calculated. This kind of dysfunctional behavior is part of "the pedagogy of the oppressed," to borrow a phrase. One of the biggest problems now is that they're trying to infiltrate the antiwar movement and the progressive movement, and they're making some inroads. Additionally, they have some ties to the white hate movement, albeit indirectly in most cases. Frankly, that's good enough for me. There is a real threat, but it's not from the government, it's from the politicians who are leading us all over the cliff. There is no substitute for political participation.

Most of the politicians in Washington have strings coming out of their backs leading to Wall Street and its environs, and they're laughing all the way to the bank at the fringe populist minority, a group of oxymorons if ever there was one. The fact is, they're the minority and they're not part of the progressive movement in any real sense, but they are problematic and should be countered at every juncture and removed if necessary from these groups in a polite and legal fashion, as befits a truly progressive movement. No one said struggle was easy or that you weren't going to get your hands dirty, and these people are dragging us down a bit and muddying the waters. That's how it goes and how it's always been, and how it's always going to be. Accept that it's a part of your entire life--the struggle against unaccountable power--and you've made a very serious step towards adulthood.

A good summation of Thompson from the SPLC:
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=367

Songs from the Site Meter: The USDA comes around for former DC Madam counsel Montgomery Blair Sibley

Site Meter--Curious, but who can tell why? The fact that it was from Alexandria, Va. caught my eye.

Domain Name		usda.gov ? (U.S. Government)
IP Address		199.129.111.# (USDA Office of Operations)
ISP		USDA Office of Operations
Location		Continent : North America Country : United States (Facts) State : Virginia City : Alexandria Lat/Long : 38.7909, -77.0947 (Map)
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
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Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution : 1024 x 768 Color Depth : 32 bits
Time of Visit		Dec 19 2009 1:34:48 am
Last Page View		Dec 19 2009 1:34:48 am
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Referring URL		http://www.google.co...ceid=ie7&rlz=1I7SUNA
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		montgomery blair sibley dc
Visit Entry Page		http://chickasawpick...ry-blair-sibley.html
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Call for information on those pesky Libertarians...

WWW--Jaenelle Antas sated my appetite to remove these bastards once-and-for-all from any affiliation with the counterculture and the antiwar movement. I think this is very doable and I will be investing some more time in this area as I think the turds have been coming around trying (without any luck) to cause problems on this site and elsewhere. They should know that any attacks are going to be reported to law enforcement...

I've told Cindy Sheehan on her Facebook page that I thought she was making a mistake going on Alex Jones's radio program, and she was not only dismissive but made it personal. That's not a level-headed person. It helped me understand the problems that people have been talking and writing about regarding Sheehan over the last few years: the notoriety has gone to her head, and she's listening to the Sirens. The fringe-right has her ear when logic would dictate that they're part of the problem. She's fallen into the wrong side of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." She's got it all wrong--they're part of the enemy camp on the right and some of their rhetoric has seduced her, as has issues of convenience. I hate writing any of this about her.

Meanwhile, Sheehan falls deeper-and-deeper into a depressing irrelevancy, which was probably part of the plan of some of the people currently whispering in her ear. They didn't have to try too hard considering the target. Since at least the end of the American Civil War, provocateurs and spies of capital have done these kinds of things--there is plenty of precedent here. I'm all-but-certain she's been the victim of at least a few agent provocateurs.

Why mention Jones in a call for information about Libertarians? Because he's been closely-affiliated with them and is a "self-described" part of that other branch of the Lollipop Guild of little men and women on the far right, the lunatic fringe (the public has never supported their agenda in the polls or the voting booth). Listen to him and read him enough and this is patently clear. Jones has also had Naomi Klein ("Disaster Capitalism," a book whose premise and thesis I consider to be conflated--go back to Canada) and numerous others from the progressive movement/left on his program to woo them into neutralization, a trap, and simply to feed his ratings. Surely, this is a case of mutual masturbation if ever there was one. It doesn't hurt for the target to be overambitious and egotistical. Take your pick as to which one best describes Klein and Sheehan--or some permutation of both--but they're most assuredly blowing it by associating with these people.

You don't build bridges with people who are the fringe of the wrong side of history. Considering that they have nothing to offer in numbers should be a real indicator of their standing with the public. They're not going to change, and they're not especially significant. However, these people associating them are helping to change that a little by "mainstreaming" them a tad, not that the public is even remotely ready to buy their agenda that's barely different from that of the GOP. These juvenile clowns are also trying to make inroads through the "9/11 Truth (bowel) movement," truly a gaggle of fools if ever there was one, and that's not to say there isn't a cover-up (which doesn't automatically imply an "inside job," that's someone sneaking an arch-conservative agenda through the back door).

My own take? The Bush II administration was so corrupt and incompetent (and compromised thanks to direct-ties to the Saudi ruling-class) that they blew it. It's about oil, dummies. The rest has been a cover-up to protect them and unaccountable power in Saudi Arabia, just like at home. How often do the "truthers" talk about the Saudi connection, assuredly the "foreign state" found in the 26-27 redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission's report? That's not an invitation to a debate, incidentally, I don't do those unpaid, my time's worth something.

So here's the deal: I want information--any information--that's reasonably verifiable as in the case of the Antas story. I want intelligence on the Libertarian Party in any and every state in America, and even Canada. Mmm-hmm, I want the dirt, the bad-with-the-bad, but it must be reasonably verifiable and pertinent. We all have agendas, and mine is to remove their influence from the progressive movement and the counterculture once-and-for-all, an evil thing, I know.

This isn't about money on this side of the fence, this is about fixing our nation and our culture and moving on from the myth of the Wild West and the Frontier. It's time America grew-up. Unlike Jones and Nimmo, I'm not trying to sell coffee mugs, books, quasi-racist images of the president emblazoned on t-shirts, and heavily-edited DVDs of insane ranting about the Bohemian Grove and other examples of Libertarian non-sequitur babbling. I want dirt. This is about principles, and I don't pay sources.

From a recent Yo-Gabba-Gabba! show in Chicago...

Songs from the Site Meter: Facebook? Burkman?

Site Meter--An interesting hit, and Google's bots are coming around scouring this site. Don't be surprised if some rather dramatic things occur regarding this site. I wouldn't even be surprised if they attack my protection against prior restraint of speech, presumably over recent articles...

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Note: Online research indicates that this is likely a trail left by a hacker. I've had a few attack attempts on there recently, as have a few FB friends. Good try, but if this is the case, the individuals doing this should know that I will find out who they are through my IP and report your criminal behavior to law enforcement. As you can tell, I'm not fucking around here...

Gimp of the perverse: The loves of Jack Burkman, Part I

The Beltway--Where does one even begin with someone like this? At least he's complicated, and if you think not, read on. I've established contact with several former (what would the word even be? lovers? victims?) women who have endured the unfortunate attentions of lobbyist and GOP media pundit, Jack Burkman, Jr. The deeper you dig into the lives and behaviors of people like this, the more you begin to realize how damaged they are and that behind all of the bluster is a very sad individual who needs help. Where do the problems begin? Where else but in the home, during child-rearing.

Not that it's some kind of immutable law, but the "Jr." part of his name itself suggests a patriarchal family culture, and indeed, my suspicions were confirmed by one woman who dated Burkman nine years ago when he was just becoming known as a media figure, thanks-in-part to people like Bill Maher (thanks for nothing, Bill) for putting him on their programs for the sake of "fairness" and "balance." Had they really meant it, they wouldn't have bothered in the first place. It should be noted that Maher himself is well known for his own womanizing and has illustrated some arch-conservative tendencies over the years that don't speak well for him. Burkman represents all kinds of institutions and individuals as a lobbyist as well as in his role as a conservative (I use the term very loosely here since he's assisting selfish interests in gorging at the public trough) pundit. If only this was all he did.

Burkman's past support and shilling for the Rev. James Dobson's "Focus on the Family/The Family Research Council" is consistent with a patriarchal demeanor. But there are some indications that he's bored with it all and yearns for a modern woman with intellect, wit, and some kind of a sense of self somewhere in the mix, and he wasn't alone in this with the other privileged former clients of the DC Madam's prostitution ring, Pamela Martin & Associates which catered to men wanting "intelligent and educated" escorts. Some of the women he's dated are impressive, smart, witty (not merely attractive), and he warms to this to some extent. You could say that the dirty politicians and lobbyists are intellectually-sexually starved and find their fiefdoms in hell boring and confining, like anyone with a meaningless career or job.

A very recent date of Burkman's conveyed this to me:

He also acted genuinely surprised to find out that I wasn't a whore, and that I did not want his money. It makes me feel sorry for the man, but he dug his own grave with that one. He started talking to me about marriage (on the second date!) and told me repeatedly, "Honey you should get married. I can't believe you're not married, a girl like you.I can't believe a guy hasn't married you yet." So weird. Then he asked me if I wanted children. It scared me.

He told me honestly that I wasn't a whore, and that so many girls he met were whores (well if they're prostitutes ...) and I said something about having a nihilistic view on life and he jumped as if surprised to learn I knew the meaning, or as he said, "the correct meaning of that word," and that it had been so long since he had been with a girl who knew the word, at least the correct meaning.

But it depends on who's he "dating" at the time, and old habits die hard. The cynicism seems to rear its ugly head first. Does this sound like someone who's torn? But he was impressed with this woman's intellect and warmed to it. This speaks well for him in a general sense and raises the question of whether he feels trapped in the life he's been drawn into as a conservative media pundit and an advocate for things that he probably doesn't believe in, maybe just marginally and out of convenience rather than actual conviction. As the lady stated, "he dug his own grave with that one." The bars may be gold, but a cage is still a cage, and he has the intellect to appreciate this.

Yes, Burkman has a dark side as well, as strange as this is going to read to people aware of his general demeanor since for many that's the only side they ever see. One recent (this year) "paramour" put it like this:

I don't think in his mind, he thinks that there is anything wrong with what he does. His morals are screwed up. He treats women like whores but he promotes family values, he even did work for the FRC. After I called him a wolf, he looked a little mad and disappointed and said, "You looked me up." That is when he got really defensive and told me he did proposition those girls, but so what, anyone would have, but that he never payed [sic] for prostitutes [sic] in his life, that he would never pay for sex. [a patent lie on his part] I didn't say anything after that because he obviously did not see the connection between the two.

Burkman apparently also walks with a limp, like some perverse character out of Gothic literature, rather than a middle-class man with an Ivy League education. However, Burkman's not a physically unattractive man by any means and suffers from a foreshortened leg and soul, which is why you would associate him with someone as nefarious as the ectomorphic Rev. James Dobson and the lamentable Bush-Cheney campaign of unfortunate years past. The list of his righist hack credentials is substantial as even a brief visit to his website will illustrate, and he was even intimately involved in the attempt to impeach former President Bill Clinton for the very behavior he and his peers on the right engage in regularly.

In 2000:

I first met Jack in the bar at the Capital Grille (a popular lobbying/political hang out). I didn't notice the limp then, but when I picked him up for our dinner date I saw that it appeared like he was dragging one foot behind. I asked if he had recently hurt himself and he said he was born with one foot shorter than the other (why he doesn't wear a corrective shoe is beyond me). So he has a very distinct gait.

This is just my amateur armchair analysis, but I'm guessing he has a lot of anger and desire to prove himself (last kid picked for sports, teased about it, etc.). I can't prove any of that but he has this angry drive about him flavored with a lot of sarcasm & cynicism. [this indicates unhappiness with the state of things] I also made a comment about how women look to see how their boyfriends treat their mother as an indication of how they'll be treated and he absolutely howled at that, telling me "[H]oney, you're barking up the wrong tree then."Not a fan of Mom.

But his father must have called him 25 times one night when I was over. He let it go to the answering machine every time. His father was watching political talk shows and calling Jack every few minutes with a comment or opinion.Very close to his father.

I'm not a member of the psychiatric community either, but some things are simply obvious here, and I should add that Burkman's not a very good liar when he's occasionally exposed to genuine scrutiny, spouting half-truths when he's cornered as most scoundrels tend to do. But that's how liars and criminals behave, and he's represented more-than-a-few in the last decade. I believe these women and what they have had to say. Incredible resources and effort are constantly being marshaled to protect these men from scrutiny, something one would associate with the apparatchiki of the Soviet system.

Ineed, it's good to have friends in the corporate-owned mainstream media to cover for you and your misbehavior, and political appointees in the federal bureacracy to pressure law enforcement to stand down. By admitting in his public denials of being in the DC Madam's phone records and admitting that he spoke to mainstream media-outlets who then took him at his word, he has basically lied on multiple occasions. The first lie is certain: He was in the DC Madam's phone records, and it's even money that mainstream journalists really did talk to him and were told to stand down either by their editors or the owners of those publications and/or wire services. Why? To keep the game going, to keep money coming from the public trough to dirty corporations and government contractors, and even towards rightist religious insitutions. To preserve the unaccountable power of criminals.

What a waste of a man. What a waste of an education. What a waste of this, the final democratic experiment in the history of the human race, a species assuredly headed for oblivion thanks to people like Jack Burkman, Jr. and the people pulling his strings. How can someone like this live with themselves? Therein is part of the reason behind the sexual-addiction. Sad. Pathetic. True.

The End?

New Smolensk tracks up on myspace

WWW--There are two new instrumental tracks of my musical project, Smolensk, up on Myspace as of today: "Endgame" is a kind of a "fourth world" instrumental with sitars-and-the-like, and "TransAtlantic" is a fragmented Apocalyptic hip-hop instrumental. Enjoy (or not)!

http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music.singleplaylist&friendid=164391063

An open letter to the remaining cuckholded GOP wives...

Ladies,

This is addressed most specifically to Wendy Vitter, the unfortunate "wife" of GOP Sen. David Vitter from Louisiana: what the hell is wrong with you all? Do you realize how stupid and pathetic you look by not divorcing these moronic clowns? At least the soon-to-be former wife of soon-to-be ex-Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has some self-respect. Clearly, you have none. You're broken women who would fit-in very well in nations like Saudi Arabia...and Afghanistan.

Even Iranian women tend to be more progressive and modern than you these days, so you really come off like anachronistic freaks who would have seemed normal during the Middle Ages in Europe, but today, you just seem pathological, insane. You have truly lost your minds if you think that what you're getting in materialism and all the other "creature comforts" is worth the scorn and ridicule. You have gotten yourselves into a Faustian bargain that's got you kissing the Devil's ass. A kingdom in hell is your home. And what of your children? Do they have reasonable role models? Most of your degenerate husbands, many of whom adhere to a form of despicable theistic patriarchy, are criminals and have made America the laughingstock of the developed world. You're pathetic.

Seriously: leave your husbands, divorce them immediately. You're going to get 50% of their assets--and that's just-for-starters--so give them that "what for" that they've had coming since shortly after the honeymoon and retake your dignity and humanity. Take them down. Tell everything, tell us where the bodies are buried. Once the floodgates are open, there's no fix that's going to put the lid back on. Tell us the worst things about your would be patriarchs, your oppressors. The courts favor you now more than ever.

To continue to be chained to these little men makes you less than them because you keep tolerating their whoring with other women. Staying with them doesn't change a thing, and taking them to task is hardly enough. In the end, this makes you all whores, and having communicated with the real deal, I can tell you that so long as you remain married to these criminals, these psychopaths, you are lower than the lowest crack-addicted streetwalker.

yours in Christ, Matt Janovic

Next week: A brief psychological profile of GOP pundit/lobbyist Jack Burkman, Jr. and his gimp-leg/soul

WWW--The site meter's going to light-up for this one! Jack has one leg shorter than the other, some weird literary analog to his damaged soul, a modern day "Tartuffe," or perhaps Tartuffe's enigmatic assistant who never talks and just acts sinister, a good fit. I can see him dragging his leg down the streets of Georgetown and Arlington, even right around Capitol Hill, as he and others work to screw the rest of us. There's an anger to this man that speaks of incredible emotional pain, and he's not alone in the political/economic/media establishment. He has polluted himself and our culture, spreading his disease like a kind of contemporary "Typhoid Mary" of the soul. But someone had to teach him this, he was created.

The problem with turds like Burkman is that some of them once had ideals and know somewhere in their poisoned hearts that they're trapped and that they're not as invincible as they'd like to think. They know someone owns their ass. Overcompensation is part of the mindset, just watch him on television sometime--if you can stand more than a few moments like me. I can say unequivocally that Burkman is lying in his denial that he was a client of the DC Madam's escort service. He called at least four times between 2003 and 2006, and that's no accident at that point, just like it wasn't with Ret. Col. Ronald Roughead, David Vitter, Dick Morris, Randall Tobias, and a yet-to-be-revealed cast of dozens of the privileged who also weren't misdialing when they called Pamela Martin & Associates.

I should also add that Jack and/or some of his associates might have sent a simulacrum ex-girlfriend around as a way of baiting me into a kind of an ambush. I could be wrong, but when someone offers to meet him again and then suggests getting him to say something "incriminating" on tape, flags go up, car alarms go off, and you know as a researcher and an investigator not to pull that particular trigger. It's entirely possible I'm wrong about this, but there have been other incidents during the entire DC Madam saga that keep begging-the-question regarding illegal surveillance and even subtle harassment, maybe even "dirty tricks."

Yes, they're out there, watching, just look at the visits I keep documenting. Of course, the skeptical can and probably will claim that these are "routine," which is half-true. Their problem is that unless they were part of the story in the same way I was, they simply don't know what they're talking about--not that that's going to stop them from having a baseless opinion. The other problem in their argument (and again, sometimes they're right) is the low-level of traffic at this site. It stops being accidental, and yes, I'm fully aware they send webots around.

Expect fireworks, and ask Wonkette sometime why they pulled literally EVERY article or post they ever did on Jack Burkman, Jr. They won't tell me. Funny considering that he's a public figure and the allegations that he walks around DC handing-out his card to women he wants to have sex with are true, including the fact that he's definitely a whore-monger like most of the scum in DC and has offered several women money for sex. What a waste of a man and his talents. What a waste of a life and an Ivy League education, better put-to-use in making the world a better place and helping one's fellow man. I'm sure he's laughing at this final paragraph, but that's the curse of the low-grade psychotic...

PS to faux-progressives: Thanks for nothing.

Songs from the Site Meter: All roads lead to San Diego II...

Site Meter--Now, why would a government defense contractor be wondering about Judge Gladys Kessler, a woman I would love to talk to one day, preferably sooner rather than later. Hit the labels for "Qualcomm" and "Jeffrey A. Taylor" for more...

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Update for December 12, 2009:

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I think if Judge Kessler truly loves her country and wants to preserve the rule of law and our democratic traditions that it would behoove her to speak with me and trustworthy elements of the journalism profession about her replacement during the Palfrey/DC Madam proceedings. I would direct her to speak with Ken Silverstein if she hasn't done so already. Your country needs you Judge Kessler.

And they saw that it was hideously flawed: The Day God Died (a very short story with dissolves and flash-forwards)

In the beginning, there were six-packs and microwaveable meals, and they were good, or at least better than nothing at all, so quit yer bitchin'. Nobody ever got hurt--muchly--and all mimsy were the Borogroves, not even a mouse. There was something I was going to write, about some "City on a Hill," but they say the place has fallen into disrepair...you really don't want to go there, trust me on this one (worse than Detroit).

And the Lord spake far too often when there were no people around to hear it, then silence for thousands of years when there were and spake again saying, "Let there be light...oh shit. Did I pay the electric bill for last month? Oh boy. There I go again!" Yet somehow, there was light, and it too was good for a time until the bill collectors came. Six thousand years passed, somehow missing the dinosaurs and several ice ages by a mile, and then it was time to go to bed again, day-in, day-out, I tell ya'...

And they found that God's all about non-sequiturs, so he must be a Libertarian: One day in the 21st century (because you can do flash-forwards and even dissolves in allegory), a corporate executive belatedly died of a heart attack in his very posh home office in upper state New York. Like most CEOs, he was a criminal asshole and nobody cared when his time came, but you have to put these people somewhere after they're six feet under, so he made his way to the afterlife. No, the streets aren't paved in gold there either, so quit asking! "What idiot would believe such bullshit?" shrugged St. Peter. No one knew.

"I'm here to win!" said the CEO to the beleaguered bureaucrat manning the Gates of Heaven. Peter grinned.

"It appears that you have lost, schlub, but I got an idea a week ago I want to try out, so come with me." He took the CEO by the hand like fathers do with their drooling children at Wal-Mart and they ambled down the crumbling halls of a crappy Ministry in a dank, smelly corner of the afterlife. The stink of piss was everywhere, and the walls of Heaven were covered with obscene graffiti. Worst-of-all, someone had written "J.D. Salinger," which confused the executive since he'd never read a book after high school, or even that much during it.

"What's that?" said the CEO as they were looking at a hole in reality into a flat plane below. Tiny dots appeared to be moving on the surface, and it reminded the executive of his many flights over Ohio--the sprawl, with capillaries and arteries of commerce spreading out like a bubbling cancer, eating-away at the surface of the plan.

"That's limbo, also known as suburbs. No actual life takes place there."St. Peter retched while the suited Golem looked down at the scene below wishing he had a piece of the action.

"Right," said the CEO with that absolute certainty all the ladies love. They kept on further down the labyrinth of halls, endless halls, all growing darker and more disintegrated as they went. At times the walls seemed to exist merely as rapidly vibrating vapor and the CEO was able to stick his arm through them. "Nifty," he said, and shrugged.

"Keep talking kid, keep talking," said his divine escort laughing softly as old men often do.

Finally, they reached an enormous set of double-doors, bronzed and festoomed with lavishes of spirals, eyes, and flora. At the heart of the door was the design of a man who was in the center of a circle, his arms and legs endtended-out in the shape of a rightside-up Pentagram. All was silent and even the pair themselves were completely immobile. There is no movement in the presence of the divine, no action...but suddenly, there was. A deep moan pervaded the hallway and seemed to emanate from everywhere, then abruptly faded away as a sickly gurgle.

"What's that? the executive asked nervously.

"That was the death of God," St. Peter said, laughing and nodding wisely.

"What killed God?" he asked. St. Peter looked at the executive sadly.

" 'What'? You mean 'who.' Why, you did. Your very existence accomplished it."

"That doesn't make any sense to me. What do you mean? I've done everything right in life, been successful, did what I had to do to get ahead, and..."

"All fine and well, but did you ever consider the beauty of a Beethoven symphony, or the divinity in children laughing and playing in peace? Did you ever see the worth in all human beings, that every life is sacred in the end? Have you ever pondered in your life why mankind yearns for more, the loneliness, the angst that created the great works of art? Did you ever try to control your animal-impulses and be the better man? Did you ever try to improve yourself? Have you ever taken a stand in your life for what was the right thing to do for others?"

"Nope, none of those--hey, are you communist or something.?"

"Yes, I thought not, and that's why you were brought here. You see, you're lack, the temporal evidence that God created something imperfect, and therefore, was imperfect himself. Your mere proximity was enough to finish the job of an already dying deity that was in the denial stage of the grieving process. I can sleep the sleep of ages now, but first..."

Someone started hacking their way through the double-doors. With an abrupt kick, a man with wild, greasy hair and a thick-mustache crashed through. He was wearing a beautiful red robe studded with Hermetic symbols on a gold-red lame background, clutching a staff, wearing jack-boots. His eyes were both of the darkest night and the brightest day.

"Who's that? said the executive.

"That's Nietzsche, here to fix some shoddy craftsmanship."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Nothing, you are lack, you never existed."

Nietzsche spake, "The last man has come...and where's the nearest bar anyway?"

"Can I finally sleep?" said St. Peter.

"Soon, but there's a universe to fix! We're off!"

As well all know, such an allegory is preposterous, impossible. Nothing so absurd has ever been contended by any religion at any time in human history, except at lunchtime and before bed.