CNN reports dumb-assed Al Qaeda salad bar/buffet plot after GOP stalls Food Safety Act for months

Is there not a better sign of the end of an Empire and a nation in serious trouble? Just don't tell the Obama-holdouts, they might get upset. Who on God's gray earth would believe this horseshit but a Republican or a Libertarian, all of them with serious emotional and intellectual issues regarding reality? "Al-Qaeda plot threatens America's salad bars and buffets." You gotta be kidding, right?

It beggars the imagination that someone without the ability to imagine would believe something a ten year old could see through or do a better job of concocting.

Just as they did under Bush II, being a venerable asset of Empire and the GOP, CNN is selling a very lame-assed scare story to boost another war criminal's sagging popularity ratings as well as providing some cover for corrupt food growers and processors who wanted the Food Modernization Act. Apparently, high school never ended and life has now become Facebook. How is this different from all the times that George W. Bush cried "WOLF!" (not CNN's Blitzer, or even Donner) with the terror alert warnings to save his own ass, for political ends? It's not at all and it's not the only example, Obama's just less obvious about it than the last clown.

Seriously: President Barack Obama is the same as George W. Bush, wake up assholes, pull your heads out of your collective-ass and stop having this.

CNN's talking-neck was barely able to read the salad bar/buffet headline it was so stupid, so nebbish, so moronic and transparently unimportant pap that was probably lifted from a surveillance log of someone simply toying with the idea of joining a terror cell...after a few bong-hits or a lift from some meth. Get real, quit insulting our intelligence with your counterintelligence, your disinformation predicated on scaring the dummies that over-populate every nation so that we hand over even more of our rights to a predatorial establishment.

Great, someone was going to "poison" salad bars and buffets across America...and somehow they weren't American food growers and producers who routinely employ illegal immigrants, who then lobby the GOP all of the time for fewer regulations on food safety. Yes, it was a smart timing to run the bogus Al-Qaeda story just hours after the GOP had stalled the Food Safety Act for months, very wise, well-timed. How long did they stall its passage? Since March of this year, nine whole months, which is roundly un-American.

Besides the GOP's tail-dragging on to poison the public, or not to poison it, these were some of the major opponents of the very reasonable bill--unless some of us prefer a little e-coli with our spinach, watermelons and potatoes (take that Dan Quayle!), and TEA:

Freedomworks

Competitive Enterprise Institute

American Mushroom Institute

National Potato Council

National Watermelon Association

Produce Marketing Association

United Fresh Produce Association

The John Birch Society

National Cattleman's Beef Association

Western Growers

American Academy of Microbiology

Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund
(http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-510)

Any familiar names here? It passed the Senate on November 30th of this year anyway, but there was more stalling from the GOP.

And you Democratic incumbents: You can stop with the good cop, bad cop act. We're on to you. We know this is all just political theater and we're about to call bullshit on this whole clown show. We're not having it anymore, you're done. For a moment, I thought they were saying that Jimmy Buffett was being targeted by terrorists, which makes just as much sense and is just as credible...

Wikileaks mirror: http://213.251.145.96/

WWW--Hit it, I am.

There are daily updates on the State Dept. cables at this point. This is much bigger than the Pentagon Papers. Regardless of what happens, no matter what foolhardy legislation gets passed to ban this whistle-blowing, Pandora's box has been opened and the lid cannot be closed, ever again.

For those of you out there who don't get how the dissemination of technology works--too bad--you cannot stop this, it's a done deal. The negative response from the mainstream media was to be expected. A healthy democracy requires that the public not be deceived. We have to know the machinations of power to remain free. Sad and pathetic then that so many Americans are knee-jerking right now on this and insisting as is their wont to remain ignorant, to remain in the dark about what their government is doing in the name of corporations.

That's how a slave that's been beaten into submission thinks...if you want to call it thinking. Seeing yet another Populist-opening, Ron Paul (in his role of "good cop" to his son Rand's dueling banjo "bad cop") has been advocating for such leaks and saying there need to be more groups like them. This is interesting since he must be anticipating the next round of leaks--if they actually make it out the gate--coming from Bank of America, and possibly even Goldman Sachs and other major corrupt financial players on Wall Street. I'm skeptical of his sincerity and view most of what he says and does publicly as political theater. Let's not make it a tragedy, shall we? In Paul's hands, it's likely to be tragicomic.

Paul can say such things because he knows he'll never have to follow through on them. Like Democratic representatives who constantly crow over sundry social-ills--knowing full well thhat the political context is wrong to expedite it and that they're not going to do anything about them of any substance--he's just sounding off as he usually does. Great, have fun with that one, but what about fixing our nation? That's called rhetoric, folks, demagoguery, and it makes one wonder where all the adults went.

Recall that Paul's not so far removed from Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman in his wackiness. Today he's talking about taking down the Federal Reserve with a parallel system of backing currency with gold when everyone should know there's not enough in the entire world to do it. As usual, he's trying to create a false impression. The reality is, he's no Robert M. Lafollette, one of the very few genuine progressive Republicans that ever was, the legendary Senator from Wisconsin.

If the GOP ever had a soul, it lost it when Lafollette died in 1925, giving into corporate interests over the role of government in American life, the very forces the senator at that time railed strenuously against. In case you didn't notice, he lost to people like Paul and the rest of them now occupying our government via the GOP's corporate-political nexus. Does that sound like a friendly crowd to you? Paul isn't exactly a friend of the working man and woman at all and doesn't believe in a social safety net, but neither do most Democrats these days since they report to the same bosses.

Where does the Wikileaks release of State Department cables covering 1966-2010 fit into to all of this? The warnings of Mark Twain, of Marine Corps General Smedley Butler that imperialism will be the ruination of the United States.

The State Department figures highly in all of this since they lobby relentlessly for American corporate interests overseas all of the time. It's their primary job besides formulating the policies to expedite this overall agenda and--this is key here--selling it to an American public that they do their best to keep in the dark. They have every reason to since most of us would reject that agenda outright if we were to know of it in real time. Yelling "national security" gets results and keeps the locals at bay. This abuse of secrecy is what makes the "sell" easier and why at least half of the public goes along with the dumbshow that's going to take the rest of us over the cliff.

Wikileaks is doing the work of an impaired corporate-owned press, and now the real scrambling begins. The battle for your mind has truly begun, to keep it ignorant so that their agenda can continue, one that's a direct threat to you and everyone you know. It began this summer when the State Department realized their post-9/11 sharing of information with military analysts had backfired, coming in the form of the whistle-blower PFC. Bradley Manning.

Make no mistake: Manning is a hero, this is a turning-point, an opening, and we had better start taking it. Read the cables and decide for yourself whether the State Department is acting in your best interests and why you don't want to know the facts contained within them.

Give them hell.

The deafening silence of the Tea Party demographic over yet another unfunded mandate

Where's all the outrage over the extension of Bush II tax-cuts for the rich? OK, we all saw this coming since Libertarians and the other red-headed stepchildren on the right ditched rational thought and a sense of social responsibility ages ago, but where is it? Where's that traditional conservative force and principle?

The fact is, the tax-cuts are one of the most massive unfunded mandates in our history. Cue the sound of crickets until another African-American makes it to the White House...

They shouldn't worry so much about this president, but being what they are, they're going to keep begging the question since they cannot cope emotionally since we have a Black one, and one I don't even like, trust, or support. Let me be crystal clear: I didn't vote for this asshole. I understand that the lawn jockey was recently stolen from the Bush dynasty's compounds, but no worries--the current president should be attending their next family reunion, so it's good, it's doss.

Meanwhile--back at the ranch--white closet racists will have to cling to what's left of their puerile fantasy while little has changed for the good in America, and that their irrational support for an empty-suit was just one more case of the mirror being held-up to them.

Once again, they failed the test. How are they so different from the Tea Baggers?

Happy holidays Bill Ayers!

On the Wikileaks State Dept. cable controversy

WWW--Make no mistake: The leaking of the State Department cables is--far-and-away--bigger than the release of the Pentagon Papers. Even that scandal's whistle-blower, Daniel Ellsberg, is giving this one a thumb's-up, and so am I and millions. Could we be wrong? I don't think so at all.

I wholeheartedly support their release because crimes are routinely committed in the name of the American public. This is about institutionalized corruption being hidden from the public and the world; the victims of American foreign policy are the first to know, the American public, the last, and for good reason. That's a systematic abuse of power and calls for things like this release to happen just as systematically if we wish to live in a free and open society. Such releases are the best defense we can possibly have since these clowns are risking our lives every single day in the service of anarchic and unregulated power.

These people in the State Department and the national security state are going to get us all killed if we're not careful; they're the great terrorists of our common era.

This last week has brought numerous attacks on Wikileaks, and coming from all kinds of nefarious corners, across the globe. It's coming from an international, criminal power structure that's bent on total domination of the rest of us, the salt of the earth, the average man and woman, everyone outside of the corridors of power. This is, in the words and observations of many of us on the true left in America, the first major information war, a war with incredible stakes: The survival of human civilization and possibly the species itself, not merely the freedom of the average man and woman.

Make no mistake that the mask is off and that this is a global phenomena. It's not just America's mask being ripped-off. Predictably, the shills and lackeys are coming out of the woodwork and exposing themselves to patch things and instate damage control. Amazon.com, Ebay/Paypal, Time Magazine, CBS, CNN, and much of the rest of the American mainstream media as well as corporations are running into the fray. The walls of their Castle system are quaking right now and it's time to take notes on who's part of the problem. It's now obvious who they are.

A national security issue? It is, just not the way it's being presented. We, the people of the world, have a right to know these things--we must know them for our own safety and the preservation of human rights and democracy itself, now under incredible and sustained attack. The stakes couldn't be any higher. Many Internet providers like Amazon are cutting the lines that feed Wikileaks into the United States.

This is mainly to keep the American public where it's usually at: In the dark, the last to know what is being done in their name, and what is being done is systematic crime, make no mistake about it. This is crucial for unaccountable power to succeed, which could mean the end of us all.

Links to Wikileaks mirrors and foreign-subsidiaries: http://czardonic.wordpress.com/

Movie star Mark Ruffalo is being harassed for his antiwar and progressive acts

Where's that change? I'm not seeing any with President Obama, just a continuation of the Bush II agenda, which means that of the super-rich. In May of this year, Mark Ruffalo (Zodiac, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Last Big Thing, Shutter Island, etc.) and about 1,800 other prominent American liberals (including linguist and intellectual Noam Chomsky) singed a petition that was published as a full-page ad in a very visible New York magazine accusing the new president of war crimes.

In some respects this is worse than Bush. First, because Obama has claimed the right to assassinate American citizens whom he suspects of ‘terrorism,’ merely on the grounds of his own suspicion or that of the CIA, something Bush never claimed publicly.

They're not only factually correct in their assertion, they have a constitutionally protected right to express it without recourse. The new president--like his predecessor--doesn't appear to believe this. Odd for a constitutional scholar.

Ruffalo is generally known as an "indie" actor, but his star has been in ascendancy over the last decade, and along with that, he's been vocal in recent years about his concerns that America is rapidly moving away from its most cherished ideals, away from democracy. With endless capitulations to the corporate sector by both major political parties, endless and pointless wars, very open political corruption, and a host of misdeeds that don't need to be recalled here since we don't have all day to recount simply the ones committed under the Bush II administration, (the one that the new president's resembles more all of the time), it's definitely time to speak your peace.

Indeed, Ruffalo has been doing just that: There was the aforementioned petition, but he's been on the path of several causes, and they're valid ones. His most recent has gotten him on a terror watch list via the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security, part of the DHS, a decidedly corrupt institution for a war on a pronoun, so you know it's a joke on the public, and one they approved of initially.

With the ending of the "terror alert" color-coded system that everyone began ignoring after it was abused for openly political reasons, they have good reason to be concerned when a likable guy like Ruffalo starts going around accusing the president and corporations of corruption, of criminal behavior. People are already all ears, and after the BP catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, it's even money that they're pissed-off. Into this latter fray enters Mr. Ruffalo who has been inviting members of the public to screenings of GasLand, a documentary that covers incredibly dangerous oil-drilling practices such as "fracking" that contaminate drinking water in the areas it's done in, one of them being Pennsylvania.

This was enough for the PDHS to place Ruffalo--a movie star actor--on a terror watch list. Ruffalo thinks "[it's] pretty fuckin' funny," and to some extent it is, but it also isn't. He was brushing-up against Big Oil, maybe even firms like Halliburton. What I want to know is who made the decision here. Were his other progressive activities taken into account? Was the White House a part of any of these decisions? What recourse would an average citizen have had in this case?

Hold-outs: He's not what you think he is. Actions speak louder than words.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/dailydish/detail?entry_id=77671

Information on the May 2010 petition accusing President Obama of war crimes: http://weaselzippers.us/2010/05/15/2000-us-actors-prominent-liberals-accuse-obama-of-war-crimes-says-hes-worse-than-bush-for-authorizing-assassination-of-anwar-al-awlaki/

14 down, 36 to go in the push towards legalization of marijuana

But what does this all mean? What does it mean when we're rapidly heading towards a surveillance state, let alone a police state? Will we be able to smoke pot in a police state? Consider that. What does this mean? I have no idea, it just boggles the mind, but you have to realize that many states of existence and social trends can live alongside one another simultaneously. Some things can be true and false all at once.

Is this all Huxley' warning, the phantom of "soma," and a populace that could find itself under some serious illusions of personal freedom while simultaneously narcotizing themselves, and not merely by television and the Internet (the unimaginative misuse of the latter)? I don't know, but it sure looks like it. There are many illusions and conceits in the counterculture and the outlying one these days, too many myths, too little reality.

California nearly passed Proposition 19 this election cycle, which would have all but decriminalized marijuana with a mere fine for up to the personal possession of one ounce of marijuana, similar to Ontario's experiment with decriminalization beginning about (or "aboot") a decade ago thanks to the ruling of an Ontario Superior Court of Justice (like our own higher Federal District circuits). But the fun didn't last long in Ontario and later rulings have pushed back the right to personal possession of marijuana. Tell 'em that in Toronto's Kensington Market, or even parts of Los Angeles and Oakland and the neighborhoods around the University of Toronto.

Local custom often trumps the law, which in the case of marijuana, is fine since it's not someone being lynched. That's what the drug laws are for.

As a criminology professor in college told me, "We never learn in America, because we don't want to." The truth has been plain for ages: Prohibition just empowers cartels and gangs, it doesn't make society a better place to live, and in fact is one of the sources of social disintegration. But it serves narrow interests, some who are in-collusion with drug lords. Without prohibition, there would be almost no potential for bribery and similar forms of corruption, especially with a decentralized model granting private citizens the right to grow set amounts for personal use, never mind medical marijuana dispensaries.

Meanwhile, the executive branch is enjoying the ability to conduct unrestrained surveillance of everyone under the rubic of the war on terror and the war on drugs. The states are moving one way, while the federal government is moving another. There could be no greater example of counter-trends of the democratic versus anti-democratic other than the newfound freedom and ease of communication created by the Internet, but the legalization movement is surely another one when juxtaposed with the ever-widening surveillance state. This isn't simply a states' rights battle, though there is certainly a fear of opening that door. It underscores that there are natural tendencies towards the democratic and anti-democratic in all nation states.

What if we do witness the virtual legalization of marijuana for personal use in the United States? Will it be a blow against anti-democratic trends? That would be a major affirmative. American drug laws were first formulated as race laws and the statistics of who gets sentenced to the most time are implicitly clear: Minorities suffer the most for the same amounts as their Caucasian counterparts, and class is also an issue, the ability to pay adequately for one's own defense at trial. So, yes indeed, this will be a step forward for civil rights across the board for Americans if we can end prohibition of marijuana since it will lead to and end in the case of the other substances to interdiction and the punishment model.

"But who's going to sell it?" is the usual question. In the case of marijuana, it should be nobody. Again, it's a hardy and easily grown plant. Yes, there will still be a market for the "best," there always will be, but any good law decriminalizing the plant will have to include the right of private citizens to grow their own. The other substances? The government should be dispensing them for tracking and statistical purposes, just like Canada does with "The Beer Store," albeit I have no answers as to manufacture, though my preference would be by the government. The money made from these sales could just as easily go to addiction treatment programs.

Would we want corporations to manufacture heroin as a commodity? I don't think so, and believe that that would be the true road to Huxley's Brave New World. Corporations are only capable of being held-accountable through the power of government because nothing else is powerful enough to. Before we knew it, we could all truly be addicts were they to have complete control over the process. But a part of me wonders: Where is this all headed? Will legalizing marijuana make a big difference? I believe that it can, and likely will, offer a "third-path" model, but Americans are going to have a big fight on their hands with--no surprise here--corporations, and the people who service, defend, and have an abiding interest in them.

Will we be smoking pot in a police state? Stay tuned...

An important update on the upcoming DC Madam account...

Late last week, just a few days ago in fact, I had a major breakthrough in my research and analysis in this case, and one that could change everything. I'm not going to spill the beans--you're going to have to be patient on this one--but it has to do with the context of Jeane's suicide. No, there has been no concrete information forthcoming that the DC Madam was murdered, and your weird desire that it was so says more about you than it does about this case or this historical moment we're inhabiting together.

One giveaway, the only one anyone's getting before the publication of the account: I've written about it before, and it has to do with her being suicidal. There is actually someone specific who may be to blame for Palfrey's untimely death, and it has to do with official negligence.

My hope? That I'm right about this recent observation of the primary material, that others look into it further, and that, ultimately, it reopens the case in the form of a congressional investigation, an internal one. That's it. That's all you're getting.

Why Alex Jones will live forever

Why do you think? Nobody's ever going to assassinate this worthless piece-of-shit except maybe one of his followers, one of his audience, like George Lincoln Rockwell. Yes, there are people stupider than him: the morons that listen to his radio show and watch his clips, buy the merchandise, and frequent his opportunist advertisers.

Let's be crystal clear about this: these people are sick as well as semi-literate.

Malcolm X was real. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was real. Patrick Henry was real. All the Civil Rights workers and union organizers who were murdered by goons and corrupt cops were real. As nuts as he was, the radical Abolitionist John Brown was real. The murdered Illinois Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton was real. Even Bobby Kennedy was more real that this clown and his pack of retards, and he shares the same honor as the rest: he died for what was right. In fact, it's pretty obvious that they were so real that it was almost inevitable that they were going to die.

Alex Jones, Jeff Rense, Kurt Nimmo, Alex Constantine, and the rest of the conspiracy-mongers are not real, they're frauds, and they're selling an anti-government agenda, literally, to paranoid idiots. When people like this won't listen to you and go running to the irrational like some screaming Mullah, you know you're seeing a religion, a cult, and that makes them vaguely dangerous to the general public, but not the citadels of power. Were they a genuine threat, they would would at least be seeing some of the harassment we saw during the 1960s-70s that was unleashed on the antiwar movement generally, as well as all the other social justice groups and movements of that time. None of that is happening to Jones and company, contrary to their claims.

The whack-jobs will point to someone like Hal Turner, stupidly, being their lot in life, yet Turner unmasked himself as an FBI informant who was likely goading the same kinds of idiots into lawless action, a provocateur.

Who is Alex Jones? Really. At best, he's a craven liar and a demagogue, making money off of the whipping-up of fear and paranoia in a historical moment where it's literally yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. I will go as far as to say that much of what he says and writes is not protected speech and that his time is coming before long. It will be belated, but he's got to be taken down, and very, very hard. Quit going to his site. Quit allowing people to post links to those sites. Ignore him. Let him dry-up and blow away like he should have over a decade ago.

It's working with a certain GOP pundit with an enlarged Adam's apple...

By the way. Fucking grow-up.

BREAKING NEWS ON THE UPCOMING BLAGOJEVICH RETRIAL

DATELINE CHICAGO: Sources have it that former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's spiffy pate has secured legal representation. The former governor's pate wasn't available for comment, but his attorneys (hey, it's a man's hair, pffft!) have stated unequivicolly that the hair isn't sentient, and therefore, not responsible for the governor's untoward actions in office, if there even were any.

On the approaching tenth anniversary of 9/11: Time for a commemorative orgy

What should we all be doing on that day? What should we be thinking? Many will continue to be afraid, very afraid, of their own shadows and shadow-sides that are the terrorists, really an archetype of our own collective crimes. Let me be clear on this: Nobody who died in the attacks on September 11th, 2001 deserved to die.

It was a heinous crime against humanity since there were people from all over the world who were killed by a coterie of madmen who were being bankrolled by wealthy sources in Gulf State nations, nations such as Saudi Arbia, Kuwait, Pakistan-and-Ollie (yes, not a "Gulf State, thank you. I hope your ego's been mollified...look up "mollified."), and the rest of the Middle Eastern Lollipop Guild, the usual suspects who are supposed to be our "friends," "friends" of America.

Of course, those regimes aren't ours or anyone's friends, they're theocratic criminals.

Here's the real problem: Being our own worst enemy, we're our own worst enema. We've sold many of our basic rights for...for...for...no idea whatsoever, some weird-assed contention that 9/11 was more catastrophic than it really was. It was not. It was horrible, an underhanded crime committed by Gulf State nations, using proxies, and then we started blowing our own balls off, even before the Nigerian bourgie who unsuccessfully attempted the same on a flight to Detroit not so long ago. This is the threat? Gimme a fuckin' break...

Nonetheless, the Children of Fear are running around, jerking themselves off every year September 11th rolls around. Do they really care about the victims? Nah. People even have commemorative picnics, which has to be the most retarded bullshit I've ever heard of in my natural life. Next year, I'm having one for the sinking of the Lusitania (look it up, Class of 2014, ya' fuckin' morons...) and the Civil War ironclad, the Monitor. I gotta say--and I had a classmate who died in the WTC and know people who witnessed the event firsthand--that with all the co-opting and misuse of the memories of the dead, I'm beginning not to care anymore, and that's not my fault, but the fault of the scumbags who have tried to "own" 9/11 to use for political gain. The worst offenders are the former Bush II administration and the GOP, but once again, the Democrats are doing likewise, only with more cunning and guile. We would have no war on terror otherwise.

So, no, I'm not having a picnic on these days. Instead, I'm not going to "observe" it at all. We need to move on emotionally from this event and bury the dead. We need to stop blowing our own toes off in the name of concentrated wealth, because they've used 9/11 to protect the core of the most evil form of economy on earth, namely American-style capitalism. It can end in peace, or it can end in slaughter, and likely, the collapse of human civilization, but the world cannot take the war on terror in its current form for much longer. Let's quit pretending that 9/11 was the most important event in our history, we've blown its significance entirely out of proportion and handed over too many of our rights.

An unwanted Facebook solicitation...from Art Brown

Who's Art Brown? Don't ask the Class of 2014, they don't know shit from shine-ola. This guy is an idiot, he's an anarchronism, and he was being dishonest in the missive I got below from him in my Facebook private mail (meaning that I didn't ask for it, but accepting a friend request on there is often like playing Russian roulette...). Apparently, he wrote a book I heard about--Everything I Know, I Learned From Comic Books, or some such ephemeral shit.

He's also a businessman, so he's worn the alligator on his tit and the faux-cock around his neck, choking the oxygen-supply to his already addled-brain. I can't withhold this from you any longer, but here goes, what he wrote (minus the dumb Youtube clip whose link I'm not disseminating).

[F]Art wrote:

"Friends - it's time I "came out." My whole liberal viewpoint has been wrong. I see the light. Won't you kindly share this thoughtful and enlightening video with your friends as well? Thank you. You're welcome."

I didn't ask, and you're not welcome, Art. In an historic moment when--were we paying attention at all--it was obvious that the GOP and Reaganism put us where we are today, this oaf thinks he's got some magical conclusion: Liberalism was to blame. Wow, what a stretch that must have been, caving-into decades of pressure, then finally, finally letting that distended gut hang all the way out. That's great, you have fun with that, Art. At least you won't live forever.

I responded to the mass-mail I never asked for with:

Me too Art.

For years I thought, "They want to drive the nation to revolution, they're insane!" In fact, I was both right and wrong, and left, and in-the-middle: We in fact need a revolution, and by gum, the GOP is poised to take us over the cliff, once again, as they did during the 1920s and 1930s! History? Who needs that stuff! Inconvenient facts, coming from no less than Nobel Prize winning economists that the same road will mean collapse--communist lies!

And--you know--you'll get a free Bissel brush if you vote for them. And hey, how about those stolen elections and the crushing of dissent, disenfranchisement of minorities...

hugs, Matt Janovic
PS: I know, I hallucinated all those open crimes committed by Republicans over the last eight years, I was wrong!!

Will I read his response? Sadly, yes, I get amusement out of the flailings of the ignorant. However, he votes, and I'd dissuade him and anyone who ever has the urge to vote Republican to never vote again, for the rest of their natural lives. Yes, this isn't exactly "Liberal," but I'm more practical than Art or the rest of the Lollipop Guild, along with the More-Liberal-Than-Thou Crew (not to be confused with CREW, and not really Liberals at all).

What would I have done without Art? I wouldn't have been able to write this piece about a very, very misguided little man, a great example of why we're probably doomed.

"I am not a witch" is added to the political lexicon

Did people react like this during the Great Depression? Did they vote for dimwits like Christine O'Donnell? Sadly, they nearly did, there being no real "good old days" in the real world. As a matter of fact, people acted about as crazy as they are now, albeit with better results. True, the New Deal didn't go far enough--thanks to the business sector--but at least they voted for FDR.

Americans are a pretty nutty bunch, and O'Donnell just reminds us of this fact. Being "nutty" is alright at parties, but not likely to get good results as a congressional representative, especially a Senator. Yet, nutty is what we tend to elect. O'Donnell is another kind of nutty altogether, however, not that she's hateful.

Fine, lots of young women screw around with the Occult during their teen years, sit on a Satanic altar on their first date...they don't? Really? Whoopsie! Hey, when I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Remember 1999? Me either! What were you having for lunch on June 21st of that year? Me either! Remember the impeachment hearings of Bill Clinton? Remember unlimited credit disguising the fact that Americans were making shit wages, even then? What a time! But it had to end, like all false Edens.

O'Donnell said this on her 1999 Bill Maher appearance (apparently, she blew the entire production staff, starting with Maher): "One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's little blood there and stuff like that," she says. "We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar." As nutty as it sounds, I know of a woman from college who did this! "A little blood"?! OK, we don't want to start throwing the blood libel around here. Would this be tolerated from a Democratic candidate or anyone on the Left? Of course not.

Let's be clear: this isn't "normal" behavior, even to someone like myself who doesn't even believe in the Christian cosmology and certainly doesn't believe in the Devil, Belial, Cheeseburglar, and all shim's other supposed guises. Interestingly, we've gone from denying that we're actually the Devil (Nixon, during the Watergate hearings in 1973) in our politics to denying that we're a holder (witch) of the franchise license (O'Donnell), like a local businessperson who owns a Howard Johnson's (who?). OK, fine, you're not a Republican, just nuts...

So, here were are, 37 years later from the Watergate hearings, and somehow, some way, the GOP is still around. We've gone from "I am not a crook," to the obvious detached insanity of "I am not a witch." If that's not a warning sign with the bodies of dead canaries littered all around it, I don't know what is. What a fuckin' bimbo in our political stasis and limbo. We probably deserve her winning the election. Now dance, bitch...er, witch.

"Where's Waldo?" and an important announcement

I've been busy, very busy revising and editing my DC Madam account and caring for a family member after a surgery. Life gets in the way: The book on my experiences with the Palfrey scandal--as I call it--should be finished and available in 2011 and should clock in at around 400 pages, including an index.

Why so little writing on the blog? Why do so few people blog these days? Because it's not sustainable, like everything else these days. Additionally, I'm finding less and less reason to write and post at this site just one philosophical and dialectical grounds. I've come to the conclusion that less-is-more with the Internet, a word to the wise. There's also a point where all you're doing is reacting. That in itself isn't a problem, but too often we all fall into this rut. But, before long, unless there's some burning reason someone can come up with, I'll be moving on to other mediums. I won't be gone 100%, but don't expect more than a handful of posts each month. This takes us to a related subject...

I'm going to do working on a book with "Party Monster" Michael Alig's mother, primarily about his period of addiction leading to his downfall and the killing of Angel Melendez. We're going to have a simple Youtube clip soon with what should be an brief description of the project, possibly some contact information, and probably lots of spastic jerks and thwaggling around since that gets the most hits (we're all doomed, I know...).

Expect something good with the clip. Needless to say, a link will be posted here too.

The Tower of Babel: An exegesis in less than 1,000 words

Almost everyone living within the suffocating confines of Western civilization (and beyond, except the American Class of 2014) knows this tale, coming from a blurb in the Book of Genesis and other books: after the Flood, the survivors, sharing one language, decided to build a great tower to impress God. There was a unity of the people, really called "Shinar" in the Old Testament version. But God wasn't pleased with their work, and "Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." (King James Version)

Once the tower ended, so too did the city of Shinar, it was over, and the people dispersed. There was no more society, just brigands, raiders, chaos. This is about the fall of a civilization. But why would "God" do this? There doesn't seem to be any logical reason. "God" just wanted to show who was boss. What this is, is allegory, once again.

The Priests and Sovereign of Babylon would do these things, more specifically to the captive tribal Jews, but could also be expected to have done the same to anyone under their sway. The Tower of Babel is about human hierarchy and how people tend more towards unity naturally, but that hierarchy is also natural and that it has a tendency to divide. The Priests were usually the only ones who could read and write, therefore, they controlled language, and they knew how to corrupt its use through religion to render communication between ordinary people almost useless.

That's where we're at right now as a society, a civilization. The Priests--the economists, the rich, the managerial class, the media, rotten lawyers, the military officers, the pundits, and so on--have corrupted language to the point that things are unraveling, society itself is coming-apart. A great deal of it is owed to this manipulation of language. Hierarchy might be inevitable, but its dysfunction can be controlled, my take. I'm sure this isn't the first time someone has "found" this interpretation, I make no high claims.

Once again: on the non-existent "Tea Party"

I'm not understanding what so-called liberals, Democrats, and the rest of us on the left and throughout the public aren't getting about these people: they're not a real political party or a movement, they're really just Republicans with no sense of irony or satire.

What don't you people get? They're still Republicans, they haven't changed at all, and no, it's not all about the fact that they cannot emotionally cope with a Black American president. It's not the entire picture with these clowns. Yes, I agree with the logic of the question, "Well, where were they when Bush was wrecking the country?" Where indeed?

I'll tell you where: they were yelling that they were part of his camp, crowing "WE'RE driving the bus NOW!" and making general asses of themselves as is their wont to do. They can't help it. This is why they're continuing on their Children's Crusade over a cliff, and once again, parading their insufficiency as functional, reasoning human beings. We already know that many of them are small businessmen over 40. When you look at the composition of their rallies, it's not inclusive. The majority of the faces are white, male, and middle-aged. What it comes off as is a last, dying gasp of the worst elements of the Baby Boomer generation, a generation fixated on their own entitlement, but not especially atypical in such regards.

None of this flailing, posing, and of course, yelling, is going to fix America anytime soon, but that's why billionaire far right extremists like the Koch dynasty are bankrolling many of these fake populist gatherings. They know that these are the inevitable deficits of humanity that one finds in all modern societies, the eternally lost, the naive, the stupid. None of this is truly real. Yes, some of these people began at the urging of the small-minded Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul, but this was never a spontaneous rising of the public.

An admittedly compacted and generalized schematic is in order:

1. A segment of fiscal and socially conservative Republicans feel burned by the Bush II administration at its endpoint. They got even more government under his term, and Roe v. Wade is still standing. They begin denying in public that they're Republicans, and frequently misquote the Constitution for no apparent reason.

2. Barack Obama is elected the first African-American President of the United States because he is not George W. Bush or a Republican.

3. Shit hits the proverbial fan and freaks like Ron Paul and Dick Armey begin the push to stimulate what has been mislabelled ever since (by the very people within it and backing it) as a "movement." It is not a movement, more a controlled rabble. The fragmentary "group"is really just a demographic of mostly petty bourgeois held together by one thing: they don't like that the Democrats won the election (some even hinting at insurrection, no less), but that they really don't like Barack Obama. Oh yes, and they don't like paying taxes...at all. Many of them also have a weird emotional attachment to the rich and perversely fight for that group's right not to pay any taxes.

4. No need for a replay of the health care debate.

5. Meanwhile--back at the ranch--all these "Tea Baggers" are denying that they're Republicans.

6. The 2010 midterms loom, and people denying they're Republicans vote once again for Republican candidates, most-of-whom are chosen by the RNC to run, to serve the interests of Wall Street and the rest of the Lollipop Guild.

Now, exactly why are they any different and what are they doing that's any different, ultimately? This is truly impossible to satirize. There is no Tea Party. It's not a party. It's not a real group. It's a Shibboleth, put out there as a distraction. Mission accomplished.

Irrational demands...

...must be met with irrational answers. Be reasonable, respond with the improbable.

Fox News brings America a weekend of Coolidge-o'-rama

Roger Aislesland--If you want your children to gain an accurate picture of American history from life, keep them as far away from Texas and Fox News as humanly possible. For no logical reason (which is their wont), we've got an entire weekend of little blurbs and even entire shows with gushing over one of the most useless presidents in American history besides Herbert Hoover or Warren G. Harding: Calvin Coolidge. Who? Exactly.

Like George W. Bush, the ignorant and unimpressive Coolidge prided himself on being away from his desk more than previous executives, so much so that it almost became a pastime photographing him lounging around the White House lawn and at his personal residence. Being a Republican in 1920s America, after the demise of the Progressive movement (at-the-hands of middle-class and wealthy patrons like Woodrow Wilson), and after the destruction of unions like the I.W.W. and a brief collaring of the AFL, Big Business and finance were able to pretty much do whatever they wanted to, and they did.

Banking regulations? There weren't very many in those days, and Coolidge wasn't going to push for them anymore than his predecessor and successor did. As we know, the crash of 1929 was coming, and it came thanks to a lack of regulation of the banking system. Coolidge was so ineffectual and immobile that he was referred to as "silent Cal." The notion of a hands-off government was popular with a certain crowd then too, and it's likely to get the same results, another global crash.

Needless to say, Coolidge was Ronald Reagan's "favorite" president, albeit he was once a New Deal Democrat. What he really was was a lifeguard and sportscaster who couldn't act, got in over his head in Hollywood, and ran to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the Chamber of Commerce (CoC), and corporations like General Electric, when his mistake-of-a-career began naturally going south--but that's another story for another time. However, this story really is about Reagan and his legacy as a president, the destructive legacy of his administration's ideology and policies.

Why? A couple of weeks ago, former Reagan administration adviser and Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), David Stockman, wrote an Oped column blaming Reaganomics and the GOP (and the DNC) for wrecking the economy, for killing it. Stockman was one of the primary architects and salesman of "Reaganomics," meaning massive deregulation of business and finance, returning us to those "glory days"of the 1920s when there was none...and we got the world's largest global economic depression. These crazy ideas gained real credence after Reagan and have continued into today; just watch Fox News at almost any given time of the day and you'll see it.

In fact, you'll see these once-wacky notions of economics (cut taxes for the wealthy, increase spending, especially defense and handouts to the aforementioned rich) arill being preached as gospel on CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, and much of the rest of the conglomerate owned mainstream media. Naturally, the majority of the public doesn't see it this way, and these memes are falling into very real disrepute as millions of Americans lose their livelihoods, their homes--their very way of life. If you want a great example of an ignorant, hollow-eyed nebbish contributing to the downfall of a nation while being applauded by a new generational round of middle-class fools, you need look no further than Coolidge...or Reagan. Or Clinton. Or Bush I and II. Or President Obama.

There's a good reason few remember--or even care about--Coolidge and why he was chosen for a callous and mercenary rewrite of American history: market extremists in this nation always go running to a remote and untouchable past that never was, a hallmark of nihilism and a retreat into the abyss. That's why this economic crisis is really a referendum of the last 30 years of class warfare in America, courtesy of both major political parties, but more of the responsibility rests with the Republican Party. Not only are they not the solution, they're a nexus of anti-Americanism, potentially poised to drag us kicking-and-screaming into Mother Night.

Calvin Coolidge? Who gives a shit? They just come off like the dorks that they are, with no answers since they're the problem.

On Robert Gibbs's remarks regarding the "professional left"

With all of the calls for him to resign or to even be fired (the latter coming from Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson), you have to wonder if Shakespeare ever imagined political theater so hollow, so empty that it's not even entertaining anymore, just pathetic. Why bother? Indeed. Gibbs's remarks were to the Moonie-owned The Hill, a staunchly conservative paper, meaning a cargo cult-within-a-cargo-cult, and apparently the outgoing press secretary felt quite at home in making the statements that he did. Why wouldn't he? He's the same kind of cretin. Yet, why? Why make such stupid remarks?

The answer is simple. He and the administration that he represents aren't especially different from--say--the GOP itself and hate their base at least as much. What choice are we left with here in a roundly rightist political culture that doesn't reflect or even acknowledge the views of the majority of Americans on social issues? That's what's known as a political crisis since there really is no opposition party in American politics, only two branches of one pro-business one; one that represents an oligarchy but not the public. Yes, now the president is worried that his agenda will be endangered (a good thing in the end) and is engaging in some last minute social spending such as a paltry $3 billion for those who have or will lose their homes. Then, there's the diehard municipal/teacher/police vote that was paid for with much more and will likely ensure more Democratic votes--the primary motive for doing it at all. This kind of a mess is nothing new to American history, but it is a regression, back to the bad old days of the 1880s-90s when the "robber barons" (now we simply call them the "rich," "CEOs," and "Wall Street"). Once again, thanks Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon, but you couldn't have done it without those wily Democrats.

Like an atomic clock going off exactly on time, a slack-jawed denizen on Facebook hit me with: "In the real world, what better candidate that can actually be elected would you suggest?" Besides being the usual straw man argument one gets from the unfortunate few middle-class whites who bother to vote (which is why registering poor and minorities is always a good idea), this kind of a comment ignores how rigged the electoral process is and that they keep voting for people who wish to impair it over and over again once they're in office, and that's for starters. There's a point where you're just another battered wife, a dupe, a mark, a moron. There was a better candidate than Barack Obama and Gibbs worked to take him down in 2004, for the the DNC and the Kerry campaign: Howard Dean. Yes, they've beaten Dean down into submission and made him parrot their absurd talking points, but there was a time, not so long ago...

But it was the Foghorn Leghorn-like Gibbs that worked overtime putting out attack ads against Dean and his reasonably progressive agenda--too reasonable for the DNC and its biggest backers. Dean's also from Alabama and has been advising on a Southern strategy for the Obama campaign/administration for some time. These are the same people that wanted Barack Obama in office and not someone like Dean since he might actually come through for the public and not Wall Street. In addition, when Team Clinton came onboard, we got more of the same cronies from that sordid, pro-business administration, making for a curious form of non-nostalgia. Why am I one of the only people in America who knows that Hillary Clinton has served on the board of Wal-Mart and is a major shareholder, for example? Thanks to a compliant media, never mind all the high talk of the Obama administration having to confront a "combative media," most Americans don't know this. One wishes they were combative, at least for the right reasons, which would be a very real change.

Gibbs is right(ist): I'd trade the Pentagon for a Canadian-style health care system in a heartbeat. For those who think we need defense spending that's 600 times greater than the next highest spender, you're the ones who are "crazy," and if you don't live to see the tyranny you're constructing, your children certainly will. With luck, it's all going to collapse before then anway. You've been lulled into a Pavlovian call-and-response--you feel fear when the political and economic establishment rings 'dem bells. What does that make you?

Would I be satisfied with "Kucinich as president"? Damned straight I would. Fire all of them. Fire the next ones if they're the same. Fire them all, and shut them out of the political process forever, and anyone like them that doesn't serve the public interest, let alone won't listen to them. Eventually, the public will stop speaking and start acting. At that point, Mr. Gibbs will have a lot of explaining to do. Will it be too late? Who knows, but he's going to own a part of the social chaos if it does in fact unfold, and as much as any Bush II operative. That's not a stretch since the Obama administration has kept most of them onboard.

"It's wrong to speak ill of the dead..."

Can those of you who believe this stupid notion take a running jump at yourselves? Do you pine for the lost lives of Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Attila the Hun, Ronald Reagan, Julius Caesar, the Borgias, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, Ted Bundy, Quisling, Sidney Reilly, Aleister Crowley, Roy Cohn, Gilles de Rais, Eichmann, Himmler, Beria, Custer (don't get me started), and every asshole that ever lived that drew breath for too long on this rock called earth?

Are you really that stupid? Sadly, the answer is a resounding "yes," you are that fucking stupid, and it shows, like a pregnancy in its sixth month. As stupid as you are, you'd have a mountain of excuses for these bastards while they were alive, and in slave-like manner, in death. You're a bona fide idiot, a moron, and an asshole. How does it feel?

Here's how it works in the real world, with people who are well-balanced and don't possess your superhuman skills of assholism and rationalization: They point-out when someone's been bad.

I know this is somehow a mystery to you, and you usually make excuses that you're "clumsy" when your significant other beats the crap out of you, or you keep voting against your interests, again and again, like an animal (OK, that's unfair to the animals). This is because you don't get it, or much else. I have witnessed the family of the deceased chanting at a funeral parlor that, "Finally, the son-of-a-bitch died, praise God!" Were they wrong to do this? Who the fuck are you to say otherwise? That said, who are you to tell people who have been affected by recently deceased politicians--very negatively--to make it clear what they did to them and what they think of them? Your only care, frankly, are how the comments affect Y-O-U. That's not as enlightened as you present it, but we already know you're full of shit.

In short: who do you think you are?

No, one shouldn't speak ill of living dead either, the real message.

President Obama is changing his name...and color.

Barry White. Barry White of you. Fuck you Wolf Blitzer. Fuck you Andrew Breitbart.

Newsflash: We don't have a Black President, and jibes about the Sherrod debacle at the USDA.

WWW--Could the Obama administration have handled the whole affair worse by immediately capitulating to the GOP once again? Give them time, they'll find a way. It's obvious that the White House did call the Secretary of Agriculture (the decidedly Caucasian Tom Vilsack, since that's who gets hired at the USDA and stays on...) telling him to fire Shirley Sherrod from her USDA post over very carefully edited comments she made at an NAACP event that were posted on a conservative blog.

The whole media event is political theater predicated on misinforming the public and pushing a racist and classist agenda: the GOP gets to show that President Obama and his advisers will give into just about any of their demands, curious behavior for a president whose party currently holds a firm majority in both houses of Congress (for now), as well as making the first Black President look weak. He's doing a great job on his own, granted, but their agenda is a primarily racist one.

One of the worst things about all of this is that conservative propagandist Breitbart wasn't the first to discriminate against Sherrod, it was the USDA in 1985 when they refused to grant her and her husband a routine loan that white farmers almost always receive, possibly because they were Black farmers. Like many at the time, they lost their farm, but presumably not for the same reasons as white farmers. Discrimination at the USDA is well known. It wouldn't have been the first time racism hurt a Black American farmer at the USDA. The Department of Agriculture has engaged in institutionalized racism all the way back to its inception, but this mandate came from Congress, from the executive branch. I believe her story as a Black farmer is true. So, this isn't the first time that the USDA has failed Mrs. Sherrod and Black Americans, not by a long-shot.

A prediction: If the Obama administration continues down the same road, they can expect two years of a lame-duck presidency or collapse and a subsequent resignation. They will have earned it.

Will the GOP benefit from this? It doesn't appear so, but you never know, even with the phony "apologies." They could very well inch their numbers higher in Congress again. But be careful what you wish for, GOP: your last unfortunate president (George W. Bush for those with no memory), the man (with help from a GOP dominated Congress) who left us with a $10+ trillion national debt was still in office when the shit began hit with the economy and he went begging to Congress and even the president-elect for help. The first Wall Street bailout came under his last days of unprecedented Republican misrule, a well known fact. The Democrats generally let him do all of this and were his shadow enablers. Bush II left us with a wrecked economy, but without the assistance of the entire congressional GOP and many Democratic incumbents it wouldn't have been possible. Again: they let him do it. In sum, both major national parties own the current economic crisis and certainly aren't ever going to be a solution to it.

Like the manufactured ACORN scandal, conservative blogging played a major hand in all of this, and it was done with heavily and selectively edited video. Yet, there has been no accountability for any of these activities by right-wing operatives. It helps to have activist conservative judges on your side, already paid for. The corporate mainstream media has been extremely complicit in the dissemination of these memes and stories to the point that it cannot be a coincidence. Congress and the Obama administration not only "played" into their hands, they were complicit in the dismantling of a grass roots organization that registers Black and poor Americans (many of who are women and veterans, no less), people who don't tend to vote Republican. A Black President signed a bill that defunded them. This is really a story of the damage that GOP operatives are doing to our democracy and the right to vote, a desire to roll things back for Black Americans to a pre-1964 state, when a white supremacist culture could still prevent them from voting. It's also about a Democratic Party that doesn't care if they do. We seem to be going backwards in time as a nation and a culture. Not so long ago, it was a frightening proposition for Black Americans to vote, and in many parts of the continental United States, not just the South.

This began to change with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which the late Sen. Robert Byrd filibustered for 14 hours, losing) and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, two laws that have being routinely violated in several national elections, and without any real official reaction, never mind enforcement. Under the GOP, that's predictable, but the Democrats haven't shown any substantial enthusiasm to curb it. These pre-1964 practices have returned and the need for a new Civil Rights movement is clear, besides the need for serious investigations into actions committed by various GOP operatives to disenfranchise American citizens.

But the DNC doesn't appear too concerned about poor Blacks having the right to vote any more than the franchise for poor whites and prison inmates. We might ask them why some time. The events at the USDA just underscores that institutional racism is alive-and-well in our era, even being implemented by Black Americans who have benefited from the aforementioned legislation and the sacrifices of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s-70s. It's not just the GOP that wants to roll back the clock on civil rights. Both parties are taking orders from the same super rich interests that dominate this nation through the power of money, influence, and yes, criminal activity. Meanwhile, the political class looks the other way...unless the public won't have it anymore. Why do you keep having it? Really?

Personally, were I Mrs. Sherrod, I'd mount multi-million dollar civil suits against not only Andrew Breitbart and his site and organization, I'd sue him personally and much of the mainstream media, as well as USDA chief Tom Vilsack and even Rahm Emanuel and the standing president. That would be just the beginning. It should be noted here that Mrs. Sherrod was an activist for SNCC during the Civil Rights era, meaning it's very likely that at one time she helped register frightened, poor Blacks in the South to vote. This is all about white hate and institutionalized racism, make no mistake about it. She was targeted. CNN's Wolf Blitzer--after profuse "apologies"--just referred to the Sherrod story (Breitbart's take) as "too good to be true." He should be on the list of defendants too.

Shirley Sherrod, community activist and ally of small farmers, including white ones: http://www.cltnetwork.org/index.php?fuseaction=Blog.dspBlogPost&postID=1389

On Glenn Beck potentially losing his eyesight, from a friend...

In the Kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is going blind, and we're not talking about Popeye here...OK, we are talking about Popeye here. Thanks Adam.

Mel Gibson to join reunited Norwegian Satanic Metal band Burzum

A burning church, Norway--At precisely 7 a.m. GMT, the recently reunited metal band announced to the international press that Mel Gibson would now be fronting the group. So as not to confuse hipsters, they explained that Gibson "wouldn't be disrespecting us--quite the contrary," but "will be out front singing for us, on vocals. Thank you all, and have a nice day, especially Jews."

In the spirit of tolerance and brotherly love, the band produced a sampling of song lyrics (still in their embryonic stage) Gibson wrote and will be singing from his padded cell in Los Angeles, via satellite.

The song is titled, "Flowers, My Dearest Love":

Stay on this phone and don't hang up on me.
I have plenty of energy to drive over there.
You understand me? (repeat four times)
AND I WILL! (repeat four times)
SO JUST F------ LISTEN TO ME.
LISTEN TO MY F------ RANTING.
LISTEN TO WHAT YOU DO TO ME.

You have no f--king soul.
I left my wife because we had no spiritual common ground.
You and I have none, zero.
You won't even f---king try.
You don't care.
You don't care.
You don't care.

I'll put you in a f---ing rose garden you c--t!
You understand that?
Because I'm capable of it.
You understand that?
You understand that?
You understand that?
AND I WILL! (repeat four times)
SO JUST F------ LISTEN TO ME.
LISTEN TO MY F------ RANTING. LISTEN TO WHAT YOU DO TO ME. (all lyrics by Mel Gibson, 2010)

In an unsurprising turn, Mel's volume of fan mail from disturbed women proposing marriage rose, while the market fell. Most of the new material will return to their black metal roots, eschewing (whatever the fuck that is) their more recent attempts at crust punk (whatever the fuck that is).

I am a Gamera (a satire, calculated for brevity)

I am a Gamera, my strides are always smashing Tokyo (and then someone from Central Casting just keeps rebuilding it, again and again, proving that Japanese horror films have a Keynesian basis in reality), never wondering if I left the kettle on when I left my deep sea cave. It's hard for a prehistoric creature to blend into modern life, never mind accomplishing some kind of Brechtian irony. I try to avoid crushing the slums. Top that Mr. Isherwood. You can't, because you're dead. That'll learn 'ya!

On Lindsay Lohan's belated sentencing...

WWWhy?!--You know, when I looked at her vacant expression reacting to the California judge finally shutting her down (watching it without sound the first time, for yucks), I could see someone who wasn't comprehending how and why she got to the place she was at. Was she still drunk? Probably, since the army of pink elephants would eat her alive if she went cold turkey. Most of her current troubles emanate from drunk driving incidents from 2007, but she doesn't appear to have much of handle on things, and I'd assume she's found a way to keep snorting cocaine as well.

Yes, her attorney looked embarrassed. Her mother didn't even show this time. Imagine that.

This all just underscores my opposition to the very existence of child stars. Fine, you need a little kid in your film or movie--great--but the kid doesn't get an agent, doesn't get pushed into all kinds of roles and jobs constantly by their parents or guardians; they don't get treated like a tiny adult, and they don't become a public figure. Fame isn't good for a child during their development, let alone for a grown adult, especially when it comes very quickly. Regardless of how much their parents are paid, this is de facto child labor once it's gone too far. The industry itself is centrally to blame, but the parents have bought into it all. They've bought into the capitalist lie that the only thing that matters is money, success, and fame. But that doesn't excuse Ms. Lohan's actions...

When I looked at that vacant, astonished expression, I could only gasp as she was gasping: here's an individual who has very little concept of personal responsibility, I thought. It's terrible to have to say this in such an exploitative society about someone who is most certainly just another victim, but she's a douchebag. She has no excuse for her behavior as an adult driving drunk, not showing up to her adult job that pays many times more than the average American will ever make, as well as not appearing for her counseling sessions for alcoholism that's a mandatory part of her probation. In other words, she went on vacation and didn't go to a few of them--she didn't give a shit at the time. Remind you of any former presidents?

Not going to alcohol and drug counseling sessions is not a high crime, but there is a reason for our legal system and process, and it comes into play when individuals won't accept responsibility for their actions. Society--no matter how flawed--has to intervene. But Americans know that it's all about money in our legal system, just ask someone who lost. Indeed, it's all about money and influence, Lohan probably didn't have enough to get out of it like Paris Hilton and her pot bust (had she been black and female, as well as poor, it would have been another story), but that's not the point. The point is that Lohan broke reasonably established criminal law, has shown an inability or lack of desire to deal with her addiction(s), has shown herself to be a threat to others, and therefore, has to be dealt with by civil society.

All I can think of are her expressions at sentencing. There's no remorse in the footage, no concept that she's done something wrong. I agree that people deserve a second, maybe even a third chance, however, and that even at this point the star should be treated medically. I believe in rehabilitation, and so does the sentencing judge. The lack of any sense of responsibility is a hallmark of her affliction, but it's also an American one. We're willing to do a lot for money, for material items, for luxury, but we're not willing to take responsibility for it most of the time, never mind necessities. It's a problem and a tone that I believe is set by the uppermost echelons of American society, the bad example that rules over us all. It's time for a change, and that means accepting a lot of responsibilities we've been neglecting for far too long.

But nobody wants to take responsibility for their actions these days. Not the the politicians, not corporations like BP, and certainly not Lindsay Lohan or her family. Soon, it won't matter whether we want to or not.

"Expletive written on Lindsay Lohan's fingernail raises new questions," L.A. NOW/L.A. Times, 07.07.2010:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/07/expletive-written-on-lindsay-lohans-fingernail-raises-new-questions-.html

Songs from the Site meter: Someone looking around about Jack Burkman's pa!

Site Meter--This is anyone's guess, granting it's coming from the Arlington County Government, but someone who lives in the same city as Jack Burkman, Jr. did a search on "Jack Burkman's dad," read for 3 minutes, and left. Burkman is a lawyer who's a lobbyist, GOP pundit, and shill for anyone with a blank checkbook so he can go buy pussy surreptitiously. Gimp of the perverse? Someone interested in his nocturnal behaviors? You tell me.

But the fact of the matter is: Jack Burkman, Jr. was and is found in the phone records of the dead DC Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey. He called multiple times, even over a period of three years. This is no mistake, he was calling Palfrey's escort service--Pamela Martin & Associates--with a purpose.

He might tell us what that purpose was some time.

[<<] [>>] Domain Name (Unknown) IP Address 158.59.19.# (Arlington County Government) ISP Arlington County Government Location Continent : North America Country : United States (Facts) State : Virginia City : Arlington Lat/Long : 38.8782, -77.1054 (Map) Language English (U.S.) en-us Operating System Microsoft WinXP Browser Internet Explorer 7.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.1) Javascript version 1.3 Monitor Resolution : 1280 x 1024 Color Depth : 32 bits Time of Visit Jun 18 2010 5:22:29 pm Last Page View Jun 18 2010 5:25:37 pm Visit Length 3 minutes 8 seconds Page Views 6 Referring URL http://www.google.co...m1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= Search Engine google.com Search Words jack burkman's father Visit Entry Page http://chickasawpick...of-jack-burkman.html Visit Exit Page http://chickasawpick...of-jack-burkman.html Out Click Time Zone UTC-5:00 Visitor's Time Jun 18 2010 5:22:29 am Visit Number 75,539

According to some women around the beltway, he's still a real Don Juan. Will people remember individuals like Burkman and his erstwhile compatriot, Ann Coulter? Probably, just not how anyone would want to be. I should add that I found the Arlington Police Department in Palfrey's phone records back in 2007. It seemed to me that someone got arrested for solicitation...