Beware of malware ("Softcop") from Winisoft!

WWW--And now, it's time for some hard-earned wisdom, kids! Just last night I was getting hit by these fake warnings that I had a virus infecting my hard drive with these constant pop-ups harassing me that if I didn't, I could "lose critical files and functions" on my computer. It just pops-up again, and again, and again, and again, until you want to perform a vivisection on the idiot that created the malware doing this to you, your computer, and of course, your mind and your sense of well-being.

Oh yeah, I had a virus on my drive alright, and it was Winisoft's "Softcop," a Trojan horse program that installs itself on your computer without your knowledge or required permission to get you to buy bullshit. Not-so-ironically, Softcop's exactly what it's telling you that you need to remove from your drive by buying their fake software that does nothing. Well, it does nothing except give you more problems like the one you stupidly paid to get rid of! That's when I'm certain that extreme violence is in order, but it's best to inform your credit card company immediately about this intolerable situation and to start the disputation process. Send them a refund message at Winisoft and refuse to pay.

This scam must be making the rounds since there's a bevy of articles about it that provide links to Malware's legitimate removal software that's free and actually works. Once you've downloaded it, run it, and then restarted your PC, the problem not-so-magically disappears. Fancy that. Yes, yes, we don't need any rules or regulations, said the Libertarians. This is exactly why we have to have laws and why business has to be regulated heavily. I could have used these articles yesterday, but this is a fairly sophisticated scam and didn't do my usual Google search, lesson learned. My guess right now is that it's from the Czech Republic, possibly from Brno, a hub of hacker and scammer activity like this, but who knows? All I know is that I'd like to remove their fingernails one-at-a-time, and very slowly...


"Can Softcop Save Your PC?", PC1 News, 10.21.2009: http://www.pc1news.com/news/1057/softcop.html

"Safety Keeper Removal," Free PC Security, 09.11.2009 (with legitimate Malware removal downloads): http://freepcsecurity.co.uk/2009/09/11/safety-keeper-removal/

"Remove Softcop (Uninstall guide), Bleepingcomputer.com, 10.17.2009: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-softcop

Alex Constantine, where art thou?

WWW--Over a year ago, the other paranoid Alex threatened to sue me, and right after he had a near-miss with a civil suit of his own! After making some rather pointed remarks on one of his comments threads (moderated by himself, so he cannot complain, he let it pass) about the nature of Jeane's death (she was NOT murdered, wake up), he got pissed-off when I wrote that he was making these wild claims along with others to get attention and basically make money, sell merch, ad space, whatever.

That's my opinion and I have a right to it, but he didn't think so, so he went and wrote a 3-part, 2-part piece (ask him) about me that was rife with speculation and just more wild allegations and flat-out untruths. At least he finally noticed Jeffrey A. Taylor when he came to my site and read my Palfrey material, and he dutifully regurgitated it as I assume the rest of his ilk does. Then, dumbbells can go, "Look, see? He wrote against this like the lefty-guys!" when it's really just about more grist for his mill and his anti-government agenda, a right-wing agenda.

It should be said and written again and again: government isn't the problem, it's the people that get voted in--mostly by the right--who are the problem, they are corrupt. It's like blaming the hammer instead of the guy who hit you in the head with it, it's a moronic and dysfunctional argument that Jones, Constantine, Nimmo, Rense, and all the rest make, and too many on the so-called "progressive left" are buying into it because these nimrods simply know the right things to say to sway them.

Remember: genuine democracy is contentious, it is dirty and messy and ugly. People argue in a democracy. It can even get ugly. Never, ever, should it become violent when we disagree, not ever. But argue? We should be taking the gloves off all the time when it comes to our beliefs. You cannot be inert or neutral in any society, that's a myth, and I consider my writing a humble contribution to the dialog. Constantine and these parapoliticians, on the other hand, are trying very desperately to undermine our government.

We might ask them why, in seriousness, this is so, and why they don't suggest real reform and participation in the political process to fix things. It's my feeling that many of them are there to demoralize the left, the majority of Americans when it comes to issues of the role of government and social policy. I have no respect for these people and consider them wackos at best, provocateurs at worst. Government will always be the solution, and it's up to us to make it serve the public. To do nothing is just more self-fulfilled prophecy, more bullshit, like what these turds are selling in the form of t-shirts, books, and coffee mugs. It's a cottage industry.

The New Devil's Dictionary: Hoax

Hoax, n--A business opportunity disguised as a lie. A wise investment for one person that quickly goes south is the livelihood of another. Life imitating art imitating life imitating art. Performance art for the bored. Entertainment for the creative that reminds the victims that the majority of humor is at the expense of someone else.

What public policy usually is. The underlying reality of temporal existence. Entire civilizations and their cultures have been built upon this firm bedrock (See "Delusion").

Examples include: The Shroud of Turin; the Virgin of Guadalupe; transparency in government and campaign promises generally; any Bigfoot revelation, truth in advertising; any given economic system at any given era in human history; the concept of the nation state; the American work ethic; the curious notion that the "other" really means us harm; the American Dream; the notion that "wise men" are running things at any given point in human history; television's "In Search Of" program, and the notion that TV chef Bobby Flay isn't in the Patterson-Gimlin film, he is, trust me.

On the "boy in the balloon" non-story

WWW--Boy, I sure miss a lot when I don't bother to watch television or the 24 hour news networks, don't I?

Again...who gives-a-shit? People without a life? These very bald examples of media white-outs (namely, regarding Afghanistan, we can presume) are beginning to irk me. This isn't news, it's entertainment-at-best. At worst, they're put out there to crowd out real stories that the public needs to know.

Does this story warrant any attention? Did the bigfoot one emanating from Georgia a few years ago? The press sent over 100 representatives "just in case" it turned out to be "true." What the fuck does that mean? There's no such thing as bigfoot any more than there was a Virgin birth or a Paul Bunyan ferchrissakes, gimme a goddamned break. I'm not going to miss the mainstream media when it finally croaks...

A message to armchair warriors everywhere...

I would be more than happy to kick in to airdrop your asses into the shit tomorrow. Please, keep talking about how "tough" you are and how you "really want to go." Get your all-talk asses down to the local recruiting stations and talk like that, sign the papers, and we'll have your asses dumped from a plane over Iraq or Afghanistan. I hear the topsoil there could use some work.

On Colin Powell's "Terror-Industrial complex" video

Washington D.C.--So what? He covered his ass just like Eisenhower did with his "military-industrial" speech on his last day in office as president. Yet, both men can be credited as key in their creation. Now, why in the name of logic and reason would you believe them or value what they had to say when they not only did nothing to stop it, but actually did everything to encourage its creation to enrich themselves and their careers? That's correct, logic and the historical record dictate that you wouldn't, but mythologies are very hard to counter once they've taken root.

It's my guess that Powell and his associates and allies are trying very desperately to recast his role in the historical landscape that was his time as Secretary of State under George W. Bush. The fact is that he lied to the public during that time in a manner that got us into an unnecessary war that came directly out of his and the administration's grandstanding and exploitation of the terror attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Powell wasn't merely an enabler of the illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan, he expedited it with gusto and he is a co-conspirator. In fact, General Powell is a war criminal not only from these wars, but from the Gulf War (Bush War I) and Vietnam when he was part of the cover-up of the My Lai massacre in 1969. People from that time refer to Powell as a "team player." Well right, that's the kind of stupid asshole you bring on board, a moron who will follow any order so long as it's coming from a superior. The legality of those orders rarely ever crosses their minds, and when it does, it gets a backseat in the final judgment, theirs.

Yet, somehow, he's a "hero," which is an insult to the mentally handicapped everywhere. He's not a hero, he's a war criminal just like the Einsatzgruppen commanders who slaughtered entire villages of Slavs on the Eastern Front. Nobody made them do these things just as nobody forced Powell into doing it. They did it willingly to further themselves and their position in the hierarchy. To allow someone like Powell to even walk around free is an insult to the rules of war and the rule of law everywhere, and he's not alone in the American pantheon of the damned, not even remotely. Eisenhower was cut of the same cloth--burlap, the preferred material officers are made of, because it gives easy. Officers are political operatives expediting political orders, period. A 1932 example offers some insight into what kind of officers Powell and Eisenhower were and how they rose through the ranks.

In the last full year of the Republican Hoover administration, economic conditions had gotten so bad that WWI veterans were flooding the nation's capital demanding their military pensions ("bonuses" originally slated to be issued in 1945, though you could borrow against them) early. Collapse was in the air. By June, the Bonus March Force had come and many veterans were camping out on Capitol Hill in semi-permament "Hoovervilles," bitterly named for the president who did virtually nothing to alleviate the desperate conditions of the Great Depression. Rather than do that, Hoover allowed the situation to grow worse as a lack of proper hygienic facilities and public services in the makeshift camps--continued neglect--contributed to incidents of violence and an atmosphere of fear and dread. Fear mounted in governing circles since it was known that President Hoover had no intentions of giving the veterans any of their very minimal demands.

On July 28, 1932, when Treasury Dept. agents and Capitol police were unable to evict the marchers peacably, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur mobilized 600 regular troops under the command of Majs. George S. Patton, Jr. and Dwight D. Eisenhower and violently routed the Bonus Marchers with bayonets, bricks, tear-gas, truncheons, and fists. MacArthur was on the scene and actually disobeyed Hoover's orders to go about it as peacably as possible and not to push too hard. Hoover who instructed MacArthur that his men go in unarmed, but no shots were fired by federal troops. Three veterans died, many more were wounded, and an infant died in the scuffle. It all-but handed FDR the election in November of that year, something the Democratic candidate was heard to affirm in his own estimation of the mishap. Others weren't so pleased either.

Patton later went on to describe it all as "discgrace to the service," but it's not entirely clear how Eisenhower felt and seems to have simply followed orders and kept his mouth shut as MacArthur's assistant. How familiar, then, this all is with Powell who helped keep a lid on My Lai and numerous other war crimes we don't even know about. He kept his mouth shut as Eisenhower most certainly did on many occasions to advance upward in the ranks. For what? Money and the perks, of course, but what more was going to await him than just more illegal and unethical orders, more crimes to push events towards war? I won't even bore you with his actions surrounding Iran-Contra. Yes, he was even part of the arms-for-hostages deal, so he'd know about how not to deal with terrorists, a practice he adhered to until he finally, belatedly, left life as a public servant, the one constructive act of his time working for the public.

Now, he and others have released this dumb video of him warning about a "terrorist-industrial complex" because he's realized too late that he's been nothing but a stooge for bad people in high places. The timing is curious, so you have to wonder if charges are coming, possibly from Spanish courts. What an idiot to think that he can do anything to change how he's going to be portrayed in the history books. By even the most casual observation, he's viewed as the man who got us into Iraq with his "16 words" before the U.N. Security Council that were a panoply of lies. Were it not for Powell's 16 words in the early months of 2003, we wouldn't be in Iraq now, there would never have been the all the billions-upon-billions of military defense contracts going to the highest-bidders, meaning friends of the president and vice president.

You don't rise to the top in the military by bucking orders. Eventually, they shut you down, just as they did with Patton and MacArthur, albeit for the right reasons (one of the men Patton slapped is buried here in Michiana and my grandfather served under him). No, those who are rewarded make it to the "top," only to realize that it's really the bottom, and then it's too late. I have very little doubt that this stupid video surfacing is a last-ditch effort on the part of Powell and his associates and allies to repair the damage and to paper over the very dishonorable and criminal acts that General Powell has been party to, his involvement being either before or after the fact. It's not going work.

The other story--the truth--escaped out of the bottle long ago. No human being, no tyrant, has ever been able to escape the judgment of history. Colin Powell is no exception to this rule and should serve as a warning to those willing to follow illegal orders out of convenience and the yearnings of crass careerism that there really is no escape; not from the judgment of history, or that "sun that never sets," one's own mind, that harshest of judges. What most of these men did wasn't serving their country, it was serving criminals and themselves to the detriment of the nation. Shame. Dishonor.

aleX joneS is the Fred Flintstone of our time

WWW--The fascination--even my own--just continues to boggle my mind. He has no real ideas of his own, but he's burly and loud and shows absolute certainty and credulousness at all times. There's no conspiracy theory he wouldn't love to have thought up. It seems he's the last guy on earth to have heard of Bohemian Grove. Sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote about the gathering place of the elites decision-makers in the California redwoods way back in 1956 in his book The Power Elite, when rock was being born and Eisenhower was president.

America's global power had reached an apex, and it's been downhill ever since. Mills didn't think Bohemian Grove amounted to much and that it was simply a place for the influential to unwind and sometimes talk shop. I don't think he was mistaken, but even reading the implications of what Mills concluded, you can presume that deals are made and consecrated there. And? That's not a conspiracy, it's reasonably out in the open. Were that not so, Jones himself would never have been able to sneak in, but then you begin to realize that this is more about oversimplified explanations and the cult of personality than anything else.

With all of his yammering about government being evil, you'd think Alex Jones was merely an extremist Republican, not that that's saying much these days. Perhaps this is why he's becoming more mainstream. It's beyond my understanding why Slacker director Richard Linklater has placed Jones in two of his computer rotoscope films, Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006), based on the paranoid meditation on informant and surveillance culture by Philip K. Dick., except that he literally sees him as a cartoon character. If that's what he means, I'm with him. Jones is a symptom of a very sick body politic.

While he espouses being against the wars in the Middle East on the one hand as Ron Paul does, he's also spreading misinformation about the current president and his birth certificate on the other. Jones is a clown at best, but I have to wonder if he's around to bad-jacket information that's actually valid and true. But most of all, he really just looks like a shaved ape with a Halloween mask on, yelling at the top of his lungs that there's a fire in the crowded theater of America when there's merely smoke. He is alarmist in his rhetoric. He is a conflater and a spreader of hysteria. He is not the answer, and he is a demagogue. What he constitutes is a great example of delusions of adequacy, and the dark underbelly of Populism. He is a very dangerous man.

Postscript 10.17.2009: And if you don't believe me, look at the one you're with! We'll just say that Ted Nugent is Jones's Barney Rubble.

Bernie Sanders is...oh fuck it.

WWW--I'm still counting the days when someone accurately describes Senator Sanders as a socialist, you know, since he is one. I'm one too, a philosophical socialist. So far, the most recent person to call me one was a neo-Nazi and a Holocaust denier. Of course, I had to TELL them.

Really, and this is a good thing: we have our FIRST SOCIALIST SENATOR IN VERMONT SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS.

Meanwhile, morons are misspelling the "S"-word at Tea Bagger protests.

"The best and the brightest" is a crock: The U.S. Military as a form of welfare and a cult of the dead

I have never understood this: our men and women in uniform as supposed to be the best and the brightest people in our nation, yet I think we all know that this is just more rhetoric, more lies. We all know it's bullshit and that the best and the brightest aren't rushing out to join--with noteworthy exceptions like a Pat Tillman or a Sergeant York-- they're heading to where the good paying jobs are. There is also the dark side of the military in our culture: People like Lt. William Calley, the commanding officer present at My Lai during the Vietnam conflict who told his men (Calley was under orders himself) to slaughter the entire village, every man, woman, and child--and they complied. And how many movies have we seen with crazy veterans killing when they get home? For many, all this changed the perception of American soldiers across the world forever, never mind America.

Interestingly, Calley recently apologized for this atrocity at a Knights of Columbus gathering in Ohio, his home state where he's worked in a cushy job as a jeweler since at least the early 1970s. Hardly anyone noticed and it was barely reported. Most of the men who served under him haven't been so lucky, so pampered, which is a matter of race as well as class. Speaking of class, a huge percentage of our homeless are veterans, most from the Vietnam War. The claims regarding all of our troops are wildly distorted claims. They are lies the occlude the reality on the ground. Like a lot of things in modern American culture, this over-adulation begins with the First World War and has more to do with motivating the domestic population towards another, future war then it does in actually honoring the dead. It's about money and power.

The Cult of the Dead Solider is about creating a false history where our troops have always held to the rules of war and where every conflict is a just one. Even very recent history must be misrepresented. In the official story, all of our troops are noble young men and women who heard the call of their nation and joined to defend it and its environs for the common good. The reality--as we should know by now--is far less glamorous and any person capable of independent thought should view such assertions with the utmost suspicion. Life in the modern world is a minefield. After 1973, we switched over to what is now euphemistically known as the "peacetime army," and the rest applies to the other branches, they're all-volunteer now too. Yet, economic conscription is still conscription and we all know that many Americans join--as they are right now in large numbers--when the economy is bad and there are few other alternatives. In other cases, it's simply a matter of individuals who couldn't hack it in civilian society and literally had no other options regardless of the state of the economy. If you think I'm kidding, look at the lives of retired military and how rapidly they become unraveled after discharge. So why are they all "heroes"? They sound desperate to me, and I grant that this isn't the entire story, but it's the bulk of it.

In 1991, noted historian George Mosse published his seminal Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, a book that details how the Cult of the Dead Soldier came into being and what its purpose is. Frequently, our soldiers have been painted in our culture as young, nubile, and brave, having come to the military out of pure patriotism and a sense of sacrifice for the group. Again, while there is some truth to this, I think we all know that many people--in the past and the present--have joined because they had nowhere else to go, something that's been a truism well before 1973 when the draft was ended. There was a good reason for this that has a lot to do with the current version of the Cult: the myths weren't true and the very real perception that the children of the poor were fighting the wars of rich men was commonplace and hasn't gone away entirely. As a matter of fact, it's alive and well. This healthy and cynical contention came out of the revelations of war crimes, the Pentagon Papers, but really out of ground level experience. People knew they were being screwed and lied to.

The enthusiasm of going to war is a normal prelude to reality setting-in: at the end of WWI in Germany there was no talk of glory, no celebrations over the war dead, no parties celebrating the loss. The reaction of many after any war is to want to forget and to cling very tenaciously to the myths of warfare and nationalism--that there was glory in it, that the sacrifices were necessary for the group, and that it was all a worthy cause that enriched all. That's a hard sell nowadays, but the desire to believe it is still very much alive, and it's part of a pathology. This dynamic was played-out in many different ways in our culture since 1973, from Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo" movies where the muscle-bound actor went back to Vietnam to "win this time," to the the equally bad "Top Gun," Reagan's exhortations to get us involved in Central America during the 1980s, and the depictions of military men and women in recruiting ads as young, vital, cleanly-scrubbed, and pure in intentions and behavior.

The enthusiasm which youth had once felt for war as adventure and personal fulfillment was difficult to sustain after experiencing the reality of war, but the nation, using the Myth of the War Experience, was able to keep the flame alight. ...Yet it was the political Right and not the Left which was able to annex the cult and make the most of it. The inability of the Left to forget the reality of the war and to enter inot the Myth of the War Experience was a gain for the political Right, which was able to exploit the suffering of millions for its own political ends. The Myth of the War Experience helped to transcend the horror of war and at the same time supported the utopia which nationalism sought to project as an alternative to the reality of postwar Germany. (Mosse, 106)

The true costs of war and the endless suffering and repercussions have been all-but-forbidden except with noteworthy exceptions. During this conflict, so little suffering and carnage is being shown to the public that the culture had to do catch-up with endless displays of gore in CSI programs on network television. But, generally, Vietnam has posed too much of a challenge, and so, damage control has been the approach since that sordid conflict. The domestic information war was like this before Vietnam, but the methods have had to become more subtle, which makes them more insidious, from lousy xenophobic action films to video games. Our troops should never be viewed as angels nor our causes automatically "just" or "necessary," but that's the message being spoon-fed to our children.

In a democracy, talk of war should always be highly contentious and there should be a very serious debate over its necessity and what its real world costs are going to be. "Will we be better off?" should be at the top of the list. Have we been better off since the Vietnam War? The invasion of Panama in 1989 and the Gulf War in 1991? The Balkans during the rest of the 1990s? When does it end? It depends on who you ask. The shift from classical depictions of our troops has shifted to that of the victim: recall when it was alleged that American POW Jessica Lynch was mistreated and raped by her Iraqi captors. It was a total lie concocted by propaganda chiefs at the Pentagon.

Lynch once stated, "They used me to symbolize all this stuff. It's wrong. I don't know why they filmed [my rescue] or why they say these things."

The Pentagon went as far as to coerce Lynch into lying about what happened while she was being held by Iraqi troops and doctors during the invasion in late March 2003, even including the allegation in her ghost written biography; Lynch has since accused the military of using her in a propaganda effort to sell the war and that they embellished her own account. Less than one year after her ordeal, the Pentagon-backed "Saving Jessica Lynch" aired, selling more lies. Instead, she was used as a pawn on several levels, not merely including the lie that she was raped by Iraqi troops, it being a bald appeal to classic American racism as well as sexism. But why did the West Virginian Lynch join the military? She needed money for college...

There are much better and efficient ways to care for our young people, to give them a real shot at the future, and it would behoove us to begin the process of demilitarization within our economy. Patrick Tillman is another stellar example in the deification-through-victimhood of our troops. The irony is, Tillman really was a hero, but not for the reasons that the Pentagon's propagandists told us. He was a hero because he saw the war in Iraq as a lie, as a violation of international law, and I believe he went overseas to bear witness to the crimes so that he could testify about them when the smoke had cleared. I also believe that his fellow troops and possibly some officers figured this out as well. They had to use him in death for their ends because...you do the math. They destroyed his uniform and his diary. Why did they stop at that? Bad press.

Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter has another ethics complaint filed against him, this time by Louisiana Democrats Part II

Louisiana--Yet another FEC complaint has been filed by Louisiana Democrats against him, so it's time for Davey to retain Wiley, Rein and Fielding once again (no, not for hookers this time), a high powered law firm populated by his own peers in the GOP, many past incumbents in Congress. Will he get out of it this time? Of course he will, the fix is always on for Davey, the law doesn't apply to people like him who service the wealthy and government contractor-fed districts (also known as "welfare").

Stupid is as stupid does, and the rule of law be damned.

The political committees of Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) have been accused of scheming to conceal a contribution from Pickering to Vitter in violation of federal campaign finance laws.

The Louisiana Democratic Party plans to file a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission today, charging that Barbour's PAC essentially filtered a $5,000 campaign donation from Pickering's PAC to Louisiana Vitter's 2010 reelection committee to make it look like the contribution didn't come directly from Pickering.

Louisiana Democrats allege that Pickering didn't want it to look like one Republican embroiled in a sex scandal was giving to another Republican involved in a sex scandal.

Pickering says the charges simply aren't true. ...

Here's the evidence Louisiana Democrats are presenting to the FEC:

In August, Barbour's low-dollar political action committee, Haley's PAC, collected just one check and made just one contribution, each for $5,000. The outgoing donation was to Vitter's campaign, and it was recorded four days before the receipt, which was from CHIP PAC. That is CHIP PAC's only activity since Pickering retired in January, and Haley's PAC has made only one other donation this year. ("Louisiana Democrats file complaint against Vitter," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10.06.2009)

And so, therefore, since Pickering says it isn't true, it's isn't true, especially to the eternal children who were abused by their parents and mutated into authoritarians. Can we just lower the age for the eligibility to run for public office? Any ten-year-olds out there? Hmm?

Do Pickering and Barbour have intimate ties with Wiley Rein? You bet, in legislative actions and consulting, and they've even given to his own campaign fund, in 2002, $1,000 (as far as we know). For example, Pickering received $1,500 from Haley Barbour's own law firm in the 2004 election cycle through two of their employees, and $500 from one at Akin Gump. You think they had to be told to? Me either. I could on (and on, and on...), but I leave it to the reader to make more connections that are a good indicator of impropriety.

Do a Google search on "Charles Pickering Wiley Rein and Fielding," and permutations on the other players. It's going to raise your hackles. What you see on the net is just the surface level, and that's bad enough. Now--and we can assume they're doing this most of the time--they're trying to do it under the wire. When the rules you made no longer work, you break them. You cannot get more perverse than this, breaking one's own rules.

"Contributions from Wiley Rein and Fielding to Charles Pickering," Watchdog.net: http://watchdog.net/contrib/?from=wiley%20rein%20and%20fielding"Louisiana Democrats file complaint against Vitter," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10.06.2009: &to=chip_pickering

Charles W. Pickering - $873,579 raised, '04 election cycle, Mississippi (MS, Republican Party, Congress," Campaignmoney.com: http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/campaigns/charles_w_pickering.asp?cycle=04

"Louisiana Democrats file complaint against Vitter," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10.06.2009: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09279/1003295-473.stm

July 3, 2008 - Vitter's (ultimately successful) attempt at skirting campaign finance laws: http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2008/07/louisiana-sen-david-vitter-attempting.html

Obama blew it...

...the entire American ruling class, and that's no small feat.

The Manchester Guardian: "Sarah Palin's upcoming memoir knocks Dan Brown from top spot"

That's right dearie, everyone cranes their neck at the scene of a car accident, and Palin is a car accident par excellence. Oh yeah: Dan Brown can't write, and Johnny can't read; if you think Freemasonry has any secrets beyond the innate meaning found in eternal symbols, you have a reading comprehension problem too.

It's a fraternal and humanist social organization, get over yourself. Look at the traditional enemies of Freemasonry, and you'll find all the worst groups and people in human history, it's a simple fact. The intolerant hate the Craft. Hitler hated the Craft. Stalin hated the Craft. The Vatican and its office of the Holy Inquisition hated and hate the Craft. Radical Islam hates the Craft. Neo-Nazis and the radical right in-general hate the Craft. The ignorant hate the Craft, meaning Sarah Palin.

The "Why Women Have Sex" articles and the Save-your-life bra

WWW--Because they're horny? Both the Guardian and Newsweek have been writing puff pieces on some very unimportant books and studies on this, so it must have been a slow news week, meaning there are important stories to do a news white-out on. That means pulling a story out of your ass and wracking your brains to remember something from your High School science class, then wrapping it in a lot of inflated verbiage to keep your whorish, dumbass job at Newsweek to feed some equally banal lifestyle because you're entitled.

At the age of 41, I can honestly say that I don't give-a-shit why women have sex. It's usually obvious anyway, and probably akin to "Why do people itch themselves?" and "Why did so-and-so just sneeze?" I could go into scatological examples, but I'm sure at least 10% of my readership (and that's a magic number) already raced to them like me, and sadly, it's just as valid as these stupid articles that don't even rise above this or many other blog postings. You get a dumbbell system out of dumbbell people.

Has Newsweek ever heard of the Kinsey Institute here in pansexual Indiana? Indeed they had, feeling the need to cover their asses at the end of the piece and the gaping-maw of a fact that their article says nothing new and that the study they were covering is hardly epic-in-scope (1,000 online-participants) or even very scientific. In other words, like Michael Moore, they were telling us (and selling us) what we already knew. What turns women on? Sigmund Freud (who was right about far more than most feminists care to admit, hence why they quote him so much) couldn't figure it out, and neither can most women come down to it, not that I care. I should add that with more women employed right now, and with the economy in the shitter, feminism just doesn't resonate that strongly these days. "But why? Why do you women have sex?" they ask us, the readers, making me wonder what their informational role is. They should, especially the ladies, since one would assume they have all the answers to this burning, itching question.

It could be: Money; power over a mate in a relationship; ego-boosting; material items; that stunning posture and moves of the insensate and cocksure beefcake; a man in uniform; a woman in uniform; someone they feel "sorry" for (pity fucks); a well-told joke; the tie someone was wearing that day; someone's personality; a good day; a bad day; frustration; naivete; a confluence of events; a rush of hormones or drugs; a bad childhood; a good childhood--gimme a break. The most galling thing about the Newsweek piece is their offhand contention that most studies haven't ever asked women what makes women want to have sex. Again, didn't the Kinsey Institute cover that ground decades ago? Here's a suggestion: try doing actual research for your article before it goes to press. Women are people, and people are complicated and not easily quantified or understood by science.

More importantly, this week, a Ukrainian-born woman in Chicago invented a bra that can also act as a gas mask, something I consider both genius and uproariously funny. But...but, why did she invent it? Luckily, this won't require any grants or lab time:

Elena Bodnar, who lives in Chicago, got her start as a scientist in Ukraine, when she witnessed the devastating effects of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in 1986. She noticed, among other things, that women were wearing bras that may have been lacy but were certainly not life-saving.

At the ceremony, Bodnar demonstrated her invention, which she said could have prevented people from breathing in Iodine-131 in the wake of Chernobyl. She graciously gave pink bras (each of which can turn into two gas masks) to actual Nobel laureates (yes, even the men, who now have the option to enjoy the bras without shame--not to mention any likely real effect--in the privacy of their own homes).

That's right, men can wear them too. Well yeah! What would the Kinsey Institute say about that one?

My real question is this: would it be appropriate for men with pot-tits to wear them in public, and where can I get a grant to study the phenomena?

"Introducing the bra that is meant to be taken off," CNET, 10.02.2009: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-10366730-247.html

CREW files a prostitution complaint against Louisiana Sen. David Vitter

Louisiana--Do I think this is going to go anywhere? Probably not, but I assume the intended result is to remind Louisiana voters he's a piece-of-shit and a liar who can't keep his dick in his pants until the 2010 elections.

What's interesting is that they're going for Davey's law license as well as punitive measures for--I don't know, nothing much--breaking the law on several occasions when he went to see prostitutes, and probably in more than one state. The FBI probably caught him in some wiretaps down in the big NO, frequenting the Canal Street Madam's brothel, but that's a story for another time.

The director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said it is time for Vitter to step up to the plate and answer for accusations stemming from the "D.C. Madam Scandal." In 2007, Vitter's name appeared on the client list of D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey. According to CREW, Vitter's law license should be revoked for allegedly violating the state's rules of professional conduct for lawyers.
"Since that's a crime and Louisiana rules provide that committing any crime is a subject matter appropriate for discipline, we thought it was time for the Louisiana bar to take a look at Mr. Vitter's conduct," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW. ("Prostitution complaint filed against Vitter," WAFB Channel 9, Baton Rouge, 09.29/30.2009)

This is actually impressive, going for his law license. It could hamper his ability to make a living after his sordid and unfortunate time in public office. Louisiana should be ashamed, but then, so should Indiana with Dan Burton and his own issues with illicit sex, possibly treason.
But never underestimate the greed, shallowness, and stupidity of Louisianans, they could just as easily reelect him. Vitter's office issued a pathetic statement in response to CREW's move that utilizes that old tactic that "when the truth isn't on your side, you attack the credibility of the messenger." This week, Vitter and his cronies are taking this adage to heart and acting on it. Never mind the bullshit about Vitter wearing diapers--Jeane never confirmed this, and she probably wouldn't have known anyway, she was more concerned about making money.
The real issue is: should the rich and their employees like Vitter be above the law? For the rich, rednecks and the religiously insane, the answer is an unqualified "yes." We might just have that second American Civil War yet. You contributed to driving a disturbed woman to her death. How does that feel Senator Vitter? Do you know how weird and depraved that is and how it looks? To say that you're a pathetic asshole would be an understatement.

http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=11227708

Tokyo Rose us, but Single Payer is Never Going Away (you bet!)

Washington D.C.--We expected this, didn't we? It's political theater, this Finance Committee vote, desperation. The funniest thing about this is that no matter what gets passed in Washington, the health system is going to crash, take the economy down further again and again, and that they're going to have to pass single payer de facto down the road anyway and they know it.

So, these morons at town halls can throw their pathetic tantrums, and the insurance companies can keep trying to milk us dry (too late!), but you cannot get blood out of a turnip. Without a consumer base, they have nothing. They're going to get their way for a time, and the economy will continue to crash. From this, will come even more unprecedented election turnouts (hence the bald attacks inside and outside of Congress against ACORN and other groups registering people to vote), and that means voter retribution for those who voted against single payer throughout the entire process.

Eventually, the political costs will become so high in a rapidly disintegrating situation that Congress and the executive branch will have to make something at least resembling single payer as a matter of fact, not fancy. Day-after-day, the average American is pelted with an all-out propaganda assault not unlike Tokyo Rose telling G.I.s to surrender and that their folks at home don't care about them anymore. This is a lie. Through polling over a generation, the public stands firmly behind single payer, medical care for all, and significantly more social spending rather than for unwinnable wars.

This is business fascism--this plutocracy--as simple as that, and it's time to face the reality that citizenship doesn't mean passivity. Single payer isn't going away as a hot-button issue anytime soon. In fact, it's taken on a new life that it hasn't had in decades, and it's not going away. Neither are calls for justice over the criminal behavior of the last administration.

On my DC Madam account and the human condition

WWW--They say that when you get older, you get wiser. This is true, but how does a lot of this knowledge profit the wise? It just depends. I have descended into the bowels of hell in this story, it has been an eye-opener, even with my own jaundiced view of humanity. When you look at a story like this, one can only marvel at how many countless times it's played-out behind the scenes. But Jeane was a fighter and she wouldn't go quietly, leaving an unparalleled record of the circus going on in D.C. that would make a sociologist drool.

This is what makes the late Ms. Palfrey's saga so unique.

Jeane was hardly a saint, and I would dissuade anyone from looking at her as one. Sometimes, we're both victims and abusers, slaves and exploiters, but the more I learn about her and her life, the more I simply pity her and hate the well-heeled men who used her service and the woman who worked for it. All of these women were used, and used again, until they were no longer of any use. The disgusting prosecution team dragged these women before a court--not their powerful customers, something that's partly Jeane's fault--and made them recount gynecological experiences they had, the coarseness of the sex, and just went about humiliating all of them to protect morons like Sen. David Vitter. Rest assured that I will be getting very loud indeed next year when Davey comes up for reelection, you can bank on it.

Then, you have media turd and crooked lobbyist Jack Burkman Jr. who somehow managed to slip through the wire altogether. How did that happen? A compliant mainstream media, of course. From my own findings and materials, I can tell you without a hint of humor, sarcasm, or exaggeration, that Jack Burkman is making factually incorrect statements very consciously that he's not in the phone records of Pamela Martin & Associates. There's no question of this, and I would have no problem proving it was so in a court of law if seriously challenged. Challengers might recall that while the rules of evidence in Ms. Palfrey's RICO case were more relaxed in favor of the prosecution, there would be an advantage in that area on my end in a civil hearing, and I would win since the truth's on my side. After that, I would countersue whomever was foolish enough to challenge my assertion.

It's sounds strange to say this, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that much of the business going on in Washington D.C. is based around illegal gifting and blackmail. I believe that Jeane was part of this nexus of crime done under the color of authority and that it's all-but-institutionalized. The recent developments (also generally unreported by the mainstream media) in the Sibel Edmonds case and her August 8, 2009 statements under oath before a congressional committee underscore Palfrey's contention that she was being used in some kind of a "honey pot" operation.

At one point I thought I'd introduced the concept to Jeane and her counsel at the time (summer 2007), but after having read Sibley's own account--Why Just Her--and other materials that I've come across over the months, I can see they were already considering this factor in their defense. There had to be a very real reason for this beyond expediency and there are many things still under seal in the case, including ex parte meetings and filings by what I have to assume was the intelligence community, even the White House itself. Jeane and I had an interesting exchange on the phone once: I lamented the eternal quality of corruption. Her response was both profound and almost Buddhist when she stated, "Matt, there will always be corruption. New generations will be born and it will continue." That's true, but it had a tinge of nihilism to it that was confirmed by her suicide. All the more reason for eternal vigilance.

I enjoin all my readers who are interested in this case to buy counselor Sibley's account, do their own research for themselves, and ponder what really makes this system run the way it does. Yes, it's about patriarchy, and much, much worse. You don't even know the half of it. There could be a very good chance that the upcoming inquiries into the CIA, lobbying, the torture and warrantless wiretapping programs, and several other scandals under the Bush II administration, will elicit more information in the Palfrey/Hookergate scandal.

Expect my account spring/summer 2010.

One world is not enough for all of us...

Corrupt Govt. contractor SAIC moving major operations closer to DC

Washington D.C.--You know, it's easier to bribe someone in-person, get real. Less of a paper trail, no compromising calls that can be monitored, and so on. The public really needs to know about these bastards, they really have slipped under the wire over the last forty years. SAIC is a defense contractor that does a lot of communications related work for the intelligence community and military.

They are truly a case for corporate military-industrial welfare run amok:

The state and county are providing a $3 million grant upfront and SAIC will be eligible for another $7 million after it expands. Dahlgren, who spoke at Thursday's formal announcement, said he will stay on the SAIC board as chairman and maintain his San Diego office, and sought to ensure employees there that the SAIC plans to grow its operations there. SAIC derives about three-fourths of its income from defense contracts. Its annual revenue exceeds $10 billion a year. The improvements to SAIC's northern Virginia campus coincide with a major redevelopment effort in Tysons Corner, where construction is under way to extend the region's Metrorail system to Dulles International Airport. ("Calif. defense contractor moving to Va.," AP, 09.24.2009)

How lovely for them. Providing any tax deferrments to a corporation that's employee-owned seems pretty cracked, but maybe that's just me. At best, SAIC's a fiefdom for the privileged, but rest assured that they're working on various intelligence programs that are spying on American citizens as I write this.
They also have what appear to be some very curious lobbying practices and employ some very strange people as operatives. SAIC comes up a few times in the phone records of the late DC Madam, and one of their operatives--Ret. Col. Ron Roughead, a former Defense Attache--made an unmistakable call three times on one day in late 2005. Clients of Pamela Martin & Associates were required to make multiple-calls to confirm a rendezvous with an escort. Col. Roughead has yet to explain the call, he's not talking, and neither is SAIC. So did the mistress of Iraq invasion architect and former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, Shaha Ali Riza. Not only that, but she and Col. Roughead worked for the Iraqi Media Network, a defense contractor boondoggle if ever there was one.

They should have a bake sale for the move, it might pad their bottom line. But now that they're moving closer to the primary source of their income, things should be rosier. These kinds of corporate fiefdoms are shelter from the rules of the marketplace. While the rest of us suffer under the dunderheaded economic policies of the establishment, these rich twits have their nice little castle system to hide within. I'd love to see a veritable army of the homeless tear their shiny buildings down, which wouldn't necessarily be so hard since many of them are veterans and have seen real combat.

Are they paid well? Do we even need SAIC? What do you think? I think SAIC shouldn't exist at all. Why do foreign operatives work there? In a time of economic crisis, the last thing SAIC should be getting is $8.5 million from the state of Virginia, it's outrageous, therefore, it must be done. Forget the fictional "Yo-yodyne," this is the real evil.

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/gen?guid=20090924/4abafcd0_3ca6_1552620090924174477725

To the "spoilers" crowd: I was right, you're always wrong

WWW--Face the facts: you lost the election for Ralph Nader by voting for an unknown quantity, Barack Obama, a kiss-ass corporate lawyer. He was never going to do the right thing, unless you mean right-wing, meaning in the service of money and power. Ten year olds saw this shit coming, it wasn't hard to miss. No, you fucked up, all of you, because you go for the name brand first rather than looking at someone for what they really are. He's like Lincoln alright, not FDR.

But none of this really matters. The system is going to keep crashing, again and again, dragging your asses firmly down to earth, grounding you whether you like it or not. I'm the kind of person who's going to get a lot of entertainment value out of this, watching smarmy, spoiled assholes suffer for a change. God knows it's going to have been earned.

To my delight, you're going to learn the hard way: what the the social contract means; what a society is for; why we must work civilly through the legal system; that the free market system was always a tottering mess that was poised for eventual extinction; what "dumbshow" means; how "conventional wisdom" tends to be utter bullshit; why civic duty is supposed to be non-negotiable; how greedy and empty you are; how stupid you are; why you suck; how conceited you are; how you have almost no intellect whatsoever; why Johnny can't read; how you don't even know the very short history of your own country; what it takes to get you off your lazy asses.

It goes without saying that the vast majority of so-called conservatives fit this bill, but so do most mainstream Democratic voters. So you hated George W. Bush? Welcome to the club, but that doesn't mean you're not the same kind of slob, the same kind of drooling asshole. Nope, you are the same kind of asshole, quit fooling yourself.

Nader voters didn't spoil anything, it was assholes like you who think you can just pull a switch and everything's fine, fixed. History never, ever works that way, it's an endless struggle between the majority and concentrated power. There are no breaks in this, no respite, it's eternal, hence the term "eternal vigilance" coming from people like Thomas Jefferson and Paine, but not James Madison. Democracy isn't a microwaveable pizza. You spoiled the elections, not us. You should have voted for Ralph Nader, the best deal on-offer in the realm of third parties, since voting for Ron Paul is completely batshit crazy.

WHEN: why doesn't the right call Bernie Sanders a socialist?

WWW--Oh right, someone, somewhere, did. I don't care about those other obscure assholes, I mean some famous asshole like Glen Beck, Limbaugh, or the whole Lollipop Guild chiming-in--even skirt chasing Jack Burkman and his desire to...uh, his desire.

Goddamned if I ever thought I'd miss William F. Buckley Jr., but I do. Do they even know what a socialist is?

Buckley did, and even though he himself was prone to red-baiting and calling people who weren't communists communists, and all the other permutations, he tended to have a higher accuracy count. No, whatever isn't socialist is socialist to the "New Right," throwing their tantrums and having their own 1960s. Luckily, it's going to end about the same way for them: a dystopian move towards hard drugs (already there!), cults (ditto), and even disco (not quite there yet). This is more a matter of profound ignorance about virtually everything.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is an acknowledged philosophical socialist, like myself. But how often has anyone called him that? Name that person, I defy you. Best of luck!