For Lazy Readers, from 2012: When Fixers Get Book Deals that Flop

Ed.-Not even that long after Deborah Jeane Palfrey's body had cooled, the very class of people (who had worked in the same office as the scum who ran her to her death), Allison Leotta, who left her job to write her "big book," penned a fictionalization of the DC Madam case. Regardless of what she'd probably say about the case, one would have to assume it would always be fiction. But, hey, these are flush times for the people who serve the people who serve power. Or are they? And regardless of what most of them will say, they're not protecting you, unless of course it's an unforeseen side-effect. Then, they'll take all the credit in the world for it at the DOJ.

I don't serve anybody's fucking agenda.

This, presumably, being the Land of Opportunity for professional fixers--the people who wipe the congressional asses of eternal children with impulse control problems for a living--Leotta scored what I would never want or accept: a book deal with the rapidly sinking (good) publishing powerhouse Simon & Schuster. 

Thankfully, the book didn't go anywhere, so I hope she's saddled with all that debt I assume was in her standard contract under "recoupable losses," or whatever guarded language they & their attorneys hid it under. You see, the public, contrary to whatever they might say, hates the truth, so the lack of sales on her part was a little hard for me to fathom. However, being human, or facsimiles thereof, the American public will do anything they can to run away from stories with a bad ending--in Jeane's case, her death. This doesn't keep some of them from speculating about the case along flat-earther lines. How could it when our toxic culture produces concentrated radioactive irrationality as its greatest export?

When I found out about this stupid woman's piece of crap novel, I was outraged. Indeed, as in other cases, I found it important to counter her comments. So, as you can imagine, I posted comments online at some of the sites that were opening their doors to her (hey, don't they for everyone?) as though it were coordinated from the start since she wasn't giving away any secrets on endemic corruption anyway, just bullshit wrapped in...don't know, don't care.

And so, here's where it went: http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2012/06/former-ausa-allison-leotta-writes-novel.html

PS: There are no pictures in my book either, fuck you very much.

On blowing your own balls off to spite your heart...

This has been irking me for a very long time: felons, in most states in America, don't ever get to vote again, YET we're constantly electing them into public office. Not only is it wrong to keep people who have paid their debt to society from ever voting again--especially considering that having been incarcerated, they've seen the real face of this nation--it's also anti-democratic and unjust. It doesn't fix anything.

I have a theory, and I'm not alone: for the most part, we're still living in Massachusetts Bay colony. We're still an almost hopelessly puritanical nation and culture, and that means there can never be enough punishment. Even with wave-after-wave of immigration, and we're talking in the tens-of-millions of people of just about every culture, it persists. How is that? Why is that?

I think there's a simple and complicated explanation. While Americans like to think that there's always going to be another "new wave" of wealth in this nation, I think old money and (most importantly) aristocratic privilege still rules this country and will for the foreseeable future. The image of the noose-wielding puritan patriarch haunts the social landscape of America where Old Testament punishment rejects even the New Testament message of forgiveness. Forget about the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, that blew past a lot of people in this country, and especially the quasi-aristocratic wackos who rule over us. The fact is, they hate the everyman and woman and want to make the rest of us suffer, mostly for their own sins.

I don't claim to know what the solution to this is except to never stop fighting it in every way humanly possible. We should insist on everyone having the right to vote, frankly, and even for at least those who have served their sentences in the inhuman dungeons of America where even privatized slavery is making its return with the ever-encroaching war on drugs. The laws regarding prostitution made the outlines of this puritanical hypocrisy patently clear to me in the DC Madam case with a two women dead, and the men, the "Johns" (especially the rich ones), merely walking away from it, and without a scratch. My dislike for these rich men will be with me for the rest of our respective lives. Never mind the "average Joe" ones, they didn't really deserve the attention some of them got.

It's the self-appointed patriarchs that I will always take issue with...

On the Tea Party crowd and the tantrum throwing right generally

In reality, they're a tiny minority who don't truly matter, but the economic elites are having their little puppet show with their silly asses before the curtain closes on their mutual dumbshow. Fuck 'em. The economic elites and elements of the poor and working poor are some of the most dysfunctional people in our society and are dragging the rest of us down, it's a fact.

This doesn't fit into the accepted identity politics and victimology, but that's all a bunch of crap anyway. It's not politically correct to say or write it, but since when have I given a fuck? The Democrats? Are they even an opposition party at all? Is there any difference between them and the Republicans anymore?

No, there's hardly any difference these days, and everyone thinks they have all the answers while our rights are being rolled back. I mean, really, it's more important to argue and split-hairs about bullshit while the Supreme Court passes a ruling enabling corporations to spend whatever they want on candidates without us even being able to find out who donated that money, I know. Being right, is being right, and wrong. And, really, quit calling yourself part of "the left" when you don't even know what the fuck it means or where it's been, quit fooling yourselves.

Blame Chris Dodd, Wall Street insider: On the AIG controversy

Republican Senator Charles Grassley's comments that AIG executives who have been awarded $165 million in bonuses that come from government bailout funds (TARP) should return the money--or kill themselves--comes at a very interesting political moment:

Republicans, seeing that the Obama administration are as apathetic as they are about corporate accountability have found an opening-of-sorts and are doing their best to steal the coveted "Populist" outrage ball. This entails very real risks when one is engaged in the same behaviors. The Obama administration and many legal experts are saying that the contracts cannot be violated, that they're "airtight," and were made in the spring of last year. But contracts can be broken, and the federal government now owns 80% of AIG at this writing.

There's an interesting dynamic here of the dodge, and by all sides.

Most of the problems arising out of the bonus issue were the creation of the Bush II administration, just one-of-many gifts they left the American public and the Obama administration before leaving office. This could all have been avoided, and it appears that the new inhabitants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. have walked right into one of their bear-traps...and one created by Congress, generally.

From the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Title VII, Sec. III:

"(iii) The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009 [Ed.--My emphasis.], as such valid employment contracts are determined by the Secretary or the designee of the Secretary.

And who wrote these lines? According to Rawstory and the papers on the bill itself, it was Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), one of AIG's largest recipients of campaign donations in 2007 and 2008, and a former Goldman Sachs executive.

The AIG contracts-in-question were written in April of 2008, so you cannot say Dodd and his fellow Wall Street lobbyists aren't proactive in their corrupt and unethical practices. They even left a little clause in there so that the burden then rests with the Treasury Secretary, a kind of a catch-22 of throwing the ball to the executive branch.

Yet the new president signed the bill with this language still contained within it. He may not have had any real choice in the matter and was more-or-less blackmailed into accepting the stimulus package "as-is." As a matter of fact, these could be some of the very lines that were fought over behind the scenes and reported about widely, though without detail since there was little transparency in the negotiations. If so, little of this is Obama's fault at all, and the attacks and demands that he do something are little more than political theater and a way for the authors of this mess to avoid the real brunt of public outrage.

But then, there's the president's lack-of-enthusiasm for doing much about the bonuses or the questionable methods of expediting the bailouts and the creation of the stimulus package of which Dodd was a major party to.

To say that President Obama's outrage is more than a little too subdued over the bonuses during an economic crisis would be euphemistic, as evinced by his comments yesterday, but it's possible that he had no other choice but to accept this provision or get no stimulus deal at all. That should tell you all you need to know about most incumbents now sitting in Congress. Is there a game being played? Of course there is, and by all sides, it's poltics. My bet is that much of this was done to smear the president, frankly. It's all about avoiding responsibility, and the longer these kinds of shenanigans continue, the longer we're going to be in this crisis. So be it until we get real representatives. Trust: where is it?

The crisis could even deepen as a result when trust becomes a foregone conclusion, a casualty of some of the same practices that created this economic crisis in the first place.

The GOP are the kings of claiming that someone else has engaged in "political theater," just never them. Rational adults should understand that it's a hollow position in every rewspect, but the real danger is in representatives like Dodd. However, the public's outrage, the monkey-like flinging of dueling rhetoric, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's introduction of a bill that would recover most of the funds could bring a kind of a "fix" for the public since it's the squeeky-wheels that get oiled.

If you want to blame anyone, blame Congress--especially Republican incumbents and red dog Democrats like Dodd who have an identity crisis of their own. The time to clean house is coming up again next year's elections. If order hasn't eroded by that time, we might know what to do to repair and restructure a wrecked economy.

One thing's certain here: President Obama had better start reassessing who his real friends are in his own party, and fast, and begin sweeping the federal bureaucracy of all Bush II appointments. The public also needs to look very closely at the voting records and public behavior of those yelling the loudest in Congress over these bonuses and the need for reform. Trust--it's a hard thing to come by in Washington and on Wall Street, and it's going to be crucial to any kind of a recovery, but there's little reason for it these days from so-called leadership.

These clowns could be running themselves out of office sooner than you think, you watch. At the head of the list should be one Sen. Chris Dodd, former Goldman Sachs employee and still a lobbyist for Wall Street.

"Senate plans on introducing bill to claw back AIG bonuses," Rawstory, 03.17.2009: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Senate_plans_on_introducing_bill_to_0317.html

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Title VII: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009/Division_B/Title_VII

UK's Mathaba (who are they?) parrots "Palfrey was murdered" theory

Ed.--Never content to take things as they really are, Mathaba has joined the list of the over-credulous who contend that Deborah Jeane Palfrey (dubbed the "DC Madam" by the mainstream American press) was "murdered." Facts don't matter when holding this theory, and lots of other exculpatory evidence must be ignored when contending something as baseless as this.

Paranoia has gone from a form of consciousness to an almost mainstream subculture, also making it a consumer phenomena. Worthless. The link at the bottom leads to the original offender, the comments above it are my reply. I am uncertain whether it will be posted there or not.

Writer Diana Lee might be a great person, I have no idea, but her article isn't "great," "good," or even well researched. It's part of a new form of literature, sadly taken for fact. Put it on the shelf next to books on UFOs, Atlantis, and the Piltdown man being "real." Ten months of correspondence means something. Ten minutes on Google does not.

Two well known journalists I have had the pleasure of contacting have assured me that they also felt Palfrey was disturbed. Others are likely to concur. But didn't we all fail her? Yes, we did. We should have helped her, and I tried in my own way, but there was nothing to be done. She was intent on acquittal...or death.

"I would question the research in this piece, specifically on the point that the deceased Ms. Palfrey was "murdered," or "died under suspicious circumstances." For this to be possible, one has to very selectively assemble a conglomeration of statements she made to the press, sans context.

For example: some of these quotes of her fear dying suspiciously was usually found in the context of her going to prison and being found dead there. This is rarely ever reported, and I suspect, parsed out of the original interviews for being inconvenient and dissonant to the baseless theory that she was murdered. There's no evidence of this whatsoever.

As a matter of fact, having had a ten month correspondence with Ms. Palfrey until March 20, 2008, and having been a general defense researcher for her at her own request, I can say with reasonable authority that she was incredibly unbalanced mentally and that I held fears from my involvement with her from June 2007 until it ended in the spring of 2008. There was a real bombshell that she kept from her counsel, but sent to myself, a co-researcher, and journalist Jason Leopold on February 28th, 2008. I reprint it here, in-full:

'Jason… let’s put it like this, the bastards aren’t going to take me alive. Of course, anytime that you want to do an interview – I will make myself available. However, I doubt that I will be doing any interviews once I am in D.C., for the trial. –Best, Jeane'

There is other information that supports this, including statements she made to the mainstream American press. From spring of 2007 until the end, she was frequently making absolute statements that, "I'm not going back to prison, not one day," and, "The government isn't taking anything away from me."

Taken together with her 1992 conviction affidavit where she expressed suicidal wishes, the conditions under which her counsel Montgomery Blair Sibley was discharged (at the time, Jeane told me, "Things were said that cannot be taken back."), prosecutorial misconduct that could include not calling for a competency hearing when they knew they had a suicidal defendant, and other comments she made to me and others. This article is speculative-at-best in this area, and I would suggest in others by-implication. Do your research, look around.

Palfrey's greatest motive in killing herself was the abatement issue that also gets ignored by holders of this stupid theory that, "She were murdered." There is no solid evidence at this writing of this being the case, and I would suggest that Gary Webb was a career journalist who was dumb enough to care what his peers in his field thought of him, one of the main causes of his suicide."

Suspicious Deaths of Those Who Knew Too Much Under Bush's Watch: http://mathaba.net/news/index.shtml?AA_SL_Session=9e0f6d58b026cededc2fff62a2eb6e50&nocache=invalidate&sh_itm=e2180bbf199e454a54fab122f4a7301e&rXn=1#disc

Spanish Business Consortium "Grupo Santander SA" and leaser of Indiana Toll Road hit with losses in Madoff Ponzi scheme

Indiana--This is pretty hilarious. Grupo Santander SA, the 75-year leasers of a major Indiana Toll Road (US Highway 31) has taken a financial hit in the Madoff "Ponzi" scheme according to the AP:

A variety of investors have been identified as having lost money in the scam, including Spain's Grupo Santander SA, Britain's HSBC Holdings PLC and New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon. More victims emerged Tuesday, including Rye Investment Management, of Rye, N.Y., which lost $3.1 billion, almost all of its clients' funds, and Austria's Bank Medici, which had two funds with $2.1 billion (1.5 billion euros) invested with Madoff. ("SIPC chief: Madoff falsified books to hide losses," AP, 12.16.2008)

Sure, it breaks my black little heart that they might have to sell-off their share in our highway that was virtually sold by our current governor, Mitch Daniels.

Daniels was an economics adviser (budget director) to President George W. Bush in his first term of office from 2001-2003. Isn't our economy in great shape? In the elections--which he miraculously won--Daniels bragged widely that our state's budget had been saved by the sale of US 31 and his wondrous economic policies. He can't claim that now with our unemployment fund expended and Elkhart, Indiana having the highest unemployment rate for a city in the entire United States.

With no state money left for unemployment payments, he's had to go to the federal government for the funds.

Daniels has long-held the same views you would expect from the GOP: an over-emphasis on government deregulation, their fictional take on the "rules of the marketplace" (except for my backers, heh-heh), and as little social spending as humanly possible. Wait, it gets worse.

Daniels headed the ultra-right think tank, The Hudson Institute, which advocates radical deregulation and still says that the economy is working just fine. As you might have guessed, Daniels did his best to deregulate across the entirety of federal agencies through his control of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) and its head, John Graham.

Daniels considers himself an "outsider" in politics--like John McCain claimed after his 26 years in office. In a way, Daniels is right, he is an "outsider": it's reported that he received campaign contributions from DC Madam client Randall Tobias for his campaign this year, now a know whore-monger. Did he contribute to Daniels' campaign? He should have, he considers Daniels a "close friend." Well yeah, nepotism and the world of crony appointments is all about friendship.

It wouldn't be surprising if Eli Lilly handed the Daniels campaign plenty, but Bristol-Myers Squibb definitely did so--Daniels was a semi-competent business executive at Eli Lilly, just as Tobias was as its CEO. The ghost in the machine continues on, wreaking its havoc. It should be remembered that George H.W. Bush was once a board member of Eli Lilly and was remonstrated by the Supreme Court for illegal lobbying on their behalf while president. He ignored them.

Mitch Daniels: like Fred Thompson and Richard Nixon, he also appears to have been fashioned out of mud. This economic crisis is partly his fault. May it devour him and the rest like him.

"SIPC chief: Madoff falsified books to hide losses," AP, 12.16.2008: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081216/ap_on_bi_ge/madoff_scandal_records

http://mitchrealitycheck.com/

"Daddy wants to fuck," by The Uncredible Duke

Ed.--Good to see you back, Duke! Ladies, you can never be "one of the guys." We know it hurts, so just get over it, will ya? That's the point. Jesus. ;0)

Okay, so I promised to tell you this story. I hope it isn't too boring. This goes back to my days at Ball State University. I was always too smart for my own good, and not half as smart as I thought I was. I still am sometimes, but I'm trying a little harder to keep it in-check. I lived in an apartment with three other guys, and we were all very bohemian.

We wore black leather motorcycle jackets, even though none of us drove motorcycles. We were all intellectuals. But we were all sort of "bullyish" too. We didn't go around threatening people, but people THOUGHT we did. And we didn't really terrorize too many people, it was all just a pose, really. We were bullies in one respect: we were intellectual bullies. We were conversational bullies, if that makes any sense, and we loved to be shocking. We'd do things that would get reactions out of people.

So that's the first part of the story.

The next part is... I stopped buying text books about my third year of college. I was hitting the old man up of cash for text books one day, and he said, "I never had any of the books when I was in college. I just paid attention." And then I thought about it. The truth was, in my first two years of university, I had always BOUGHT the books. But, like Dad, I paid attention in class, and I never really used the books. (Note, I was a communications major, and liberal arts aren't all "facty" like science and medical fields), I had discovered that the Ball State Library had most of our textbooks in regular rotation, AND if you got there early enough you could just check the dang thing out for the semester. So I did this in classes which I absolutely needed the book. This leads us to...

Film Genres 301 (or some such) taught by Wes Goering. Goering was very odd. [Ed.--And he had an unfortunate last-name. Why do I think he was ugly as well?] In his late forties or early- fifties at the time. He had written a couple of books about the Marx Brothers, and he sort of resembled Groucho, but in a more Germanic sort of way. You would think he would be really wacky, but he was very very square. Or at least so eccentric as to come-off as being very square. A very "just the facts, ma'am." sort of professor, although he would utter a profanity from time to time. [Ed.--You gotta give him credit for this.]

Well, old Wes had produced and edited the textbook for Film Genres. He wrote the chapter on screwball comedies, and he had other people write the other chapters, but he was getting most of the cash. The college book stores sell used text-books, but only if they get permission from the author or a publisher. Guess who wouldn't give them permission? WES! AND it was the most expensive book I ever had for any of my classes. AND he made sure that the library's copy was reference-only and could not be checked out. [Ed.--I would have made 1,000-copies and distributed them to everyone with a pulse. Thank God for the internet--all I'm sayin.'] Whenever we would have a writing assignment, his only criticism of my work was always, "I would have liked to see more reference to the text." [Ed.--Right, HIS dumbass book. Why didn't this asshole marry himself?!] YEAH! Because I don't HAVE the text.

So we have to choose a film, and write a paper describing it the terms of a film genre. It didn't have to be something that was strictly, say, a western, or a horror. It just had to cross over into that genre enough for your analysis.

I chose to write about Blue Velvet, as a dark comedy. My paper was entitled "Daddy Wants to Fuck!" I got a C+, and got comments like "would've liked to see more from the text" and "I'm not really sure this fits."

I don't know if you've seen Blue Velvet. But it is somewhat disturbing. In fact, some find it very disturbing. It's...I guess you'd call it a psychological thriller. But here I was writing about how funny it is, throwing the f-word around fairly freely. I'm pretty certain Wes looked at me a little differently from then on. But I still think it's funny, especially the looks on the faces of my classmates when they saw the title of the paper I was turning in--AND the looks on their faces when they saw the graded paper returned. LOL

Why the financial institution bailouts don't matter

OpEd News--That Ukrainian-born Larisa Alexandrovna is doing more of her defeatist ranting over at Rob Kall's defeatist-o'-rama site this week, this time over the bailouts being "part of the plan." What plan would that be exactly?

What we're seeing the results of short-sighted economic-philosophies with the crashing of various banking and financial institutions. That's right, the business mentality transplanted into the halls of the federal bureaucracy once again, with the predictable results.

The pathetic-part of it all is how the public, investors, and the like are all massing around former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, current Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson, and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke as though they were Mesopotamian Priests, the guys "with the answers." All they have are short-term answers.

Just as in the 1920s, the Republicans and Democrats gave the business and lending sectors what they wanted, and the results have been predictable. How is this "a plan," when it's really about profoundly corrupt and ignorant businesspeople and politicians repeating history? You don't plan to do that, especially when you're repeating history to save an already dying power structure. It's semantics, word games.

In her editorial, "Welcome to the Final Stages of the Coup," Alexandrovna tells us what most of us already know about "the Business plot" from the 1930s when various members of Wall Street (including a Senator Prescott Bush, though behind the scenes) attempted to seize power by paying-off WWI veterans and military leaders to take Washington by force and to make a puppet of executive branch.

Sure, it's relevant to now...but?

Now, if you do not yet understand that the Wall Street crisis is a man-made disaster done through intentional deregulation and corruption, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell to you (or Sarah Palin does anyway). This manufactured crisis is now to be remedied, if the fiscal fascists get their way, with the total transfer of Congressional powers (the few that still remain) to the Executive Branch and the total transfer of public funds into corporate (via government as intermediary) hands. ("Welcome to the Final Stages of the Coup...," OpEd News, 09.20.2008)

Congress has done all of that willingly and now they're all just trying to survive this whole debacle politically, if not legally. It's just my opinion, but I think Alexandrovna's characterization of the bailout is wrong, and that what we have here is a system that--no matter which way it turns-out--has nowhere left to go except towards substantial reform or a collapse that would take the rest of the developed world with it. Sure, we're all being ripped-off. How is this new?

That's right, even Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Australia, Canada, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Libya, The European Union, the UK, all of it, all fall down as a result of an American economic collapse.

That's not Alexandrovna's take, however. For her, this is all going to work and it was all calculated and not a matter of gross-incompetence, negligence, greed, and short-sighted stupidity. That's a common misreading of American history that I believe will be proven wrong in the next few years. What we already know is that this was all facilitated by both parties in Congress, and that it comes out of a culture of corruption. Much of this is due to the inaction of the citizenry--the voting and non-voting public--though it took a lot of beating-down to get them to the point of apathy they now inhabit. Remember that for her argument to be true, the bailout has to "work," whatever that means. By-all-appearances, it's not going to work for very long, if at all.

What will all that bailout money be worth then? Why put worthless paper in an offshore account? Where will the guilty (the CEOs, bankers, lobbyists, the White House, and Congress) have to run? Nowhere, that's where, and that's why this is really about their survival, not a power-grab. Political and economic elites have had almost unchallenged power for decades domestically and on the world stage, just to bring Ms. Alexandrovna up-to-date.

Alexandrovna and others contend that this all puts more power into the hands of the executive branch than ever before. Sound familiar? That's exactly what was being yelled from the mountaintops when FDR was "handed" unprecedented power to intervene in the economy during the Great Depression, but holders of the "coup" viewpoint ignore the fact that these are very real emergency measures done out of desperation, albeit advocated and authored by those who created the current "man-made" economic-mess.

The administration proposal would be the biggest government intervention since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It would dole out huge sums of money to financial firms to purchase their holdings of bad mortgage-backed securities so that these firms can resume normal lending operations. The bad mortgage debt has been at the heart of the current credit crisis which hit more than a year ago but erupted with special ferocity in the past two weeks forcing extraordinary government actions.

Two weeks ago, the government seized control of the nation's two largest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and then last week, it took control of the country's largest insurance company, American International Group Inc.

The measure that the administration sent up to Congress on Saturday is a mere three pages in length. ("Paulson resists calls for added help in bailout," AP , 09.21.2008)

And this is all great as well--create a situation where the runaway borrowing can commence again, unhindered. How long can that last? Not very long, because it was borrowing that got us into the mess we're in right now. Admittedly, economics is a quicksilver that often eludes the understanding of the brightest among us, though this writer contends that nobody truly understands its real machinations due to the limitations of human perception and comprehension. That's right, the rest is bullshit and polish.

While it's true that Ms. Alexandrovna was raised much of her life in the United States, she should understand that our history isn't the Ukraine's. Are there troubling-aspects in America's history that tend towards violence? Yes, but not that of Europe or Asia's tendencies towards outright bloodbaths. That's not to say that it "can't happen here"...

Alexandrovna and others should look to the period that led to the collapse of Tsarist Russia for some answers: this is what happens when a system is ending, when it is collapsing. There is repression. There are police state measures passed. Rights become tenuous and are rolled-back, and then, after a time, it ends and things tend to quiet down and "normalize" as much as they can and a new order emerges. Without a sincere solidarity and restraint, you get the Soviet Union, you get tyranny. Sometimes they occur regardless of what we do.

Yet these systems inevitably end, and nobody can do anything about this. But we have options as players on the historical stage. The shape of future orders is determined by how we act now and when things begin falling-apart. Strong-relationships are the glue of any viable society. Go make a friend, a real friend. It will be up to the American public to decide whether we end-up with chaos or community. Resorting to senseless and wanton violence will never build a better society. We have to use our heads and do what's constructive. That doesn't rule-out self-defense against repression.

I don't personally believe that there was some kind of a real "master plan" here--that's overestimating the intelligence of the members of the Bush administration and their allies, famous for their delusions of adequacy. No, they're corrupt and they and the interests they represent would have sank-into-oblivion sooner rather than later without their war on terror and their bizarre economic policies.

What we have are hollow economic arguments hitting-up-against cold, hard reality, it's that simple. They aren't alone in failed-theories and constructs, as we have creatures like Alex Jones and Larisa Alexandrovna telling us that all is lost. What's really happening is that the obvious limitations of their own theories and historical perspectives have also played-out, just as those of the neoconservatives. What will they all do without each other when a coin needs two-sides? At best, all these so-called "progressives" accomplish is the demoralization of the rest of us into either a wild panic or an apathetic resignation to the great events of our time when they should be making constructive suggestions as to what to do next. That's exactly what the powerful want, and it's time for Americans to start thinking for themselves, my own humble suggestion.

The sky is falling, but it doesn't have to mean a total catastrophe. That's up to us within certain parameters. If handled with a cool resolve, constructive-thinking and action, and a dedication to cherished values of friendship and solidarity, it could mean a very real move towards democracy unlike ever before witness in human history. The opportunities are there, and they're being missed and/or ignored by the likes of everyone from the totally irresponsible Alex Jones to the sad Larisa Alexandrovna.

Believe in yourselves, think before you act, and do what's right for yourself, your families, and your country. There's no reason to stop there--people throughout the world need a better life, and they're out there waiting to take our hands as brothers and sisters in troubled times. Friends are everywhere, but beware, and use your head. Alexandrovna strikes me as a would-be power broker who fears the voice of the people. She can speak for herself and leave the rest of us out of it.

"Welcome to the Final Stages of the Coup...," OpEd News, 09.20.2008: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Welcome-to-the-final-stage-by-Larisa-Alexandrovn-080920-541.html

"Paulson resists calls for added help in bailout," AP, 09.21.2008: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20080921/48d5c6c0_3421_1334520080921173871715

Will we see Katrina II?

The Gulf Coast--I doubt it, there's too much to lose, but never count the GOP out for screw-ups, incompetence, and indifference for the lives of other Americans. But nature is going to do her do, whether we like it or not. This is comforting.

And isn't it lovely? Isn't it wonderful that Gloria Vanderbilt's love child Anderson Cooper is down in New Orleans, readied to report rumor-as-fact again so he can get another promotion to support his materialistic lifestyle? Who said good things don't come out of disasters? They were lying, but we're used to that here.

And isn't it comforting to know that no substantial upgrades or changes have been made to the levee system in New Orleans? Can you feel it? Can you feel that American can-do spirit? I sure can, and I love it, I feel proud!!

And imagine all of the would-be documentarians out there with their HD video-cameras, poised to record more of the disintegration of America, and maybe not making a truckload of money like the producers and distributors who sell the cable rights and the DVDs, mind you, but having something kick-ass on their infotainment and McBlogger™ resumes?

No, it's a great time to be an American, especially if you have those really big-stilts and those boots to walk over the top of the wreckage. Harry Shearer, I share your angst.

Yes, there's a spirit in the air, alright...and it's time to call-in an exorcist, pronto, shit!

[Ed.--Some jackass commenter named "Anonymous" has suggested that I'm being "untruthful" in calling Cooper Gloria Vanderbilt's "love child," that he was actually born in-wedlock...as though I care about such trivialities. Right, he was born in-wedlock, but he's still a stupid, over-ambitious moronic bastard. Big deal.]

"Bigfoot Global LLC."

Atlanta, Georgia--When I was around 7-years-old, I saw one of these examples of pure hokum: it was an allegedly "bigfoot" frozen in a block of ice. Predictably, you could barely see any features of what was inside the block, and the owners of the artifact were refusing to let any real scientists near it.

The vendors had merchandise and the viewing fee was stiff. It was the 1970s. You would think that after all the debunkings over the last 30 years it would scare-off the gullible, but we're an ignorant culture, so it's go-time. Add to that the hopelessness of this era, and you have some craning-necks. Besides, isn't it looking like the 1970s again anyway? OK, without Hans Holzer and Leonard Nimoy and "In Search Of," but the cruddy History Channel covers that gap.

All we're seeing today are some photographs of what is either the carcass of an monkey, or a very cheesy ape suit. The orangey-haired creature looks an awful lot like an orangutan.

There's a reason: it's utter bullshit, though it could be a distant relation of late President Gerald Ford.

These bozos from Georgia regularly suck money from the gullible, taking them out on "bigfoot expeditions," and somehow have concocted this newest scam...except someone whom I now love hacked into their site this last week and stole some of the unconvincing photographic scans and published them wide over the internet. So, the bozos from Georgia (not the nation) had to hold their worthless press conference today, and astonishingly, Obama accuser Larry Sinclair was nowhere in sight.

CNN and other television news outlets (and all of the rest) have given this story about as much time and credence as the Russian incursion into the breakaway nation of Georgia. That should tell you how much credibility they have.

As far as I can tell, absolutely no major media outlet has commented on how obviously craven and exploitative this bigfoot venture is, but if you look at all of the information, "Bigfoot Global LLC." should have raised some alarms that this is nothing but a scam for money. The media's often difficult position is that they're the same kind of creature--a genus know for its lowliness and guile, as well as an overdeveloped lust for money and privilege.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Reserve aren't taking it seriously, which should also tell you something. "The most trusted name in news?" I've never trusted or respected CNN, and neither should anyone else for that matter. Our press is a shambles, but that's nothing new. You don't need a 24/7 news network, not at all. They need to all get a real job, whatever that is these days. Besides, there is no Easter Bunny on all stations of the Cross. Get a clue.

CONGRESS DECIDES TO SELF-DESTRUCT WITH BUSH PRESIDENCY: ON NON-BINDING RESOLUTIONS AND SUPERFICIAL TALK FROM JOE DONNELLY, ET. AL.

"The American people have lost faith in President Bush's course of action in Iraq and they are demanding a new direction."
--House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today (AP, 02.13.2007)

"I haven't decided yet."
--Joe Donnelly killing his own political future.

WASHINGTON D.C.--Like Athenian democracy, Congress has decided to shoot itself in the foot with non-binding resolutions. Thinking that this is going to make the public forget that many incumbents and presidential candidates voted for the authorization for the use of force in Iraq, they've deluded themselves as most corrupt individuals do.

Worse still, the public shares some of the blame in allowing the vote to occur at all with nary a fight. It's true, once again, those of us on the real Left had to do this, and few wanted to listen. We can blame George W. Bush as much as we want, but we're in Iraq because we want cheap-gasoline, and because we weren't civically active, let-alone responsible. That's right, it's not just the Bush administration, it's collective-guilt. That guilt is being acted-out--pathetically--in our House of Representatives right now.

But, if you look at the prewar statistics, over 50% of the public was against going in if the conflict was a prolonged one. This is why there was no postwar planning, and such low troop-levels in the aftermath--to do so would have altered the public to the fact that this would inevitably be prolonged based on the plans of PNAC and neocons within the Bush administration. A cabal. But it was an above-ground one that everyone knew about, tolerated it, and allowed it to flourish and hijack our political system. Only radical reform can undo the damage that was allowed by political elites who only view democracy as a means for their own advancement as politicians.

The public deserves this out, but was too-easily deceived to be safe. The GOP seems to be totally committed to self-destruction in their blocking-measures, and their tepid bills that merely allow the Bush administration a continued blank-check:

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), that _
(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and (2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.(AP,02.13.2007)

Mainstream Democrats--reluctantly emboldened by the November midterms that gave them a congressional majority--only seem willing to support non-binding resolutions (not binding as law). Vice President Cheney has stated on CNN that "it won't stop us." This war will be four-years-old in March, and the political-cost will only continue to escalate.
The Bush administration's response to the bills (besides Cheney's): support the troops, the old broken-record we've been hearing for four-years, yet another underscoring of the Bush administration's inherent contempt for the rule of law and democracy. Some congressional GOP incumbents attempted to bring-up the ghost of Vietnam and the disdain most of the public had for returning-troops--save the crocodile tears, wimps:

It was the first debate about the war in either house of Congress since November's midterm elections, when public opposition to the conflict helped power Democrats to control of the House and Senate. Bush's decision last month to deploy an additional 21,500 troops to help stop sectarian violence has quickly become a flashpoint for critics of the war in Congress. There are currently about 141,000 American troops in Iraq and 27,000 in Afghanistan. The nonbinding measure states simply that the House "will continue to support and protect" troops serving in Iraq but that it "disapproves" of the troop buildup. (AP, 02.13.2007)

So, all it does is attempt to apply pressure to an administration that has never made any bones about kicking decorum to-the-curb. The war will continue, and thousands of Iraqis will be murdered by this ongoing-policy. This inaction makes all members of Congress who do not aggressively-oppose this administration fellow travels--war criminals. During a pause in the debate, Republican congressman Charles Norwood was eulogized.
Nobody was salivating over it since the GOP has no-chance of a majority in the House at present, and received a page-nine treatment (in stark-contrast to the stroke of Democratic Senator, Tim Johnson).The AP reports that, "Norwood was part of the Republican wave that took control of Congress in 1994." (AP, 02.13.2007) My, my, if only most Americans got the health coverage he did.

Amazingly, our own Joe Donnelly (here in the 2nd District of Indiana) was interviewed by AP, and had some disappointing things to say:

"The most important part of this to me is standing up for the troops and making sure we have full funding for them," Donnelly said Tuesday, after a weekend meeting with veterans' groups and constituents back home in his conservative north-central Indiana district. "I haven't made up my mind yet." The concerns of members like Donnelly are behind Democrats' strategy for this week's Iraq debate, which was carefully calibrated to bar votes on a GOP alternative that could expose a potentially messy divide within Democratic ranks over whether to cut off or restrict funding for troops on the ground. (AP, 02.13.2007)

A Hint to Joe: if you want to remain in Congress, you had better back defunding this war now. The majority of the public backs this measure, and yet you and the rest of the Democratic mainstream will not even pen a binding-resolution to halt any more troop-escalations.

You and I know this will mushroom into a military disaster, and that your real option is to defund the occupation, giving funds that mandate a demobilization. It doesn't bother me--or anyone except the GOP--that they've been relegated back to minority-status, and barred from watering-down an already watery-bill with their stupid amendments. They should shut up and accept their status.

The AP is siding with the GOP on this one, while they essentially ignored the shutting-out of the Democratic minority during the four-year GOP-majority. Frequently, they ignored the Democrats altogether, barely giving them the ink that the GOP-minority affords today.

This is because most of the mainstream media and the Republican Party are allied through an unconstitutional concentration of media ownership authored and engineered by the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton administrations and Congress. A situation like this that crosses party-lines, done with premeditation over decades, can only emerge from the culture of a class of people.

That would be America's ruling-class and her functionaries in the media, academia, and the other various professions that service them. There is no GOP alternative for Iraq, it will just be more-of-the-same, which is what they're always going to be about.

AP on the Debate: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070213/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq_27;_ylt=AspApysA5fArp38emfb7OheGbToC

"Democrats Bar GOP Alternative on Iraq":
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070213/ap_on_go_co/democrats_iraq;_ylt=AmIL_vNRpZiVwOAkDwTq3m2MwfIE

Text of the Resolution ("Bad boy, you stop!") :
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Feb12/0,4670,USIraqResolutionText,00.html