Upcoming Book Contest & Other issues from the flesh

I haven’t worked out all of the particulars yet, but I’ve set aside a few copies of the book for later. As you might have expected, I’m not making the parameters effortless, or easy for the contest. There will be a few hoops, but the winners will receive a free signed (as opposed to singed, what some of Palfrey’s former clients probably want) copy of the book, and my blessing, the latter of which means absolutely nothing whatsoever. Anyone capable of proving the DC Madam doesn’t need anything from me, not that I think that’s ever going to happen, like Jesus returning, nutty, crazy primitive-minded shit like that.

We’re only in the first week of the release of the book and I’ve already brushed up against more high weirdness. This brings me to other matters…

As a result of these little elves, pixies, and gremlins flitting about me yob, I’m going to make things crystal clear: I will not continue to live this nuttiness surrounding the Palfrey case and narrative. I am turning my back on it with the completion of this text. I will be more than happy to answer any serious questions. However, I don’t want to hear your gossiping about people who were part of or related to the case itself. Any logical corrections that can be proven/corroborated (your job, not mine) will be appreciated and noted. I don’t give a shit anymore about the story and owe nobody nothing regarding the DC Madam. That responsibility was discharged writing the book.

My role in this is over, done, unless there’s some burning reason otherwise. If you have questions, ask the book first, consult it. This isn’t to slam anyone with good intentions. I will discuss the case and am open to interviews. However, I’m not tolerating any bullshit, and it’s literally no effort for me to ignore you, the easiest thing in the world in fact. This isn’t my usual jokiness, it’s dead serious. If you don’t get it, I don’t care, but you’re going to be humiliated twice, first by yourself, then by me, and I will air it publicly naming names.

Anyone I’ve communicated with recently has nothing to worry about. The book is the best bargain the American public are likely to have for some time. You’re most welcome. Witche, ye haave been foun' guilty 'a commerce with thee Devile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ladies,

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

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

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

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

yours in Christ, Matt Janovic

Arlen Specter's Town Hall and the articulate, gesticulating chick in the blue shirt

Lebanon, Pennsylvania--A very well-spoken woman, I must say. One might be mistaken in thinking that she was the ringleader of all the jackapes yelling at Senator Specter, but certainly not their paymaster.

Here's some problems:

--She went out of her way to state that she was 35 since--let's be honest--most of the morons yelling and violating other people's right to speak (a clear violation of the First Amendment, meaning it's OK to drag them out) are old fools. Not many young people...OK, virtually no young people at all...

--She stated that, "This isn't about TARP [right, why would the right-wing care when the people sending them there benefited from it?]...this isn't a left-right issue...I don't want my country turning into Russia [sure about that one?]," and a bunch of other inane comments about "dismantling our country" that aren't worthy of repeating.

--She and the other jackapes engaging in political theater for the benefit of the health care trusts have no concept of the social contract (look it up), so Arlen Specter, yes, Arlen Specter, had to explain it to them like the overweight schoolchildren that they are.

The main problem was that she was most certainly a handpicked activist/actress put there to appeal to a specific demographic of stupid American woman--reactionary, greedy, narrow-minded ones. You know, Kate Gosselin, that flaming shrew extraordinaire, part of the minority of 30% who don't want socialized medicine, and "you're just jealous." No, I'm not. We're not. Happy? I don't think so, and it's obvious. Her point-of-view is most definitely to the far right of the political spectrum when put up against public opinion, but she shares this with many politicians currently holding office.

How many times does it have to be repeated? A firm, unmovable 70% of the American public strongly desires socialized medicine, like a Medicare program for everyone. You know, that program that dirty hospitals, doctors, and all the rest like ripping-off whenever they can because free enterprise doesn't need to be regulated, and other unicorns and animals that couldn't fit on Noah's Ark.

One old moron in the audience really put it well, though: "I don't think we have bad attitudes, we're just being Americans." Yes, retarded ones, and yes again, this isn't about left or right, it's about what the public really wants, meaning socialized medicine. And this means these people are hardly representative of the public by any stretch of the imagination. But keep yammering, I'd love to see the crappy bill (as opposed to H.R. 676, the real deal) that the Obama administration, Big Pharma, the insurance companies, and the best Congress money can buy, are trying to float through.

Even if they do, it's just going to keep wrecking the economy with the cost.

A bolder contention: the entire thing is a sham, these town hall meetings are nothing but political theater, and there are no real "sides" being represented, certainly not the public one. How could it be with all the shouting? Now you know the whole point of this charade, this Shibboleth. Hey, you could be easily forgiven in thinking Billy Mays was still alive-and-snorting...

Postscript, 08.14.2009: The woman at the Specter town hall was Katy Abram. She was recently taken to task on MSNBC with a little rundown on it here (hit the link below) at Crooks & Liars. (http://crooksandliars.com/logan-murphy/hardball-town-hall-protester-exposed). Of course she's ill-informed. But I'm sure someone put this pushy monkey up to it...

Purple Mays, all in my brain...

WWW--You know, who woulda thunk? Me. Millions who aren't pathetically naive. Billy Mays, a not-a-man who was a carnival barker for fifteen years of his unnatural life, and who hawked a bunch of products I'm not going to mention, was a coke-head. Well, duh.

Far be from me not to speak ill of the dead. This one's worthy of it. And besides: he's dead Jim, he can't feel anything, just like most of corporate America and Wall Street, hence the need for all the coke, hookers, amphetamines, alcohol (sorry, they don't make ludes anymore in America, but that's not good fuel for these folks), and whatever other addictions can fill that gaping-hole in their souls.

When did it all start, and who cares? For over fifteen years, this not-a-man has yelled at me and America, blaring his inanities to sell crap nobody ever wanted or need for rich asshole investors to...get richer. No, I don't think that's a good thing, nope. Again, I'm obviously "just jealous," so please bear with me...

It's doubtful that the autopsy report's going to be impeached--ever--even if someone gets sued or bribed to do it, we now know he had metabolites of cocaine in his system, it's out. Science can be a tad tenacious like that, as seen on TV. Yet, his family and backers are scared shitless about the stiff's image, making statements that contradict--I don't know--a valid autopsy report by the accredited and licensed Hillsborough County medical examiner? You know, a mean guy, so he's probably just doing his job and was just telling us the truth, so money is surely at-stake somewhere in all of this.

"We were totally unaware of any non-prescription drug usage and are actively considering an independent evaluation of the autopsy results," Mays' family said in a statement.

The statement said the family was "extremely disappointed" by the release of the information by the medical examiner's office. The report "contains speculative conclusions that are frankly unnecessary and tend to obscure the conclusion that Billy suffered from chronic, untreated hypertension, which only demonstrates how important it is to regularly monitor one's health."...

Longtime friend and colleague AJ Khubani, founder and CEO of the "As Seen on TV" product company Telebrands, said Mays never exhibited any signs of drug use and was always prepared for his many commercial [sic] shoots.

"I'm just shocked," Khubani said. "He was the model of a responsible citizen." ("Autopsy: Cocaine contributed to Billy Mays' death, AP, 08.07.2009)

Mmmm-hm. Life's full of disappointments, or didn't you get the memo? I know I did. Hey, if I was all coked-up, I'd be "prepared"most of the time too, locked-and-loaded, baby. Mr. Khubani: define what a "model" and responsible citizen is for me some time. I'm assuming it means making you rich(er).

No, I would never think that someone yelling at the top of their lungs showing absurd and abnormal degrees of stamina for the majority of his adult life was taking stimulants, no. Considering that the examiner has listed cocaine as a "contributor" (no, not that kind, silly) to his death (make more sense now?), that he did cocaine just a few days before his departure from this dimension, and the fact that his head appeared poised for explosion since the public first heard of him from all that yelling, I'd say he was at least using the drug off-and-on much of his life. You could say he was probably driven to it, but that he was wrong-headed appears pretty obvious to these eyes and ear, and these ears are still ringing.

Whether he abused the drug is another story, but clearly the man had lifestyle problems. Mays' family made a public statement:

We are extremely disappointed by the press release released by the Hillsborough County medical examiner's office. We believe it contains speculative conclusions that are frankly unnecessary and tend to obscure the conclusion that Billy suffered from chronic, untreated hypertension, which only demonstrates how important it is to regularly monitor one's health.

Given the hectic nature and pace of Billy's life, especially during the past 10 months of his exhaustive travel across the country, it was not surprising to hear that hypertension was the cause of his death.

We were totally unaware of any non prescription drug usage and are actively considering an independent evaluation of the autopsy results. As those who were close to Billy knew, he had been in chronic pain for more than two years and was about to have his third hip surgery in 18 months.

His use of prescription pain medication for his hip condition was guided by his physician and was at recommended usage levels. This has been a very difficult period for our family and we appreciate the respect for our privacy that Billy's many clients, fans and members of the media have extended.

We appreciate your continued thoughts and prayers for the family and will not have any immediate comment beyond this statement.

If you think that I don't pity Mays and his family or mourn him, you're sadly mistaken, I do. The bastards that made a mountain of money (and concomitantly polluted our minds, bodies, and our world, and still are right now) took this poor little man--this barker--and used him up until there was no more to take. Now he is gone, and the madness continues on, but for how long? Until they've made our world uninhabitable.

So, it's not that I hated Billy Mays the man, it's that I hated the image he had to project out there at-the-behest of a bunch of evil businesspeople and investors. Bearing witness to his death is almost like watching the statues falling in the former Soviet Union: Crash, crash, crash. Watch the Shibboleths fall, one-by-one. Historians say that the late Richard M. Nixon was a barker for the gambling-tents during the Great Depression. Makes sense.

"Autopsy report: Cocaine use contributed to death of Billy Mays," 10 Connects.com, 08.07.2009: http://www.wtsp.com/news/mostpop/story.aspx?storyid=111143&provider=top

"Report of Diagnosis and Autopsy on William Darrell Mays, File 09.04082," Hillsborough County, Florida, Medical Examiner Department, conducted 06.29.2009: http://download.gannett.edgesuite.net/wtsp/pdfs/2009/mays-autopsy.pdf

"Toxicology Report, Mays, William Darrell ... ," 07.27.2009: http://download.gannett.edgesuite.net/wtsp/pdfs/2009/mays-toxicology.pdf

Winner of the "Oops! I Spoke Too Soon!" Award, Dr. Francis Fukuyama

"The distant origins of the present volume lie in an article entitled “The End of History?” which I wrote for the journal The National Interest in the summer of 1989. In it, I argued that a remarkable consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal democracy as a system of government had emerged throughout the world over the past few years, as it conquered rival ideologies like hereditary monarchy, fascism, and most recently communism. More than that, however, I argued that liberal democracy may constitute the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and the “final form of human government,” and as such constituted the “end of history.” That is, while earlier forms of government were characterized by grave defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, liberal democracy was arguably free from such fundamental internal contradictions" --Dr. Francis Fukuyama, in his introduction to his book, The End of History and the Last Man, 1992.

Yes, what a moron he was and is, but that's a given. Fukuyama's been spreading the love since 1992. Would he really know democracy if it bit him?

But even at that time, it was becoming obvious through developments of the successful Zapatista uprising, the subsequent rise of the "anti-globalization movement," the "Battle for Seattle," the rise of an unending proactive antiwar movement, new forms of resistance and theory arising throughout the globe to neoliberalism (notably in South America in the last decade where it has been rejected almost entirely), and so on, that Professor Fukuyama couldn't have been more wrong. He still is wrong, as is his wont, and he isn't going to be satisfied until he has no reputation left but that of a laughingstock. Mission accomplished--time to retire along with George Lucas.

Fukuyama was defending himself even when his book version of The End of History was released, with the author even going as far as to use Marx and Hegel as a shield in the above introduction. That they posited some "end-point" to human social and political evolution--the evolution of ideology--is well known. On this point, he's correct, and he shold have enjoyed being right, at least for once. Yet, Marx and Hegel were never so brazen, ignorant or insolent as to claim when that end-point time would actually come, and it's clear from their writings that it would probably take centuries, if not millennia. Never mind all that: someone's paying the bills, and it's good business to agree with oneself.

No, Marx and Hegel weren't being paid by a bunch of rich capitalists (although the factory owning Engels could fit into that category, he was headed in another direction...) to be one of the shrill voices during the fall of a global power (the Soviet Union) lauding the invincibility of another global player (American style economics, themselves). People like Limbaugh, Gingrich, and Fukumaya were drunk on their short-lived "victory" over the ending of the Cold War and their plans to take Capitol Hill "permanently," if not the White House. Sober minds in the Kremlin warned, ominously, that the United States would fall as a power after the Soviet system. They were right, and now we find ourselves where they were twenty years ago: Afghanistan. The warning signs have been flashing for decades, but never so brightly as now. But power is tone deaf.

As should be common currency by now, power corrupts, and that was the voice speaking from the well-fed yob of Fukuyama back in the 1980s-90s. His utterances in the present historical moment don't show any sign that he, his class (academic historians of all sorts), or those he serves, have lost any of their lust for power for its own sake. That he's looking like even more of an ribald ass now than he did at the time of 9/11 is a given. When you don't have the truth on your side, you resort to jargon and jingoism, and that's about all that Fukuyama and the so-called conservative side of the fence ever had besides the willingness to use barbarous violence to impose neoliberal/Reaganist capitalism on the rest of the world. You lie, rhetorically, throwing out the words "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality," and other myths regarding our way of life.

What does any of that have to do with "liberal democracy"? Nothing, it's just rhetoric on their part, and the new president surely shares many of their assumptions. But things have changed.

Now that America's dominance is slipping--most importantly, on the economic side--it appears that history is far from over, not even by a longshot. At best, Fukuyama's writings on whether the historical development of ideologies have ended are political-philosophical tracts written by a conservative hack on the payroll. In the future--if we're left with one thanks to people like them--they'll make for a very humorous read.

If you've actually ever read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, you know that one of the central tenets of the book is that all nations have their time at the top, but that history deems there is a time when that dominance ends economically. Contrary to what many are saying, America doesn't have to suffer under this cycle--quite the contrary. Without all the unnecessary expenditures revolving around an empire, the average American will have lifted a very heavy lodestone from their neck. As a result of the ending of empire, illegitimate control over their lives by domestic elites will be severely weakened. The power structure in America is under serious threat, caused by their own hand.

What comes next is the groundswell of people demanding a better life, which isn't always a pretty or even tidy affair.

This is why we saw the passing of so much repressive legislation under Bush II and why most of it isn't going away anytime soon. Far from being a "coup," American elites are doing their best to hold onto power, and castles have a dramatic way of falling (watch your heads). History is over? Tell that to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and tell it to the average American solidier or military contractor on the ground. They might point to the dead and ask, "What's that?" Dr. Fukuyama should be taken on a tour of our torture and rendition facilities to ask inmates whether they think "history has ended," and he might also take a tour of South America today and ask the leaders of those nations whether they think history has ended.

He isn't likely to get a positive answer, but probably more than a few laughs at his expense again. Laughter is the summation of his legacy. Fukuyama realized this--belatedly--in his boring and lie-ridden October 4th, 2008 oped piece titled, "The End of America Inc.":

All this suggests that the Reagan era should have ended some time ago. It didn't partly because the Democratic Party failed to come up with convincing candidates and arguments, but also because of a particular aspect of America that makes our country very different from Europe. There, less-educated, working-class citizens vote reliably for socialist, communist and other left-learning parties, based on their economic interests. In the United States, they can swing either left or right. They were part of Roosevelt's grand Democratic coalition during the New Deal, a coalition that held through Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in the 1960s. But they started voting Republican during the Nixon and Reagan years, swung to Clinton in the 1990s, and returned to the Republican fold under George W. Bush. When they vote Republican, it's because cultural issues like religion, patriotism, family values and gun ownership trump economic ones. ("The End of America Inc.," Newsweek, 10.04.2008)

In other words, the right has used cultural flashpoints as phony issues to sway a healthy chunk of American workers away from servicing their own economic and political interests. Europeans tend towards the left because of centuries of struggle by the average person, two devastating world wars that made it clear that a lasting peace could only come through social justice, better educational systems and traditional systems and networks of resistance that have no analog in the US, and because there was an incredible loss of faith coming from the fall of the traditional monarchies after the wars of the 20th century. America has experienced little of this, partly due to how young it is as a nation. If it's broken, don't fix it.

Like America's business class, the Monarchies had used religion as a weapon to control the masses, and they fell. Again, America doesn't have the same historical experiences, but these things have a way of playing-out similarly, these all being human systems of social organization rather than ones from Mars or Jupiter. Once the Monarchies were delegitimized, religion fell into disfavor throughout many parts of the European Continent. It's quite possible that the same could happen here, and for similar reasons.

In the 1980s and 1990s, it was the job of people like Dr. Fukuyama to drive people away from working towards their own interests by deceiving them with false invocations of patriotism, religion, "family values," and sundry other Shibboleths. That no longer works when the system crashes under its own in-built paradoxes, and the public correctly moves towards the left (or, more accurately, away from authoritarian thinking) because it's natural to do so in the "correction" part of this historical cycle. If there are no corrections, there is no recovery, a word to the wise who are wishing very vocally that President Obama's economic stimulus plan fails--then what?

Ultimately, the only thing Fukuyama could do in the fall of 2008 was to finally start covering his ass, and to do it as substantially as he could manage. How sweet it was of Newsweek to pay him for his services rendered. He might want to convert it into non-perishable foodstuffs and gold. Do he and his ilk really believe in anything at all besides power? Unfortunately, yes. We might find that at the heart of Reaganism there always contained more than a hint of the death wish and nihilism, especially when power isn't achieved, is under serious threat, or is lost altogether. False conservativism's implicit logic can be found in the writings of Dr. Fukuyama, a logic that offers no future at all.

"The End of America Inc.," Newsweek, 10.04.2008:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/162401/page/1

Conspiracy LLC.™

WWW--This is likely to be the last thing I'm going to write about this species of bottom feeder (no, not Bill Bastone, another fish-to-fowl). The vast majority of these people who write on so-called "conspiracies" tend to be completely off--not just in their contentions, but in their minds. Many of them and their readers are--flatly-put--mentally ill individuals who are so messed-up that they created a new religion.

Their writings will never accomplish much of anything substantial, except diverting people's attention from what really needs to be done to change things. They will never spawn a real or constructive political movement with any real results. What they accomplish is to demoralize people, making genuine social and political problems into a mythology of hopelessness and demoralization. Some of them are definitely on the payroll of the FBI, the CIA, and other aspects of the intelligence community, either as assets or as operatives, just as some journalists are.

That they're pathetic is a given. LavaCocktail's Jay Beldo summed it best for me today: "Conspiracy itself has become a bottom line commodity no different than I-Pods or Nike tennis shoes, sold by various fear/profit mongers." Yes, the primary motive here is sales, primarily of books, but also mugs, t-shirts, DVDs, CDs, and other worthless collectibles for the desperate. How is this any different from fundamentalist Christian hucksters? It isn't. I like Jay, he gets it. He understands we have to keep our minds positive and clear, and we have our own paths to take. I recommend his website highly.

Sure, Alex Constantine will probably try to bait me on this again, but rest assured that he and others have got their work cut-out for them. There was no defamation on my part, I wasn't the one who yelled "liar" over and over again on my site. My right to the opinion that Constantine and his ilk are pricks, bastards, assholes, morons, and scum, is secure in the First amendement. It's also my opinion that these arch-conservative turds have very little respect for the right to free speech, unless it applies to them. The Bolsheviks and German National Socialists held the same attitudes.

The silver-lining of the economic crisis: the death of the management class

The Tomb of Frederick Taylor--You can't feel sorry for them. They've worn the brown-lipstick, they've kissed-up, and they've done their best to ensure that American workers have no say in hows and the whys of production or what a business delivers as a product or a service. Why ask the people on the ground?

No, they won't listen to anyone but ownership, and often, they won't even do that, amazing as it sounds. This is why they're all going to be kicked out soon. Apparently, corporations aren't "immortal entities" after all. "Management" is just another word for "overseer" when it comes down to it.

Watching this particular species of social animal croak is a delight, the height of schadenfreude. Any American who's worked under a tyrannical boss knows these bastards for what they are: pea-brained roadblocks to fairness and innovation in the workplace. The most any of them have accomplished is dividing the social bonds between people and running the institutions so badly that they crash. Their time has finally come...to push the mops that have always been beckoning to them to come back home to their true vocations, namely shoveling shit.

These shovels, the sponges, dishcloths, irons, and garbage cans are calling out to them like the Sirens did to Odysseus, longingly. Finally, these little men are going to have to shut-up and have their share of crow as so many former apparatchiki did when the Soviet system collapsed. The public is already beginning to demand accountability, making probes and trials a real possibility.

Will Congress save the day and deflect the forces of law and order from apprehending the Bush II administration? The same with Wall Street's corporate crime wave? Who's going to be the scapegoat, the sacrificial lamb? To be sure, it's going to be someone.

But what's going to be the best is watching the many of these types who were stupid enough to break the law under the duties of their self-appointed jobs being arrested. Certainly, they're going to cling-to their kingdoms in hell for a short time, but then the subpoenas and the criminal and civil suits will come. Most of them will simply be discarded along with the rest of the American working-class, that group they stupidly convinced themselves that they were never a part of.

The only thing management has ever cared about is the perpetuation of management.

That's not a solid platform for any system as we have ample-proof of today. Even bad ideas die hard. Taylor posited the theory that human beings are naturally lazy--indolent--and had to be driven to work if they were going to work at all. This meant the imposition of an authoritarian culture in the workplace, something that wasn't exactly new 100 years ago! Taylor's writings--at best--read like a tract by Ebeneezer Scrooge and Lenin, with a dose of your senile old uncle who drools in the corner at family-gatherings.

Taylor was a High Priest of business Bolshevism; contemporary business/tech/financial elites hold values that aren't especially different from Taylor's and his robber baron "acolytes." Like the phenomena of Social Darwinism, Taylor was just giving a more pointed voice and direction to what was already the overriding spirit of his time. That Americans must work so hard merely to survive is a testament to the anti-humanist and authoritarian nature of forced production in the United States. Why it would behave any differently having its roots in the days of the robber barons, a time when there was virtually no regulation of the economy whatsoever.

Taylorism was adored by the Soviet system's architects, admirers of American authoritarian methods of production.

Lenin and other leaders of the Soviet Union displayed even greater enthusiams for Fordism [standard-parts put together on an assembly line] and Taylorism than the Americans had. When the Soviet Union embarked on a Five-Year Plan that specified mammoth regions of technology based on hydroelectric power and prodigiously rich stores of Siberian natural resources, it turned to American consulting engineers and industrial corporations for advice and equipment. The Soviets constructed entire industrial systems modeled on the steel works in Gary, Indiana, and hydroelectric projects on the Mississippi. (Hughes, Thomas P. American Genesis, University of Chicago Press. 2004. P.8)

Work, work, work, and more work, because there's work to be done and nations to be built. Except that that's not the case any more, at least not in the "developed world." Things need repairing and maintenance, but nation building is over in North America.

What happens when the justifications for work are only in-place to perpetuate a hierarchy? That system eventually falls over its own internal paradoxes, just as the Soviet system belatedly did in the early 1990s. But no, the candidates tell us, "Work, work, work--you're gonna have to work harder than ever!" Why? Just to be able to live, to have shelter and be able to eat? That's a violation of a human being's basic human rights.

With a genuinely scientific approach, Americans wouldn't be working the hours they do because there would be an efficient division of the work, making it more manageable with greater rewards for every contributor. Most major industrial production should be nationalized, or more accurately, owned and directed by the American public. A logical distribution of wealth would also make for a more stable economy, a dynamic one instead of the historical pattern of boom-bust cycles.

This isn't how ownership and employers want you to think, but if this economic crisis should teach us anything, it's that they're the parasites, the exploiters of our labor, and that we don't need them. We never needed them, and their claims of ownership are shoddy. Management has been their flesh column to block the progress of everyone else. If anything, management has been an obstacle of efficiency in production in meeting the essential needs of American workers. This class has been a general drain and an authoritarian roadblock to natural change in the workplace, a buffer between ownership and workers.

Now, these individuals have taken their system over the cliff. This was the natural result of dissolution, when ideas and practices that no longer work and rarely ever did, stop working. With the practically inevitable nationalization of Ford and General Motors, we're seeing the end of "Fordism" and "Taylorism" as core principles in production and the structure of private business and financial organizations.

Are we a "body politic" again? It remains to be seen. Society isn't a machine, but an organism, and organisms require that we're flexible to change.

Future social institutions will have to embody a reasonable degree of this flexibility through an expansion of workplace democracy through the support (allowing it to happen) of the federal government, but not necessarily under its direction. Innovation has been repressed for far too long and the road ahead is a high-tech one with a green-lining. The "Socialists are taking over"? Authoritarian ones did long ago in the United States, and the Cold War was just a matter of competing power structures, a game of semantics and straw men. Similar games are being played (badly) today.

Why do so many of us fear freedom and liberty? Because that means more responsibility and accountability for all, and equality under the law. We have only ourselves to blame for not fighting corporatism in America as we should have. That's reason enough to make up for lost time.

Step 1: Attention management! Clear-out your desks, you bums, and get out. You're fired. Have a nice day, m'kay?

Those folks in Chicago are going to win their strike. The world will take notice of this and workers in other nations are going to emulate it, even in China. You have to make a new day in America happen, and the world can change. Make it happen.

Thank you Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, for saving us all

Washington D.C.--The man who looks a lot like he's headed for multiple-strokes (and why not) misspoke this week. No, he wasn't lying about some crime he had direct-involvement in...OK, I guess he did, but that's not the point.

Earlier this week, Paulson said we "have turned the corner on the economic crisis...and averted a financial collapse." Wow, does he like tempting the fates and the goddess called Providence.

Today, we're seeing the market react rationally to his Mesopotamian comments: the market's DOW Jones industrial standard went down below 8,000, or 7, 997.28, the lowest in at least five years. Yep, those comments are really having an effect on the market alright.

Consumer spending has hit a monthly-low in October with the biggest drop since 1947 (see the article a few posts below on lame-duck President Bush's comments on this at Federal Hall last week for yucks), a stunning 1%. Thanks Hank, keep talking, and see your doctor about your health, you look like shit. Such are the permutations of history overwhelming the scoundrels who have been on our necks for ages.

Maybe he'll hit some luck and contract Lou Gehrig's disease, but I heard it died with him. Were I Paulson, I'd emigrate somewhere very remote before Americans start burning him in-effigy. "But why not burn him in Washington?" says my cat. Indeed, why not?

Bush attempts human speech--as opposed to Cthuloid--at Federal Hall:

http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2008/11/bush-ruminates-on-failure-of-60-years.html

On the partial nationalization of the American financial system, the rebounding of the DOW, and the return of the nebbish word "bolster"

WWW--The media's take on the past two-day rallying of stocks on Wall Street is presumptuous and smacking of an underlying desperation: high capital and finance still want to achieve a further scaling-back of wages and bargaining power (what's left of it) for the American worker and to keep playing the deregulation and unaccountability game in commerce and finance.

In other words, the big players are starting to act as though they might be able to continue "business as usual," though the message from Washington D.C. and from notable economists is the reverse. Events have a way of forcing the hand of fate and the marketplace, but most importantly, of the big players who have erroneously convinced themselves of their own invincibility. You aren't God. The choices are now fewer, and going down the same path as before will ensure an almost total economic collapse that could conceivably dwarf that other global crash, the Great Depression.

This has the potential of taking-down most of Western civilization with it, including the Persian Gulf States and their current authoritarian regimes. Change and reform will come no matter who gets elected on November 4th in the American presidential race. As in most times of rapid change, up-is-down, and down-is-up.

Who would have ever expected that one of the most laissez-faire administrations in American history could find itself forced into rescuing the banking and financial system through even a "partial nationalization"? Call it "Socialism," call it what you want, but regulation and a government (meaning we, the people) share in these institutions is going to be vital towards preventing such a widespread collapse.

After the purchase of preferred stock in nine large banks, the new program is expected to be expanded to many others. Among the initial banks participating will be all of the country's largest institutions, including Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley, said one official, with each institution expected to receive billions of dollars in return for the sale to the government of preferred shares.

The advantage to the taxpayer is that if the rescue plan works, then the shares can be sold for more than the government initially paid, providing a profit on the transaction. ("Government moves again to unclog credit lines, AP, 10.14.2008)

This goes much further than a simple "partial nationalization," considering that the stock being bought is "preferred," which offers greater advantages to holders--us--and is traditionally the first kind of share to receive payments of dividends, often higher than that of other shareholders.

Where's the missing-ingredient, accountability? With the Justice Department (hello Jeffrey A. Taylor) still under the control of the Bush II administration, and a bought Congress, we shouldn't expect much if we don't pressure them to mount massive investigations into Wall Street as former New York Governor and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer did several years ago.

Additionally, we should already be building third parties in the event that we get the usual response of inaction from the Democrats. We can bank on it.

As usual, the constructive contributions are coming from the public, and the most responsible citizens we have on-hand nowadays are people like Ralph Nader. The independent candidate was granted (since there's no other word for it) time on CNN just a few hours ago because there was no other choice. Major events have a way of bending a news giant like CNN into having the most viable third party candidate on to speak when it should be a matter of course.

Such are the vagaries of the Statist market economy--ratings and advertising dollars trump public responsibility when you the politicians of both major parties in your pockets. The "problem" now is that many of these very same pockets are emptying with the very economic decline they have caused. Sometimes one should be careful what one wishes for. The K Street lobbyists did their jobs too well.

There's no irony here since reality is outpacing satirical humor and the occasional literary and philosophical observation of the existential mess we've allowed to grow. Nader had some great observations of his own on the bailout, bouncing-off of viewer comments sent in to the cable news Shibboleth: at the very least, it's time to go after the culprits and widen criminal inquiries. If there are those who broke the law, they should be held-accountable. What average American could disagree with that? Nader also made a good point in his hand-delivered letter to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson who made $200 million at Goldman Sachs when he was their CEO, suggesting he kick-in some change to help. It's doubtful that he will, but it makes a good point of putting your money where your money is--or was. At least his life is hell right now.

Nader's time on CNN was an interesting few minutes that should be commonplace, but it should be remembered that the official line wouldn't be able to withstand it, and therefore, these kind of viewpoints must be marginalized. Yet Americans are on the same page when it comes to social policy, ranging from foreign aid (we all really want to spend more when the right questions are posed), our healthcare system (we want a single payer system), progressive taxation, military spending, and so on.

The public's opinions are decidedly progressive and Populist, which is why the mainstream narrative is being pushed so hard, and why culpability in business/finance fraud and criminality aren't topics for discussion. We don't have faith in the economic system because we smell a rat, hence Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's comments today:

As in all past crises, at the root of the problem is a loss of confidence by investors and the public in the strength of key financial institutions and markets, which has had cascading and unwelcome effects on the availability of credit and the value of savings. The actions today are aimed at restoring confidence in our institutions and markets and repairing their capacity to meet the credit needs of American households and businesses. The voluntary equity purchase program will strengthen financial institutions' capacity and willingness to lend. The guarantee of the senior debt of all FDIC-insured depository institutions and their holding companies will restore the confidence of these institutions' creditors and reinvigorate the crucial inter-bank lending markets. Additionally, the Federal Reserve is pressing forward with its facility to provide a broad backstop for the commercial paper market, so vital to the functioning of our businesses.

The general goal of various financial interests is to isolate and divide us and to make us believe that we're alone in our thinking, a patent falsehood. With the advent of the internet, this is becoming less-and-less tenable and stretches its credibility to the breaking-point. Remember that billions are spent keeping us in this dysfunctional state towards the maintenance of what is basically an unstable system model.

Make no mistake: the bailout is similar to the New Deal in one core respect, and that's to save American-style capitalism. It's not a worthwhile goal. We've already had a mixed-economy with elements of Socialism that stretch-back to FDR, though the examples of the subsidizing of the phone companies and the railroads in their development precede it by several decades. The EU is going significantly further with their nationalization plans, which will have a very real world effect on our own economy, possibly driving it closer to a continental European model by default. The time for a social dividend has come.

But don't hold your breath on Hank Paulson throwing-in to help with his own money. It doesn't matter--damned if they do, and damned if they don't. If the scions of commerce and finance get their way, they lose in the inevitable (and deeper) crash that will come sooner rather than later. The day of the giant firms and corporations is ending, just as the hunter-gather and feudal orders have before it. Time to finish the job.

The key is pushing for a better order and determining what comes next. The public holds this power more than elites do. Their hold on power is almost always weak-at-best. Once the average person realizes this fact and acts responsibly and accordingly, and understands that civic duty is a lifetime responsibility, things will stabilize and improve. Fine, the market's up...today. It won't last, because the underlying-causes (extralegal deregulation, white-collar crime, criminal speculation, etc.) are still going to be firmly in-place. This is because the current business and financial establishment aren't good at what they do.

When the rules and the "invisible-hand of the marketplace" attempt to correct them and their faulty-logic and criminal incompetence, they run to the government for help. That's Socialism for the few, and nothing new in America. Angry investors should take note of the fact that they've been ripped-off too and demand widespread accountability. That doesn't mean they should all be bailed-out, however. Like the Demiurge of the Gnostics, these fools have proclaimed themselves to be "God," but the universe answered back with bad news that this wasn't the reality of things. No simple or easy solutions here.

Postscript: Alright, so this is what George W. Bush meant by an "ownership society," gotcha. In retrospect, Aaron Burr's 1804 shooting of Alexander Hamilton in a duel seems to have been prudent but belated.

"Government moves again to unclog credit lines, AP, 10.14.2008: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081014/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_meltdown

"Financial Panics of the 19th century," Robert McNamara, About.com, "19th century": http://history1800s.about.com/od/thegildedage/a/financialpanics.htm

Palin quotes Ronald Reagan during the VP debates

WWW--That's great, and it was from a Chamber of Commerce-backed LP that Ronnie made during the wonderful 1950s when white Americans were "free" from much social-interaction with those frightening black people.

It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we’re going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.

That's great to Alaska Sarah, a former beauty queen and now GOP cheerleader and little woman poised to take the throne in case the daddy-figure croaks in office (good chance there). The Apocalypse is nigh if McCain wins, so drink-up (I don't endorse the use of drugs, but do what you have to do).

She wouldn't lie, would she? She wouldn't be part of trying to take our freedoms away, would she? Get real. The real would be tyrants are inarticulate. She wins that one hands-down, but does she admire Wagner? She wouldn't even know who he was or that he inspired Hitler. Does she know of the myth of Faust? Doubtful. Has she ever read Herman Melville and understood his message? Also doubtful. Can she have any comprehension of her obvious vacuuousness? No. Does she even know what "detente" or "mutually assured destruction" means? Nope. Even Reagan did, that's how far we've fallen in the age of the little man (and woman).

Perhaps we're headed towards that moment where all will be one, as in the Hermetic mythology (and countless others) where the higher and lower orders join to become one, immobile, unmovable, and unchanging. Sound horrible? It's the end-point of most spirituality and religions, just not my own. Reagan was that grandfatherly old Shibboleth pushed on us by the business and finance community who reassured us as he took our rights, our jobs, and anything else he and his backers could get their hands on, so what does that make Palin? The smothering Mother of Death, of course, the shadow of the good, nurturing mother. Why? Why does there have to be a reason? Probably because it would get her off.

Reasonable people know there would be no hope of constructive change under her stewardship of government and that things would only worsen, identity politics aside. Never underestimate human perversity, we crave disaster, we want catastrophe to fall upon us. It simply is. Palin has a right to invoke "the great communicator," however. He initiated this mess that we're all in right now and many of the same criminals in the Bush II administration served under him.

Neoconservatism's daddy Grover Norquist served under Reagan, as did Donald Rumsfeld and several top staffers who have also served under George W. Bush. This was never a mistake or a coincidence, and Congress allowed these many appointments to pass, they authorized them. Palin is just the symptom of a much larger contagion rooted in the human condition. Reading this, one might make the mistake that I believe "all is lost." Hardly. This is a new beginning where an old order is falling-away.

Creatures like Palin tend to come out during such times, and must be taken down any way possible, but they also possess human perversity. They are mortal, they are as weak as any of us, merely being propped-up temporarily by social forces, only to return to the dust from whence we all came. Like the rest of us, these "great men" (and women) are as insignificant as a speck in the limitless reaches of the abyss. Curiously, they yearn to return to the primordial ooze that they deny we originate from, a paradox. Life is like that sometimes, yet I have a very real hope and excitement at the possibilities in all of this.

Canadian Film Tax Credit Legislation Stalled, Evangelist Charles McVety Laments

"It's not about Charles McVety. Who am I? I'm nobody. I am irrelevant in this process. But I have been someone--this evangelical that people can take a shot at...because of my faith and because of the religion that I belong to." --Rev. Charles McVety doing a very bad job playing the role of a religious minority and a victim this week. (The Globe and Mail, 04.17.2008)

Ottawa, Canada--It's unsurprising that evangelist activist Charles McVety--president of the Canada Family Action Coalition (CFAC)--is unhappy about the current version of legislation that would revamp Canada's Telefilm tax credit fund and how it's going to be distributed in the future. The vast majority of Canadian media are against the current version of the bill that would grant unprecedented powers to the federal Heritage Minister (an appointed position), allowing them wide-berth in defining what films violate "public policy," and deny tax credits to those productions. This could occur even after Telefilm approval of tax credits for a movie or television project, and banks could get cold feet over future domestic productions thanks to these provisions of the legislation.

McVety wants another version of the bill that would go drastically further in curtailing which films get made, and which ones won't. Yet he won't define what is and isn't a violation of public policy in Canadian media. Fortunately, his recent outbursts might be a sign he and his allies have been told that they won't be making any of those decisions as political appointments in the future. According to McVety, he's "not a lobbyist," yet he certainly acts a lot like one. McVety had likely spoken too soon on the legislation back in February, having taken credit (not a tax one) for the very existence of the current bill being debated in the Canadian Senate's banking committee. Now, he's flatly denying it.

Naturally, the Tories are still bullish on the idea of this bill passing, but with the recent RCMP raids on their national offices, it could get the backseat. The entire banking and commerce committee don't appear to like Mr. McVety or his dubious agenda of blanket censorship:

Dr. McVety did not appear to have supporters of any stripe around the committee table.
The Conservatives were cordial, but seemed preoccupied with refuting allegations that government lobbying on the part of Dr. McVety had prompted the legislation.

The Globe and Mail reported in February that Dr. McVety had claimed credit for the proposal after discussions with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.

Dr. McVety backed away from that yesterday.

"We had no discussions about this legislation [Ed.-Called "C-10."] period. We didn't even know it existed. We didn't know it until The Globe and Mail called us the day after they had put this provision on the front page of their newspaper. We had zero knowledge of it. We had no specific meetings on this," Dr. McVety said. ("Film tax credit proposal falls short, evangelists says," The Globe and Mail, 04.17.2008)

The politicians on the liberal and conservative sides don't appear to want to have any impression that there is an association between themselves and "Dr." McVety, and the subject himself is trying to backpedal on his claims of virtual authorship of the current tax credit bill. Why is that? Because it's bad political theater.

Should we take Charles McVety at his word this week? Of course not. That's asking to believe much of anything he has to say outside of his circle of believers--believers in yet another false social prophet-cum-influence peddler. McVety sounds more like a Father Coughlin than a Jesus Christ. This week, almost all he could talk about was a controversial film that has yet-to-be-released in Canada: "Young People Fucking," and like many, it was funded partly through Telefilm and the Canadian tax credit. The reverend appears to be a little too obsessed with young people fucking, frankly. Like it or not, this is what Canada's media is great at.

If you know anything about Canadian cinema's success, it's that it's edgier than boorish American fare--it has its own niche, and it takes more creative-risks. As far as North America's concerned, it's the freest form of cinema left in an ocean of Hollywood conglomeration and meaninglessness-of-content. Interestingly, C-10 doesn't punish foreign movie and other media productions from receiving the same funds, irregardless of whether they violate "public policy."

Only Canadian productions fall under this provision of C-10, and it isn't hard to understand why this is so: monied American productions don't want to be affected, and the biggest ones don't want any Canadian competition. Enter creatures like Charles McVety, a Trojan horse if ever there was one. The Liberal Party's senators weren't buying what McVety was selling, and were practically belittling his testimony before them on Wednesday. This is how things are supposed to work, and it's obvious Canadian government is a little healthier than her American counterpart. But not much.

Charles McVety isn't just obsessed by "young people fucking," however, but by homosexuals: another film called "Breakfast with Scot" was another object of attention by the evangelist during his testimony before the suffering Senate banking and commerce committee. This shouldn't be a surprising tactic on-the-part of the evangelist and the shadowy interests he presumably represents, and was used to dramatic effect in the 2004 elections here in the United States. It's the politics of division and minority-baiting. McVety on "Breakfast with Scot":

Breakfast with Scot, released last fall, is about a gay ex-hockey player and his partner caring for a young orphan who displays less-than-masculine tendencies.

"(It) is about an 11-year-old boy who is being raised by a homosexual Toronto Maple Leaf to be a homosexual," said McVety. "... This is not something that the government should be (funding)."

Toronto-based filmmaker Laurie Lynd said he was "appalled" by McVety's description of his movie.

"The film is a gentle family comedy about self-acceptance and loving your child for whoever he or she is," Lynd said in an interview. He added that losing public financing just before production "could have killed the film completely."

McVety would not say how he would define entertainment that is "against public policy," instead listing titles such as The Masturbators and Young People F------.
("Activist decries tax break for gay comedy," The Toronto Star, 04.17.2008)

Like all would-be censors, Charles McVety wants us to believe that he knows best, and that he knows smut when he sees it within his own mind. Indeed he does, and he's far-and-away more obsessed by so-called "smut" and "pornography" than the rest of us here in North America. But are any of these films genuine "pornography"? No. This isn't the case, and these reactionary elements know this. Statutes already exist under Canadian law that bar public funding of pornographic productions.

McVety's congregational rank-and-file likely don't know this, and it's even money that they've all been told not to ever watch the aforementioned films. A Canadian-blog named "Slap Upside the Head" adds some pertinent insight into the McVety take on "Breakfast with Scot":

McVety—who previously claimed responsibility for Bill C-10, but has since backpeddled—summarized Breakfast With Scot as a film about “an 11-year-old boy who is being raised by a homosexual Toronto Maple Leaf to be a homosexual.”

Ignoring, for a moment, that the notion that someone can be raised to be homosexual is rejected completely by the psychological, medical, and academic community, I’m amazed by this misclassification. Either McVety has never seen the film, or he is lying about what he saw. ("Lobbyist: No Tax Credits for Adorable Gay Comedy," Slap Upside the Head, 04.18.2008)

Well-connected activists like McVety appear to have very robust sexual imaginations, but have they even seen these movies? Why do they have such easy-access to politicians? These kinds of acts of political theater are familiar to Americans looking across-the-border at the Canadian versions. They fall-short, and the strings are showing. It's likely that they extend from the corporate boardrooms, Hollywood, right-wing think tanks, and the evangelists congregations of America. Canadian autonomy is being assaulted on all fronts.

Fat, smug demagogues like the Rev. Charles McVety are the avatars of this push, and they and their unfortunate supporters should be resisted aggressively .

"Activist decries tax break for gay comedy," The Toronto Star, 04.17.2008: http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/415391

"Film tax credit proposal falls short, evangelists says," The Globe and Mail, 04.17.2008: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/freeheadlines/LAC/20080417/FILM17/national/National

"Lobbyist: No Tax Credits for Adorable Gay Comedy," Slap Upside the Head, 04.18.2008: http://www.slapupsidethehead.com/2008/04/no-credits-for-gay-comedy/