Listen up, you Tea Party Bastard

For between true Science and erroneous doctrines, Ignorance is in the middle.

-Thomas Hobbes-

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“the credibility of the United States is now surrounded by uncertainty.”Said Fareed Zakaria on AC360. I don't think so. That the reigns of power have been grabbed by a malicious minority for whom the successful defense of a failed and disastrous economic theory seems damned certain. That even a very large majority of voters have become so removed from participation in decision making is so certain that the Tea Party inmates now dance with idiot glee on the site soon to become the grave of our country. For after all, has that 3% taken off the adjusted gross in excess of $250,000 not been the reason we all did so well during the Bush administration? Wasn't it the reason that private sector job growth was at 0.0% for 8 years?

What remains quite certain in my mind is that the stated objectives of the hostage takers are not to be taken at face value, yet, even if we do, the premise behind it all is a lie and smells accordingly. The real but hidden objective of course is a feudal society out of the sick dreams of Ayn Rand, where a handful of powerful people are unimpeded in their greed and everyone else is destined ( and designed) to serve them while subsisting on their crumbs and leavings. But, these scams, these lies, these frauds are still the fundamental props of that Tea Party scheme, a scheme shown to fail even more quickly than Communism does -- and we're allowing our erstwhile democracy to fall like Jericho to a mob walking in circles and blowing loud on a horn.

"The imbecile bourgeoisie of this country make themselves the accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches"

-Joseph Conrad-

Upper bracket tax cuts do not create jobs or prosperity except for a very, very few individuals and that prosperity comes with a crushing burden on the rest of the populace. While the fake Libertarians rhapsodize about not ever asking what they can do for their country, Mexico sits there demonstrating what it's like when a handful with all the money are absolved from responsibility and often even from the law.

A healthy Capitalistic system, a system that fosters job growth requires discretionary money flowing through the hands of consumers and the "agreement" we now seem to have had forced upon us takes it away while granting favors to a privileged class who spend proportionately less on consumer goods, thus weakening the economy. We've had thirty years of the continuous failure of this long con, although, thanks to the ownership of the 24 hour propaganda system by that privileged plutocratic class, we've forgotten.

The rich man will not hire people to build anything while most of the country can't afford to buy them and as a shark requires moving water to survive, a capitalist economy requires moving money.

Tax cuts do not pay for themselves with increased revenues. much less do they pay for the longest and most expensive wars in American history. We have now had three wars in three decades, all sold as self-funding and the lion's share of our debt is attributable to our having to borrow the funds from abroad to pay corporations who do not pay taxes rather than paying for it. The war that pays for itself in booty is a stinking lie. How much more proof will it take?

Tax cuts for the wealthy do not create jobs, nor boost the economy, nor boost revenue. Only a small fraction of the extra cash in deep pockets makes its way back into the economy and nearly all of the cash from entitlements and paychecks of middle and working class families does -- and quickly. For each Porsche or Ferrari or yacht bought with that extra tax bonus, for every stash of Krugerrands or condo in Marbella, 10 families, maybe 100 families would have bought cars and washing machines and refrigerators and school supplies and some might have bought hamburger instead of cat food. Their money returns to the economy instantly. Yet every day we hear lying voices shouting about "job destroying taxes;" shouting so loud that we forget that our most prosperous and fully employed years featured high marginal rates.

Marginal rates below 50% seem to precede recessions. Don't believe me, look it up and the biggest debt increases have been under Republicans for a very long time -- most spectacularly under the misrule of Bush and Cheney and don't tell me you were against it at the time, you weren't.

“Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter”
-Dick Cheney-

This isn't Obama's recession, it belongs to all of us and Obama's biggest "spending spree" was in his first year, operating under a budget and tax scheme passed by Bush. It's as if Congress bought the yacht under Bush and because Obama had to make the payments, pay for the dockage, maintenance and fuel, he's the spendthrift.

The biggest increase of the debt ceiling in the average American's lifetime was under Reagan, the second under Bush, 200% and 90% respectively. Both presidents created recessions. Clinton raised the debt ceiling 44% and raised taxes and we had record high employment and the longest period of expansion and prosperity - ever. Funny how you told us his success was because of Reagan and Bush the First, but on the day of his inauguration, it was "Obama's recession."

26% under Obama so he can pay "the troops" and keep our contractual obligations -- and the reeking, ignorant unwashed rabble take to the streets and storm Congress screaming about impeachment and the biggest spending president ever since the beginning of time.

"Joy to great Chaos! Let Division reign"

-Pope-

But you won't learn, you won't be honest, you won't stop protecting your fantasy, even if you have to go down with the ship you're scuttling. So keep giggling, keep your nose in the air -- keep talking about tax and spend Democrats and bleeding heart Liberals. You'll bleed too and there will be no one to help, no one to care.

You meet the nicest people in Hell

I'm not Yahweh, The Hulk or Captain America and I'm not into destroying countries with hellfire or even evildoers in hand to hand combat, but If I were, I have a feeling I would have a hard time finding enough good people to convince me to park the thunderbolts and volcanoes and floodwaters and let it all this American hate culture continue. Yes as a humanist and a non-believer, I have a hard time condoning that sort of world-drowning temper tantrum in the first place, but I sure as hell empathize with the old dude. We sure as hell deserve another dunking. Maybe in boiling water, this time.

Speaking of empathy. I walked into a shop today and as I was looking for some hardware, I chanced to hear the voice on the radio ( I think it was Rush) trying to twist the Oslo shooting story into some form where it seemed liberals ( who hate Christianity) were trying to portray the shooter as a Christian when he really was a "neo-Nazi" and they were just calling him Christian because he wasn't a Muslim. Funny how that doesn't work with Muslims not all being terrorists to inside the Rush Bubble, but never mind, amidst the tumult and the roar, I heard old anal-cyst for brains tell us "Barack Obama told us after 9/11 that we have to have empathy with Muslim terrorists"

the owner said to the clerk,

"Did you hear that? Obama told us to empathize with the terrorists" "Oops!"

Well, nail Jesus to the cross, sell your mother to a brothel, piss on everything holy, but never question Rush. It's too big a lie to deny, too tasty not to swallow. It's certainly too much work to check it out. Like so many people I'm becoming disgustingly familiar with, these nice people sit in their little store all day injecting hate, smoking hate, cooking up hate like some junky in a basement room with a needle and a spoon and who gives a damn if any of it is actually true?

Well did I pull out a gun and slaughter them? Drive back there with a car bomb? Did I even say, "no he didn't and Rush makes Satan look like Santa Claus?" Sorry to say, I didn't, not in this town, not in the gun toting, burn your house down, hide your body in the swamp Bullshit Belt. I just said, "have a nice day" and left and won't ever shop there again. I'm not proud. I'm not proud of seeing a fake statement from the First Lady saying she "will side with the Muslims" in another shop not far away and not saying anything. But I won't be returning there either.

Of course what Obama really said was:

"The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. "

The exact opposite. It's like saying "Jesus told us to hate our neighbors"

But you know, these are otherwise, friendly, nice people. The kind you'll meet in Church or civic organizations and out helping their neighbors in times of disaster: the kind Hell must be full of.

Hatred and ignorance and Rush Limbaugh, the primal ooze and petrie dish of evil. Was Brievik influenced by right wing religious intolerance or was he simply attracted to it. Should we call him Christian or a Freemason and should we call Osama bin Laden a real muslim and who gives a shit? This kind of mindless, relentless, evil dripping, malignant and malevolent propaganda is as delightfully irresistible to "felaheen America" as carrion to a buzzard and is as able to wrap itself around facts, digest them and turn them into shit as a snake.

God damn Limbaugh and all his friends and all his sponsors and all his words and all his lies and all his hate and all his wealth -- and that's as close to praying as I've come in these last 60 years.

Billion Dollar Coins and Exploding Options -- oh my!

Maybe the President can't simply cite the 14th amendment and raise the debt ceiling, maybe he can -- but does the Constitution provide a paddle? Must he allow the Tea Party to shut down the government as the more mainstream Republicans attempted to do in 1995 during the Clinton administration?

You remember President Clinton, don't you, the guy that the snickering snarkmongers told us would only serve one term, who would destroy capitalism, plunge us into debt and start fake wars simply to allow him to become a dictator. I'm sure the parallels are coincidental. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

But Obama, even if if no Clinton, ( for better or worse) may still have options, says Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School. The Constitution has as many loopholes as the Tea Party has loonies, although some of them are as arcane as something out of the Da Vinci Code. There's the Platinum Coin gambit and the exploding Option Strategy, for instance.

Even so, all may not be lost for 14th amendment solution protagonists, like Bill Clinton and a few others says Balkin.

"If the president reasonably believes that the public debt will be put in question for either reason, Section 4 comes into play once again. His predicament is caused by the combination of statutes that authorize and limit what he can do: He must pay appropriated monies, but he may not print new currency and he may not float new debt. If this combination of contradictory commands would cause him to violate Section 4, then he has a constitutional duty to treat at least one of the laws as unconstitutional as applied to the current circumstances."

Balkin likens this dispute to recent attempts to topple the president over his ability to use the military to protect the national interest or in emergencies.

"If the courts won't intervene in the Libya affair, they probably won't intervene here."

But regardless of your opinion on the best way to beat back the barbarians, (whichever side you think they're on, Balkin's CNN exclusive interview is great reading and gives a glimmer of hope that the Constitution will do what it was designed to do, protect us.

Taking the 14th

"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

14th Amendment, US Constitution
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Now, I'm no lawyer, which means that I generally take such statements at face value and have no knowledge of what pretzels they've been twisted into by various courts in various cases, but it seems to me that if congress can't question the validity of our public debt, then congress can't refuse to pay it or more importantly say it's only valid under a certain amount authorized by Congress after they've already deemed it legal. What do you think?

I hate to bring up the constitution at a time when the Tea Bag Patriots are pretending to worship it while claiming that those who would like to actually conform to it are "shredding it" but the situation is getting serious.

Of course this whole controversy is about "taking down" the president we elected by a good margin and replacing him with a Tea Party Republican of their choice hell bent not on reducing the debt, but killing Social Security, Medicare, all forms of welfare and any protection for the public against the health insurance cartel -- and all to make sure people like me can put an extra tank of fuel into the yacht every now and then thus creating jobs in the Bahamas and Taiwan.

After all they raised the debt ceiling every year a Republican was in office since the beginning of the Reagan administration and authorized Bush's massive debt explosion like a well disciplined private army. Remember when "debt doesn't matter" was the slogan? No? Well I do.

"Obama would be impeached if he blocked debt payments"

says Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and he'd also be impeached if he invalidated the debt ceiling based on the 14th amendment, says Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) Talk about a poker player with a 'tell.' Might as well lay the cards on the table.

It's all about impeachment and all about finding some flimsy excuse or forcing the president into a position where they will impeach him if he does and impeach him if he doesn't. No more revolting, I guess than impeaching one for asking his secretary not to tell his wife he was having an affair. Talk about insurrection and rebellion! No sooner did we lose the Cold War gravy train then we embarked on the Cold Secession.

President Clinton of course told us recently that he wouldn't hesitate to use the 14th to raise the debt ceiling and "force the courts to stop me." You'll remember of course the attempts to impeach him on any pretext and how the talk of the "failure of the Clinton Presidency" preceded the Clinton Presidency and how he would certainly be a one term president and how his tax policies would bankrupt the economy. They hope you won't remember, of course because we're hearing the same damned bullshit again.

"I think the Constitution is clear and I think this idea that the Congress gets to vote twice on whether to pay for [expenditures] it has appropriated is crazy.”

said Bill Clinton to The National Memo last week. No wonder slimy things like the Newt are challenging the constitutional basis for even having a Supreme Court.

Meanwhile that 3% extra tax cut I get on anything I earn over $250,000 is going to prompt me to create jobs for those struggling people now paying for the longest, most expensive wars in American history while losing their houses, jobs, medical insurance waiting for the Voodoo to kick in and save us all -- and all will be fine just in time for a Tea Party president. I can feel it in my bones.

91 dead in Oslo

People have made it very clear to me that Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Murrah Federal building in 1995 was not a Christian, the connection between that vicious, inhuman act and the Waco, Texas incident notwithstanding. He couldn't be, you see, by virtue of the fact that he did such a thing.

It's too bad that Muslims who are horrified by terrorism aren't given the benefit of the same rationale, but I'm still waiting to hear about Anders Behring Breivik. Despite the initial prejudice that had the Oslo bombing and the murders at a Summer camp as the work of al Qaeda, it looks like Breivik, identified by a survivor as the attacker, was a Christian Conservative disturbed by the presence of other cultures, other religions, in Norway. Would he fit in with a spectrum of Americans, from the Aryan Brotherhood to the Tea Party, trying to promote our intentionally secular Republic as a "Christian nation" and perhaps an exclusively Christian nation?

How long can we go on pretending that religious tribalism of any denomination hasn't been and doesn't remain a potentially destructive, oppressive and communicable human vice?

Ex Nehil Nehilo Fit

George Packer writing in the New Yorker about the debt ceiling crisis and the ever more strained fault line running through Washington, reminds us of a quote usually attributed to Vladimir Lenin: "the worse, the better."

I rather think Lenin himself was quoting Georgi Plekhanov, when he wrote his essay Three Crises in 1917, but whatever the source and however Lenin used it, I tend to agree with Mr. Packer that we're looking at a planned destruction of our economy to serve a revolutionary cause that in some ways; in it's ideological blindness to practical consequences, looks so much like the Bolsheviks, it might cause liquid irony to condense into caustic clouds and rain down upon us.

Indeed the worse this manufactured crisis becomes, the more likely it is, at least in the minds of the radical right, to destroy the prospects of Obama and the Democrats as well as our national prospects, leaving the Tea Party, like roaches after a nuclear war, in charge of a withered State sure to become a wildly prosperous unregulated utopia. It seems a fatuous dream of course, to anyone who has read even a little about the aftermath of the 1918 revolution, but if you've read this far I shouldn't have to point it out. Out of a power vacuum, power comes.

Packer quotes Max Weber, writing only only two years later with regard to “the ethic of responsibility” versus “the ethic of ultimate ends” and it seems that little has changed in the course of human events since then -- at least in American events. The distinction

"between those who act from a sense of practical consequence and those who act from higher conviction, regardless of consequences."

describes our current struggle; unser Kampf, if you will.

" These ethics are tragically opposed, but the true calling of politics requires a union of the two."

Is there any doubt about into which group the "tax cuts and deregulation produce prosperity" and "the government is always the problem" people fall? Discussion of practical consequences can't be heard through the roar.

Such a political union is less foreseeable I think, than at any time in American History that I can call to mind and a complete rupture or a complete capitulation of the "ultimate responsibility" forces to the anarchists and nihilists may be the only possible outcome. Ex nihilo, nehil fit: out of nothing, nothing comes, no longer is supported by science, but in the world of governments and power and people, things are different -- and après ça, le déluge, of course.

West world

When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, many of the ugliest Republicans told us that Democrats were "playing the race card" a mawkish cliché which means, I think, falsely accusing them of the racism they do really espouse. In other words, talking anal cysts like Limbaugh were having their pearls of wisdom denounced by the "politically correct" because you can't criticize a black man these days without being called a racist. It's a cheap dishonorable gambit, but like counterfeit money, it can be passed off on an uncritical populace.

An uncritical, astigmatic, angry and greedy American public seems to have had another bit of counterfeit money passed off it. Allen West, the Republican Congressman from the 22nd Congressional District right here in Florida, land of snakes, lizards, Teaturds, pollution and poisonous toads -- Allen West, one chromosome short of a tape-worm, says in his blog:

"I must confess, when I see anyone with an Obama 2012 bumper sticker, I recognize them as a threat to the gene pool."

Well isn't that special? Indeed it's the one feature of that pretentious Club of Fools that keeps it in business: it allows the mentally under-endowed, cognitively incontinent circus clowns to challenge their betters and to assault us with ideas that don't hold water nearly as well as a worn out douche bag. The giggle gallery in the back of the class, mocking the teacher.

Indeed West, speaking from his teabag-buttressed platform of arrogated biological superiority seems to be of an intellect too limited to have noticed the irony of a black man appealing to the snobbery of the uneducated, ill-informed, probably stupid and definitely angry whites, and offering soothing delusions of genetic superiority in a grotesque parody of white supremacists from Montgomery to Munich. But then, when has any American been too stupid and dishonest to be someones hero?

There is indeed a tide in the affairs of men and there is an armada of those now afloat on that full sea of hate, not only using it for their own purposes but seeking to make it rise further until it drowns the land. Allen West is such a man, a man whom under ordinary circumstances would be a nobody, a flyblown bit of flotsam in a stagnant pool; but because of this tidal wave of fury, he can pretend to be a battleship and his flatus a volley of cannon. He can twist, misuse, misquote and invent, he can put on the white-face and wear a red tie, He can grin like Uncle Tom and mock like a monkey, but while honesty is within reach of all, what he pretends to is not.

Women from Planned Parenthood and the activist group Code Pink "have been neutering American men" he says and making them weak. West tells us this with his genetically based intellect still unaware of Dr. Strangelove and bodily fluids. Perhaps he himself is having problems with his manhood and this talk of virility and gene pools tells a cover story. Perhaps his politics serve as verbal Viagra for the intellectually impotent Representative. But I don't need to postulate such questions, the doctored Obama bumper sticker with the hammer and sickle tell us the whole, sick, sad, disgusting tale. Allan West is a whore. Allen West is Count Dracula's rat-eating Renfield, Allan West is a liar. Allen West, and for reasons probably too disgusting to contemplate, is trying to ruin everything good about the United States of America. So what do I do when I see that sticker? You don't want to find out.

The president, despite all appearances and lack of opposition to corporate abuse and capitalist excess is a "low-level socialist agitator" reciting "Marxist demagogic rhetoric." Is West describing himself again, or is he just grabbing bits from the instruction manual like a tent-meeting preacher with his mouth full of Jesus and a mind full of money? Obama is a Communist to the extent that John D. Rockefeller was a Communist and Bernie Madoff was a capitalist.

No, this high water mark of anti-government anger that produces foul and foetid things like Allen West and the Tea Party has little to do with genetics and everything to do with our national ignorance and our manufactured delusions; both fed and cultivated by the people who reap benefits in their billions and trillions by subverting the values of civilization and setting the dogs on the ever expanding masses. It's an old story, but in our new version, not all the dogs have four legs.

Dawn patrol

The last time I watched the movie Spirit of St Louis, about Charles Lindbergh's 1927 flight across the Atlantic, I wondered what he would have done if someone had told him: "hey wait, in a few years you'll be able to do this in a few hours while drinking champagne and watching this movie. That's not how the human ego operates however. We take huge risks to be the first. Risks that would be far, far smaller if we waited a while for technology to catch up.

Of course if it weren't for the Cold War we might never have gone to the moon or built a space station or have our hopes for a verdant Mars dashed in the 1960's and 70's. Sometimes you are better off taking the risk, spending the money; but is that an argument for not moving on with the times?

While the press and much of the public is lamenting the end of the seriously flawed shuttle program, the real science of space exploration is continuing to produce astounding advances that dwarf the advancements to knowledge produced by our manned program. With the rapid advance of semi-autonomous robotics and miniaturization, it's foreseeable that the huge risk and titanic expense of sending people around the solar system and returning them alive and sane may be less and less worthwhile.

What have we learned from the shuttle experience? That space travel is still very risky, still vastly more expensive and difficult than we imagine when we design these things. Expensive enough that we will always make serious compromises in design that eventually make things even more expensive when we have to work around them. The shuttle is a textbook lesson in the perils of design by committee and politicians. It's catastrophes result directly from design decisions driven by economy.

If we are to continue the Space Station project for a while, perhaps there will be sufficient motivation to develop a smaller, lighter, truly reusable, economically sound and more modern supply vehicle, but the Space Station, if it has any justification, is all about practice in sending people to places to do what robots will probably be able to do much better before we get there.

Yes, perhaps we'll be able to support some sort of human existence on Mars for a period of time and perhaps construct a moon base that could, for a time, house humans, but it wouldn't be much of a life and it certainly shouldn't be called a "colony" in the way European settlements in the Americas were colonies. We still lack the money and the technology as well as a reason to develop them. In that respect science fiction tends to be a somewhat cloudy fun-house mirror of the past more than a window into the future.

Would we ever send; would we ever expend the huge resources to send men and women to Vesta, or Ceres much less to the vicinity of the outer planets with their monstrous radiation belts and no resources -- a journey that would force the new Conquistadors to live in conditions we now reserve for pickled herring -- and keep them in constant danger and deprivation for years? No, but we can send and have sent patient, unemotional and replaceable robots whose capabilities are expanding as fast as the universe itself. Would we spend trillions and ask a crew to take a decades long trip in a stinking tin can without a shower, drinking recycled urine and eating horrible food just to orbit Pluto? Will we ever travel to the nearest star? I doubt it, but the technology to send an unmanned vehicle is at least a real possibility, even if we won't live to see the pictures.

Robots can be sent in small vehicles; can be small vehicles, powered by small efficient ion motors and won't suffer from emotional problems or long for the cool, green hills of home. A cheap cell phone now has more computing power than existed anywhere when we first walked on the moon and high resolution video cameras are smaller than the human eye. (remember when color TV cameras were the size and weight of refrigerators and required a two man crew?) The rate of change is accelerating. Think of what we'll be able to do in the 20 or 30 years it would take to build manned rockets and ancillary equipment for a very risky Mars mission.

The shuttle was a 1970's design loaded with so much design compromise that it was obsolete before it got off the ground. Robotic missions on the other hand can go from the drawing board to landing on Jovian moons in fairly short order. The real science is done on places that would incinerate, irradiate, freeze and squash an astronaut, even if he survived the mind numbing confinement and squalor needed to get there and back.

Not so with the Dawn mission, now as of yesterday in orbit around the asteroid Vesta; an object so small and distant that even the Hubble telescope can't see anything but a featureless smear. Expect a flood of hi-res images in the next few weeks. In time it will move on to Dwarf Planet Ceres and surely gain some insight into the formation of planetary systems. That may be less a thing of dreams than small boys and Sci-Fi fans like to imagine but much more of a thing of science. We've already seen the sunset on Mars and watched dust devils cross the endless desert. We've heard the wind blow on Titan and seen its methane rivers and lakes and there's more to come as the technology improves.

It's impossible to do more than guess, but I'm guessing that long before we discover bug-eyed monsters on alien worlds, we'll be building our own in Pasadena and sending them there. You and I can see the dawn rise on worlds more alien than we can imagine and we can do it poolside with a glass of lemonade.

Pants on fire

“The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

-Article III of the US Constitution-

“There is no Supreme Court in the American Constitution"

-Newt Gingrich-

Really, Newt? Are you really a history professor? Do you really think we're that stupid?

It's getting hard to tolerate the stench coming out of the pre-caucus Republican cesspool; from Presidential candidates getting government funds -- our tax dollars -- to teach people how to pray away the gay and advocating the use of Federal might to stamp out all forms of pornography frowned on by their frowning religion and to legislate and limit and punish our personal relationships -- while griping about too much government interference and too much spending and too much social engineering. It's getting damned hard to tolerate morally, mentally and ethically bankrupt creeps like Newt Gingrich, who is quite happy to feed the malignant idiocy now consuming the remnants of our Republic by telling us that our constitution does not "mention" much less provide for a supreme court, Article III of the Constitution notwithstanding.

"We now have this entire national elite that wants us to believe that any five lawyers are a Constitutional convention. That is profoundly un-American and profoundly wrong.”

lies the moral multimillionaire elitist with the million dollar line of credit at the jewelry store and a string of illicit mistresses and abused ex-wives. That's profoundly un-American and profoundly wrong and profoundly Republican. But of course anyone who thinks the highest court is an extra-legal ad hoc assembly of five self-appointed members foisted on the public by "elitists" and with no constitutional authority can hardly be considered an elitist of any kind unless there's a ranking of candidates according to their ignorance and mendacity and greed. Perhaps Newt just forgot that the Supreme Court Justices are approved by Congress or perhaps he's just a lying tub of septic scum who thinks he's entitled by birth and party affiliation to feast on the corpse of America.

You can fool some of the people all of the time: you can fool a lot of them in fact. They're called Republicans. They're called perverts, they're called liars, thieves, embezzlers and saboteurs.

Crocodile tears

Most bad drivers, like the American public in general have no concept of momentum or kinetic energy. Americans are the sort of people who will complain they're still falling after the parachute opens. Americans were the people who lapped up Fox News' "Democrats are pessimists trying to tear down the economy which is strong, strong, strong" and the Administration's "Debt doesn't matter" philosophy and are still the people who remain steadfastly unaware that the Republicans raised the Debt ceiling 7 times in the 8 years they held the White House and asked for a bigger bailout with no accountability or accounting. They're just shocked, shocked, shocked to see what that farleftliberalcommie president is doing and just look at the tears in Boehner's eyes.

Listening to Tim Geithner trying to be re-assuring on Meet the Press this morning didn't do much to dispel the idea that Republicans want nothing more than to allow default so as to give the illusion of Democratic guilt to their "look what Obama did" strategy. If he's right that the government will still pay it's bills after August 2nd, there will still be serious repercussions for all of us. If Geithner is right that a larger catastrophe than the Great Depression has been diverted it makes little impression on those who don't remember what caused the 1930's to be what they were and what brought about the rebound. They don't remember that every experiment in drastic upper bracket cuts has has the same negative result, that an extra few percent on the top bracket puts more back into the economy than cuts do or remember that paying off the debt on WWII brought steady expansion and job growth and infrastructure improvement. The kids in the back seat will continue to bitch until the money they imagined they had five years ago materializes again.

No, it's burn baby burn and the new Utopia will rise from the ashes and far better to let people who need Social Security and Medicare to stay alive die and reduce the surplus population than for hedge fund tycoons to pay an extra couple of grand more and send an extra couple of grand less to to offshore tax havens. If Medicare is indeed bankrupting us, it's by Republican design. If the debt is expanding, it's part of their plan to pay it off by reducing taxes and eliminating things they have opposed for 75 years on "moral" grounds. They look on economic tragedy as an opportunity and are probably quite aware at the Boehner and Koch Brothers and Murdoch level, that the 'lower the income to make the debt go away' strategy will, like pulling back on the stick and cutting the throttle, send us spinning downward instead of climbing. It's what they want.

I would be tempted to give a shit once again if there were any significant number of people who recognized that funny feeling in the rectum for what it is and weren't too easily seduced by the feeling of importance one gets by joining the Low-Brow Brotherhood of Trolls and Tea Smokers Marching Band, but there aren't enough and and no, I'm not tempted.

The thing is

It's not any one thing. It's never one thing. All the things that have led up to my crisis of caring are old things; have been around a long time and I've been aware of all of them all along. Whether things have become so crazy that some trigger point was passed or whether being chronically weak because of a strict diet or a passing virus or whether somehow, the realization that all suffering comes from believing, from having faith that things can ever be all right in the long run, finally seeped through from that repository of things I always say to whatever core of self awareness exists deep down somewhere.

The thing is -- I just don't care. Neither more or less than the last time I said it, but I don't care. Someone apparently got away with murder? What's it to me? My country is making strides toward being neo-feudal, toward a police state, a corporate oligarchy with no collective concern for anything but maximum profit and maximum exploitation by those who can make the most of it? So what? The great accomplishments of science? That's over, unless it's the science of sales and manipulation and the technology that exists only to make people buy it. I don't give a damn. I don't even give a damn that I don't give a damn and I've forgotten why I ever believed in the progress of man and the slow climb up from the insanity of animals toward enlightenment and civilization -- or even decency.

But it's always something.

I got a phone call the other day. It was a recorded voice asking to contribute to the fight against the persecution of Christian parents' rights to raise their families as they saw fit. I have no idea what they meant but I can have some confidence in the assumption that it has to do with interfering with some other group's right to do the same. I pushed the "never call me again" button. I don't care, it's someone else's fight after all, and if they do win, it will take so long they might as well just wait for the next asteroid or gamma ray burst or solar catastrophe.

I got a flier in the mail too. Cover photos of grey haired people smiling like they were drugged under a headline of "happy Seniors." Now I hate like hell to be called a 'senior' and it damned well is a gratuitous pejorative. I'm still a man and no less entitled to be one than when I was an idiot teenager, fulfilling my duty of buying things to be hip. But no, these happy folks were just in Ecstasy because Representative Tom Rooney and his friends Mr. Ryan and Governor "Medicare Fraud" Scott were going to keep Medicare and Social security from being taken over by "unelected bureaucrats" and presumably given over to those entitled by party affiliation to a big Goddamn profit from it. You know, the Republican peerage, the elect. Happy, happy days, but I'm not going to be able to do a damn thing so why worry?

I bought one of these little flat screen portable HDTV's recently. Figured it would be a good thing for hurricane season, but trying it out today, I was was disappointed to find nothing on the air but Jesus and informercials, but I shouldn't be, of course. That's all there really is in this episode of the Truman Show and all there will be allowed to be because all this amazing technology has no other purpose than to sell to those at the bottom of the pond. The people already borrowing at 400% from Wells Fargo payday loan stores to meet the mortgage payment to Wells Fargo Bank and the credit cards they maxed out at Wal-Mart and who just found out they have to die because they have no insurance and can't even get welfare because they can't pass a drug test because they had to take something for the pain and they can't afford a prescription or prescription drugs. Yes, it's gonna be all right after we 'save' Medicare.

Some "Practicing physician" as he continually reminded me had the ultimate cure and preventative for heart disease which "we now know" is only caused by "Toxins" that need to be chelated out of our blood stream with his snake oil pills. " I don't wancha getting a bypass. I don't wancha getting a stent" He just wants to sell pills that will stop the "epidemic of sickness overwhelming all of us." It would take more than a pill to stop the irony, but nothing will stop the two born every minute.

Another channel appeared to be a cooking channel, showing children how to cover apple slices with sugar sprinkles because, as the nice Church lady tells us, "God wants children to eat healthy food" unless of course the fruit contains knowledge of morality. Perhaps that's why so many children are hungry - not enough red and green sprinkles -- or maybe, like me, God doesn't give a shit -- at least not as long as he sells enough air time. And he does sell it. Four stations available on the indoor antenna and three of them have Jesus, or at least so they say. They don't show him, but perhaps he's tied up in the back room while those polyester puffballs strut and parade and chant and solicit money. JEE- Suss! wants you to be rich so buy my prayer towel and my blessing -- call now.

So why feel sorry for myself. I don't need to if I don't care. I don't feel sorry for America either, they're fed all the crap they can chew on and they will die, or at least make sure you do, rather than make anything better. If I feel sorry for anyone it's people like poor old Jesus who not only thought they could, but tried -- only to be defeated, have their history stolen and used to sell product, to support tyranny and exploitation and persecution, the fleecing of the poor, the fearful, the desperate and to stifle knowledge, damn decency and prostitute hope.

But who cares?

Just let it die

“Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too,”

-Michelle Bachmann on Fox News-

John Wayne, I never really liked him; not as an actor and particularly not as something he attempted to portray off the stage: a patriot. No, the only uniform he ever wore came from the costume department at Republic Studios, the folks who got him his 2A draft status during WW II because it would have meant lost profits had he followed so many actors into the military.

But of course by the time the Vietnam war became a tragi-comic opera, he was a Hollywood soldier of long standing, fond of telling many of us we weren't real Americans because we didn't quite see the glory of the whole thing.

So leave it to Michelle Bachmann to claim she's channeling his "spirit" -- whatever that might be. Whether that consists of telling us we're not real Americans because we dare to measure the age of things or don't accept the Biblical nonsense about the "waters" above and below the Earth I don't know, but there are few things that amuse me more than the trolls, public and private, who present their limitations and disabilities and delusions as their strength. Haven't we all had people tell us ungrammatically how stupid we are and spell stupid wrong? Petty irony it is indeed, but then such little moments of irony may provide the most satisfaction one can expect in our kind of times. It costs too much to care any more.

So should we laugh at Michelle for confusing Winterset, Iowa, birthplace of John Wayne (nee Marion Morrison) with Waterloo, Iowa, birthplace of John Wayne Gacy who strangled little boys and buried them in his crawl space? The entire pandemonium of journalists, bloggers and blowhards has been going at it since yesterday morning. Go ahead and join in, but I'm beyond laughter or tears for that matter. When it comes to giving a shit, I don't. I'm all out of givadamn and I'm not shopping for more. As I said, it just costs too much these days.

Father's Day

Things change, everyone gets older. You start to wonder how many more father's days will pass while you still have a father to spend it with. It's good then, to see how some things never change; things like the bitter, miserable, vicious lies that spew from the GOP. Take the current Elmer Fudd of the Party, John McCain, the tortured war hero who didn't have the courage to stand up to the party's support of torture. Take John, who is making this Father's Day so much happier by blaming the Arizona wildfires on illegal immigrants rather than on the drought.

But he has substantial evidence, which he will, no doubt, reveal eventually, or not reveal or simply forget about after the wildfire of hate has got beyond control. Remember when Mexicans were bringing leprosy across the border? Many will long remember Lou Dobbs' accusations but not the lack of evidence and perhaps the wildfire libel will stick long after McCain's slide into dementia becomes all too obvious.

Well thanks John, for all you do and for reminding us of Republican fathers long gone like Joe McCarthy with their vaporous claims of "evidence" and I'm sure your legacy will stink long after you're gone.

War or not a war

"If it looks like a war, it's a war"

said Dennis Kucinich to CNN, but he's wrong. Many things look like wars and many things have been sold to us as wars that aren't wars. Johnson's War on Poverty? The war on Drugs? calling it a war doesn't make it so nor does saying it is when it isn't. The 1968 Democratic convention looked and smelled like a war -- maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.

Of course invoking the War Powers Resolution of 1973 finally gives the dogs something to bark about and they've been looking for impeachment arguments since election day, but is the current hoopla about our support of NATO actions in Syria based on concern for the law or another congressional burlesque show attempt to overturn an election they lost for good reason?

It looks like a war to the Republicans too but then, Birth of a Nation looks like history to them. Reagan's invasion of Granda and Bush's invasion of Panama looked pretty much like wars as well, but although both those presidents did report to Congress under the War Powers Resolution they did so without citing section 4(a)(1) which would require approval to continue after 60 days. In both cases hostilities ceased before the 60 day period even though troops remained in Panama and the question was deemed moot.

The question then hinges on whether American forces and personnel are still involved in hostilities 60 days after the initial air strikes and are still substantially in harms way. Obama argues that they are not, that they are only providing support for an embargo. His opponents disagree, but then they disagree with his presence in office and everything he says or does even when it mirrors their own sentiments. Scandal has been cried more often than Wolf, but while I tend to see the argument in similar light as the White House does, I Wish he could have done what Bush did by taking action when Congress was out of session, but not having had that option, I wish he would simply remove this issue from the spotlight and allow Congress to have their way. If nothing else it would take my Representative Tom "Looney" Rooney off the soapbox and out of my inbox for a while.

I think NATO can do without us and if this is so important to the Arab League, they can use some of that firepower we sold them.

Cicero on Fox News

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."

Marcus Tullius Cicero

A horse of the same color

"I believe this because I believe that and I believe that because I'm a believer and believers believe it." If this passes as anything resembling reason I give up and if it's the argument of someone who feels qualified to be the President of the United States in the 21st century I'm getting out. It's not because I believe anything or believe in believing as either a virtue or a way to run a country, but because I'm simply tired of the sanctified madness.

Take Herman Cain -- please. Take him far away from any office that allows him to rule and ruin other people with his beliefs; allows him to substitute his beliefs for law and invent crimes at will. Cain, you see, says that homosexuality is a "choice" and is a sin and he believes it because he believes it and that makes it true.

“I believe homosexuality is a sin because I’m a Bible-believing Christian, I believe it’s a sin,”

he says and yes, that's just the sort of thing Republicans like to pass off as reason and package this fear of retributive and divine bogeymen with fear of communism and common decency like Wall Street packages bad loans.

Sin, Mr. Cain, is not crime, it's a tool used to tyrannize the mind and because the sin of one frame of reference is not the sin of another and because we are a government of laws and not of prophets and because those laws are designed to protect liberty and property and not to protect your tangled web of beliefs or promote them or ennoble them or sanctify them or elevate them to the status of law and permit them to persecute others: and because sir, you are a man like the rest of us, neither better nor worse nor more to be obeyed because of your beliefs, you should save them for Sunday and leave the rest of us the hell alone with your damned arrogant beliefs. No man is elevated by standing on Bibles.



Preacher Cain of course would be a good choice for the GOP at this point -- evidence that they're not really racists and have only set the dogs on that other black man because he's not Christian enough or as concerned with the things God hates like Medicare or the Minimum wage. A different shade of black man and one more easily used as a tool to get things back to the way they used to be when there was a place for everyone and everyone was in his place.

Koching up some trouble

"Good Lord. These are truly evil people"

says The Impolitic and it's hard to disagree. Of course the people that thought it would be a "conservative" thing to do; giving struggling Detroit homeowners fake foreclosure notices, don't think they're being vandals trying to destabilize civilization and built a "conservative" Utopia on the ruins. In fact the Koch brothers who seem to be behind this prank have a vision for the future that more resembles an Orwellian horror with the part of Big Brother played by corporate robber barons like them and the sinister, black menace portrayed by Barack H. Obama. Their lackeys see it otherwise, I'm sure. A step in the final solution of the "colored problem" that the Liberals and do-gooders brought upon Detroit and a reaction to the stunning affront of ACORN having forced a black president on us -- a man nobody voted for, of course. The new North. It's the old South without the sheets.

It's truly hard to describe this sort of thing in the way we describe rational human conduct, because it isn't any more rational than drunken football hooliganism or beer hall riot -- and a hell of a lot more dangerous. It's all the more dangerous for the lack of attention given. CNN.com today provides a bright colorful farrago of sex scandal, new Facebook features, the exploits of rappers and little else. Indeed what else concerns us?

The Sesame Manifesto

It's impossible for me to watch a Fox "panel" chew a story without thinking of an alligator feeding frenzy or a bunch of mean dogs fighting for possession of a bit of rawhide. Actually it's impossible for me to watch Fox News at all, but for those of a tougher breed, here's a prime example of the ruthless war on reality called Fox.

Listen carefully and you'll spot the message that Sesame Street aims at lower income, Urban kids and you'll smell the racism and you'll hear the Republican anthem that the fraction of a cent per taxpayer that this show costs is "on principle" too much and especially because it tries to elevate the underclasses in direct contravention of Divine Law and Ayn Rand, whichever is the more powerful.

Does anyone really believe that Big Bird is a Communist or that Sesame Street is ruining America and the morals of its children? (perhaps Doctor Spock fans can sigh with relief now that they've moved on to a new chew toy.)

Perhaps you do, perhaps you watch Fox anyway. Perhaps you're a malicious idiot with delusions of persecution, but here it is again:

The Horror

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow-

________________

I had pretty much made up my mind that I wasn't going to grant Sarah Palin any more free publicity or waste any more stress-filled time reacting to the Idiot's Princess, but like the safety valve on a boiler, I have my set limit. Pop goes the weasel, or at least the blogger.

I read her garbled soliloquy yesterday, about how the immigrants who built this country up from an agrarian economy to an economic giant had a terribly hard time gaining entrance and getting citizenship and could not favorably be compared to those today who were raised in the USA from infancy, got an education and became part of our society only to be expelled on some error in their parent's papers. She's right, you can't. It took a matter of hours to go through Immigration in the Ellis Island days and if you weren't Chinese, you were all right. No English required, no guaranteed job, no nothin' -- and they came by the millions. Today it takes years, of course, but we're dealing with Sarah Palin, congenitally stupid product of a fourth tier higher educational system and a lifetime of reading nothing. She's dumber than a pre-schooler and she's a Republican front-runner.

My mother read me that Longfellow poem when I was little more than an infant and I don't think any of my contemporaries did not know by early grade school of that somewhat mythological event, but no, not Sarah Palin who seems to think that the famed Boston silversmith was a spokesman for the NRA and a right wing, saber rattling blowhard whose main concern was promoting gun rights in the American wilderness.

“…he who warned the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and, um, makin’ sure as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free. And we were gonna be armed.” You betcha, gol durn it!

The fact that this perky little peanut brain couldn't graduate 5th grade much less pass a citizenship test -- or even, apparently, read a newspaper isn't just obvious, it's horrifying and what these daily enormities we're subjected to every day say about her is still less horrifying than what this says about America.

You can't have that!

"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."

-Daniel Webster-

Every morning's bag of e-mail brings at least one call to arms and sometimes many more. I'm getting tired of the blaring slughorns and fraying pennants, whether or not I support the basic premises.

Take private cars and fuel economy. I got one from NRDC today; that's the Natural Resources Defense Council, a group whose purposes seem reasonably clear from the title. The headline purports to tell me how much I would save by switching to a 60MPG vehicle - one of those hermetically sealed capsules from which I could observe the glory of the ocean and dunes and the beauty of vast natural scenes through tinted windows, darkly. Think of how much money I would save and of course think of how I, an aging superhero, could "go green" and "save the planet!"

Numbers don't lie, people do and when I plugged in my actual figures, it told me I would save about 333 dollars a year. No I wouldn't and whoop-di-do if I did. First of all the cost to all things natural and to me of building another vehicle isn't factored in at all here nor is the possible 60+ year lifespan of my car Vs that of a Japanese post-modernist disposable gumdrop. I 'd have to sell the glorious red 190Mph convertible that may be worth more in my grandchildren's senescence than it is now and buy a rolling toad with those tiny wheels, primitive suspension and a ton of batteries ( which will have to be replaced at a high cost not added to the alleged savings.) Is life and the joy of living worth 300 bucks a year? I could save a fortune by selling the house and moving into a trailer in Central Florida after all. I could choose for myself.

The Modernist movement of the last century brought us the idea of minimalism in architecture; the idea that our homes were machines for living and that living in them made us better and more efficient -- efficient being the key word, I think. The stripped down, unornamented minimalized life of maximum efficiency isn't all that compatible with what most of us would consider a life. Integrating man into the means of production, minimizing private space and emphasizing public and communal areas and mechanizing the whole experience of life doesn't, in the mind of this inefficient life form, make for an existence I would enjoy, to say the least. It hardly allows for experiencing the intense joy of being alive on a minute to minute basis, unless you consider a brief two week packaged vacation from the cubicle to be living.

I don't know about you, but I'm not a machine or a piece of production equipment. My house is not a machine and my preferred transportation would not resemble one of those pneumatic capsules you put your checks and deposit slips into at the drive-through bank.

Send a message urging the government to strengthen pollution and fuel efficiency standards to deliver 60 miles per gallon by 2025!

screams the headline. It doesn't mention that the glut of huge, heavy, clumsy, dangerous hunks of iron now clogging the curves on our roads was the direct result of that same message sent back in the 1970's as a hysterical response to the Arab Oil Embargo. That was a perfect example of the "here's a problem - let's pass a bill" kind of knee-jerk politics that's clogged our arteries for decades and no, we can't hardly pin that on the Republicans.

You can get a 60 mpg vehicle right now if you want it - a 100 mpg vehicle that costs a thousand dollars. They sell them in several places around this town, you just have to sweat in the heat and get wet when it rains, and you can't go very fast but hey, it's all about efficiency and going green, right? Many people choose that, many enjoy it -- including me, for what it's worth, but it's a choice, not the result of a Federal mandate. Sometimes you feel like a truck, sometimes you don't -- you consider the need and the budget and you makes your choice. But is it "saving the planet" to drive one of those terrifying "smart Cars?" Did anyone stop to notice that the US military is the largest single fossil fuel burner in our country? Is our problem really cars or is it how much we drive. How much of the passion is really that same stale neo-Luddism that nestled into Liberal thought back in the 60's when it was oh so hip to destroy cars in the name of whatever you call it?

Sure Americans waste untold resources driving to work, waste a fortune to drive fashionably military-looking "safety" vehicles that cause 4 times more accidents and have to crawl through maneuvers like airships, but is the answer to regiment us, to furnish us with little steel boxes and proclaim "only this and nothing more?" Maybe it's time to let Dracula out of his coffin and raise the fuel tax! (gasp) Let people work out their personal mathematics by themselves - maybe move closer to work, maybe use a small car to drive to the train station, maybe buy a scooter. Raise the taxes steadily and put the money into high speed rail and local light rail. Eventually our obscene sprawl will contract and the mall to mall crawl may become a trip into town or down the block and people can make choices that suit them and their needs - you know, like free people in a free country. We don't trust you to use that ( insert anything here) wisely, we don't think you need it and therefore, you can't have it. It's the recipe for bad measures indeed.

Sure, I'm strongly convinced that something needs to be done, but I'm strongly convinced that it doesn't require us to become soulless gears and cams in the efficient, regulated machine of commerce and the State, if there's any difference between the two.

I know what you're thinking

My first thought was: I've seen this scenario in some cheesy Tom Cruise infected Sci-Fi movie. Apparently that thought occurred to the Nature.com editorial staff as well. The Department of Homeland Security it would seem, is testing a system to detect malicious thoughts. No really.

They call it Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) because that's what government departments do with their doings, lest clear speech shed clear light. They make up acronyms that disguise the tunnels they dig under the foundations of liberty, but I digress. The technology purports to identify individuals who are planning to blow things up or have "malintent" as they say in the dialect.

Like a more traditional polygraph, FAST measures heart rates, among other things. Heart rates respiration and perspiration go up, after all when you're nervous about the bomb in your shorts or wishing you could throttle some thick-skull TSA twit as he gives you grief over an aspirin in your pants pocket that shows up on a scanner and starts groping you for explosives as you put your hands over your head in abject submission. Hell I'm sure I'd set off all kinds of alarm bells right now just thinking of how I've so often been treated as a felon on his way into the penitentiary instead of a tired traveler trying to get home.

I have no idea about what else this electro-mechanical night club bouncer measures and I'm not sure it invades any privacy that hasn't already been taken away by the cowardly traitors who passed the "Patriot" Act. I'm too lazy and too unwilling to provoke myself into another Lewis Black style tantrum to read the " Privacy Impact Assessment" our bureaucratic brethren at DHS have given us. I'll leave that to you. Besides my loathing of people who seem to exist only for the purpose of inserting that fly-blown and putrid metaphor into every sentence, it was written, most revealingly, by someone any German speaker will recognize as the Devil himself: Hugo Teufel III, Chief Privacy offer at the DHS under George W. Bush.

Does it work any better than the Polygraph does at detecting the evasions of sociopaths? It would have to, since those tend to be the people we're looking to put on no-fly lists and of course we won't have the results interpreted by a seasoned professional, but rather someone who was promoted from K-Mart security officer last week.

No, it's the stuff of B movies or sarcastic Dr. Strangelove sequels or even Orwell novels, but perhaps we've lost the ability even to see what the politics of fear has done to us in our cringing, cowardly new century.

If they're for it, we're against it.

The natural state of men, before they were joined in society, was a war, and not simply, but a war of all against all.

-Libertas, Thomas Hobbes -


Scanning the Facebook page of my congresscritter, Tom Rooney (R-FL) I find the real interest not to be the simplistic banalities and the strained attempts to generate outrage against Barack Obama. It's not the continuing effort by Rooney to portray the assistance being given NATO's actions in Syria as a constitutional violation; it's more about the truly demented calls for impeachment by the people who post there; calls that remain in view without comment by Mr. Rooney, who claims that he maintains the page to be more "in touch" with the sentiments of his constituents rather than as a tool to promote irrational rage for political purposes.

If he has some constituents other than me who disagree with the "Oh I just hate, hate him" and "Oh he just makes me sick" and the "he uses the constitution to line his bird cage" swamp dwellers, they must indeed like me, be very reluctant to post comments there under their real names. He's created a milieu quite hostile to reason and reasonable people offering constructive criticism.

Yes, of course there are many questions about the legality of George W. Bush's legacy, some of which -- too much of which -- remains in place, but the War on Obama is not really based on his alleged and often misrepresented constitutional infractions, and we know it because they weren't presented as such during the previous administration and indeed were eagerly supported by the reactionary beasts who hang out on the Rooney page to congratulate themselves and outdo each other on the size of their hate. Indeed, that place is a microcosm of our war against ourselves, a war of all against all.

It's not that I like Senator Rand Paul or his familiar pose of principled outrage, but I am indeed on his side when it comes to addressing the real constitutional outrage of the Patriot Act. I have to smile at what may be the end of his naivete because it isn't the Democrats at war with the Leahy-Paul Amendment, designed to allow greater oversight of ever increasing Government warrantless surveillance powers under that cynically named act. It's the Republicans supporting precisely the kind of power they pretend to oppose while posturing as libertarians to the frothy-mouthed and furious rabble.

“Unfortunately, what we’re finding now is that the Democrats have agreed to allow me to have amendments but my own party is refusing to allow me to debate or present my amendments.”

Said Paul. Imagine that.

But as the man said, the joining of people into a society serves to prevent the chaos of nature, and I have to ask myself whether the effort to portray anything social or designed for the common good as the unqualified evil of Socialism, did not have the promotion of that very bellum omnium contra omnes; everyone at war with everyone and every man for himself as a purpose. Perhaps when everyone is against everyone, such things as consistent viewpoints are illusory as is anything resembling principle. If you're for it, I'm against it may be as close as we can get.

T minus 34 hours and raving

Dies iræ ! dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla:
Teste David cum Sibylla !


Well the End is neigh and a Day neigher than it was yesterday, but the proof is certain, says Harold Camping, even though he formerly had 'proof' 1994 was the big one; the Dies Irae, the End time.

But he has proof that God is allowing us to have gay pride parades and same sex marriage as a set up for the fall and the proof is in something called the Book of Jude, which I'd never heard of, my Bible ending somewhere around the book of Daniel or so and being in various Semitic dialects, not Greek. Anyway Camping says God all gaybashing mighty explains it in Jude 7 which is funny because although the Bible has at least two names for God ( and two versions of the stories to go with them) Jude isn't one of them. The real Tanach doesn't tell us that the elder Yahweh or the somewhat later Elohim wrote it either. That was Moses, it supposes -- nor did the prophets claim to actually be God, but that's a long road I won't go down today, you'll be pleased to hear.

But seriously -- it's important now in these last days before John the Revelator's ( also not God) psychotic episodes come true, to be familiar with the words of God, speaking through Jude and Camping (the least godlike of all) of course, so I looked it up to see just who this fellow was, but although I did find a site that explains it all, I had to stop reading the explanation when the writer accused Theologians ( as to be distinguished from believers) of incompetence.

" This subject is under constant dispute by many theologians. The trouble with them is they can't read English."

Stunning and in the interest of brevity I could quit right here -- but I won't.

I certainly can read English, but I can't claim to be an authority on this questionable early second century book, since I can't read Greek, so score one for The Bible Study Page. I'll even overlook the gaseous certainty that whoever the author claimed to be, he must then be, and the ubiquitous practice of naming anonymous religious texts for long dead prophets. I'm just not in an argumentative mood.

So I'll have to believe them when they say that God himself guarantees that Jude, like James, the Upright, was the brother of Jesus, but as the English language was more than a thousand years away in the future and out of respect for Mrs. Christ, or Miriam as poor old impotent Joseph ( who none the less made other kids with her) called her, let's call them Jehudi and Jacov just like their mother did. Not nice to contradict Jewish mothers, I can tell you -- I mean you want to talk about days of wrath?

So then -- just what does Jude 7 give us as the WORD OF GOD that can't be attributed to Jehudi son of Miriam or some other writer in another country?

"In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire."

Well I guess Jehudi would know, being the half brother of the son of God or maybe the full brother - who the hell knows, but it's funny that neither of the real Gods, Yahweh and the Elohim mentioned this a thousand years and a half earlier and what they did mention didn't need some adopted son to relay the message. I thought it mentioned something about inhospitable treatment of strangers, and condoned tossing your virgin daughter to a crowd to be gang raped, but as the book was likely written quite a long time after these cities disappeared, who the hell could possibly know?

Anyway, since neither Lot nor his daughters were blasted to hell for incest, I think we can dismiss the sex thing entirely, OK? If Mrs. Lot was fossilized for looking over her shoulder, but Lot gets off for free (yes, that's a double entendre - aren't I wicked?) the whole God-hates-perverts thing came right out of Jude's ass and into Camping's mouth.

As far as I can gather from Bereshit, or Genesis, Gay Pride wasn't the problem with the cities of the plain at all, and as far as we know, ancient Greece wasn't blown to hell by a firestorm like Gomorrah, nor was Egypt whose kings made Oedipus look like a prude, but who am I to argue and point out contradictions?

Like the Wrong Reverend Phelps, Camping believes "God hates fags" and is going to kill most of us for allowing them to live in peace like other people, just like he killed the Sodomites and Gomorrans for their gay pride parades and same sex marriages. And he'll find proof somewhere whether it makes sense or not, and since none of his followers are really quite sane, it doesn't matter.

The real proof of Camping's high fecal content will come at the International Date Line ( no, not the phone sex number) on 6:00 PM Saturday when nothing at all happens and the Repo men will begin to pick up all those vans, The leases on the billboards will expire, his followers will stand around like fools looking at them and wonder how they're going to get their property back and the 18 million dollars Camping has raised will likely disappear into various "good works." Perhaps he'll rapture himself to Marbella or Monte Carlo.

Anyway, Even though there are two sets of commandments given in two slightly different settings by Gods with two different names in the Bible, it's obvious to me that God doesn't like having words put in his mouth and for those who believe Jesus was Divine ( no, not the Drag Queen) I think Jesus didn't think much of you putting hate speech or damnation in there either. Of course in my personal religion, God not only speaks through our mouths, he speaks only through our mouths and thus nobody can be certain of what he's all about. Certainly for those like me who escaped out the back door during those weekend religious study classes and actually read it in its entirety, Psalm 77:19 comes to mind.

"Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. "

Like the Poet said: nobody knows where God is going or where he has been and his wake is long lost in the waves, so stop pretending you know.

Two pathetic losers

Once upon a time the wood shingles on my house caught fire from a spark that came out of the chimney. It was on the surface and I could have put it out with a garden house in seconds, but the fire department insisted that it was in the attic and tore up the ceilings trying to get at something that wasn't there. I wasn't allowed back in the house until they'd done 15 thousand dollars worth of damage - a lot of money in the Early 70's. I was angry but I never called them "fucking traitors" They were after all, trying to keep me safe and perhaps to protect evidence should it prove to be a crime scene.

I loved Easy Rider when it was first released. Hey, I was a young guy with long hair and a motorcycle and it was the first movie with a contemporary sound track. I saw it again a year or so ago and it was unwatchable; a stilted, cliche-ridden and pretentious film that confirmed my belief that as an actor, Peter Fonda was born to play the roll of standing in front of a tobacco shop with a fist full of cigars.

He's still a spoof of himself and every bit as self-important as Hanoi Jane. If I wasn't already aware of his unimportant self, his claim to have sent the President a letter calling him "a fucking traitor" for allowing BP employees and the Coast Guard to keep him and his cameras away from the oil spill clean up site would confirm it. ( I'll bet you were wondering where I was going with this.)

Fonda has an interest in a documentary which he co-produced, so he stands to profit by this adolescent behavior, which gives me even less respect for him. It's almost worse than Ted Nugent's "suck on my machine gun, you piece of shit" anti-Obama rant, because Nugent at least has the excuse of being stoned, drunk, neurotic, demented and full of guilt for dodging the draft by shitting in his pants (after getting a student deferment when he wasn't a student.)

Fonda has far less talent and his desperate efforts at getting attention here are nothing short of pathetic.

Apocalypse fer sure

Well folks, here it is again. The doomsday circus is back in town and guess what's happening in the big top in less than three days - that's right, it's the rapture and we're all gonna die screaming! OK, maybe some of y'all are actually Holy Smoke Church members and won't have to sit here through the tectonic shimmy, the lakes of fire and all the other rides while Jesus, like some Mexican wrestler with a gruesome mask is gonna kick some infidel ass, but not yours, Mr. camo pants. You get to go to the magic kingdom. You'll have to leave the truck behind, of course.

Yes, May 21, 2011 is right around the corner and Doomsday, as it has been countless times before, is almost here. For perhaps the first time however, these prophets have recognized that there are a dozen time zones and so Saturday at 6:00 PM, starting at the International Date Line out in the pacific, the apocalypse will march across the planet at a thousand miles per hour - boy can those horses move! That means we'll get to watch it all on TV as that Titanium robot, or whatever Jesus comes dressed as these days. kicks hell out of Asia and moves on toward Europe. That will give a lot of people her in God's own US of A enough time to convert and yes, you can do it on line through Paypal.

Not me though, It's going to be months before the planet is cleansed of disbelief and animal life and since the righteous will no longer be here, I get to grab their trailers and second hand pickup trucks and ATV's and guns and stuff and me and the other heretics can shoot guns and barbeque like Ted Nugent. It's gonna be a hell of a party - as long as the beer don't run out before that lake of fire thing.

Anyway, the Rapture should hit the fan at my house at 7:00 PM Eastern Daylight time according to God's infallible plan and I'll be watching it all unfold from poolside and I'll have plenty of ice on hand. Perhaps I'll live blog the whole thing. Stay tuned.

I am not an animal

Said the elephant man, and we know what he meant, but of course if we divide all living things between, viruses, plants, bacteria and so on, you'll find that humans, or most of us anyway, are animals. There was no point in our evolution when we suddenly broke the connection with our past and became something other - we're just big brained apes.

Big brained apes who like sex however, should stay out of Florida, says Southern Fried Science with tongue firmly implanted in Southern cheek, since the language of Florida's latest legislative idiocy Law outlaws sex with or the enjoyment of watching sexual activities of animals would outlaw sex between human animals as well as watching porn, human or animal -- unless you're a veterinarian or horse breeder of course, in which case, saddle up!

"An act relating to sexual activities involving animals; creating s. 828.126, F.S.; providing definitions; prohibiting knowing sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal; prohibiting specified related activities; providing penalties; providing that the act does not apply to certain husbandry, conformation judging, and veterinary practices"

Ok, ok, I'm stretching the point, since Florida law does distinguish between human and non human animals and since this one doesn't use the word "person," that Spring Break escapade in Daytona isn't necessarily going to get you locked up, but of course in the Bible belt, evolution never happened in the first place, we're not animals but animated mud and so no foul here. Sorry to have bothered you.

Cities of the plain

There are people who give Free Speech a bad name; people who use any freedom the government protects to undermine and destabilize and overthrow that government and exploit the population -- and all for personal ( and corporate) gain.

Such are the shadowy, entities behind the multi-headed beast pumped into a frenzy by unaccountable and uncountable millions they get for the purpose: entities like SOCYBERTY.COM whose recent post was sent to me by a breathless Republican eager to impart the secret knowledge that no, President Obama did not give the order to enter Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan because he is a dithering, indecisive coward and the reins of government have been pried from his trembling, black hands. You see, Leon Panetta had to "override" Obama with the help of cabinet members and that eye-rolling Minstrel Show clown is too afraid now to tell the truth. Holdouts like Valerie Jarett aren't telling us either because of the "investigation back in Chicago" but there was a silent coup and Obama is no longer in control.

"What Valerie Jarrett, and the president, did not know is that Leon Panetta had already initiated a program that reported to him –and only him, involving a covert on the ground attack against the compound."

Of course no news agency; not ABC or NBC or FOX or CNN or BBC or Deutsche Welle or al freakin' Jazeera knows about this, only SOCYBERTY.COM and all the other PAC funded heads of the same hydra who are cutting and pasting and posting these stories. Google it and you'll see. They have secret sources in the cabinet, you know, who will commit treason only for them.

Sure, we can see it as the desperate death throes of a humiliated racist party, a wicked witch melting and hissing on the floor, but I can't forgive it and I can't forgive the people who e-mail it around the country like some titillating photo of some stoned starlet getting out of a limousine in a short skirt. I can't forgive, I can't forget and while old Yahweh was willing to spare Sodom for the sake of ten good citizens, no God worth his scriptures would forgive a country that contained ten such unpunished liars as these.

The knock on the door

We've got a hard core Socialist Radical in the White House if you listen to people like the Koch Brothers -- and make no mistake, we do listen to them whether we want to or not and whether the slander comes from their mouths or the thousand mouths that speak their words. Yet the slide toward the right, the slide toward authoritarianism, the slide toward the business of America being war, continues without much popular resistance. Unless you mean the resistance of the voters of course but the voters don't matter since they're drawn along like hyena puppies following their mother, snarling about Socialism and Taxes.

Can we blame Obama, who hasn't done much to stop the wars, close the torture chambers and offshore prisons, end the DADT charade, temper the growing power of the Executive Branch or give us the kind of transparency in government we were promised? Sure we can, but if every naive campaign promise had been acted upon, we'd still have a long way to go to stop that slide.

Even while the Republicans, including my own Representative Tom Rooney, (R-FL) are howling about Obama exceeding his powers by authorizing a no-fly zone in Libya, his party has proposed giving the president even more war powers. The House Armed Services Committee's National Defense Authorization Act would authorize the United States to use military force anywhere there are terrorism suspects, including within the U.S. itself, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Yes, yes, I know, you hate the ACLU Libtards, but I don't suppose you like the idea of a president sending the marines to your neighborhood or invading any country the president suspects may be harboring "terrorists" either. As it stands there was little opposition in the house save for one member of the House Armed Services Committee: Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) who was the sole dissenter. Now let's all raise our right arms and shout "Libtard."

The President didn't ask for this awesome power boost. He didn't suggest that he needed it. He didn't ask for the extra billions in military spending or another extension of the Afghanistan War. It was the smaller government folks. It was the Republican House hissing with a forked tongue from both sides of their smirking mouths.

Yes, we're sliding and it's not toward Socialism but toward a military/police surveillance state. It's the courts, like the Indiana Supreme Court that has handed us a ruling suggesting that Indiana Police no longer need warrants nor to be in hot pursuit nor need they have probable cause to enter and search your home for any reason - and may beat hell out of you with impunity if you "resist."

“A right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,"reads the decision.

And we're babbling about Planned Parenthood and NPR and the ACLU Commies and against right of the government to flood some fields to save millions of people or take poison of the store shelves in violation of sacred property rights. We're fantasizing about being economic secessionists free or restriction or responsibility. We're oozing lofty proclamations about property rights and the government of no government like medieval monks talking about angels and pinheads and hunting for witches and heretics.

Obama can't fix this and all the Republicans can do is offer people like Tim Pawlenty, Michelle Bachmann. Maybe we can't fix it either and if you want to know who's to blame, you need look no farther than your bathroom mirror.

Why we need Ron Paul

I rather hope Ron Paul becomes the Republican presidential candidate in the next election. It's true that I agree with some of what he says, some of it quite strongly and it's true that I disagree as well and just as passionately, but if he is Barack Obama's challenger, the nature and tone of the debates and the wider campaign will have to address some fundamental assumptions that always are ignored. One of the many fundamentals that separate the left from the new right is the ranking of rights in our society. Paul asserts what most of his party would rather hide beneath heaps of polemical hyperbole: Property rights are the basis of freedom and being thus fundamental, must not be abridged for the common good.

I'm one of those people, you see, who thinks all ethics, or at least all ethical judgements are situational and that what we like to call fundamentals is an abstract construct, a bit like Euclidean geometry, which is immune from other, perhaps decisive factors. Parallel lines do indeed intersect in a universe with curvature and morally clear decisions become less clear when they have to cope with the purpose of morality and ethics.

Speaking to Chris Matthews last week, Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) declared that he would not have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act -- not because he's a racist, and to be sure he says he would have desegregated government institutions like schools, but because the rights of property owners are fundamental to our basic freedoms; freedoms that our constitution implies, are rights inherently and independently fundamental as they stand. Is he insisting that those with no property have fewer or no rights? That's up to him to clarify and I expect he would like the oportunity.

“I believe that property rights should be protected,”

says the man from Texas. Who would disagree when presented in the abstract. But life isn't an abstract thing and may I defend building a nuclear waste dump next to Manhattan because of that declared axiom? Are property rights part of a constellation of rights all designed by humans to make human life free of certain abuses? Are rights, like Newton's laws, fundamental or descriptive? If they are things invented by the people and for the people, to what purpose were they invented; to protect the one against the many or the many against the one or both? Do they apply equally at all points on the long curve or are only around the middle where we experience things?

I'm sure Paul would have to admit with liberals, that there are limits to "fundamental" rights, but just what those are and for what reason those limits are put there needs to be dragged out of the cave and into the light. Do rights exist for the benefit of people and if so does the right of one man always trump the right of every man? Are we here for the law or is the law here for us? Do the rights of all really flow from the rights of an individual or are individual rights sometimes an impediment? If there is an impediment to that road to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, must 300 million of us endure it so that the abstract right of one may be protected? Yes, that's extreme, but as with Newton's laws, it's the extremes that absolutes are shown not to be so. In short, can Libertarian theory produce a country that any of us will want to live in - in whole or in part?

(Of course if I were to debate him, I would, in my quasi-deconstructionist way ask him what he means by property and whether that question isn't more fundamental because without asking that, defending property rights can defend slavery or rape and some slightly worse things.)

We need to talk about it. We've been stuck at this point for too long. These concerns aren't new and they aren't going away and we all need to rethink our opinions at a fundamental level as a regular practice. I think Paul and Obama are both well qualified to do it and will do it -- and if we have to endure another hysterical fugue about flag pins and death panels and birth certificates and Communism aimed at the stupidest elements of the population; lies and slander and tactical statements of opinion that a moment may reverse - - well let's just say that the civil war doesn't need to be fought this way again.

I am not an animal

Said the elephant man, and we know what he meant, but of course if we divide all living things between, viruses, plants, bacteria and so on, you'll find that humans, or most of us anyway, are animals. There was no point in our evolution when we suddenly broke the connection with our past and became something other - we're just big brained apes.

Big brained apes who like sex however, should stay out of Florida, says Southern Fried Science with tongue firmly implanted in Southern cheek, since the language of Florida's latest legislative idiocy Law outlaws sex with or the enjoyment of watching sexual activities of animals would outlaw sex between human animals as well as watching porn, human or animal -- unless you're a veterinarian or horse breeder of course, in which case, saddle up!

"An act relating to sexual activities involving animals; creating s. 828.126, F.S.; providing definitions; prohibiting knowing sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal; prohibiting specified related activities; providing penalties; providing that the act does not apply to certain husbandry, conformation judging, and veterinary practices"

Ok, ok, I'm stretching the point, since Florida law does distinguish between human and non human animals and since this one doesn't use the word "person," that Spring Break escapade in Daytona isn't necessarily going to get you locked up, but of course in the Bible belt, evolution never happened in the first place, we're not animals but animated mud and so no foul here. Sorry to have bothered you.

Freedom is slavery

A mind is a terrible thing to make up, uncertainty being a fundamental building block of nature, but I've come close to making up my mind that a mind is, unlike all other things, not really subject to change and so those who spend their time trying to change minds damn themselves to a great deal of suffering.

So then, I'm not going to try to convince you that Rand Paul is having another one of his captious fallacy fests by trying to convince us all that if one believes that Americans have a right to have a certain degree of health care, one believes, ipso facto, in slavery.

Why try to go through his tortuous logical progressions and attempt to refute them as factually or logically false? Why indeed, since humanity runs on a blend of unconscious bias and packaged rationalizations. Who would read the list of ingredients on a pack of cigarettes anyway and who bothers to question politicians who mock people you don't agree with? We just inhale and we like it and we come back for another pack.

So, to reiterate the claim that freedom from untimely death is slavery will be enough for me this sunny morning when I should be enjoying life instead of following the lives of celebrity idiots. I'll just leave it to you. You may think of Orwell and smile, you may dream of being the only man in the world and growl in approval, you may jump off a cliff, you may do as you please. I've got mine and screw all y'all, as it says on the Tea Bag and if my wake upsets your boat, or you're thrashing about in the water, screw you twice, loser -- I'm nobody's slave.