tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69871282024-02-18T23:30:19.785-08:00The Heraclitan FireA sometime journal on the nature of truth, critical thought and politicsCraig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-1056030619755774202019-06-02T20:12:00.000-07:002019-06-02T20:12:47.555-07:00<b><span style="font-size: large;">The Problem with Capitalism </span></b><br />
<br />
As I see it the problem isn't really capitalism but human nature. Capitalism is a known quantity, it's all about greed and greed only. It always devolves to the lowest possible level and recognizes no rules whatsoever. Its structure is pure feudalism and the end result of every transaction is dog-eat-dog and every 'deal' is governed by how much power the parties each have.<br /><br />Our problem is that we try to smear on morals and ethics to a system that doesn't have any idea what those are. You can have all the 'economic engineering' you want and your lovely scheme will always instantly rot at the seams.<br /><br />The one and only thing you can do (if you're trying to control the beast) is to set out some ironclad rules for the crazy people - think of them as a bunch of Charles Mansons. Create bonecrushing punishments for transgressing those rules (be sure to make the punishments personal) rigorously enforce those cruel rules... and wait for the inevitable rot that will nibble away at and crumble said rules and enforcement... until you have to start over with new and even more onerous rules and enforcement.<br /><br />That's the awful truth as the man said. The rest of economic theory is just a bunch of crap based on fairytales about how humans operate.Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-82736956571619116842018-02-20T06:39:00.000-08:002018-02-20T06:39:53.109-08:00Gun Control Redux - Part 2Well this conversation has gone on and I think I'm obliged to post the follow up.<br />
I think I may have lost a friend and I'm very sorry about that. He's a good guy and means well, he's just stuck in a loop imo and can't get out... on the other hand I could just be maligning him unnecessarily.<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
K: </div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I don't particularly
care about Trump or the Democratic party.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
They seem all
equally corrupt to me.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But you are totally
wrong about gun control.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is dead.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Ignorant kids can
fall for it for awhile, but kids don't vote.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Nor do I think the
police or military would actually try to implement the kind of gun
control the democrats are pushing.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is suicide for
the whole party, once you go down that road.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Unions, labor, poor
people, etc., none of them are going to support gun control to that
level.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I lived through 2
students being killed in my senior year, and I can tell you that all
the students were very happy there were armed teachers and
janitors. </div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
If modern students
don't get it, then they are insane and part of the problem.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
You can't possibly
make any one safer by disarming the honest people.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
Me: </div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
We do disagree a
lot but that's OK, I think because we are both looking for the larger
truth.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
Nobody in this
country really cares about the ME or the people in it. If they did we
would have been out of there a long time ago as you suggest.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
But they DO care
about their children and now you are siding with the people who
killed their children. Times are changing my friend, the kind of
libertarian individualism you espouse is beginning to have the odor
of dead fish about it. People who once might have railed against
Ruby Ridge and Janet Reno are pretty much over that now and you have
Mr Trump to thank for that. You and other old people may see him as a
beneficial disruptor but the kids are very much aware that he's
pathological liar who cares for no one but himself. He made a Yuuuuge
mistake when he started to go after the FBI. He lost the youth (and
rightly so). He may well survive on the backs of the white racists he
has courted so avidly but the future belongs to the Florida high
school kids. I believe the tide has turned. If you want to keep your
guns better find a good deep hole to bury them.</div>
Me, again: <br />
Y’know I don’t think you guys have thought this through, any
of you.<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What do you imagine
would happen if your plans for resisting the government actually came
to the top of the soup? </div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’ll tell you what
would happen:</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
There are
approximately 17,985 state and local police offices in the US
employing 765,000 sworn police officers, about 100,000 part time
officers and 44, 000 deputies. This doesn’t count the 120,000 full
time federal officers (US Marshalls and such).</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
This is about 1
million police officers… how many people who would willingly pick
up their firearms and fire upon the police have you got?</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And of course this
doesn’t even count the National Guard (remember them? The guardians
of the constitution within our borders? Armed with military grade
weapons)</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Currently the
National Guard has about 210,000 active members on duty. You should
really have a look at this document in regards to the national guard
in case you had any fantasies of various governors rising up to
support your insurrection.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act</a>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And if that was not
enough there is the US armed forces which is authorized, on the
President’s command, to suppress insurrection and or revolution in
the United States and Posse Comitatus be damned.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Btw the US Armed
force has about 2,280,000 soldiers</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
That's about
3,476,000 trained crowd control officers and professional warriors to
face your...? What? 100,000 do or die guys? 10,000? Or do think
Captain Moroder will save you?</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
They have howitzers
and Bradley fighting vehicles. They have Abrams tanks and LAWS
rockets and .50 caliber machine guns and flamethrowers, They have
bunker buster bombs and nuclear weapons ferchrisakes.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And what do you
have? A bunch of AR-15s and a lot of handguns… are you kidding me?</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Use the tools that
are available without the patently false bullshit like Scalias
twisted interpretation of the 2<sup>nd</sup>. Stop with the NRA, they
don’t give a shit about you and your individual rights, they are
there to promote gun sales. Run as far away from them as you can.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Get together in a
real gun rights organization and hire really good lawyers to preserve
as much of your rights as you can.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Disabuse yourselves
of the notion that you can ‘win’ this fight. The children are
really pissed at you, it’s too late. Get used to a lot more strict
oversight and monitoring of your gun privileges, if you’re very
very smart or have very very smart lawyers, it might be as easy as
having a driving license. If you’re intransigent (ie, stupid) it’ll
be a lot more like getting an FBI high level security pass… with
full body cavity search.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
There may be perks
with this. I can easily see a Presidential National Emergency
directive ordering any criminal and/or gang member/and or ‘raping’
mexicans shot on sight. Trump really likes Duterte… this may be his
chance...
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-60330723030937069372018-02-19T22:11:00.000-08:002018-02-19T22:11:48.988-08:00Gun Control ReduxI and some friends have had an ongoing - over several years - discussion about guns and gun control.<br />
<br />
At one point I even bought a gun to see how I felt about owning one. I didn't feel any increase in godlike power nor did I feel like the world was now my oyster. I didn't feel safer for me or my family nor did I feel any increase in hostility for my fellow man.<br />
<br />
I should say that I'm a fair shot with a bow - I can consistently hit a man-sized bale of hay at a distance of 100 yards. I own a couple of knives and I know how to use them. So absent a team of dedicated assassins, I am fairly confident about surviving for the next few years or so.<br />
<br />
I have also had a very fast car: E39 M5, supercharged. So I've gotten that out of my system and I have every expectation of continued longevity (my Dad just turned 94 and seems to be in good health).<br />
<br />
That all being said, the discussion has continued.<br />
<br />
At first it was a bit hot and heavy, then I came to understand that it wasn't a condition that was amenable to discussion or persuasion. Gun owners acted like members of a cult. No amount of logic or reason would ever sway their opinions. Well, I said to myself: "So be it."<br />
<br />
The other part of this is... [painful truth ahead, you won't like it but...] there are some 350 million people in this country and some 370 million guns. This means two awful things:<br />
<br />
1) You'll never get the guns away from people, there are simply too many of them.<br />
<br />
2) It doesn't really matter anyway because: statistically speaking gun deaths are insignificant - too small to matter on the great scales of history.<br />
<br />
I know it seems horrible to think that but the numbers don't lie. Gun deaths, whether by cop or suicide or massacre just don't raise a blip compared to how many people there are in this country.<br />
<br />
They don't matter.<br />
<br />
So why am I raising the matter yet again?<br />
<br />
I had another exchange with my group - and I should say that these guys are very open to discussion and are willing to talk and explain and even consider change (sometimes).<br />
<br />
I got a statement from one of them and gave him my response: <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px #ccc solid; margin: 0 0 0 .8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
<div>
<div>
K:</div>
<div>
You miss the point about gun control.</div>
<div>
Sure
other there are other countries with much stricter gun control, but
they are not committing mass murder like our government did in Iraq,
Waco, etc., and they were always somewhat draconian to start with</div>
<div>
The US is committing mass murder, torture, and lots of other war crimes.</div>
<div>
The US is the most dangerous country in the world right now, and it is attempting to stifle any and all resistance.</div>
<div>
So gun control in the US is a far bigger issue than anywhere else in the world.</div>
<div>
And yes it is worth killing and dying over I think.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Me: <br />
<div>
Ah,
but <i>you </i>miss the point. What has been shown time and time again is just
how easy it is to commit mass murder with guns... even a child can do
it. No one is worried about a G..... or a K... (my friends) going out and mowing down
swathes of immigrants or children.</div>
<div>
We are all a bit
worried about so-called hunters getting plastered during hunting season
and shooting anything or anyone who makes the underbrush twitch.</div>
<div>
We're
a little more worried about some dipshit teenager who doesn't have a
clue to how his brain works and only has to decide whether to go to
Syria and join ISIS or stay here and be a 'lone wolf' and mow down some
defenseless teenagers or better yet some completely innocent children or
settle for a few hundred country music fans. Funny I never notice them
attacking a gun club or a police station.</div>
<div>
I'm kinda
surprised that gun people haven't formed some kind of vigilante society
to detect, monitor and stop these idiots. It must have occurred to some
people at least that this can't go on. Maybe you've shut down the
outrage for this season or this generation but the anger against you is
getting louder and louder. Do you thinks those kids in Florida are going
to forgive or forget? The longer you guys cling to your guns the more
certain will come the day when people have had it. And when that day
comes they really will take your guns, all of them - no matter what it
takes to do it. You are in the process of becoming pariahs and soon no
one will care about your precious individual rights because they will
see you as threatening theirs.</div>
<div>
You guys really need to wake up and smell the cordite.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So that's where I'm at these days about guns, I'd be interested in your thoughts...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-52618490765858136262017-07-17T17:31:00.002-07:002017-07-17T17:33:48.843-07:00A friend asked me...<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A friend asked me about politics and said he was meeting another conservative friend and would return loaded for bear</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By now I’ve had a lot of experience talking with people who
have other opinions (gasp). These talks have not, for the most part, gone well.
They all tend to unravel into each person talking over the other or into
agreements to disagree. Nothing seems to get resolved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I myself try to apply critical thinking to politicians,
especially presidential ones. This means that I do research on them whether I
like them or don’t. When I’ve finished I usually have a good idea of what they
really stand for and who they really are, at least sufficient knowledge for me
to support or reject them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My criteria are:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Is this person out for power or for service?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Do they understand the importance of the Rule of Law?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Have they read and understood the Constitution and it’s time
and context?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Do they understand justice and compassion?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There are more of course but these are a start.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If I don’t want to get into arguments about bullet lists,
what do I want?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I want to say to people: Here these are some of the books I
read and some of the people I spent time with, trying to figure things out. I
had to absorb this knowledge to get to a place where I could place things in
their proper perspective, identify the real players and understand their
agendas. These are the tools you need to get real about things.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It took me thirty years to get to this point so don’t
despair. I also don’t expect everyone to have these experiences – frankly – if you
just read all of Shakespeare you could throw about 95% of this stuff out. In fact you’ll
learn more about human nature than all of the other books combined. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Economics<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Adam Smith<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frederic von Hayak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Milton Friedman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Joseph Steiglitz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">John Galbraith (Older and younger)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Paul Krugman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Karl Marx<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thomas Piketty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Politics<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sun Tzu – Art of War<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Musashi – A Book of Five Rings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Von Clausewitz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Julius Ceasar – The conquest of Gaul<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Marcus Aurelius – Meditations<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thucydides<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Modern Times<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">William Schreiber – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Bruce Catton – The Civil War<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Federalist Papers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Anti-Federalist Papers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">People Whose Work You
Should Know About<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Oliver Wendell Holmes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Roger Taney<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Benjamin Cardozo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thurgood Marshall<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">William O. Douglas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Howard Zinn<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">People and
Organizations You Should Know About So You Can Run From them in Terror<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Charles Koch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Davis Koch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Fred Koch – yes, their father and the founder of the John
Birch Society<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Peter G. Peterson<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">James M. Buchanan (not the president, the economist)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Heritage Foundation <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Cato Institute<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Fellowship – Doug Coe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Ku Klux Klan – doing quite well thank you very much<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">David Duke<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Jeff Sessions – remember him? He’s now US AG<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A.L.E.C. – look it up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Alex Jones <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Michael Savage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Rush Limbaugh (still)</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Know your enemy. All war is a crime.</span></div>
Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-72875186742708355602017-07-07T20:51:00.000-07:002017-07-07T20:51:00.293-07:00On the Subject of July 4th<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As I often do on the 4<sup>th</sup> I reflect on our history
and, more specifically on those who have fallen in its honor. Some who think
they know me may be surprised but most of the others know of my deep respect
for true patriots and true honor, however earned.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Since the Vietnam War was the war of my time, I focus on
that conflict and try to understand the things I can’t. Perhaps the burning
flames of that conflagration concentrate my thoughts in a way nothing else
might.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Let me start (and end) by saying: “All War is a Crime”, by now
this must be obvious to everyone yet we go about our daily lives acting as if
this was not the case… I have no answer to this, it baffles me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I was intimately aware of the Vietnam War insofar as I was
eligible for drafting to serve (having exhausted my student exemption)… I was reprieved
by a high draft number and escaped. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I did have to consider my options:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
I could have claimed conscientious objector status, except that I would not
have – I thought that fighting Hitler was justified, for example.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I could have gone to Canada, except that I couldn’t justify
that to my parents.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I knew that if I went to Vietnam, I would die… very hard to
reconcile with abject cowardice.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So I was ecstatic and grateful for the draft number that
spared me from that decision. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As a natural consequence I have been troubled by the
omnipresent moral monitor who always demands an answer: did you really do the
right thing? I usually buy her a drink and try to forget…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Literature abounds with books on war which constantly smack
me upside the head, sometimes they make movies…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In modern times there have been two movies, no, three, that
bring things to a crux for me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Oliver Stone’s ‘Platoon’ of course, which posits they conflict
of Good and Evil sergeants to limn the way before us.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The masterful Terence Malick (James Jones) movie The Thin
Red Line that was buried by the usual sloppy, soppy Saving Private Ryan of schlockmeister
Steven Spielberg.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But there has also been another movie made more recently of “We
Were Soldiers Once and Young”. Taken from the book (memoir) of the first real
battle between the North Vietnam regulars and the US regular forces.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I need to stop here and say a few things:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">First rant</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I think Mel Gibson is a decent actor, not great, not
horrible but pretty good within his limited range. I don’t begrudge him the
money he has made Hollywood and good looks being what they are. But I do take
exception to his truly awful personal beliefs. I don’t mind that he’s some kind
of weird Christian fanatic but I do mind his faith-based opinions of others – I’m
sure you’ve heard them many times over. And actually I don’t even mind that he
has those beliefs: just shut the fuck up about them, please? Then we can all
get along quite nicely.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Second rant</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I generally like war movies and action movies in a desultory
way. They while away the time and display manly men doing manly things in a
manly way… they go well with popcorn. But I do get annoyed by the laziness of
directors I guess. Almost always the battle scenes are just two groups of
soldiers screaming and running at each other, seemingly with no battle plan
thought out, no tactics or strategy. I realize that the 10,000 ft view can’t be
detailed and that no plan survives contact with the enemy but it annoys me that
there’s only chaos in view.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Rants over, thank you for listening.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We Were Soldiers… is a memoir by retired Lieutenant Colonel
Hal Moore and Joseph Galloway (the journalist at the battle). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a remarkable retelling of that battle at
La Drang that went on for three days in November of 1965.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The movie is also remarkable, showing the tactics of both
LtColonel Moore and North Vietnamese commander Nguyen Huu An. Attack and
counterattack, backup plans and swift response to unexpected situations. And also
showing the gritty reality of the battle itself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Technically speaking the Americans were outnumbered 4 to 1
but they had far superior cavalry and aircover and were able to beat back NVA
assaults. There is of course the irony of the ending when, having driven the
NVA out of La Drang valley, they leave only to have the NVA forces immediately
return.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As good a performance by Gibson as he could manage and Sam
Elliot’s turn as the crusty Sgt Major is epic.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In its own way it is an anti-war movie in that it shows the
senselessness and futility that all wars exhibit but it is also a showing of
respect and honor for those who fought and those who fell.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Well done and a credit to all involved especially Moore and
Galloway, it’s one of those things we can invoke on fourths of July.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-31905167469661929692017-06-27T10:41:00.002-07:002017-06-27T10:41:44.389-07:00An Open Letter to the Democratic Party<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I’ve listening for months now to all the various
pundits/partisans/prophets and fools giving their weighty opinions about why the
Democrats lost the 2016 election.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It’s all self-deluded bullshit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">There are two main reasons the Democrats lost and until they
fix those reasons they will continue to lose.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">1<sup>st</sup>: They didn’t do the work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">2<sup>nd</sup>: They forgot who their base was, and is.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When I (or any rational observer) look out over the last
forty years in the political arena, there is a glaring discrepancy. On the one
side you have the Republicans: marching in lockstep down their road to hell,
completely governed by their party leaders and speaking from an approved
script. They have assiduously gathered together to overwhelm school board
meetings, attack town councils, raise candidates for state legislatures – over
and over and over again – until they win and win and win again. Where has there
been opposition? Where are the Democratic candidates supported by ground
pounding cadres ceaselessly turning out the vote? Answer: [crickets]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And we’re surprised to find out that the south and the
middle of the country are solidly Republican? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Let’s face it: the Democrats blew it simply by being
disorganized and feckless. They blew it in 1968 when they let Jerry Rubin and
Abbie Hoffman run wild in the streets of Chicago. Anyone who saw that had an
instant reaction; “There’s no way I want those morons in charge of the
country.” And so we got Nixon. The original Mad King.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Notice that every so-called Democratic candidate thereafter
was deemed an irrelevant sideshow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And they were because the Democrats never woke up to the
fact that they had to DO THE WORK of building a base that was respected and feared
in the political world, they needed to fight for every school board seat, every
town council member, every state legislator in order to prevent what happened:
Republican control of the state houses and therefor control of drawing the congressional
district maps after the census, i.e., gerrymandering, which gave them control
of the House.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Yes, the Republicans were aided by very smart people who
crafted and plotted this insurrection and developed the propaganda and
misinformation that guided the victory they achieved. It’s all true but it’s
irrelevant The Republicans only won because the Democrats didn’t enter the
field.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The crux of the situation is that the Republicans knew they
were in a war and the Democrats never figured it out… stupid.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Stupid, which is also an apt word for the second reason the
Democrats lost (and will continue to lose until they figure it out).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Who are (and were) the Democratic base?</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Well nobody really knows do they? Let’s see: there are the
Blacks and the Hispanics and the Women and the Indians and the LGBTQ people and
the… whatever…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Notice anything odd about this list? No? Well I’ll tell you
this one time: there are no white people. Sounds racist doesn’t it? It does
sound racist until you go back and look at the history of the Democrats: from
its founding the bedrock of the Democratic party has always been the unions:
which have been almost exclusively poor blue collar white folks. The Democratic
party’s bulwark has been the cadres of union members who could be reliably
turned out for rallies, demonstrations… and voting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But not after Chicago 1968, then the party was more and more
given over to interest groups and not to party unity. In part the Democrats
were victims: the Mafia had so completely taken over the unions that no
self-respecting pol wanted anything to do with them fearing, rightly, that they
would soon be compromised and used as tools for mob enrichment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Nevertheless, unions continued to dwindle and the Democrats
continued to suffer the consequences.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So the Democratic party became, more and more, a collection
of special interest groups. There’s nothing wrong with this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">per se</i>, but special interest groups in
general have an agenda: the welfare and benefit of their particular group.
There’s nothing in their lexicon about ‘cooperation’. In the old days, the
democrats could fall back on the unions to be the organizing drivers for the
party and they would drag all the disparate factions along for the ride but
that doesn’t work anymore. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This time around we had the so-called ‘progressives’
(yet another faction) who, imo, knew they would lose and just did as much
damage as they could (turned out to be quite a bit). And of course there was
the hilariously boneheaded Black Lives Matter who apparently could only think
of one target for their ire and showed up to hijack one of their own
candidate’s rallies, instead of confronting a Republican rally<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- I guess that was too hard.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So every little splinter group had their own agenda and none
of them was prepared to even listen to any of the others… the results were
predictable.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">If the Democrats ever want to have political power again
they need to remedy the two areas mentioned above. It won’t be quick and it
won’t be easy, indeed. It may already be too late. But going along the way they
doing now will only lead to more losing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<![endif]-->Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-65725396025572371132012-03-20T20:52:00.002-07:002012-03-20T20:53:47.584-07:00Passing thoughts on the State of the Art(ifice)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> 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mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Thought of The Police the other day while I was thinking about the police: </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Poets, priests and politicians<br />have words to thank for their positions<br />words that scream for your submission<br />...no one's jammin’ their transmission<br />- The Police</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">The noise level is so high these days you can have trouble hearing your own thoughts... </span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Florida apparently passed a law that says, basically: shoot first, then claim self-defense – it’ll be alright (especially if you’re an upstanding white guy and the other guy/perpetrator/victim is black).</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Irony clause: This was vigorously supported by women’s groups trying to find a way to protect abused women who lashed back at their torturers.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Congress passed a bill (instantly signed into law by the Prez) that effectively bans all protests anywhere near the object of the protest. As one officer put it to a sign-wielding protester: “The no-protest zone moves to be anywhere <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you</i> are.”</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Asma Assad’s (who finally let her hair down on Twitter, said “I am the dictator here.” – as we all suspected) government is now using social media to counter-propagandize the Syrian revolutionaries. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(Death Count: 8,000 and rising)</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Foxconn is evil, Apple is evil wait, wait… the guy who said this stuff in a one-man show apparently got some of his info from people who weren’t authorized by Foxconn to say that Foxconn was evil… so Apple and Foxconn <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">aren’t</i> evil after all, phew!, all our iPhones are safe… but the suicide nets at the Foxconn plants are still up…</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Rick Santorum wants to know who you’re fucking, when you’re fucking and why you’re fucking… he especially wants to know these things about women; men, not so much.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Republicans have come up with yet another economic plan that fails to address any of the economic problems we are faced with except for the wrenching tragedy suffered daily by the very wealthy: apparently they don’t have enough money (see Ann Romney for commentary)… the White House is desperately searching for a way to capitulate.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Supreme Leader Imam Khamenei has, effectively, taken over control of the Iranian ‘Republic’ (ever notice how the grander the title, the punier the tinpot dictator?) from Ahmadinejad (too batshit crazy even for Khamenei). He’s declared that no, they are not producing weapons grade fissionables… now. It seems that the 30,000 centrifuges they have been running day and night for the last six months aren’t separating out the U-235 at sufficient purity for bombs… yet.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">In its wisdom, the US Army sends a guy with brain damage back to the front for a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">fourth</i> tour and then is ‘shocked, shocked’ to find out that he went off the reservation and shot anyone he could find in an alcohol-soaked redout… forget Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz and Musashi, didn’t any of these people see “The Hurt Locker” ?</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">On the other hand, in the time of ‘Obamacare’ vs ‘Romneycare’, we don’t hear a peep nowadays about ‘single-payer’ or Vermont…</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">The gutting of NASA continues apace, I guess that Obama was really pissed off that NASA couldn’t duplicate Star Trek technology – y’know, it’s been <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">40 years</i> now, I mean, jeez, how much time do you guys <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">need</i>?</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">The economy crashed in 2008 due to weasels stealing everything they could carry and then sticking us with the bill (nice move!) it’s now 2012, four years later and NOT ONE PERSON has been indicted for the greatest fraud perpetrated against the citizens of the United States, in history… news at eleven?, I think not…</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">In a comment on the political situation in Europe wherein the European Banksters are taking over the governments and overruling or displacing any democratically elected regimes and replacing them with dictatorial states that answer to the German Central Bank. One politician said:</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetimes.”</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">…wait, that sounds familiar, did I hear that before somewhere?</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">A shallow, narcissistic, incompetent corporate hack is being challenged by a shallow, narcissistic, incompetent corporate hack, an ignorant, shallow, incompetent, religious, misogynist, xenophobic bigot, a schizoid, incompetent, ethically convicted, opportunistic, cruel, serial betrayer and a fraudulent, self-serving, incompetent quack… my, my, my… how to choose.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">I’m reminded of a story told about Dorothy Parker (a founding member of the incomparable Algonquin Round Table). She and Jean Harlow (the Britney Spears of her day) arrived at the door of the Algonquin at the same time. Harlow, trying to be witty (big mistake!) held the door for Parker, saying “Age before beauty.” Parker replied “Pearls before swine.” and swept through the door…</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">...no one's jammin’ their transmission…<br /><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-21452698670439980692012-03-15T16:08:00.000-07:002012-03-15T16:10:54.756-07:00I’m not fair anymore<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'm not fair, I'm not even-handed, I don't give the benefit of the doubt, I don’t suffer fools gladly any longer- I'm way past that these days. I'm angry and outraged at the cowardice, venality and stupidity I see in the political sphere, I'm frustrated that bog-obvious solutions to our problems are gathering dust while the clown circus magic pony ride goes on and on and I’m especially furious when ignorant, self-righteous twits attempt to foist their narrow-minded bigotries on me (or anybody else), case in point.<br /><br style="font-family: verdana;"></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Rick Santorum (the Pro-Rape candidate) removed any possibility of his being elected and probably killed whatever chance the GOP hoped for in the general election even if they nominate Rubio for VP:<br /><br style="font-family: verdana;"></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">In an interview with El Vocero newspaper, Santorum said he supported Puerto Ricans' right to self-determination regarding the island's political status. </span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;">"We need to work together and determine what type of relationship we want to develop," he told the newspaper.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But Santorum said he did not support a state in which English was not the primary language.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law," Santorum said. "And that is that English has to be the principal language. There are other states with more than one language such as Hawaii but to be a state of the United States, English has to be the principal language."</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">1) Of course there is no federal law mandating English (or any other language) as the 'principal' language </span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">2) Nowhere, except in the fever dreams of rightwingnutland is this even an issue.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">3) Can he say that in Spanish so everyone can understand him?</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><br style="font-family: verdana;"><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Every Hispanic in America just registered as a Democrat... </span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I think that this issue will be a tremendous loser for Republicans in this election (especially among the Hispanic community). So far, there has been no official language in the US, English has been proposed, German was proposed as a co-official language with English between the wars and of course Spanish has been proposed more recently - in some areas it is a de facto standard along with English if not de jure.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I don't like ‘Imam Rick’ very much on a visceral level. My nomination of him as the "Pro-Rape" candidate is an extrapolation of his stand that not even incest or rape are sufficient cause for a woman to seek an abortion. I consider his statement to be an invitation to rapists everywhere, after all, they get to increase their power over their victims by forcing them to bear their children.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">As for the Republican party in general, I'm of the opinion that the GOP is populated mostly by corrupt corporate stooges who have left their ethics, morals and ability to think, at home on the bedroom dresser along with the cufflinks.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sad to say (having been a Democrat for 40 years) this applies to the Democratic party too, nowadays…</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">…just to be fair.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><br style="font-family: verdana;"></span>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-78134051460214222432012-02-02T23:27:00.000-08:002012-02-05T16:04:59.335-08:00A Brilliant Maneuver<span style="font-size:85%;"><br style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Yesterday the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced it would no longer fund Planned Parenthood’s mammogram outreach to poor women, because a right wing Congresscritter had started an investigation into Planned Parenthood for, frankly, who cares? Some absurd allegation, trumped up to provide this very excuse.<br /><br style="font-family:verdana;"></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">This utterly transparent ploy is the basis of a brilliant maneuver by the right wing-anti-abortion, hate-women crowd. First, they carefully infiltrated the Komen Foundation with Karen Handel, who apparently bedazzled founder Nancy Brinker with her ‘born again’ fervor to serve women (although she had made her career as an anti-abortion politician).<br /><br />Then Handel convinced Brinker and apparently some other gullible members of the board at Komen to support this astonishingly stupid decision (talk about a snake in the garden!). And eventually got the Komen Foundation to make what is arguably the worst decision made by a woman since Nancy Pelosi declaimed that ‘Impeachment is off the table.”<br /><br style="font-family:verdana;"></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">But for the right wing women haters, this is win-win! Now, no matter what happens next, the Komen Foundation has lost all credibility with its grass roots supporters. It’s once cherished position as the preeminent US charity fighting breast cancer and providing poor women with the help they desperately need, is now in cinders. As an added bonus, the women haters got to cut off funding for their <span style="font-style: italic;">objet de détester</span> - Planned Parenthood…. It’s a twofer!</span><br style="font-family:verdana;"><br style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">And, in addition, now Karen Handel and the rest of the women haters have a fan-dab-tastic method for closing down anyone they hate at any time they want. All they have to do is get a tame Congersscritter to start any kind of bogus investigation into the target group and presto-chango, they can justify any hate-filled, anti-woman action their little black hearts desire.</span><br style="font-family:verdana;"><br style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">To the right wing fanatics who thought this up: I have to tip my hat to a vicious tactical victory – well done.<br /><br style="font-family:verdana;"></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">To the idiots like Nancy Brinker who just drove her Foundation into the ground, you really should resign because getting suckered like this means you’re pretty much too stupid to be trusted with anything this important.</span><br style="font-family:verdana;"><br style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">In the larger picture, I wonder what it’s going to take for the left wing in this country to wake up and realize that they’re in a war with an implacable, merciless enemy that absolutely will not stop until all women are slaves? Think I’m overstating the case? Have you listened to Rick Santorum lately? No abortions for any reason including incest and/or rape (I’m thinking of naming him the Pro-Rape candidate), no condoms for anyone and no sex at all unless it’s between man and wife (women only as wives, of course) and even then only for purpose of procreation - How could you tell, Rick? And how would you find out? If you think this is starting to sound like the Reader’s Digest version of The Handmaid’s Tale, you’re right. </span><br style="font-family:verdana;"><br style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">I’ve often wondered why women in this country don’t just stand up and take power – they’ve got the numbers. I see things like this happen and I don’t understand why they don’t burn the place down. I’m not a woman (obviously) but I have a wife and a daughter and Hell would have to freeze over before I’d allow any, cramp-assed, pea-brained, woman-hating bigot tell either of them what they could or could not do with their own bodies.</span><br style="font-family:verdana;"><br style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Time to step up ladies, if you don’t grab hold of your own reins, there are plenty of people out there who will be glad to – for you own good of course. </span><br style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> </span><br style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">UPDATE 1:</span><br style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">The Susan G Komen Foundation has reversed course due to the massive outcry against their boneheaded move against Planned Parenthood. However, Ms. Handel still has her job so i would expect there to be a stealth move to block funding after the attention has died down.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">UPDATE 2:</span><br style="font-family:verdana;"></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Apparently there's a caveat: The Komen Foundation announced that they will honor current grants - which they were legally obliged to do since they had already publicly issued the grants. However, they made no mention about grants for next year, which were the ones in question.</span><br face="verdana"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> It's possible that this is a planned Red Herring: approving already approved grants and waiting until the heat dies down before refusing the next years' applications. </span><br face="verdana"><br face="verdana"><span style="font-family:verdana;">We'll see...</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">UPDATE 3:</span><br face="verdana"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Well, that didn't take long, see </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/05/karen-handel-susan-g-komen-decision-defund-planned-parenthood_n_1255948.html">this article</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> in HuffyPo. Turns out VP Karen Handel was actually targeting PP all along and so the right wing woman-haters are doing exactly what I predicted they were doing. Champagne tonight in the Halls of Right Wing Batshit Crazy Woman-haters!</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">UPDATE 4:</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Who's reading? I note that this press release was done at the unique time of year guaranteed to get it the least possible attention in the universe: on Superbowl Sunday just as The Game was about to start. I took a quick look around the web to see who was aware of the story: None of the MSM of course: NYTimes: No. CNN: No. Salon: No. Slate: No. NBC: No. ABC: No. CBS: No FireDogLake: No. ... Huffington Post: Yes, Daily Kos: Yes. I'm heartened to note that Arianna Huffignton found this story of enough interest to actually folllowup on it, And the DK has two articles offering some actual insight on the underlying issues. Well done HP and DK.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Shame on the rest of the so-called 'press' - let us know how the Great Battle in Indianapolis turns out willya? </span></span><br style="font-family: verdana;">Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-62899877517499643152011-12-22T18:30:00.000-08:002011-12-22T21:00:43.263-08:00“Inter arma enim silent leges.”<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> 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10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">“In Time of War the Law is Made Silent.” – Cicero</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The infamous, illegal, immoral and shameful American war of choice in Iraq has ended, as it should, in ignominy. The few remaining American troops took the flag and slunk over the border to Kuwait, home of another American war that, at least, had the virtues of being morally right and being legal (insofar as any war can ever be called ‘legal’).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Almost 5,000 American lives were lost in vain, more than a million Iraqis died also, it looks like, in vain. Just a few days in and the Iraqi republic is falling apart like a sand castle in the waves.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Inter arma enim silent leges.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">We shattered our army, paupered our economy, destroyed our reputation and drowned our morality in Fallujah, at Abu Graib and with the imperial satrapy of Mr. Bremer in the Green Zone…. and all of it in the Name of Oil. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Inter arma enim silent leges.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">At home we threw Habeus Corpus out the window along with Posse Comitatus. We created the Department of Homeland Security: the largest and most comprehensive secret police service since the Stasi. We allowed torture and secret prisons, ‘rendering’ and ‘extreme interrogation’ we regularly submit to x-ray machines and full body searches for internal and external traffic, we’ve created another branch of surveillance and control, the TSA, with almost unlimited powers of control and no accountability. We no longer even require the rubber stamp of security courts <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">post hoc</i> for eavesdropping and now countenance ever more surveillance by any agency for any reason they care to offer, or not. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Inter arma enim silent leges.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Our local police departments have been transformed over the last ten years into militarized heavily armed crowd control shock troops, rent-a-cop security forces casually pepper spray seated protesters – prophylactically. The riffraff are herded into ‘free-speech zones’ where they can howl their fury against the chain-link fences that conjure images of every dictatorship we’ve ever encountered… they may even be able to glimpse the motorcade as it glides serenely by, several blocks away. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Inter arma enim silent leges.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">For 500 years the Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean world and for 500 years before that, the Roman Republic fascinated and terrified an ever expanding sphere of influence. What made the Romans so powerful? What made their power so long lasting? What made them fail at the end and fade into history?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Volumes, entire libraries have been written about the Roman Empire. Extensive studies, archeological evidence, contemporary testaments abound and certain themes emerge.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Development of the Roman Model</span></p> <ul><li><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" ></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Development of a permanent, professional standing army – the legions’ training and tactics were far ahead of adversaries (with some notable exceptions). </span></span></li><li style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" ></span></span>Development of a network of hard infrastructure – the famous Roman roads and aqueducts</span></li><li style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" ></span></span>Development of the Rule of Law – Roman jurisprudence was evenly and widely applied</span></li></ul><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> </span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Distribution of Power</span></p><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> </span><ul style="font-family:verdana;"><li><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" ></span></span>Distribution of Power - A militant Republic develops elite classes </span></li></ul><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> </span><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in; font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">o<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" > </span></span>The orders of Roman Knights<span style=""><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in; font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">o<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" > </span></span>The concentration of money and power</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in; font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">o<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" > </span></span>The ascendance of familial/tribal networks</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1in; font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -0.25in; font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" > </span></span>Distribution of Power – The Republic becomes The Imperium</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in; font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">o<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" > </span></span>The path to power is through the military</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in; font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">o<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" > </span></span>The means to secure power is through the granary (Egypt)</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in; font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">o<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" > </span></span>The means to preserve power is through Bread and Circuses </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Dissolution of Empire</span></p><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> </span><ul style="font-family:verdana;"><li><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" > </span></span>As the power concentrates, the Rule of Law begins to break down</span></li><li><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" > </span></span>As the money concentrates, the social contract dissipates</span></li><li><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" > </span></span>The Center Cannot Hold, the Empire melts away</span></li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Inter arma enim silent leges.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Even in the drastically abbreviated ‘Rise and Fall’ above it is easy to see parallels to our contemporary situation, or to any empire for that matter. The difference is that, now, we know that we know (‘known knowns’ in Rumsfeldian). We need not follow Santayana’s dictum to destruction.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">But we’re in a permanent state of war now: War on Afghanistan, War on Pakistan, War on Terror, War on Drugs… </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The total cost, so far, for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">at least</i> $3.2-3.4 trillion. (<a href="http://www.costsofwar.org/">1</a>) </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The river of blood flows on, the river of treasure bleeds on, the river of the spirit continues to hemorrhage. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Never has Yeats been more apropos:</span></p> <p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">The Second Coming</span></span></p> <p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">Turning and turning in the widening gyre<br />The falcon cannot hear the falconer;<br />Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;<br />Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,<br />The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere<br />The ceremony of innocence is drowned;<br />The best lack all conviction, while the worst<br />Are full of passionate intensity. </span></span></p> <p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">–William Butler Yeats</span></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-bidi-line-height:115%;font-size:10.0pt;" >The dead cry out for meaning, the living cleve to rotting gods, the worst dance on the grave of our morality.</span></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-bidi-line-height:115%;font-size:10.0pt;" >Stop our several wars, stop our home-grown Monsters of the Id, restore the Rule of Law before it really is, too late. All war is a crime and the first casualties are truth and the Rule of Law.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Inter arma enim silent leges.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-bidi-line-height:115%;font-size:10.0pt;" > </span></span></p>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-17789482496400565202011-09-24T20:10:00.000-07:002011-09-24T20:19:45.998-07:00Reboot: America 2.0<!--[if !mso]> <style> v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> 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<![endif]--><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> </span></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">It doesn’t help to be right if you can’t make things change. Cassandra was terminally frustrated – I know how she felt. It also doesn’t help to sit in the warm bath of your own self-regard and point fingers at all the bad guys – they’re merrily running off with the silverware and they aren’t looking back. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">If the political situation is FUBAR – and it is… and if the economic situation is FUBAR – and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">it</i> is… then we’re left holding a hand-lettered sign:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVEetY0E6ouLW6t-MVCIhtwb56Kf1edRB6ec5aiGkWGRBhfPTDvvL1mLQORu_fsVsjARRkFcZxb924ofn9PawKqs9Rt9JzIPJYGkK1oEVRCeYUmLQCtEWff8k9hxWDvo04hnjsGQ/s1600/help.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 179px; height: 239px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVEetY0E6ouLW6t-MVCIhtwb56Kf1edRB6ec5aiGkWGRBhfPTDvvL1mLQORu_fsVsjARRkFcZxb924ofn9PawKqs9Rt9JzIPJYGkK1oEVRCeYUmLQCtEWff8k9hxWDvo04hnjsGQ/s400/help.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656130721518103394" border="0" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Ideologues and fanatics from right and left (mostly right) will gibber and howl, trot out their buzzword propaganda and try to stifle any kind of discussion, much less real debate, about making any change – because they know exactly what that change must be and they’ve convinced themselves that if they can prevent anyone speaking the truth about our situation, they can somehow prevent any change from taking place. In all honesty, they’ve been pretty successful; anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see this train wreck coming decades ago, many did, and said so, and were buried under an avalanche of scorn and derision. See Peter Schiff being laughed at when he accurately predicted the crash <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw">here</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw"></a> , see the saga of Brooksley Born, read Krugman, Stiglitz, Roubini, Black, Galbraith the Younger, remember how Elizabeth Warren went down in flames… this isn’t a recent revelation: read Galbraith the Elder or John Maynard Keynes; this goes way back.</span></p> <p face="verdana" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">And it’s not that we don’t have latter-day prophets: Chris Hedges sums up the current situation nicely: <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ralph_nader_is_tired_of_running_for_president_20110704/">here</a> or you could read anything recent by Chomsky, or Howard Zinn for that matter. The information is out there and has been out there for quite some time – so why don’t we ‘get’ it?</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I think it comes down to three dysfunctional syndromes we exhibit as a nation:</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"> The Not My Problem Syndrome </span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">This is familiar to everyone: you have a job, your wife has a job, little Johnny is on the baseball team, little Susie is taking ballet lessons. The mortgage is under control, the college fund is looking good, you’re two years into the car financing and you’re planning that vacation to Cabo… not you? Me neither, but there are enough elements in that scenario that people can relate to and they don’t really want to know about the neighbors down the street who had to move out last month. Or the guys who seem to be on every street corner with handwritten cardboard signs: “Will work for…” After all, you never hear about this stuff on the news, so it can’t be that bad, can it? Besides, what can I do? I voted for the hopenchange guy, I don’t want people to suffer… but I’ve got my own problems to take care of…</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this guy, he’s just been protected from the reality of his environment and trained to apathy about acting to make things better… and it’s certainly a lot easier to watch ‘Jersey Shore’ or “American Idol’ than to write a letter to your Congressperson or walk a picket line in the ‘free speech zone’. </span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Until, you get sick and lose the job, or get riffed so the CEO can make his quarterly numbers and collect that fat bonus check, or – any one of a thousand things that throws you on the scrap heap where your neighbors avert their eyes and say to themselves: not my problem.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Those annoying activists, y’know, the ones who keep pestering you to get up and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">do</i> something?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They’re actually on your side – the flacks you hear on the radio and on the TV, telling you that ‘it’s all good’, things are gonna turn around, just be patient. These folks are your enemy, they are lying to you to keep you quiet because there is only one thing they fear: millions of people in the streets, telling them to get out.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Strongman/Savior Syndrome</span></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">No foul on anyone with this one, it goes back about 3 million years: the strongest ape leads tribe because: who’s gonna say ‘No’ to him? We see it all over the place today: starlets who think they’re immune to the police, athletes who have hissy fits when they’re not worshipped, newspaper magnates who think it’s fine to delete the voice mail of child kidnap victims on the chance they can steal the kidnappers’ ransom demands (nothing personal, just business). It’s the basis for all our hierarchies, from priests and kings, warlords and dictators, corporate CEOs and imperial presidents. The nature of the beast, one might say. We run to it when things are bad: got severe problems? Look for the White Knight to solve ‘em. In a terminal jam? Hope for the 7<sup>th</sup> cavalry to charge in for the rescue. We constantly look for saviors and gurus to extricate us from our messes. It pretty much hard-wired. </span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">In the political world that means, dictatorships, tyrannies, warlords or, at best, feudalism with all its inefficient chaos and destruction. Democracy doesn’t really come into it. Depressingly, if you look at democratic rebellions throughout history, almost all of them end up with some strongman or other taking charge and trying to build an empire. This isn’t surprising given that rebellions need leaders and leaders are strongmen and strongmen see no reason to relinquish power once the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">ancien regime</i> has been swept away.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Boiling Frog Syndrome</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">The way to cook frogs (or lobsters for that matter) is top put them in a pot of cold water and increase the heat gradually. By the time the water gets hot enough, they’re already cooked. We’re pretty much cooked – it’s taken about 30 years by my count, you may choose an earlier of later start point, but the deed is done: democracy is on its way out in this country.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">For a long time I was an advocate for a third (or fourth or fifth) party. I don’t see that any longer as a viable option – the corruption is too far gone, any new party that spontaneously forms will be overwhelmed by money from the outset. Good luck to the Tea Party btw, I don’t agree with their agenda but at this point <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">any</i> effective, disruptive entity is welcome, anything that could help to derail the corporate juggernaut has my support. I just hope they don’t get co-opted by Wall Street too soon – and it’s not looking good.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">It’s time to start thinking about what comes after: after the current depression/corporatist <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">coup d’etat</i> now underway, after it becomes clear to everyone that we no longer live in a democracy (or a republic), after we finally wake up and discover that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">all</i> the money now rests in the hands of the thieves – and no, they’re not giving any of it back. </span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">There will be a time, just before the police start firing on the protestors (in the free speech zones) and the ensuing ‘torches and pitchforks’ riots begin, when it may be possible to institute some structural change. I don’t think this is likely but the protestors in Egypt are trying and I never thought they’d get this far (in all likelihood they will get ground up by the iron fist of the army and it’ll all go to hell under the Muslim Brotherhood). </span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">But if we get the chance, this will be the time to build America: 2.0.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">OK, that’s pretty depressing, you say, but what have you got to replace version 1 with? Those were some pretty smart guys and the founding documents they wrote have stood up pretty well for 225 years.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Well, I think we have to start by acknowledging that the America train has gone off the track and needs some drastic reworking to get it back on track. </span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Unh… OK, so what would that look like?</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana; font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">A Constitutional Convention</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">To address the systemic problems mentioned above and to make the structural changes that are necessary if we are to move forward as a nation, we’ll need a constitutional convention. This will be hard to do but it is possible if enough people are convinced that it is required.<br /></span></p><span style="font-size:85%;">There are two ways to initiate an Article V convention:<br /><span style="mso-bidi-mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin;font-family:Calibri;" ><span style="mso-list:Ignore"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" ></span></span></span>A two thirds majority vote by both houses of Congress</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-bidi-mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin;font-family:Calibri;" ><span style="mso-list:Ignore"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal;font-size:7pt;" ></span></span></span><br />An application for a convention by two thirds of the state legislatures</span> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">While convincing two thirds of Congress to vote to create such a convention would doubtless be the faster, more efficient way to do this, it is unlikely that either of these dreadfully corrupt bodies would be able to summon the courage to do so. That leaves the longer, more difficult route of going through state legislatures. One thing is for sure, this is an idea fraught with danger: will corporatists thugs try to take it over? Of course they will. Will avalanches of money be thrown at participants to buy them off? Of course that will happen. But there’s also the intriguing possibility that right wing interested parties will support this idea for their own purposes and that corporate interests will think they can secure their control over us by some well placed bribes to whomever participates in the convention…. In fact they will be certain of this. But if we are forewarned of these dangers we can be prepared to counter them, if we can counter them through preparedness, organization and focus, we may be able to enact…sanity. </span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">If it’s not yet clear if we’ll be able to make a convention happen or how we’ll ensure that we get the changes we need, nut in the meantime there’s still the job of deciding what those changes will be…</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">The US Constitution was adopted in 1787, just 12 years after James Watt developed the first commercially useful steam engine and just 50 years before Samuel Morse demonstrated his telegraph. There is no doubt that the framers were extraordinary men who deliberately tried to create a blueprint for freedom that would last for the ages. They included the amendment process to keep it updated and they did their best to address the crucial problems of their time: preventing the takeover of a religious theocracy, keeping power out of the hands of a would-be dictator, protecting the individual from the state and the states from the federal government. But… there were some problems they could not resolve, see ‘slavery’ for example and there were other problems they had no way of knowing about: the rise of corporate power, for example. Nor could they have possibly have known anything about the explosion of technology that was just around the corner. </span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">These are now our problems and now may be our opportunity to resolve them. You must have ideas about this, I have some ideas myself – we can start by talking about them… time for a change.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-8993197047285852372011-09-15T22:55:00.000-07:002011-09-16T13:00:28.376-07:00To the Libertarian/Randites - an open letter<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> 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{mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">I haven’t written in a long time, I’ve spent the last year or so in reflective mode, trying to see a path that doesn’t just go over old ground: yes, we know Obama is an idiot, we knew it first… so what? The coming campaign for 2012 is, sadly, predictable – unless HRC reconsiders… but even then, we get the benefit of competence, intelligence, leadership… in the context of political corruption even the Gilded Age couldn’t comprehend. The solutions I can see would require an emergence of will and determination in this country that I don’t know if we even possess anymore… I will continue to put out ideas and plans for those who are interested but it’s more in the vein of “rage, rage against the dying of the light.” <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">I don’t often get riled anymore, chalk it up to cynicism or burnt out faith in my fellow man. I more or less expect the daily freak show of stupidity and venality that parades across our ‘informational’ display devices these days. Like Captain Renault in ‘Casablanca’ I am <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">faux</i> “Shocked!, Shocked! To find out that there is gambling going on here!”.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">But every once in a while, there occurs an act so vile, so venomous, so…evil, that I have to take notice or forfeit my ‘moral superiority’ card.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Such an event took place the other day during the so-called Tea Party debate:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">From the Sam Stein article on the debate: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/tea-party-debate-health-care_n_959354.html?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Daily%20Brief&utm_campaign=daily_brief">here</a></span></p><br /><blockquote><p style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">A bit of a startling moment happened near the end of Monday night’s CNN debate when a hypothetical question was posed to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). “<em>What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn’t have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? Are you saying society should just let him die</em>?” Wolf Blitzer asked.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>“Yeah!”</strong> several members of the crowd yelled out.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Paul interjected to offer an explanation for how this was, more-or-less, the root choice of a free society. He added that communities and non-government institutions can fill the void that the public sector is currently playing.</span></p></blockquote><p style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">This is depraved, there is no other word for it.</span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">I feel like the prophet Isaiah - damning the Jews for their acts of injustice and cruelty. </span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />The problem is that the logic of Libertarianism leads, ineluctably, to this position: I am answerable only to myself, I can do anything I choose, regardless of the consequences to others, there is no injustice or cruelty except insofar as it might impact me or anything I choose to do. I have no responsibility whatsoever to any other person on earth and I don't give a damn whether they live or die.<br />This is why Libertarianism is evil and why anyone who practices it needs to take a long look in the mirror to determine whether they're human any longer.<br /><br />...but I'm not sure I can say that these days, it’s way too popular to be a monster... </span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">I like Ron Paul, in a ‘motley fool’ kind of way, I like his quips, his iconoclastic stance, his impertinent windmill jousting at the establishment, he’s a lot of fun to watch…</span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">But Ron Paul is a fraud, always has been, because he is forsworn, because he took an oath before he became a Libertarian – the Hippocratic oath, the one that says “First, do no harm.” The one that mandates service to others - that countermands his Libertarian “Me First and Fuck You” creed on the most basic level. He tries to get by that oath, even in his response above, he tries to avoid responsibility by saying “that communities and non-government institutions can fill the void that the public sector is currently playing” – so Ron Paul’s logic is: I don’t have to care about anyone because someone else will always clean up the mess. This, then, is the essential tenet of Libertarianism (and its even more evil stepchild: Ayn Randism): I don’t give a shit about you or anyone else and I don’t have to because there’s always some other ‘dumb fuck’ (Mark – Facebook - <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Zuckerberg’s definition of his customers) who will clean up the mess I create/ignore/leave behind. </span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Libertarianism and Randisim (they’re just different facets of the same depraved psuedo-philosophy, very similar to the Nazi perversion of Nietzsche) are not about the glorious brightness of the rugged individual making his Galt-like way against the tides of mindless bureaucracy and the envy of the masses of mediocrity. </span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">No.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The truth is that Libertarianism and Randism both are about denial and exclusion, about selfishness and venality, about abandoning responsibility not claiming it, about the vast disconnect with the human race, reducing all others to ciphers (read Camus to see what I mean). In fact, they are the modern banners of the elemental fear of ‘the other’ that limits us, constrains us, separates and devalues us. And a further truth is that they make us weak, not strong, each of us an island, a castle, inviolate and sufficient unto itself – and, oh, such easy prey for the Hitlers, the Maos… <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘monsters from the Id’, indeed. </span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">For the real world impact of Ron Paul’s (and Alan Greenspan, Phil Gramm, Grover Norquist – the list goes on, but notice they’re all very, very rich) plans for you and me, read this, yes, I know it’s from the Daily Kos, I’m assuming you’re not so stupid as to think they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">never</i> have a valid point: <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/13/1016557/-That-was-my-brothers-death-you-were-cheering,-you-a$-Updated?via=siderec"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes">here</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"></span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></a><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><a 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line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> </span><p class="author" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Remembering her brother, <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/user/Susan%20from%2029">Susan from 29</a> writes:</span></p><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> </span><p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">I had planned to write another separate diary about his journey through what passes for health care in a nation fixated on the profits that that care brings. In a nation where his death was cheered in front of a panel of politicians, none of whom had the decency to object. It is not yet a capital crime in this nation to be uninsured.</span></p><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> </span><p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">And </span></p><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> </span><p style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">His buddies came up with the $2000 a proctologist wanted to do an outpatient surgery. But the hospital wanted $20,000 for use of the room for the brief procedure because he was uninsured. Because the pain didn’t matter half as much as the profit.</span></p> <span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-line-height:115%; font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SAfont-family:";font-size:85%;" >Those all I’ll quote because you should read her entire essay. So here’s your out: I’m not going to just drop in quotes from this piece, give you the gist and let you slide without getting hurt, </span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">I don’t think it would be right, she’s writing from a place of pain I hope never to know – but this is the real world, not the make believe, fantasy, flag-waving bullshit paraded about by your ‘representative’ on the 6 O’clock news. If you have the fortitude to read about something real, perhaps even connect in a tenuous way to the experience of someone other than yourself, read on. </span> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">If you’re a Libertarian or a Randite, of course you won’t, because you don’t really give a damn about someone else’s life or experience: after all, there’s nothing in it for you.</span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Just between us: go to hell. </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-22331134976171356582010-11-12T13:53:00.000-08:002010-11-12T14:05:53.529-08:00Language and the Will to Power - Part 1<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">I’m bemused by the trend, in recent years, of obfuscating, conflating and downright deliberate abuse of our language – especially our political language. It has left people confused (perhaps intentionally) about some basic terms and that, in turn, has left them confused about the realities of our current social/political/economic situation. This may seem picayune to some, after all harping on the language used to describe events can’t hold a candle to actually dealing with those events, right? Well, not so much; to the extent that we use and abuse language we define or obscure what we’re talking about. This is done in two ways: first by ignorance, people who are not clear about their subject or the definitions of the words they are using are red meat for the propagandists. The second way is by design. This is the special world of propaganda/advertising where the word and the meme are deliberately twisted to serve a commercial and/or political end. As Orwell pointed out, this is an unparalleled tool for establishing and maintaining control of a market or a society. And tyrannies of the left and the right have used it assiduously even a casual look at history will provide numerous examples.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">I‘m very concerned with how this is playing out today. Right here and right now the meanings of words are being twisted for public consumption – see anything written by George Lakoff and Frank Luntz for details on this trend. I want to examine the definitions of some political/economic concepts so we can try to determine how the concepts are twisted by the misuse of words and how that relates to the difference between what we’re told is going on to what actually happening in reality. <br /><br /> </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">First, some definitions (I got these from Wikipedia for simplicity’s sake, if you distrust Wikipedia go look them up in the Encyclopedia Britannica, or any other unbiased authority you respect, they’re functionally the same).<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Socialism </span>is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources. Additional definitions can be found <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialism">here</a>. <br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Democracy </span>is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). Additional definitions can be found <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/democracy">here</a>. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fascism </span>is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy. Additional definitions can be found <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fascism">here</a>.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Corporatism </span>is a system of economic, political, or social organization that views a community as a body based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles amongst individuals. Formal corporatist models are based upon the contract of corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, scientific, or religious affiliations, into a collective body. Additional definitions can be found <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/corporatism">here</a>.<br /><br /> </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Capitalism </span>is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit. Additional definitions can be found <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capitalism">here</a>.<br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Right enough, I have some quibbles about these definitions – from my more leftward perspective and I’ll be mentioning some of them – I’m sure many others have rightward quibbles themselves. I’m less concerned with what these definitions say than with what they leave out or ignore altogether.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">We throw these words around without examining their roots. We use them as epithets to cudgel our opponents and in doing so, we strip them of their meaning and substitute the buzzword soundbite – useful only as agitprop which stirs anger (with extra foam) and drowns discourse and understanding.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">The roots of these definitions lie in our nature as humans and in our innate understanding of the world around us. It comes down to money and power and how we behave around them.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">This can’t be a surprise to anyone who looks at the evidence but we generally don’t take the time to examine the structure of the ‘isms’ and ‘acys’, let’s take a quick look at them right now, maybe we can shed some light…</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Parsing definitions</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br />Let’s start with Socialism (guaranteed to drive right wingers crazy).</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Socialism </span>is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.</blockquote><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Well, first of all, I think it’s more than a theory. Socialism has been enacted, more or less successfully, by several nation states and other socio-political entities around the world. In fact, despite the frantic efforts of the corporatists/fascists to deny it, the most successful societies in the world today are socialist. I refer to the Scandinavian nations, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland (more about Iceland later). This is only, of course, if you believe that the purpose of society is to provide the best possible standard of living for all of its citizens.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Our own Anglo-Saxon heritage is socialist to the extent that it is based on the concept of ‘the commons’, a community supported grazing field that would support anyone’s cattle or sheep if there were a famine or a flood. More to the point, we have a sterling example of socialist behavior right here in the middle of River City: a public entity that provides cooperative management of the means of production and allocates resources to that end – the Pentagon… think about it for a minute and see if you don’t agree. Or rather see if you aren’t forced to agree… </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">These things get tricky once you really start thinking about them… </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">More on this later on…<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Moving on to Democracy, the ne plus ultra of American political worship.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Democracy </span>is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy).</blockquote></span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Very careful language here, almost as if the writers suspected a trap. That’s not surprising as there has been virtually no credible, viable, direct democracy, ever, anywhere.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Think I’m joking? Let’s look at the record:</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">First, there is not now, nor has there ever been, an ongoing, functioning direct democracy. It’s called a mobocracy or plebiscite democracy and it plain doesn’t work: too easily coerced by demagogues, too easily corrupted by oceans of money (hmmm… that sounds familiar). Even our cherished Athenian democracy wasn’t pure rule of the demos. Eligible voters were restricted to free men who had done their military service to the state. That is: no women, no slaves, no one who was not a veteran, no one who owed money and no one who had property close to the city walls (this last rule was because a contemporary tactic of invaders was to burn the grounds close to the city walls to prevent the inhabitants from reaping the grain and fodder). They forced out the corrupt kings and substituted a set of aristocrats and oligarchs called the Archons. The Archons of course were subject to the same kind of corruption as the kings and this was one of the main reasons why the Athenian democracy was eventually defeated by the outright militarist/fascist Spartans. Even in Solon’s Athens there were great restrictions on democracy but these are minor cavils when placed beside his staggering, revolutionary idea of people ruling themselves. We’ve still not gotten over it. <br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">At best, these days, we have the Parliamentarian system (exemplified by the UK) and the Constitutional Republic system (exemplified by the US). These are both powerful bars to the progress of corruption and decay, if used properly. But their flaws are transparently obvious to everyone - how do we deal with the real problem: the will to power.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Democracy and Socialism, in the context of their stated aims, are very, very close, in power distribution terms. Each claims to want the best possible result for the greatest number of its citizens. Where they diverge is that Socialism avers that it is necessary to control the means of distribution in order to effect a just and fair dispersal. Democracy, being only a political system, has no comment on this issue – it punts.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is a signal difference and we’ll return to it later on…</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Next, there’s fascism:</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fascism </span>is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.</blockquote></span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is the most troubling definition for me, mostly because there is so little agreement on what, exactly, fascism is. The definition, above, from Wikipedia is a little incoherent but none of the other definitions I could easily find were any more clear. The best description I remember is that fascism is political system where, the state, under the guidance of a dictator, directs and controls civil and business entities for the benefit of the state. I’m not sure that’s any better but it puts the focus on the dictator, where it belongs.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Everyone knows the shibboleths about this: Mussolini, Hitler, Franco; their mad world conquest fantasies, their horrible xenophobias and persecutions, their genocidal psychopathy. These monsters are only matched in ferocity and depravity by their communist alter egos: Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Actually, the lines kinda get blurred here: it’s difficult to parse the difference between Hitler murdering 6 million jews (and assorted catholics, homosexuals and gypsys) and Pol Pot murdering 2 million Cambodians (about a fifth of all Cambodians), not to speak of Stalin’s murdering of upwards of 30 million Russians or Mao’s staggering murder toll of over 100 million Chinese. Who cares what political name you call them? This leads directly to my larger point later on…<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">But the direct point here is: fascism is largely dependent on a cult of personality surrounding the dictator. His personality cult (this is pretty much a male party, unless you count Maggie Thatcher as a fascist dictator… hmmm… no… but it was close) drives the entire enterprise, egged on, of course by various (truly evil) businesses and organizations - See the history of Krupp, AG in the 1930s and read “The Family” by Jeff Sharlet. <br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">…and corporatism: here’s where it starts to get fun:</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Corporatism </span>is a system of economic, political, or social organization that views a community as a body based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles amongst individuals. Formal corporatist models are based upon the contract of corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, scientific, or religious affiliations, into a collective body. </blockquote></span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">A “system of economic, political, or social organization”, that’s quite grand, isn’t it? And “based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles amongst individuals” seems a bit thick, doesn’t it? – almost like the writer didn’t really want you to understand what he’s talking about. The rest of Wikipedia’s definition reads like a classic case of double speak – Orwell would have been proud. Here’s the skinny on corporatism: where fascism has the state at the top of the heap running the corporations as satraps, corporatism has the corporations on top, using the state as the enforcement arm for corporate policy. …and you thought it was just corrupt Washington politicians going every man for himself. Turns out it’s not a chaotic mess at all, someone’s deliberately managing this, can you say: "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money," (H/T to Matt Taibbi). Goldman Sachs doesn’t get all the blame, mainly because there are so many, many others eagerly scrimmaging for a place at the groaning board.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Last, as it should be, is capitalism:</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Capitalism </span>is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit.</blockquote></span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Capitalism is an economic system” that says it right there. Not a political system nor a social system nor a political ideology, not even a financial system, it doesn’t know or care about countries or constitutions, sees no difference between Senators and gangsters, lawyers and prostitutes, cops and robbers – it’s just an economic system. Capitalism has no business meddling in politics or social systems: it doesn’t know anything about them and it doesn’t care anything about them. The fact that we’ve let fanatical ideologues who neither know nor care anything about our society and political system, manipulate, pervert and control our country in the name of capitalism (AKA ‘free trade”) is a testament to our stupidity and cowardice not their acuity and/or amorality. They never said they had any moral standards and walked the walk; we said we did, and have utterly failed to follow through.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">The middle distance point here is that when people make the accusation that Obama is a socialist, they are wrong - by definition. If, for example, Obama had expanded Medicare to Part E (”E” for everyone), then you could legitimately make the charge that he is a socialist. Obama does not do that, he never has, If you look at his record (thin though it is) you will see that, at every opportunity, Obama always, always, comes down on the side of corporations against citizens, large corporations against small ones, corporations against country. Obama is not a socialist - he is a corporatist… no, I won’t say the ‘f’ word, they’d burn me in effigy but given his all-consuming self-absorption it’s not very hard to see him as a dictator (it certainly isn’t very hard for him to see himself that way – in fact I think he already does).<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">That finishes Part 1 of this exercise. Part 2 will see a dissection of the real world structure of the ‘isms’ and ‘acys’ we defined above. We’ll take a look at how the real world intersects with our pigeonholes and presumptions and how the language we use defines what we see and changes who we are.</span><br /><br /></span>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-35321971040843971452010-10-11T13:40:00.000-07:002010-10-11T13:51:18.157-07:00The Trial of Geert Wilders<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ayaan Hirsi Ali has an article at the WSJ this morning, decrying the assault on free speech manifest in the trial of the bigot Geert Wilders. While I loathe Mr. Wilders, he is being railroaded by laws designed specifically to convict him - all for the convenience and propitiation of islamist fanatics determined to take over the Netherlands, it won't work.<br /><br />The problem of ‘creeping islamification’ has been a growing problem for decades as Ms. Ali correctly points out. The current list of participants in Greet Wilders trial are evidence of the extent to which this trial holds up a mirror to us all. There are several players in this ongoing train wreck: the fanatic Islamists, the misguided multiculturalists, the deeply tainted ‘christian’ european nation states and the globalist corporate capitalists.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><br />The multiculturalists are the easiest target, their ‘rainbows and unicorns’ approach is treated, frankly, to the contempt it deserves from the other parties. Certainly, the Islamists and capitalists have taken full advantage of their cupidity.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />The Islamists situation is murkier: after the poor Muslims were imported into Europe to do the work that the Dutch, or Germans or French or English wouldn’t do for those wages (this’ll sound familiar to Americans), there were instantly segregated and marginalized, treated to the European equivalent of ‘Jim Crow’ laws – the multiculturalists have a point here – it can surprise no one that they were easy prey for the radical fanatics. And we say ‘fanatic, ‘radical’, ‘fundamentalist’ in an attempt to differentiate by definition. Islamic cultural divides are as complex as our own and not dissimilar in many ways. Like us (and by ‘us’ I mean the western cultural norm: European and American, judeo-christian-based cultural underpinnings – there’s a hint right there) they have a vast body of very quiet, respectable folks who are not very interested in what their neighbors do or don’t so long as it doesn’t get in their face. There are a few, however, who just can’t stand the fact that other people don’t follow the rules they do, this always breeds trouble.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">The opening was made for the Islamic radicals, we should actually call them what they are: World Caliphate Islamists, and the WCI rushed right in. This is analogous to the Christian Nation fundamentalists here in the US being generally acknowledged as the representative of christianity to the world.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Unfortunately, this feeds into, or springs forth from, the judeo-christian heritage of Euro-American western culture. Not a pretty picture, that heritage, from the Council of Nicea on through the aptly-named “Dark Ages” and the infamous Inquisition (see Malleus Malificarum) and the devastating fratricidal wars of the 15th through 18th centuries… the West has no peg upon which to hang its hat of moral superiority.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Which brings us to the instigators of this latest round of religious world war: the capitalists (hobby horse alert). These clever folks have a habit of using whatever ’tools’ they can find for their purpose (profit) then dropping them instantly when a better scheme comes along. So we saw the great capitalists demand and support importing hundreds of thousands of Muslims into more or less stable western European countries, in order to pay them low wages and force the native workforce to either reduce their wages to the same level or go jobless – in the name of competitiveness and efficiency (read: better profits). Immediately upon realizing that they could do even better by exporting the business itself to the low labor-cost countries, they did so… and dumped the immigrants on the slag heap with the rest of the trash. What naturally follows, followed naturally. </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">At the last, we come to the question implicit in Ms Ali’s letter: what can we (the West) do about it (the WCI).<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Well, for one thing, we can do nothing or rather we can slog along n status quo. That will mean more and more effort energy and costs related to combating the guaranteed-to-grow homegrown WCI terrorist agenda. We can be certain they’re not going to stop or even slow down by themselves.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Or, we could make some new laws directed at containment. Not silly press-op laws like banning hajibs (I think it’s a good idea but more of a morale builder, fruitless as a deterrent to the WCI). We could certainly ban sharia law anywhere in any western country, that would help. We could pass laws making fatwahs illegal, subject to instant arrest and prosecution, etc., etc.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">But these are all palliative measures, they do not address the underlying problem: the WCI and their sympathizers are out to take over the world and will kill anyone who stands in their way. Not to recognize this is to make a mistake of Chamberlinian proportions… again. The answer is simple, direct and will be very, very hard to do. It has one advantage: it will work.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Any muslim who wishes to remain in any western country is free to do so, with the following conditions:<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />They must observe local laws and customs, that is,</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;">There will be no sharia law in western muslim communities. </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Local laws concerning freedom of speech, such as lampooning of political and religious figures, are sacrosanct.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">No fatwahs may be issued by any religious figure, for any reason, against anyone</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Citizens are expected to put their rights, responsibilities, duty and loyalty to their country and fellow citizens ahead of their religious obligations.</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Abrogation of any of these conditions results in being stripped of citizenship and deported.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />The list of conditions may be incomplete but the intent and result of these conditions will be consternation and bitter complaints by the WCI and their adherents. No doubt they and the multiculturalists will take to the streets, numerous obscenities will be hurled very loudly, a few Molotov cocktails will probably be thrown, some cars will be burned and there will be strikes and riots of various kinds and ferocity. But it would be wide for the West to stick to these principles – they’re the only thing that will work. </span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-55353878871274535422010-06-01T09:37:00.000-07:002010-06-01T10:04:11.497-07:00[Blink!]… [Blink!] Dispatch #2<span style="font-family:verdana;">As the Gulf oil catastrophe continues to worsen, I've been checking with some </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/2010/05/its-time-to-pray.html">sources </a><span style="font-family:verdana;">on this matter:</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">From Matt Simmons:</span><br /><blockquote style="font-family: verdana;">…“In my opinion, what most likely happened when one of the largest surges of oil as gas blew out the BOP and within seconds, began melting down one of the world’s most technically advanced deepwater rigs ever built is that just the BOP and wellhead got tossed far away from the well bore but the riser which was attached to the rig floor was separated from the wellhead/BOP.<br /><br />“What all the black crap coming out to create these plumes are is the oil from the reservoir and it is staying so deep under the ocean surface that only the recent tests by NOAA research vessels finally saw these giant plumes rapidly spreading across the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico.<br /><br />“BP is in total denial that this could be real.<br /><br />“It is time for the government to ask BP to step aside and bring the military into to managing this colossal failure of judgment by BP.<br /><br />“Spread this news as we all need to better understand what is really happening.<br /><br />“Very tragic story.<br /><br />“Matt” </blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">and from Mike Ruppert:</span><br /><br /><blockquote style="font-family: verdana;">The obvious collusion between the USG and the mainstream media leads me to believe that the USG has known that a nuke would be the only option within a week of the explosion. About two weeks ago we posted on this blog a link to a story from (I think it was) The Telegraph saying that President Obama had dispatched a team of nuclear scientists to study the situation and evaluate the possibility of using a nuke. One was a co-inventor of the H-bomb. It was a credible story that no press outlet followed up on. Why not?<br /><br />I believe that the leaks are devastating for all life in the Gulf and that large portions of the Gulf will be dead zones from seabed to surface within maybe six months. I believe that an announcement of a pending nuclear detonation will come within a week to ten days. I predict that US Continuity of Government provisions will be activated and that FEMA will, before end of summer, be placed in complete control of the Southeast United States… limited martial law.</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">My original <a href="http://theheraclitanfire.blogspot.com/2010/05/blink-blink.html">[Blink!]… [Blink!]</a> post seemed a bit far fetched to me at the time but events proved it out. I have heard about the nuclear solution from the start of this debacle but didn't think it would get this far. Now I think Mike R may be right on target. At this point we have to ask ourselves whether we can stand another 2-3 months of an underwater gusher pumping 200,000+ gallons of oil per day into the Gulf and the Caribbean, it may well destroy both bodies of water completely.<br /><br />It may be that the lesser evil would be to use the big nuclear hammer and just blast the well closed, that was 'Red' Adair's basic solution and I don't see a better one on the horizon.</span>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-69497475664356208852010-05-14T12:15:00.000-07:002010-05-15T18:07:49.891-07:00The World Boole Made<span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">George Boole (1815-1864) is, in large part, responsible for our current technological society. His studies and discoveries in mathematics and logic were the necessary precursors for the development of computers. Boolean logic is fundamental to computer science and can reasonably be inferred to represent our capacity, as humans, to think rationally, to make evaluative judgments and to choose logically. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Here follows an extremely simplified description of Boolean logic. If you remember this stuff, more power to you, if you’re rusty, this may help warm up your high school math muscles.<br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Boolean logic deals with logical operations on two items or values (A and B, for example). There are, basically, six types of operations you can do: AND, OR, NAND, NOR, NOT and XOR. The Venn diagrams help to illustrate the operations.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5IvCOhLxyS9tPLJNSzZnnFPM7exCJYSER69DyYLlN2VlouJHjC2skwgG20y-hfGvnKiMT1QCZwrqsdLE_8u7IcU5m2Mx3MkGSOv5qpHSplwTl0taUERQMV0WzZmsio9eWGNnG2g/s1600/AND.png"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 66px; height: 48px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5IvCOhLxyS9tPLJNSzZnnFPM7exCJYSER69DyYLlN2VlouJHjC2skwgG20y-hfGvnKiMT1QCZwrqsdLE_8u7IcU5m2Mx3MkGSOv5qpHSplwTl0taUERQMV0WzZmsio9eWGNnG2g/s400/AND.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471212309673448034" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">The AND operation – This set is both A and B<br />I take cream (A) and sugar (B) in my coffee.</span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwflKG2VO4HGnHaF6qbfSgeJvGKIwQmKstASIDdyd8uWbitUFrVpZbivSRvIFF_6lNVTe3Epnwzpx4OSP7MHXfKlVDI4LcXvsP_ohqITQC2gFOYcaNHzYSo_aJUQBSA5RNsxBJgQ/s1600/OR.png"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 66px; height: 48px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwflKG2VO4HGnHaF6qbfSgeJvGKIwQmKstASIDdyd8uWbitUFrVpZbivSRvIFF_6lNVTe3Epnwzpx4OSP7MHXfKlVDI4LcXvsP_ohqITQC2gFOYcaNHzYSo_aJUQBSA5RNsxBJgQ/s400/OR.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471212053730454066" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">The OR operation – This set is either A or B<br />I take either cream or sugar in my coffee.</span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw-1caqdKzD30MhwhkG7hF7o8pUxLIP5gR1yAYnUvV4yseIPAsWthmMVltKyfB27-Kl-gc3mvJvvWWTMCanLGp-Qd5jYJE03FirNtB2ceqyK5QVG1nfmGnzoGbuKxBpHu3zhHEUA/s1600/NAND.png"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 66px; height: 48px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw-1caqdKzD30MhwhkG7hF7o8pUxLIP5gR1yAYnUvV4yseIPAsWthmMVltKyfB27-Kl-gc3mvJvvWWTMCanLGp-Qd5jYJE03FirNtB2ceqyK5QVG1nfmGnzoGbuKxBpHu3zhHEUA/s400/NAND.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471212447488756498" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">The NAND operation – This set is both not A and not B<br />I do not take cream and do not take sugar in my coffee.</span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiEX1vBr7HkKnhVoAvX9i6HuCqzXBYiCMqLWVCpuAScOMks7LlJWVUZlyN59YyMGty5Oc0WroXeHdZlIO4c70BGm32cnEJLWN5TaG1mKysGRNQonHEU7hTaUVArYnuhaAGdeOdaw/s1600/NOR.png"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 66px; height: 48px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiEX1vBr7HkKnhVoAvX9i6HuCqzXBYiCMqLWVCpuAScOMks7LlJWVUZlyN59YyMGty5Oc0WroXeHdZlIO4c70BGm32cnEJLWN5TaG1mKysGRNQonHEU7hTaUVArYnuhaAGdeOdaw/s400/NOR.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471212571695941378" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">The NOR operation – This set is neither A and B, nor not A and not B<br />I take neither cream nor sugar in my coffee. (but I might take sweetener and/or soy)</span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC3Zwtc2fbqjAT_HX0z5ohLCIjzvSH1_thp8RGgeQ-gHixTar8vZW58cAlC4uRgifEmkrKPQKgRNiXZBoyNKer-tefkMdvbWdjTIEv_o_HW1RMUZp2WI197kUA3mXC0MNtZpziIg/s1600/XOR.png"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 66px; height: 48px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC3Zwtc2fbqjAT_HX0z5ohLCIjzvSH1_thp8RGgeQ-gHixTar8vZW58cAlC4uRgifEmkrKPQKgRNiXZBoyNKer-tefkMdvbWdjTIEv_o_HW1RMUZp2WI197kUA3mXC0MNtZpziIg/s400/XOR.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471212701925412754" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">XOR operation – This set is the exclusive difference of A and B<br />I’ll have either cream or sugar in my coffee, but not both</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />NOT is self explanatory, I think, and not really relevant to this discussion. As you can see, it is implied in the XOR set.<br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />If you know this stuff does it mean you’re ‘smart’?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />Well I’m not really sure what ‘smart’ is and Boolean logic isn’t really that arcane - you use it every day: all the search engines use Boolean algorithms to build their queries. In fact, if you come to really understand Boolean logic you can make your favorite search engine sit up, bark and roll over.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">But that’s not the reason I brought it up. Being a technologist, I tend to look for solutions to my puzzles using the tools I’m familiar with. So I was thinking about why it is that people seem to get caught up with (to me) transparent frauds like Reagan and Bush and Obama. There doesn’t seem to be any logic to it and in the end most people just throw up their hands and say “It’s a mystery”.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Well, maybe not so mysterious after all… Several studies have been done in Europe, on the internal effects of religious types of experiences on the brain. The results show that, for some people in the presence of charismatic figures, certain areas of the brain (the pre-frontal cortex) apparently shut down – not surprisingly, these areas are the ones concerned with differentiation and logical constructs. To see abstracts of their findings, go: <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627574.200-brain-shuts-off-in-response-to-healers-prayer.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=life"> here</a> and <a href="http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/03/12/scan.nsq023.abstract?sid=53d42804-bda6-46c6-9a78-97d3adbf6077"> here</a>.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Another part of my nascent theory involves intelligence. Now there’s a word that’s guaranteed to cause trouble. What is it? What’s it good for? Why do we have it and other animals don’t? Why do some of us have it and others don’t?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Intelligence is far too simple a word for all the uses we put it to. Usually it refers to the kind of intellectual activity that shows up well on so-called ‘intelligence tests’. Those who score well add a little swagger to their walk (if they’re complete idiots) those who don’t may be resentful, but I’ve come to believe that there are many kinds of intelligence, going all the way from the Stephen Hawking variety to my cat who treats me fondly even though I’m just a slow, clumsy giant who can’t smell worth a damn and is virtually blind at night.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">In the real world, over the past forty years, we’ve seen a succession of charismatic idiots come onto the political scene, one after the other. Each one tries to outdo his predecessor in how much more he can screw up this country. Yes, I’m talking about Reagan, BushII and Obama. I don’t leave out Bill Clinton because I was a Democrat (he did a number of things I was furious about) but because the actions he took on his own generally worked for the betterment of the country while the actions he took under Republican pressure invariably worked against us. How did these mental and moral midgets get elected?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">I think there has been a combination of planning and serendipity working for the enslavers. There is now no doubt that key elements of this ongoing train wreck were well thought through and detailed plans were made to be implemented whenever conditions were right. Others have written and spoken about this at length: Naomi Klein, James Galbraith, Simon Johnson, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader, just to name a few. The elitist movement called ‘globalization’ has been revealed as a horrific scheme to plunder the entire planet and recast the population as indentured servants to their own destruction – unions destroyed, national governments suborned and reduced to penury, impossible ’restructuring’ plans designed to subjugate entire populations to corporatist rule while shifting the blame to the very governments that should be protecting their populace.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">In current events, Chris Hedges has a revealing piece on the moral cesspool of the “Ubermensch” mentality that permeates our culture. <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/after_religion_fizzles_were_stuck_with_nietzsche_20100510/"> here</a>. James Galbraith recently made this <a href="http://utip.gov.utexas.edu/Flyers/GalbraithMay4SubCommCrimeRV.pdf"> statement</a> to the Senate Judiciary Committee in reference to the serial pillaging of the American economy by ‘free’ market fanatics over the past thirty years. Yesterday, Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, incredibly, said “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” Even as it becomes clear that BP lied about the size of the spill: apparently not 2,000 bbl/day as originally stated or even 5,000 bbl/day as they revised upward. More like 25,000 bbl/day, possibly as much as 50,000 bbl/day… and the beat goes on...<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">How do we deal with these horrors? How can we protect ourselves against these predators? Is there a kind of intelligence that would enable us to navigate in the dystopian world of corporate political savagery? What kind of intelligence would that be? And: can we test for it?<br />The answer, thanks to Danish researchers and Boolean logic, is: maybe.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">There may be a combination of brain dysfunction and an inherent inability to deal with cognition that beguiles and then enslaves what might otherwise be a perfectly normal human. The proclivity to unskeptical belief doesn’t seem to have much to do with any measures of intelligence. I had a dismaying experience, in 2008, of weekly meetings with a team of lawyers, all very accomplished and experienced, people you would normally expect to have a jaundiced view of the world and a fairly cynical opinion of politicians. Yet several of this hard-bitten crew just couldn’t stop gushing about how wonderful Obama was and when presented with evidence of outright lies and fraudulent political actions, they only grew more vociferous in their praise and more hostile to any criticism. My anecdotal evidence echoes the Danish results.<br />So, here it is: I think we need to abandon our long cherished belief that everyone should have the right to vote. Not everyone is qualified to make decisions about our republic, not everyone should vote.Voting should be an earned privilege, not a right.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">We’ve had all kinds of suggestions over the centuries on whether and how to limit enfranchisement. Some of our intellectual powerhouses of the past had long and vigorous discussions about it. Jefferson didn’t want to make the vote available to just anyone, he thought that only landowners were responsible enough to be entrusted with voting – he also thought they were, in general, smarter than the normal run of folks and more likely to have thoughts and values similar to his own. Voting rights were one of the main subjects of the suffrage movement for women in the 1800’s and the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. In fact, it’s become anathema to even speak of limiting voting rights. It’s one of those things we don’t want to talk about these days - there seem to be a lot of those kinds of ‘verboten’ subjects.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">I think we need to talk about this one. We’ve gotten to the point where we can see the edge of the cliff for this culture: running out of resources, out of control greed, complete co-option of governance by money, the bottom dropping out of any concept of responsibility to one another. How can we put a stop to this slide?<br />It’ll take many ways and many actions over a maddeningly long timeframe, of course, but one of the things we can do is to start re-thinking our <span style="font-style:italic;">a prioris</span>.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">A lot of times these discussions only go over well-trodden ground. Everyone knows the arguments on both sides and, inevitably, we all just circle round and round until we’re exhausted and just drop the discussion. Every once in a while, however, there’s an opening.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">The problem with limiting enfranchisement is twofold: why do you want to do it? And how do you do it in a way that everyone can recognize is fair?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Those of us who are ‘of a certain age’ can all recall (mostly apocryphal) stories about blacks being denied the right to vote on various absurd pretexts. Clearly these limits were put on by the Jim Crow south to prevent them from voting because they were black. All of the variants to limiting enfranchisement were vulnerable to the charge that they were just as absurd and were only mask for the intent to prevent the vote for blacks or women or Catholics or Jews or… pick your target. Even intelligence tests are vulnerable to the charge of ‘racial cultural imbalance’.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">So what can we do if we’d really like to weed out the ‘sheeple’? And I would like to weed them out, for several reasons: First, they’re way too easy to fool, propagandists like Karl Rove and David Axelrod are detestable human beings but they are very, very smart and they have developed the use of their tools to a razor sharp edge. Their capability to determine election results with defamation, deception and outright lies, is deadly both in its accuracy and in its results. Second, I’m tired of my life being run by ‘sheeple’ (I’m being polite here, I usually call them something else), I imagine many of us are. It’s time to reset the rules.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Now there can be a lot of discussion about the rights of citizens who are denied the vote: why and who decides, is there recourse or remedy? How does this affect their other rights? What’s the relationship to the original tea partiers (“No taxation without representation”).<br />This is absolutely a discussion we should have, just not here and now – mostly because it’s huge and needs a bigger venue that one article in a blog.<br />And there can be a whole ‘nother discussion about other kinds of criteria for getting a voting card. How this would redefine our society: do we then have a two-tiered citizenry? What are the rights and obligations of those who fail to get their voting cards? Should they get a break on taxes? What if they’re in the armed forces? Would this lead to another kind of social stratification and discrimination (in the old classist/racist sense)? This also absolutely merits a thorough discussion but not here and now for the reason cited above.<br />Here I’m want to focus on how and why we can and should devise and use a test that determines your (or my) ability to think clearly and evaluate choices on the basis of reason, logic, horse sense, common sense… whatever you want to call it: just as long as you don’t use “the Force”.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">In Boolean terms, everyone does AND and OR, a fewer number are comfortable with the concepts of NAD and NOR but the ones I want to screen for are the ones who ‘get’ XOR. These are the people I want for voters in this society. Everyone else should ‘live long and prosper’ but the XOR people should be setting the rules.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">“Well, CDP”, you may say, “Isn’t this just another way of reserving the vote for smart people? Aren’t you just being an elitist?” My answer is that I think it would be great if we reserved the vote for smart people (the alternative seems counterproductive) but the last election shows us that ‘smart’ doesn’t necessarily mean smart. Look at the legions of dunces with degrees who voted for Obama – high IQ numbers and a bunch of letters after your name doesn’t guarantee you can think your way out of a paper bag.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">What’s interesting about the XOR test is that it doesn’t purport to measure your potential or put a stamp on your putative relative value. It also doesn’t care whether you’re a liberal, a conservative, a stock broker or a Scientologist. It only tests whether you have discernment, the ability to evaluate the evidence and make a judgment: take this but not that.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">The context of the XOR test is important too. We’re talking about politics so we should expect the test to measure deliberative capability in choices made in the political context: think of it as measuring your bullshit detector. And when you think about it: do you really want to share your right to vote with someone who obviously can’t tell a bald-faced lie when they hear one? (I won’t even bother to provide examples, I’m sure you all have plenty)<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">There is another way of presenting Boolean logic called the “Truth Table” (seriously, I didn’t make this up). Below is the truth table for XOR.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFCwBI-Zo4fVSI2Wod0nv02bARsosNG3SqGQc8sAPZEWUkqrLEXZZ2KKEPGrmP9CB30KRJAWP0DfoKBnvKyw6plLgROqfWgvYhLEP2VupbxNQdW01J8upx62d0S6Q1fGdMb9nUpg/s1600/truther.png"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 105px; height: 101px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFCwBI-Zo4fVSI2Wod0nv02bARsosNG3SqGQc8sAPZEWUkqrLEXZZ2KKEPGrmP9CB30KRJAWP0DfoKBnvKyw6plLgROqfWgvYhLEP2VupbxNQdW01J8upx62d0S6Q1fGdMb9nUpg/s400/truther.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471222915472676002" border="0" /></a><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">You can see here that p XOR q is only true when one, and only one, of the values is true. This is the kind of thought we should encourage, for example: listening to a candidate’s words and comparing them with past performance. For example: candidate Obama’s ringing words about the need for health care reform, contrasted with his actual record of derailing health care in Illinois. This might have been a clue that he was in the pocket of the insurance companies (he got a letter of praise from the insurance companies for his work in Illinois). Regarding political ads for what they are: propaganda (and therefore almost certainly untrue).<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">So, what would an XOR Voter Test look like? Well there are some models for a starting point: Situational Judgment Tests (SJT) have been used by many organizations, including the US Army, for decades. Employers often have their HR departments administer this kind of test to determine where prospective employees will best fit in the organization.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">These kinds of tests are usually written for the specific situation and I would expect exactly that kind of thought and attention to be applied to a Voter Test. The Voter Test would come in the mail with your primary registration for every election (you get another chance to pass, or fail, at every election). It need not be long, perhaps a dozen questions, all designed to determine that the prospective voter is engaged in the process and has the capability of making a decision based on reason – whether they actually do make a reasoned judgment is another matter. We can’t control anyone’s actual behavior (nor should we want to) but we can do two things: first, make sure that our fellow voters are competent to make a decision and second, weed out the propaganda, i.e., political ads, political money, etc. Dealing with the second problem is another matter for a different discussion, right now, I’m thinking about the first problem.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Let me try to anticipate some objections.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Isn’t this just a disguised ‘intelligence’ test?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">No, this type of test doesn’t measure your IQ or aptitude (like an SAT) or your knowledge competency (like a GRE, MCAT or LSAT). It measures your ability to judge a situation (or a candidate) using objective criteria rather than emotional attraction (or repulsion).<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">This is discrimination and besides, it’s unconstitutional.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Last charge answered first: it’s not unconstitutional. The Constitution only says “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” can’t prevent you from voting (Amendment 15), nor can gender: “on account of sex” (Amendment 19), or unpaid taxes: “by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax” (Amendment 24), or if you are 18 “on account of age” (Amendment 26).<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">On to ‘discrimination’. This is another loaded word, when people use it they generally intend it to be a euphemism for ‘racist’, but what the word really means is “to note or distinguish as different”.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">[Sidebar here: be careful with dictionaries, Webster’s Third International, for example, defines words by their ‘common usage’. When in doubt, go to the OED for the actual meaning]<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">So, in fact, we do want people to discriminate, to measure, to compare, to test, to doubt, to evaluate. And we really don’t want anyone who can’t do those things to vote. There are a whole lot of people out there voting who aren’t interested in making their vote meaningful – they’re voting a party ticket, or voting for someone who has seniority or voting for the ‘kewl’ guy. Every one of those drone votes, every one of those thoughtless voters, damages you and damages me. They vitiate our ability to change the status quo, they dilute our power. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">I want you to be very careful with your vote because your vote affects me – and mine affects you. This is one of the last things we all do together as a community and the oligarchs are doing everything in their power to make it superfluous. The barrages of political advertising that are nothing but lies. The incessant blaring of media hype of the chosen candidate, the absence of coverage of anyone else (or worse, the vitriolic savaging we saw in the Spring of 2008) and the utter vacuum of attention paid to anything that smells like real discussion or thought about actual issues.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">They really don’t want you to vote, your apathy is a surrender to their onslaught. And if they can’t prevent you from voting, they want you to go for the cardboard cutout of the moment: the amiable old idiot, the stumbletongued cretin ‘who’d be great to have a beer with’ or the pretty, vacuous HopenChange clown, they don’t care about color or party, ideology or aspiration; if they can keep the electorate stupid and apathetic there’s plenty of money to spare for ensuring that the ‘vote’ goes their way.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Restricting the electorate to those who prove they can think would go a long way to preventing the continuing abuse we see all around and would also be a step towards repairing the damage already caused.<br /><br /></span>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-22953876511486794532010-05-12T07:41:00.000-07:002010-05-12T07:43:51.663-07:00[Blink!]… [Blink!]Remember how that annoying light showed up on the dash? The incomprehensible graphic didn’t tell you anything and you had to look it up in the Owner’s Manual? And then the Owner’s Manual said something like: “The frammistat sensor is out of alignment.” ? You then did one of two things: you ignored it and it eventually stopped blinking or you stopped by your local Dashimotu dealer to get it checked out and the service manager said “Good thing you came in, your transmission was about to fall out of the car.”<br><br />This is one of those ‘blinky’ moments. Wayne Madsen – who apparently never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like – has published a warning article that claims the BP oil spill is far, far, worse than we’ve been told. I wouldn’t normally give Madsen’s story too much credence but the way the clowns in Washington sequester and manipulate information these days makes me wonder who’s fooling whom.<br><br />With that caveat emptor, take a look at Madsen’s article:<br /><a href="http://oilprice.com/Environment/Oil-Spills/The-Cover-up-BP-s-Crude-Politics-and-the-Looming-Environmental-Mega-Disaster.html"> Oil Spill</a>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-91440206313677619622010-04-15T14:08:00.000-07:002010-04-15T14:38:43.001-07:00Bo(zo)’s Bright-Unique-Lovey-Loopey-Shiny-Hopey-Ideal-Twinkle plan for NASA<span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">BO(zo) did a flyover and crapped on NASA at the KSC today on his way to a $30K/plate fundraiser. He’s now hawking his new plan that I’ve dubbed the <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span> plan. Note: the original, bulleted, items are all taken from the White House handout.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Lets’ review the new </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> plan, shall we? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>• Advances America's commitment to human spaceflight and exploration of the solar system, with a bold new vision and timetable for reaching new frontiers deeper in space. </blockquote></span><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Standard campaign</span> B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> we've heard this crap from every sleazy politician since JFK (who was the only one who actually meant what he said)<br /></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-family:verdana;">• Increases NASA's budget by $6 billion over 5 years. </span><br /></blockquote><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Last year’s NASA budget was $18.69 billion. This year’s Pentagon budget is $708.3 billion. $1.2 billion extra per year is nothing, if he were serious about supporting NASA he would have doubled the budget and it still would be a rounding error on the Pentagon's spreadsheet = </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>• Leads to more than 2,500 additional jobs in Florida's Kennedy Space Center area by 2012, as compared to the prior path. </blockquote><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Since they were going to lose 7,000 jobs by 2012, this really means they’ll only lose 4,500 jobs = </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>• Begins major work on building a new heavy lift rocket sooner, with a commitment to decide in 2015 on the specific heavy-lift rocket that will take us deeper into space. </blockquote></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">“with a commitment to decide in 2015” – in the last year of his second term in office, he gets to decide… or not = </span></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> and btw, we already have several heavy lift rockets ready to go: the Atlas V, the Delta 4 Heavy, Direct 3 (otherwise known as: <span style="font-style: italic;">using the Shuttle engines we are already using</span>) = more </span></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>• Initiates a vigorous new technology development and test program to increase the capabilities and reduce the cost of future exploration activities. </blockquote></span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:verdana;" > </span></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">This statement is semantically null =</span> B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>• Launches a steady stream of precursor robotic exploration missions to scout locations and demonstrate technologies to increase the safety and capability of future human missions, while also providing scientific dividends.</blockquote></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">No specifics, which means he’s just co-opting missions already in the pipeline = </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>• Restructures Constellation and directs NASA to develop the Orion crew capsule effort in order to provide stand-by emergency escape capabilities for the Space Station – thereby reducing our reliance on foreign providers. </blockquote></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Turns Constellation: an escape velocity (25,000mph) crew life support and re-entry system, into a port-a-potty backup LEO system (17,000mph) in case the Russians stop sending up Soyuz capsules to rescue our ISS crews = </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>• Establishes the technological foundation for future crew spacecraft needed for missions beyond low Earth orbit.</blockquote></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Complete and utter crap – he just killed off our “technological foundation for future crew spacecraft needed for missions beyond low Earth orbit”: it was called <span style="font-style: italic;">Constellation </span>= </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> “likely beyond 2020” = </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> “1- 2 years sooner”. Than what, using the Shuttle? = </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>• Jumpstarts a new commercial space transportation industry to provide safe and efficient crew and cargo transportation to the Space Station, projected to create over 10,000 jobs nationally over the next five years. </blockquote></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">All the supposedly ‘new’ commercial space industry companies are already up and running under existing programs, this is just campaign </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>• Invests in Florida, adding $3 billion more for the Kennedy Space Center to manage – a 60 percent increase. </blockquote><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">More campaign </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>• Makes strategic investments to develop critical knowledge, technologies, and capabilities to expand long-duration human exploration into deep space in a more efficient and safe manner, thus getting us to more destinations in deep space sooner. </blockquote></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Utter crap, this is all about trying to shift the responsibility onto someone else = </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>• And puts the space program on a more ambitious trajectory that pushes the frontiers of innovation to propel us on a new journey of innovation and discovery deeper into space.</blockquote></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Utterer crap = </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br />The 2012 campaign has certainly begun. I wrote <a href="http://theheraclitanfire.blogspot.com/2007/12/open-letter-to-senator-obama-dear.html">this </a>to then Senator Obama in 2007. Nothing has changed. Get ready to see Russian and Chinese space stations in the sky cause BO(zo) has just tossed our space program under the bus.<br /></span></span>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-19509441552229180142010-04-07T21:41:00.000-07:002010-04-07T22:11:33.981-07:00This is what tyranny looks like…<span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">I remember the day after George W. Bush opened his illegal, immoral, unprovoked war on Iraq – based on nothing but lies – when an email petition came through advocating that we start impeachment proceedings against him. I knew it was a non-starter, politically speaking, but I thought we should, at the very least, let those evil folks know what we thought of them. So I sent the email on to a few ‘friends’ who were a wee bit more to the right than I… and got back blistering responses of the barking mad variety (the word ‘traitor’ was used). Apparently impeachment was only to be used for blow jobs… one guy I’d known for 20 years threatened to call the cops if I ever emailed him again.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />I was surprised then and I have the feeling I’m going to be surprised again… </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Something happened today that has so far gone unmentioned in the Directorate of Propaganda (otherwise known as the Mass Media): we have today made a giant step down the road to tyranny.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Today Barack Obama issued a worldwide ‘kill or capture’ order on an American citizen. No indictment has been offered, no court has issued an arrest warrant, no officer of the court or the law was consulted, no military tribunal was invoked, JAG was not asked for an opinion, habeus corpus was not involved. The American citizen who is the subject of the ‘kill or capture’ order was investigated by Barack Obama, indicted by Barack Obama, tried by Barack Obama, convicted by Barack Obama and sentenced to death by Barack Obama… all very neatly and legally (the laws were perverted by BushCo for just this purpose and BO(zo) was happy to use them as such). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Note to the Right Wing Wacko Brigade: this is what happens when you allow abysmally stupid perversions of law in the name of ‘please, please protect us from the terrorists’. This is the real world, wackos, some people out there hate us. It’s time for you to grow some balls and stop trading in our rights for your cowardly macho notions of safety.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Note to the Faux Left Wing Sycophant Brigade: Darth Cheney pushed through this legislation in the GWB Thugocracy, but even Dubya, human stain that he is, couldn’t bring himself to use this particular piece of legal excrement. What does that tell you about “The One”?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Because I suspect that neither set of wackos has the mental acuity to think their collective way out of a paper bag, I’ll spell it out for you;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This is not about fighting terrorism.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This is not about whether Anwar al-Awlaki is a bad man (he is)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This is not even about whether Anwar al-Awlaki is a traitor (probably, but Hint: we need a TRIAL to find out)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This is not about protecting the American way of life (actually it is, just not how you’re thinking)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This is about the most fundamental property of Western Civilization: The Rule of Law (this should be animated and the sound should come from a burning bush and knock your socks off). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The Rule of Law means that no one, repeat NO ONE can KILL you without going through due process. YES, this IS about you. It may seem to be about some nameless fool who just doesn’t understand… no, this one really is about <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This abomination is not about the people you hate, the gays, the rednecks, the furriners, the rightwingnuts, the haters, the racists… it really, really is about you.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">For the brain dead among you, here’s how it works: we start out as apes, savages really, and we dance about beating our chests and howling insults at everyone else around us. This of course leads to real fighting and, in the grand scheme of things, the biggest, baddest, nastiest bastard wins. This goes on for a very long time. Eventually, the rest of the tribe gets a bit sick of it and they start casting about for another, <span style="font-style: italic;">any </span>other, solution. Eventually (and you’ll have to go back to your civics classes for this, if you had any) the apes figure out that they have to have a set of rules that applies to EVERYONE or it doesn’t really mean anything.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This is called “The Rule of Law”, it is the basis of western civilization. It means that no man, or woman, can make a decision, all by themselves, about what is right or wrong – they have to refer to the law to decide that. The law being the set of rules everyone in the society agrees on.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Are you beginning to see what I mean? Does the enormity of the crime start to become apparent to you?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Just in case you are confused about it, I will state it for you:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">President Obama has just overturned the most fundamental principle of western civilization and of any free society. He has arrogated to himself the right to accuse, try, convict and kill an American citizen without reference to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights without due process or Habeus Corpus or two centuries of ironclad, settled law of the land. …Just because he says so…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">I can’t believe I have to say this, but: <span style="font-style: italic;">YOU </span>could be next. Think about it, take your time and think it through (this is actually an insult but you’d have to have read <span style="font-style: italic;">Protector </span>to get it).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In a, now typical, Obama blow job piece the toilet paper formerly known as the New York Times goes all the way back to Gerald Ford to rationalize this deeply criminal act<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html"> here</a> . </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Glen Greenwald has a scathing article with many more details <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/07/assassinations/index.html"> here</a> about this disgrace, writing as one constitutional scholar to another. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">So, knowing all this, do you think we should militate for the impeachment of President Obama? Or shall we wait for the next step on the road to dictatorship?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"All that is required for evil to triumph, is for enough good men to do nothing."<br /> - Edmund Burke<br /><br /></span><br /><br /><br /></span>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-23729253918924857062010-03-22T11:24:00.000-07:002010-03-22T11:37:24.609-07:00The Honor RollHere's the list of Democratic Representatives who had the courage to vote against this atrocious Health'care' bill:<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUl8tLnn0UHbgzvQH6BfEuOBCAQOv33MjaoZNlIGLGHCbgjBX92OrEAkVbbjLC7MGTfw-gPy77keXGAvkYYiK98NeyMTaEgdUTlqNHbTiAJ352xB54S0AuGQo4PAg5Ma7qkOFJEw/s1600-h/honoroll.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 143px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUl8tLnn0UHbgzvQH6BfEuOBCAQOv33MjaoZNlIGLGHCbgjBX92OrEAkVbbjLC7MGTfw-gPy77keXGAvkYYiK98NeyMTaEgdUTlqNHbTiAJ352xB54S0AuGQo4PAg5Ma7qkOFJEw/s400/honoroll.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451528625195540802" /></a><br /><br /><br><br><br><br><br /><br><br><br><br><br><br><br /><br /><br><br><br><br><br><br><br /><br><br><br><br><br><br><br /><br />Every other Democrat should be voted out of office this November.Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-23354658061172035522010-03-18T12:09:00.000-07:002010-03-18T12:29:25.827-07:00Smoke signals...<span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Where there's smoke, there's fire." is a cliche but it's true nonetheless... I'm smelling smoke - haven't seen it yet but it's out there.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Charleston International Longshore Association Local 1422 leader Ken Riley: </span><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-family:verdana;">"You can say “Don’t buy Wal-Mart” all you want, preach it till the cows come home; Wal-Mart’s gonna be boomin’. I can’t say to my neighbor, “Man, don’t shop at Wal-Mart.” He’ll say, “Well, that’s easy for you, Kenny; how much money do you make an hour? I’m only making $7.25.” So how you gonna tell all these poor people, “Don’t shop at Wal-Mart?” You want to get Wal-Mart’s attention? Stop the goods.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">We have to get bold. We’re dying, and when you’re dying you explore radical medication because you’ve got noother choice. Maybe the medication will kill you, but the disease will definitely kill you. You have to get to the point where Martin Luther King was on that final night, when he said, “Like any man I would like to live a long life, but it really don’t matter to me now.” He had a vision. We are going to die anyway, so it really don’t matter; we have got to fight now. "</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">From "When You're Dying You Explore Radical Medication"</span><br /></blockquote><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">By JoAnn Wypijewski <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/">http://www.counterpunch.org/</a> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Sounds like Harry Bridges and the IWW, doesn't it? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">...smells like wood burning... </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Norman Solomon writes in "Zero Public Option + One Mandate = Disaster" </span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/18"><span style="font-family:verdana;">http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/18</span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>"On a political level, the mandate provision is a massive gift to the Republican Party, all set to keep on giving to the right wing for many years. With a highly intrusive requirement that personal funds and government subsidies be paid to private corporations, the law would further empower right-wing populists who want to pose as foes of government "elites" bent on enriching Wall Street.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">With this turn of the "healthcare reform" screw, the Democratic Party will be cast -- with strong evidence -- as a powerful tool of corporate America. But the Democrats on Capitol Hill and the organizations eagerly whipping for passage are determined to celebrate the enactment of something called "healthcare reform."</span></blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">...throw another log on the fire...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The brilliant Chris Cooper writes in "Everybody Knows The Deal Is Rotten" </span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/18-4"><span style="font-family:verdana;">http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/18-4</span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>"It is not the job of Dennis Kucinich to prop up this disappointing president or the rotten, useless Democratic party. It is not the job of progressive voters to support lame candidates who lie to them and use them because "the other party is worse." It is not the job of the American public to "make a space for the president", to support "incremental improvements" in our wretched situation or to "force the president" to use his alleged giant brain and forceful oratory in pursuit of real and useful and meaningful governance by sending him letters or contributions or by "supporting him" just because he's not George Bush or John McCain.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This country is falling apart. People are dying. Despair is settled upon the land. These clowns are frigging around for no purpose better than the enrichment of Wall Street bankers and Connecticut insurance tycoons. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">There has been no change. There is no hope."</blockquote></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">...that's definitely smoke... </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">I'm still working on Part 4 of "Reflections..." which is starting to look like it wants to be a lot bigger and have a different form. But it's beginning to look like the springtime of our discontent around the web. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">We're re-playing "Network"</span> (1976)<br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Max Schumacher's parting rant:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote>"It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain... and love."</span></blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Damn! I miss Paddy Chayevsky... I'm feeling that way about our political 'system'.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Many things that have been dormant through the winter begin to wake in the spring. It may be a rough time but if the rising tide of anger I'm sensing grows... </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Stephen Hawking said "In the vicinity of a Black Hole, <span style="font-style:italic;">anything </span>can happen." I think we're close to a Black Hole in politics right now.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">...wait, besides the smoke, is that brimstone?</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-22919002681302645472010-03-09T11:43:00.000-08:002010-03-09T11:59:27.928-08:00Once again the US ahows its leadership on human rights...<span style="font-family:verdana;">...oh, wait</span><br /><h1 style="font-family: verdana;" class="articleHeadline"><nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" "></nyt_headline></h1><blockquote style="font-family:verdana;"><h1 class="articleHeadline"><span style="font-size:75%;"><nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">India Wants to Give Women 1 / 3 of Legislative Seats</nyt_headline></span></h1><nyt_byline><h6 class="byline">By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS</h6> </nyt_byline> <h6 class="dateline">Published: March 9, 2010</h6> <script type="text/javascript"> var articleToolsShareData = {"url":"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/aponline\/2010\/03\/09\/world\/AP-AS-India-Women-Lawmakers.html","headline":"India Wants to Give Women 1 \/ 3 of Legislative Seats","description":"NEW DELHI (AP) -- India's upper house of parliament voted overwhelmingly Tuesday for a historic bill that would reserve one-third of legislative seats for women, despite a boycott by socialist lawmakers.","keywords":"","section":"world","sub_section":null,"section_display":"World","sub_section_display":null,"byline":"By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS","pubdate":"March 9, 2010","passkey":null}; function getShareURL() { return encodeURIComponent(articleToolsShareData.url); } function getShareHeadline() { return encodeURIComponent(articleToolsShareData.headline); } function getShareDescription() { return encodeURIComponent(articleToolsShareData.description); } function getShareKeywords() { return encodeURIComponent(articleToolsShareData.keywords); } function getShareSection() { return encodeURIComponent(articleToolsShareData.section); } function getShareSubSection() { return encodeURIComponent(articleToolsShareData.sub_section); } function getShareSectionDisplay() { return encodeURIComponent(articleToolsShareData.section_display); } function getShareSubSectionDisplay() { return encodeURIComponent(articleToolsShareData.sub_section_display); } function getShareByline() { return encodeURIComponent(articleToolsShareData.byline); } function getSharePubdate() { return encodeURIComponent(articleToolsShareData.pubdate); } function getSharePasskey() { return encodeURIComponent(articleToolsShareData.passkey); } </script> <nyt_correction_top> </nyt_correction_top> <p> <span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Filed at 1:15 p.m. ET</b></span> </p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"> NEW DELHI (AP) -- India's upper house of parliament voted overwhelmingly Tuesday for a historic bill that would reserve one-third of legislative seats for women, despite a boycott by socialist lawmakers. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> Prime Minister <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/manmohan_singh/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Manmohan Singh.">Manmohan Singh</a> described the 186-1 vote a ''historic step forward toward emancipation of Indian womanhood.'' The bill now goes to the lower house, where it is likely to pass. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> Members greeted the announcement of the voting result by thumping their desks. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> The vote came after socialist lawmakers blocked the parliamentary debate on Monday and forced the upper house to adjourn twice on Tuesday. The protesters later boycotted the voting. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> The bill to reserve one-third of legislative seats for women -- in national and state parliaments -- has faced strong opposition since it was first proposed more than a decade ago, with many political leaders worried that their male-dominated parties would lose seats. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> But socialist lawmakers' objection is that the bill does not go far enough: They would like to see seats reserved for ethnic minorities and people from low castes. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> The Bahujan Samaj Party lawmakers, who mainly represent lower castes, participated in the debate but abstained from voting. They were protesting the government's rejection of their demand to reserve seats for women belonging to their community within the government proposal. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> On Monday, angry legislators in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, rushed to the chairman's seat as he presided over the session, tore up copies of the bill and tried to grab his microphone. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> The bill is expected to be taken up the powerful lower house of parliament for voting next week. It will have to be approved by 15 of India's 28 states before it becomes law. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> It is expected to pass since the main opposition parties, including right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party and communist groups, already have announced their support for the legislation proposed by the ruling Congress Party. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> Arun Jaitley, a top leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said even 63 years after India's independence from British colonialists, women had only 10 percent representation in the powerful lower house of parliament. They make up nearly 50 percent of India's more than 1 billion people. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> The proposal is an attempt to correct some of the historical gender disparities in India, where women receive less education than men and are weighed down by illiteracy, poverty and low social status. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> The bill would raise the number of female lawmakers in the 545-seat lower house to 181 from the current 59. It would nearly quadruple the number of women in the 250-seat upper house.</span></p></blockquote><p style="font-family: verdana;">What the hell is going on in this country? Why isn't this long settled law? How f***ing far backwards do we have to go before we wake up?</p><p style="font-family: verdana;">Whoops! I forgot... we're here:</p><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF3fXeGFtCYMO5NreZuR7Bn5us_-r_kWduVL-5I8eQNWWLvRmW3-2Bb1Q3yNZUZY0LgSnlXhyphenhyphenOFt-CQ6pyFK5SE5OEQGKCdG9MTqsZWRdnBb0DijKXDjzpPQieVtZXFpt1PykUdA/s1600-h/bosuper.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 92px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF3fXeGFtCYMO5NreZuR7Bn5us_-r_kWduVL-5I8eQNWWLvRmW3-2Bb1Q3yNZUZY0LgSnlXhyphenhyphenOFt-CQ6pyFK5SE5OEQGKCdG9MTqsZWRdnBb0DijKXDjzpPQieVtZXFpt1PykUdA/s320/bosuper.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446723742659629746" border="0" /></a><p style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: verdana;">...nevermind.</p><p style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></p>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-83663842539626624342010-03-05T15:15:00.000-08:002010-03-05T15:32:58.229-08:00Reflections in a Dark Room – Part 3<span style="font-size:78%;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;">Obama is not the problem – we are.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;">I’ve been re-reading the “Anti-Federalist Papers” trying to get a feel for what the FFs were thinking as they gathered in the spring and summer of 1787 to hammer out a constitution. One pleasant surprise is that James Madison, acting as scribe and reporter of the various players, was possessed of a very trenchant wit. His sly observations on the speakers and their opining liven up what might easily have been a lugubrious exercise.<br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Three things come across, very clearly:</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />These were men who had thought long and hard about the issues being raised. Many of them warned against exactly the condition of corruption of the body politic we find ourselves in today.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">They were men in and of their time. That is, they were aware of history and were glad to take example or make example of historical solutions to the problems besetting them.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">By the same token, they were not able to see themselves clearly, in situ, nor were they aware of what was to come. (Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”)</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />..and fourth, Jefferson was in Paris. A tragedy in my opinion, we would never have had to make the first ten amendments had he been present, for one thing, and I can’t help but think that the Constitution would be a much better document than it already is. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Two things should be taken into account when thinking about this time, these men and the work they wrought.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />First, the context of the time. That context comes in several flavors depending on what we’re looking at.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Politics: the French Revolution hadn’t happened yet. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were still blithely coasting along with le Ancien Regime, unaware of the gathering storm. Marat, Danton and Robespierre were just dots on the political horizon, Napoleon was undreamt of. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Economics: The Industrial Revolution in England was just picking up steam [heh, heh!] and the textile mills were beginning Great Britain’s voracious appetite for raw materials which would lead them to found the greatest empire ever known (southern American cotton fields were part of the mix that fueled the American Civil War in the next century). </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Legal: American jurisprudence was still based, in large part, on English Common Law. This ancestry was the story of a seesaw class battle (in Marxist terms) between the peasants (now the proletariat) and the Upper classes (in the person of the King). Nowhere in this mix was any consideration of, or thought given to, the corporation.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />All of which leads us to my next point:</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />It was not possible for the framers, given their milieu, to comprehend, much less anticipate, the mind-numbing reach and power that would be amassed by deathless, faceless, amoral, avaricious, irresponsible corporations. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Neither could they have anticipated the nigh-logarithmic advances in science and technology that have occurred over the last 221 years. James Watt had received a patent on his steam engine only 8 years earlier, Morse’s telegraph (the first global internet) was 50 years in the future.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The point is that we have gone into legal/political/moral territory that constitute another dimension insofar as an 18th century viewpoint is concerned, enlightened as they may have been. We may not be their equals but I think we’re at a point where we have no choice but to try. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />We need to take this system apart and glue it back together again, with a few improvements. Until recently I thought that a third party (and a 4th and a 5th party) would be enough to upset the duopoly that now exists but the corruption has spread too far and too deep. With the system as it now stands no individual can remain uncorrupted, no new party can be effective against the power now entrenched. Good luck to the Tea Party, btw, I’d love to be proved wrong on this.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />What we need now is a reset - a full stop, down tools, wildcat strike, to hell with the bosses and the union reps too kinda reset. The US has run for 221 years on a pretty good set of rules but times change and so does circumstance. The visionaries who created the US Constitution were, frankly, a lot smarter and wiser than anyone I see around today but even they couldn’t anticipate the kinds of changes that have taken place in the intervening two centuries. We face a lot of the same threats they faced then but we also face some they could not have dreamt of. Corporate structures vaster and more powerful than nation-states: accountable to no one. Weapons that threaten life over the entire planet. Forget the weapons: deliberate actions by individuals and groups that threaten life over the entire planet. Crazed religious fanatics, within and without, who would kill every last person on earth who refuses to accept their creed… hmmm, well I guess they were familiar with that one.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Obama is not the problem – we are.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />There is a well-trodden path for the kind of political train wreck we’re experiencing: a nation-state with a claim to some kind of democracy representing all or most citizens begins to experience broad-based stress. This can take the form of attack from without by other nation-states, economic difficulties deriving from any of a number of circumstances, internal strife created by opposing ideologies, deliberate sabotage by interested parties, general or specific corruption of internal control agencies by bribery or blackmail. Usually it is a combination of several or all of these ills that eventually breaks the system down. Inevitably, as frustration levels skyrocket, violence breaks out – which is what the saboteurs have been waiting for: some sort of insurrection begins to form and whoever is in control of the military moves in and declares martial law, massacres their enemies, sets up a tinpot dictatorship and goes merrily along their way. Alternately, there is a civil war and the victor declares martial law, massacres their enemies, sets up a tinpot dictatorship and goes merrily along their way. Or there is a general breakdown of society from, say, a biological attack and the nearest military force declares marital law… well, you get the idea.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Think of it, aside from the American revolution, just about every political revolution in the last 200 years has worked out this way: the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution (the second one), several of the so-called ‘communist’ revolutions – they all devolved into savage dictatorships unrecognizable even by their most devoted followers. There’s no compelling reason why we won’t head in that direction as well.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />How do we avoid this trap of history? </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />We need to start seriously thinking about convening a constitutional convention. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Article V of the US Constitution: </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><blockquote>“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, <span style="font-weight: bold;">or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments,</span> which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” [my emphasis]</blockquote></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">I know that ‘constitutional conventions’ (CC) sounds almost funny, like we should dress up in periwigs and frock coats, but it’s a legitimate process that we have the right to use. There are, however, some very serious questions to be asked first:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;" >Why propose this path?</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Because it’s the only thing left that will forestall the slide into insurrection/dictatorship.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Can we do it?</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Maybe, the first option provided by Article V is closed to us, I don’t see any way that Congress would agree to opening a Constitutional Convention when it’s obvious that we mean to deprive them of their money and their power. On the other hand, once you convene an Article V CC, all bets are off. I notice that there several proposals in Congress purporting to deal with the ‘Dred Roberts’ decision – all of them strictly adhering to that single issue. I think they’re (justly) terrified of what would happen if the ‘people’ ever got their hands on this process. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How would we do it?</span> </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Go through the state legislatures, there may still be enough uncorrupted folks at that level to see the value and necessity of a CC. Try to do it as a simultaneous effort in all the states so as to vitiate the tons of money that will be thrown against the idea.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;" ><br />How do we keep out the wingnuts – from both wings?</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />We can’t, they’ll be there in force and will try to co-opt the process for their own ends. This means ‘we’ must be organized to prevent this kind of takeover, especially from the corporate fascists, this is just the kind of opportunity they think they can take advantage of.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How do we keep out the money?</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Ah, there’s the rub: the transnats will see this as an opportunity to twist the laws to their own ends and will release a tsunami of money in order to do so.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What’s the real danger here?</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Once you open up a CC, it can pretty much do whatever it wants. We could end up with President-for-Life Obama – for real, or a true corporatist/fascist state like the Randites and other nutjobs want. If it gets too wacko some MacArthur wannabe could declare martial law…[see above]. We might actually start the civil war we’re trying to prevent.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">So, this could be dangerous, couldn’t it?</span><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Yup. But I think it’s become abundantly clear that we’re going to have to take some kind of risk. If we stick our heads in the sand now, it’s quite likely that we’ll end up with a true corporate/fascist state run by Hank Paulson, Bernie Ebbers, Jeffery Skilling or one of their clones. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What do we want out of a CC?</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />We want to update the Constitution to deal with 21st century problems.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Howinhell do we do that?</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">See Part 4</span><br /><br /><br /></span>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-47568412932864294612010-02-10T11:20:00.000-08:002010-02-10T11:28:11.106-08:00Reflections in a Dark Room – Part 2<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Note: I wrote this before the SOTU and waited to see if I needed to change anything - I didn't<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Obama is not the problem – we are.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">OK, what does that mean? It means that Obama is just a symptom of whatever the disease is. It means that he was obvious, even elementary, and why did we - as in 'the electorate' fall for it? It means that we have to start looking in the mirror and really seeing what's there... </span> <span style="font-family:verdana;">I came across this review of a critically acclaimed TV show and I think it sheds some light:<br /></span> <blockquote><span style="font-family:verdana;">“Maybe we deserve it for watching in the first place. Or maybe this is the price those of us who can't chuckle at absolutely everything under the sun will be forced to pay, over and over again in this spectacle-driven nightmare culture, for still having some shred of humanity deep inside us.”</span> <span style="font-family:verdana;">-Heather Havrilesky writing about the “Dexter” finale in Salon<br /><br /></span></blockquote> <span style="font-family:verdana;">“spectacle-driven nightmare culture” is an accurate description, I think, an old friend calls it “modern bread and circuses”. I keep thinking of Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of everything is crap.”<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">“Buy Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, buy Rinso Blue…” [and so on for the full 30 second TV spot]... and watch Rinso Blue sales skyrocket while all the smugly oblivious tell each other that they’re not affected by those TV ads – hmmm, I wonder if it would work in politics…<br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Another vapid, content-free cinema extravaganza by James Cameron goes over the $1 billion mark in sales – in two weeks - guaranteeing yet another decade of valueless drivel from Hollywood, all with happy endings (the focus groups say it adds at least $50 million to the bottom line).<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Meanwhile...<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">The ranks of the homeless swell, the poor remain unfed, the ill remain untreated, the unemployed are reduced to begging and yet our several wars go merrily on their way: one useless quagmire, propping up a staggeringly corrupt kleptocracy is winding down just as another is ramping up and of course, after we’ve poured out blood and treasure in an doomed attempt to create a nation-state out of a tribal culture by force majeur in Afghanistan, why we’ll have Pakistan just ripe for yet another American Expeditionary Force.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">I’d have a lot more faith in us if we stopped thinking that the Marines are the same thing as the Army Corps of Engineers or Medecins sans Frontiers, but I digress…<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">The unholy confluence of thirty years of gigantic political lies (supply side “economics”), political sabotage (Ken Starr and the persecution of the Clintons as only one example) and sheer, unadulterated political cowardice (“Impeachment is off the table”) combined with the monstrous entrance of advertising techniques (and amorality) into politics (thank you Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, David Axelrod) has all combined to produce a spineless, feckless, deliberately ill- and under-informed, gullible ‘electorate’ who can be led contentedly down the garden path and blatantly lied to with absolute impunity, (see David Axelrod’s recent remarks on the North Carolina primary: “Yeah, we were behind in the polls so we decided to call Clinton a racist and that did it.” – yes, I’m paraphrasing but he admitted it.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Obama is not the problem – we are.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">We now live in a vapid culture of overarching ignorance, obsessed with the ‘now’. We blithely ignore the past (see Santayana).<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">I’m being bludgeoned into incredulity by the superimposed banality of contemporary life. I was reading, the other day, about the Boskops, a race of hominids whose remains were found in South Africa in the early part of the 20th century. This was a race, very closely related to us (about as close as we are to Chimpanzees) but whose brains were about 25-33% larger than ours especially in the cerebellum (where cognitive thinking occurs). These folks would be geniuses in relation to us and would have probably played a major role in the development of civilization. Incidentally, they appear to have had very child-like faces, 1/5th of the head frontal area vs 1/3rd for Homo Sapiens – much like the non-threatening aliens of sci-fi lore. We don’t know what wiped them out: disease, ecological disaster, attacks by Homo Sapiens… I’m thinking evolution really jumped the shark when the Boskops died out because Homo Sap apparently can’t think its way out of a paper bag.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">This isn’t just an oldguy rant (that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it). It’s another attempt to generate a wakeup call to me/we/you/us, before they just cancel elections as irrelevant foregone conclusions, before they kill the internet and free, broadcast TV - that campaign has already started, didja know? Mind you, I wouldn’t be mad about that if they canceled <span style="font-style: italic;">all </span>TV: as an information tool, it’s next to useless; as a propaganda delivery system it’s frighteningly effective.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">We just had a primary and an election where massive cheating and illegal campaign tactics by the ‘winning’ candidate (both in delegate counts and in huge duplicitous campaign contributions), race baiting and palpable, outright lies were used to install an obviously incompetent candidate as president. Obama thugs and bully-boys – the same ones were seen in five separate states - threatening and intimidating caucus goers into voting for Obama. Women in the North Carolina primary wept because they wanted Hillary but they were pressured by friends, family and the entire black community into voting for Obama <span style="font-style: italic;">because he is black</span>. The ‘intelligentsia’ of college faculty and ‘lefty intellectuals’ became instant sycophants <span style="font-style: italic;">because he is black</span> and the masses of slackerclones woke momentarily from their fever dreams in mom’s basement (where the parents are the problem), to vote for him because: “he’s cool kewl!”. $200 million flowed into the Obama campaign coffers in the middle of September 2008 (when it looked like he would lose to McCain) does anyone really believe this money came from little Suzie's cookie jar? Really?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">We’ve accepted so much that we should have resisted with blood in the streets: “free speech zones” - blocks away from the parade, behind chain link fences topped with concertina razor wire. Congressmen and Senators whose corporate sponsorship should be tattooed on their foreheads, awash in money and privilege telling us that the only thing we can hope for is that your government will now <span style="font-style: italic;">force </span>you to pay a private insurance company for a policy that has no value whatsoever. Regulatory agencies that will “go to the mattresses” to prevent any corporate regulation whatsoever. Corporate propaganda channels masquerading as ‘news’ programs pouring pre-digested pablum down our throats and calling it information.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Obama is not the problem – we are.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it!” you say, so what's your point? What are you/us supposed to do about it?<br /><br /></span> <span style="font-family:verdana;">Stay tuned for Part 3</span> </span>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987128.post-27769020435423882642010-01-20T15:10:00.000-08:002010-01-20T21:45:08.517-08:00Obama Revealed!<span style="font-family:verdana;">The intrepid sleuths at "The Heraclitan Fire" have made a truly astonishing find (dumpster-diving outside the offices of a well known image manipulation and PR firm). An unfinished document which answers many questions we have all had about Obama and offers a peek into the inner operations of the Obama 'operation...'</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwdLzODW4jGDzYGqlVOsJvWgFiOkLnWY4Y1HABrQsqCucvXWMbz8fDf2zTqdiBvHFkxk2r18RXELslHtYisQugUtkpXpbb7BRemEd6XOR4artqULKEqaoeF3Ap3ySXl35LjWM-wA/s1600-h/Obamatron+v0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 452px; height: 338px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwdLzODW4jGDzYGqlVOsJvWgFiOkLnWY4Y1HABrQsqCucvXWMbz8fDf2zTqdiBvHFkxk2r18RXELslHtYisQugUtkpXpbb7BRemEd6XOR4artqULKEqaoeF3Ap3ySXl35LjWM-wA/s320/Obamatron+v0.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428964723228105874" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><br /><br />...at last the truth comes out!</span>Craig Della Pennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06088316749384519019noreply@blogger.com0