Cruzin in Ioweigh

Texas Senator Ted *Teabagger* Cruz, a wholly-owned subsidiary of C3PO Gesellschaft, has been stumping madly in the Iowa carcases, hoping for 51 percent of the vote. It probably wouldn’t do him much good because everybody is now assuming that Donald T. *Captain Underpants* Rump will be the nominee of THAT party, but Teddy is still in there pitching. 

However, we can't expect this *doubleplusgood ducktalker* to go on forever like the Energizer Bunny, a mechanical contrivance to which he bears a certain superficial resemblance. Rumor has it Ted is secretly planning to soon retire from politics and become a novelist, and in fact has half completed his first fiction book, *Honey, They Shrunk My Hormones.* 

Cruz is also something of an amateur archaeologist, and will be spending some of his leisure time, of which he will have 24 hours a day in the near future, searching for deer femurs in the deserts of Utah and Arizona, then claiming that these bones are the remains of camels, unicorns, or gryffens. Teabaggin Ted has always had a fertile imagination. 

Happy Trails to You, Until We Meet Again.

a fine family fortune

'

     Surname    $ (in bllions)

1, WALTON -- 127.6

4 individuals, heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton, own over $30 billion apiece.

2. KOCH -- 82 Bn belongs to the brothers Dave 'n' Charley.

3. GATES, Bill -- 76 Bn = largest individual fortune.

4. MARS -- 70.2

3 sibs hold 23.4 bn apiece -- there's money in sugar addiction.

5. BUFFET, Warren -- 62

6. ELLISON,  Larry -- 47.5

7. BEZOS, Jeff -- 47

8.  ZUCKERBERG, Mark -- 40.3

9. BLOOMBERG, Michael -- 38.6

10. PAGE, Larry -- 33.3

11.  BRIN, Sergey -- 32.6

12. ADELSON, Sheldon -- 26

13. SOROS, George --24..5

14, KNIGHT, Phil -- 24.4

15. BALLMER. Steve -- 21.6

16. ICAHN, Carl -- 20.5

17. DELL, Michael  19.1

18. JOBS, Laurene -- 19.1

19. CHAMBERS, Anne Cox -- 18

20. ALLEN, Paul -- 17.8

In order to undertsand what a BILLON dollars is, you first have to have a complete grasp of a MILLION.

Everybody knows what a THOUSAND is. Chances are yr house is worth 100-200 thousand.

Or at least, that's what you're paying for it.

1 MILLION = 999 THOUSAND plus one more THOUSAND. So clearly a million bux is alotsa dough, It's more than most of us will earn in a lifetime!

OK, so a billion dollars is 999 million + one more. An almost inconceivable amount of cash, or to put it another way, 10 million $100 bills.

             

That's what we're talkin about when we discuss family fortunes ranging in value from
 $17,800,000,000 to $127,600,000,000.

christmas friday cat blogging

So we  come home from 24 hrs in Surprise & find Cat Face in the laundry basket I prepared 4 her just B4 we left...

She's such a well-behaved, no-maintenance little beast, she's always a pleasure, & very independent. 

furrills?

Is this the real face of Yeshua ben Yusuf of Nazareth, known 2 Christians as Jesus (the) Christ? It surely is a lot closer than the blue-eyed, flaxen-haired dude we usually see in upper North America. 

Keep in mind also that Jesus, if he was average height and weight for the time among his people, would have been in the neighborhood of 5' even and 110 pounds.

eye witless 2 histy

Dear Angry,

Arn't U evr afraid oƒ BURNIN up in yr own righteous indignation, not to mention indigestion?
& blieve it or not, even though i'm a 72-yr clean hippie freak, I agree with yr attitude entirely. I-2
will vote for either one -- on the other side of coarse.

I guess U COULD  say the main diff between U  and me is that while I & mine  are celebrating  a great and transformational victory in November,  you'll be looking at the same problem that plagued U in 2012, namely: how can we get somebody  b-soides OAFS (old white guys like U & me; old farts)  interested in some body like Romney or Drumpf, or Teddu Cruzu?

I don't think there's any way that the national Republican Party can continue on the way it is, without filing the intellecral, moral, and spiritual equivalent of chapter 11 or 13. 

wedding day -- 10/9/2015

My lovely bride Kathleen & I tie the knot with the help of Father Luigi, The massive white shirt at the right of the pic belongs to kit's grown son, Billy Shaw.

eating one's words

I never liked eating my words. They taste bitter, especially when 
one says nasty things sbout somebody he doesn't like anyway.

A couple of days ago I wrote a post here in which I accused  Hillary Clinton of being incapable of exhibiting either passion or spontaneity. Then, the evening of the next day, speaking at a venue at which she showed up an hour-and-a-half late, she showed both, almost as if she was answering my blog (although I'm sure she wouldn't know me if I walked up to her and painted her white.)

The reason she was so late to her own party was due to a meeting that ran long, between herself and some Somalis.The speech was scheduled at the University in St. Paul for 5:00, but it was closer to 6:30 when she finally showed, much to the relief of her grateful, very patient audience.

The speech doesn't seem that special at first,beginning with acknowledgements and boilerplate, but she begins to warm to the announced topic at a few seconds past 8 minutes. 

I don't know what went on at the meeting with the local Somalis, but I know she showed up for her speech loaded 4 bear, and made a liar out of me.

friday cat blogging

We've decided the laundry basket is the best place in the world 2 B.

BesT place 4 sleepin & best 4 being awake.

Invariably, however, it doesn't last; after a day or 2 the clothes and towels get put away, and nobody wants to hang out in an empty basket.

Nothing 2 do now but wait out the week or so until paradise reappears.

comme back, redd (huh)

Redd Foxx left us in 1991.  But I've found myself wishing in this campaign season that he was still around.

Ben Carson, in purporting to know about  things other than surgery, turns out to be the biggest phony in the field. If Redd was here it would take him less than a minute to cut this fake genius down to size.

"Dr. Carson, I know we've never met. But haven't I seen yo picture on the rice box?"

snart snoerk -- vasectomies @ 7/11

Boy,  Tailgunner Ted  Cruz & ye 7 other dwarves are playin "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,  U're the Fascist," & thinkin it'll stick. The primaries are comin rite up, TED. My advice is to not continue this line. Doing so will make you look like an ahistorical boob, and a very pathetic example of a tough cowboy. Adepto vestri stercore simul.
2 months ago  ::  Oct 16, 2015 - 9:47PM#2
catboxer Posts: 14,069	oh  my. I forgot to mention the kitchen shears and pizza wheel, but have changed my mind & now do not wanta go there. It's 2 gashly.

خوب، مغز آمریکایی تمیز

 Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Obama's Iran Deal

When i saw that headline a couple months ago my immediate reaction was:

so what?

Over half of Americans disbelieve in Darwinism.

About a third think the climate ain't changin. or if it is "I didn't do it!"

About a third of us think women should obey their husbands.

12% of Americans a few years back believed that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. (Cited in Morris Berman's The Twilight of American Culture.)

This is a time 2 check world opinion and forget this exceptional backwater, where people in their millions have been brainwashed by the corporate media.

above it all

\

So what say ye? Is she floating serenely above the fray, like Nike Athena looking down from Olympus  upon us ant-like mortals below?

Or is she more like (as Mr. Kunstler would have it) "gliding above the election arena like Rodan the Flying Reptile — caw! caw!"

I saw but didn't hear* her posture of the week for 12/8-12/14, with its not-so-subtle message: "Peace & Love will 
rule the World" raining down on us humans from heaven, but triangulated and engineered to counter the violent fulminations of one, specific mouth-breathing politician.

Don't get me wrong...I'm glad she's targeting T. Rump, but I can't understand why she seems to be unable to do this -- or anyting else, spontaneously.** Even when she's righteous, she comes across as a big phony.

*I usually watch political coverage on TV with the mute button engaged.

**Want spontaneity? See this!

President Sanders

health care in amerika?

After nearly 2 full months of intensive work in the field, I'm happy to be able to report back in the affirmative. Yes, there IS health care in Amerika, but of course it's riddled with problems, most of which stem from health care enterprises in this country existing mostly as for-profit businesses.

The largest health care "providers," such as Arizona's Banner Corp, an Arizona 21st-century non-profit corporation, are full-scale governmental-private enterprises, structured to prevail in the 21st century, Truly a medical-industrial feature of the Arizona landscape, and the second largest employer in the state (second only to Walmart.) Banner is also delivering some of the best quality health care in the country, and Banner Bayview is easily the nicest hospital I've ever stayed in...like a five-star hotel in some respects.

However, lest you think I'm about to launch into a full pro-Banner PR campaign I should tell you I was nearly delivered into enemy hands in that hospital, and my little odyssey could have ended a disastrous wreck then and there, as it might have six weeks later, in another time & place.

What began as a routine biopsy ended up taking me close to the edge -- I'm not sure just how close -- and ended the way it began: very badly. 

Part of the problem at the outset was personnel too young and immature for an adult job. I was put under the care of a nurse of about 18 who was also a control freak. When the biospy result went badly, which was not at all her fault, she refused to call in reinforcements, and behaved badly in other ways as well.

On Thursday, October 23 I checked into the hospital for a biopsy. I was unconscious during the procedure, but shortly afterward became aware of intense pain in the chest as my right lung precipitously collapsed.

A team of doctors hurriedly moved to insert a tube in that lung, through the right side thoracic wall. This first attempt to reinflate the lung went badly, however, and by the morning of Oct 24 I looked like this.


The condition is called "crepitus," and consists of air getting between the skin and what lies underneath. 

The next day we did Chest Tube 2.0,
with similar results, although there was some improvement -- for one thing I was awake and aware more than with chest Tube 1,0, although I'm still not sure whether that was a blessing or a curse.

This is a good place to leave it, at a "What will our hero do now?" moment, or more precisely, "What will be done to him?"                                                         

.

alive!

Sometimes I wake up genuinely surprised and amazed to be here -- or ANY where.

After less than 2 months out of circulation -- early October till late November -- It's impossible to step into the old routine.

I'm having to take it all real slow. So far the challenge is being around real food.  After I don't know how many November Unhappy Meals at the rehab-my ass,  regular Kitagawa breakfast is a sensory overload -- but who's complaining?

eggs 4 breakfast

The one thing that's egg zackley the same as it was when I "went away" is Tha News. Same shrieks & groans coming out of the same gray faces. At least we have a (1) candidate this yr. but seriously, pundits y punditas, you're gonna have 2 come up w/ some new material or risk becoming what the academics call "moribund,"

dear jim

"Bernie Sanders plays the meshugganah grandpa role reserved, on the screen, for Larry David or Alan Arkin. He’s always worked up about something that nobody else can really get worked up about, always raising his voice and stabbing his finger in the air in imitation of Yahweh."
--Jim Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation blog, 10/19/25

I seldom disagree with you about anything other than Zionism, so I was perplexed to discover the degree to which you do NOT "Feel the Bern." What reason could you possibly have for calling the candidate I (and seemingly yourself) have been waiting for these past 50 years, a guy whose most salient traits are his spotless integrity and political consistency, to a crazy old grandpa?

And most particularly, why would you ridiculously and inexplicably say that "Sanders is worked up about something that nobody else can really get worked up about," when you have expended gallons of ink and miles worth of column inches railing against the banks and our larcenous financial sector in virtually the same words as he uses.

I would appreciate your telling us the real reason behind your profound distaste f0r the only candidate I've seen in a lifetime of voting that I can actually pull the lever for with enthusiasm.

I'm not comfortable addressing you in this tone, since you were the Moses who largely single-handedly led us out of the wilderness of domination of the national political conversation by the oil patch  bhoyz. I found "The Long Emergency" a masterpiece of concision and accuracy (to judge by all that's happened since it was published), and the "A World Made By Hand" series I devoured in three sittings, and eagerly await the final volume. It's gorgeously  written, and a polemic as well as a page-turner.

Please enlighten is as to  why you have missed the mark so completely when the subject turns to  the all-important question  of who's to follow the weak "centrist" Obama into  the White House. I'm sure you're aware the Rehooligans will fail (again) to nominate a human, that the race for the Democratic nomination is in reality the race for the presidency, and that there are exactly two viable contenders. Your assessment of Mrs. Clinton is spot-on; why don't you feel the Bern.

Sincerely,
©∂†ß0X∑®

friday cat blogging, early saturday posting

Sammy is stickin pretty close 2 good old Pops since our return home a week ago.

хот доги (aka perritos calientes, chiens chauds, heisse hunds, or hot dogs).

All the punditos & punditas are talkin about what a great show Marty O'Malley put on last nite.

All he showed me was the left-side profile  of a  preening narcissist.

O'Malley is one of the three dwarves that this show needs 2 lose if it's gonna stay viable.

The less said about the other 2, goofy Linc Chaffee and the Republicrat Jim Webb, the better.

This verbal combat needs 2 B exclusively between the 2 contenders, 3 nites, best 2 of 3 falls/nite. By the end the voters would have severally formed their opinions. This is not just 4 the nomination, mind U  but 4 the presidency.

friday cat blogging, late tuesday edition

Now that the gates of hell are opening up and they're actually gonna let Hilarius and the three amigos on teevee, people might suddenly realize that she's got nothing, & that Sen Sanders is holding all the cards.

Me? I'm just glad 2 B home alone with my wife, whom I married 3 days ago in Mesquite, Nevada.

Most of all, our feline is glad we're back, and has showered us with wet purrs & furry rubs since we returned last evening.

god nose snotreel

It's  gettin tougher 2 debate rehooligans cuz Who nose what they talkin about?

They allways goin like "Benghazi. Benghazi. Them E-mails."

"Acorn! Acorn!"

What's all that cal about?

how much wood would a packwood pack?

If a Packwood would pack wood?
A Packwood would pack all the woody would pack,
If a Packwood would pack wood...

Does any one remember the 
tenure of Bob ,,
Pack wood,  the liberal senator 
from Oregon?

He was one of the great serial womanbotherers of all time, a guy so naive he couldn't figure out why women he didn't know objected when he cornered them in elevators.

At that point the story is monotonously the 
same..."and then he rammed his tongue 
down my throat."


he'd've done better  if somebody had told him that yah, it's good 2B the kynge, but a U.S. Sennetore is not a monarch.

1. 
   

inertia & inevitability

.

Kershplung -- what shocking & depressing thoughts.

I decided to follow up a conversation re: who's gonna win the 2016 by consulting w/ people in whom I have the most confidence as predicters. That would be ye high priests of ye football poole, z Vegas oddsmakers.

Mrs. Clinton has the best shot at la CasaBlanca with 8 to 11 odds, which is hard to 2 visualize unless U look at the other candidates. Twump & Jeb! R in a dead heat for nomination and WH, both w 9/2.

A better way to express it as far as I can see is 2 turn it upside-down and say their chances are 2/9, or 2X as good as a 9th. Looking at it that way, Rubio, Sanders, and Jojo Biden are all at 1/8th. But as of today, Rubio looks dead in the water, and Biden might not run. 

& that's all yr runners in both parties, basically, (between 4 & 6), cuz then then you drop all the way down to Mme. Fiorina at 18-to-1 or if you really wanna go there, to Kim Kardashian, whose chances are noted by the oddsmakers 2 B a thousand to one shot at being elected presnit. This info comes from Lost Wages on 10/1.

These oddsmakers R not always right, but they R  completely trustworthy because they do well by doing good. Their rewards, which R ample, depend on their getting it right.

Looks to me like Hillary has the inside track, at this very early time. The inertia of voters' habits and party loyalty might yet propel her (if that's the word) to the top of the heap. But a lot can happen in 14 mos as every body know. 

As of Oktober first

brain teazers

If "snuck" is not a word (and it isn't), what should it be?

What is the plural of mongoose?

smells.like teen spirit

Must B pun kin-spice season, which means we B gettin a lot of these.

Restaurant facade in Tokyo.

bye for a while

I'm afraid I must suspend work here, at least 4 a while.

Typing has. Become 2 difficult. I could use Voice activated typing on the iPad, but speaking is nearly as difficult as typing.

It's all due 2 Parkinson's. 

Not sure what to do. I'm not ready 2 pack it in completely. I'll continue posting on Facebook, mostly on the "news & politics" pg, also occasionally on Twitter.

suckhard

Here's what Marco Rubio said during the debate on Tues. that upset me so,

There is a lunatic in North Korea with dozens of nuclear weapons and long-range rocket that can already hit the very place in which we stand tonight. The Chinese are rapidly expanding their military. They hack into our computers. They're building artificial islands in the South China Sea, the most important shipping lane in the world. A gangster in Moscow is not just threatening Europe, he's threatening to destroy and divide NATO. You have radical jihadists in dozens of countries across multiple continents. And they even recruit Americans using social media to try to attack us here at home. And now we have got this horrible deal with Iran where a radical Shia cleric with an apocalyptic vision of the future is also guaranteed to one day possess nuclear weapons and also a long-range rocket that can hit the United States.

Taking this mess sentence-by-sentence, Kim Jong Un, dictator of North Korea, may or may not be a lunatic. the rest of the sentence is pure fantasy: Kim does Not have "dozens" of nukes, nor a missile that can hit anything farther away than Japan. The burden of proof is on Sen Rubio.

yuck

I found myself unable to watch the Rehooligan debate last nite.

4 1 thing, it was (again) all about Trump, who looked like a big, ugly rat being set upon by a pack of enraged gerbils. Everybody, including the moderators, is trying to bring this giant rodent down, but he continues to chug along.

About 7:00 Marco Rubio, professional honor-roll student, comes on & holds forth 4 a few minutes on Iran, saying that undesr the terms of the still-unconcluded treaty with the country, the mullahs were "guaranteed" -- guaranfknteed -- to have a nuke in a few short years, which they would of course use against us &/or Israel.

"Bud, you can stand out on the corner & tell that same lie twice" I said B 4 kissin the Mrs. & bidding her goodnight, for she had determined earlier in the weeek 2 punish herself by actually watching this dumb show put on by morons & misfits. 

It's past time 4 us to start keeping track of these fearless predictions, such as the one made by Marco R. Last nite, so as 2 B b able 2 rub the perps', faces in em when they fall due.

From z sub-conscious

In 1973, French novelist Jean Raspail wrote  "In the Camp of the Saints." It was immediately almost universally condemned as racist garbage. 40 years later we're looking at they events described in this novel playing out in the news from Europe.

During the interlude between the book's publication and 2011, when the demand for it became such it needed 2  reprinted, the Atlantic magazine, at a time when "Camp of the Saints" was out of print & hard 2 find (1994), published an appreciation of Raspail's work under the title "Must it be the  West versus the rest?" 

Then there's Donald Trump.

Nobody, not even trump himself, wants to just think of himself as a racist asshole. At the same time, treating the coming migration storm as if it's not a problem is self- destructive. 

The earth is overpopulated, especially in places where 200 years of energy whoopee have encouraged population growth way beyond what resources in those places -- Middle East & North Africa (MENA) -- could ever support. 

This past Monday Jim Kunstler addressed this situation by noting that "Yes, the tragic intrusions of the US military in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and elsewhere have been reckless and stupid. But that is not the whole story. The desert nations of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have populations abnormally swollen by a century of oil-and-gas-based agriculture, really by the benefits of Modernity in general. Now that the oil age is chugging to an unruly crack-up, and Modernity with it, and the earth’s climate is doing wonky things, and the rich nations to the north have faked their finances to the point of bankruptcy, well, circumstances have changed."

In this country I have advocated getting a handle on our borders by limiting immigration from Latin America  by eliminating the sick, the criminal, and illiterates. There would still be a lot of people coming here, but they would all be workplace ready.

Pretending there's not a problem because T. Rump's a butthead, or J.M. Penn a racist dick, doesn't get it either.

I curse our so-called leaders past and present, who allowed International income inequality 2 become so skewed this situation has arisen: people can't stay in Mexico because life there is impossible, as it is in Syria, Afghanistan,  & Libya. 

1972, at home by the shore of the Mediterranean, Raspail had a vision:  "A million poor wretches, armed only with their weakness and their numbers, overwhelmed by misery, encumbered with starving brown and black 
children, ready to disembark on our soil, the vanguard of the multitudes pressing hard against every part of the tired and overfed West. I literally saw them, saw the major problem they presented, a problem absolutely insoluble by our present moral standards. To  let them in would destroy us. To reject them would destroy them." 

Friday cat blogging

Sammy really loves her new stroller.

With the weather a little cooler now, we take her out  morning & evening most days.

9/11/2015

I'll never forger what I saw on 9/11/01, nor would I want to.

I wish I could forget that it was shortly thereafter this country, after flirting with mass psychosis for decades, decided 2 go balls-2-the-wall nuts.  Collectively, our national psyche went into orbit and hasn't come back.

And we might never, although I hope this orbit we're in, characterized by Rambo fantsies fed by extreme paranoia, will weaken sufficiently that we might fall back down to earth. 

sardine balloon to

The sardine balloon is a concept that's been around since 1985, when my daughter was 13.

The appearance of the SB signals a tough time ahead, since this is the signal of an imminent revolution.

It may be thorough or partial, universal or strictly personal -- you never know in advance.

The sign of the sardine  balloon  is momentous indeed.

the crucible,1965-1972

We were all reborn out of the crucible, every one of us over age 10 by 19 & 65.

The crucible was Vietnam, racism come 2 a head, and other culminative factors loose in society simultaneously. 

The 70's was still unwinding when Patrick J. Buchanan called out the simultaneous semi-revolutionary turmoils of the late 60's as some sort of turning point in US society and gov't.

The political revolution he called for in 1979 & 1980 has been wildly successful, and is just now beginning to show signs of fatigue.

We;ve hardly been heard from 4 over 30 yrs. The next couple yrs will shock a lot of people.

friday cat blogging

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ





































Photo: Kit Wood 

oops -- reflections on aging

I've probably deeply insulted Matt Salmon, the Congressional Rep for my Arizona district, and the chelloveck whose picture you see below, although I'm pretty sure he doesn't know it (VIP's don't ever read this blog).

Yesterday I said he was an OAF (old fart) like me, and "probably in his 70's."

Turns out the dude is 57 -- 14 yrs younger than me. So my first question is, How does one so young manage 2 look so old?

I thought all that clean livin due to Mormonism was good 4 a person.

something fishy goin on

Oh My Cod! The Congressman from Aridzona who just happens 2B my own rep here in this little old Congressional district where we've settled down, Rep. Matt Salmon has been scarin the little kids in elementary school.

Now you must understand that believing in democracy as I do leads me to conclude that Rep. Salmon's Mormonism and Republicanism are OK, because East Mesa here is largeley Mormon and Republican, so that's cool.  BUT he's an old fart like me, and I happen to know most OAFS are totally clueless people.
             
The problem with OAFS is they think things are as they were 50 or 60 yrs ago. What I mean by that is Salmon, being probably in his 70's, clearly remembers the "duck and cover" drills of the early 50's, and very clearly understood what a nuclear bomb was and what it would do, as all public-school first graders did at that time.

A parent who heard the Congressman speak to the little ones was horrified by his question, "Do you know what nuclear weapons are?" to a group of 2d- and 3d-graders. He was talking about Iran when he asked it, as well as mentioning that in countries where they hate Americans, the schools train "kids your age to be suicide bombers."

Mr. Campbell (4 such was the witnessing parent's name) was horrified by this statement as well, and said the next day that was the information  which most frightened his daughter, as she didn't know what suicide is. We're talkin 8- & 9-yr-olds who have no information on the basics of life and death.

I'm sure Mr. Campbell's telling the truth in all of this, but I can't help but think the parent in this case is as clueless as the Congressman. As an educator he'd make a very sour dean. He appears 2 think  kids like we were, who knew what the atom bomb was, what it was capable of doing, and also read a newspaper every day, and so figured out early in my life the precise meanings of all the common death-associated words -- murder, suicide, homicide, mortal, etc. -- that such children are now extinct, & no longer walk the earth.

It's a big flap over nuthin, really. and a tempest in a teapot, but Rep Salmon really needs a style makeover. I wonder how may of these little kids, unlike Mr. indignant dad, felt like something smelt  in Salmon's presentation. I also wonder how many of em know a lot more than Mr. Campbell thinks they do. 

#30#