life in these disunited states

Looking around at the US today, I quickly come to the conclusion that this country hasn't been so divided since the Civil War.

Then it was brother vs brother, and today we're seeing that again.

In those days whites, who ruled the place, agonized and disagreed, to the point of going to war, about what the status of blacks in America was, and what it should be. Just like today.

On one hand we had, and have, an industrialized, urban population, quick, intelligent, mobile, and contemptuous of any kind of rural slowness or traditional points of view. On the other we have the tribe of bumpkins -- romantics who  dislike the anti-idealist tendencies of modern science.

And there's where the problem lies. If people look at the facts and disagree on a course of action, that's OK, but if they can't agree on what the facts are, you've got real problems, for the nature of reality comes into question.

I doubt that the coming confrontation will be as bloody as the last time, but it could be. Either way, there has to be some kind of resolution of the issues.

1. Science is here to say. Relgion and science need to agree; when they don't one or the other is wrong.

2. White Christians no longer rule America. The 14th Amendment (adopted 1867) makes clear who is a citizen, who isn't, & posits the equality of all citizens.

3 Facts are things that are true,  & the stuff you make up isn't necessarily, no matter how much you might wish it was.

4. Communism. socialism, fascism, racism, nationalism, black & otherwise, even abstract expressionism, are all on the outs. It's time for an end to -isms, and past time for Americans to start dealing with each other as human beings rather than abstractions or "demographics."

bollocky bill the hitler cat

Not my cat, but a good one.

There are lots of Hitler cats, but no Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, or 

Gandhi cats I know of.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

And yes, I know it's Saddy already. My bad.

jonny getcher gun in wisconsin

Gov. Scott Walker on Wednesday loosened gun restrictions in Wisconsin by signing a pair of bills that would make it quicker to buy guns and easier to carry them.

O man, I DO love me some "dairy state." 

Wisconsin is definitely where I wanna vacation this summer, starting in Plainfield, at the Ed Gein museum & memorial.

You can buy a Winnebago & 20# of cream cheese, then paint an appropriate design on the front of yr new vee-hickle & head south. Don't forget why U went there in the 1st place -- be sure 2 pick up a couple AR-15's & sufficient magazines 4 a deer-hunting trip.

OUTTA MY WAY U LIBERAL SCUM -- I"M A HARD CHARGER!

ye foxe & ye raysyns

Wm. Caxton, the printer, retold this beautiful old fable of Aesop in 1484.

He is not wyse

That desyreth to haue a thynge whiche he may not haue,

As reciteth this fable Of a foxe

Whiche loked and beheld the raysyns that grewe vpon an hyghe vyne,

The whiche raysyns he moche desyred for to ete them.

And whanne he sawe that none he myght gete,

he torned his sorowe in to Ioye

and sayd These raysyns ben sowr, 

and yf I had some I wold not ete them."

And therfore this fable sheweth that he is wyse

Whiche fayneth not to desyre that thynge the whiche he may not haue /

(I think it was his wyfe who really wanted the raysyns,)

2 dam hot

The news is, it's too damn hot to do any thing in the Phoenix area right now, even post 2 a blog.

This was in our car a couple days ago, and there's been no let-up.

friday's cat

                                                                 Bedframe Blues

we need to talk about this every day for a long time...

Dylann Storm Roof

On this profoundly tragic morning, when we awake to find that a 21-yr-old man in S. Carolina went into a black church last nite and told the 13 people sitting there, "You rape our women & you're taking over our country. And you have to go," Then shot and killed 9 of those attending the service, I have nothing to offer but a little food for thought.

Imagine the principle of ethnic sovereignty being applied to the US, where one's ethnicity is of no consequence provided one looks, sounds and behaves sufficiently Anglo. In the US, ethnicity has been reduced to questions of music and cuisine, with perhaps a festival here and there, but always with the tacit understanding that “ethnic” means “other”: there is no such thing as an “ethnic Anglo.” Since ethnicity is essentially taboo, the completely artificial construct of race is used instead, with artificial, discriminatory labels attached to categories of individuals. The label “Latino” is particularly bogus, since there is very little in common between, say, a Cuban and a Bolivian, except that both are likely to face discrimination, neither being considered sufficiently “white”—Anglo, that is. But imagine if the Mexicans or the African-Americans were to be granted a similar level of autonomy within the US? It would blow the country to pieces!

A country predicated on protecting “white privilege” cannot possibly survive such a corruption of its founding principles. The US fought a revolution to keep slavery legal (it was about to be abolished by the British); then it fought a civil war to change slavery from one form to another (there are more African-Americans in US jails now than there were slaves in the Confederate South prior to the Civil War).

Nobody knows what wars lie in its future, or what will provoke them, but this particular intercivilizational fault line is likely to be very important. For what is a nation? Is it your tribe, or is it a bunch of mercenaries pretending to be Anglo so that they are allowed into the country club? Only time will tell which of the two civilizations will prove to be more durable.

--Dmitry Orlov

The perp was arrested in NC a few minutes ago.

everything must go

The Pope has spoken, and made clear that if we're going to survive and prosper as a species on this planet, we're going to have to change one thing -- EVERYTHING.

There's no new science revealed in Francis's message, but the philosophy is startlingly original.

 What you see in the illustration is both a beneficiary and a victim of privilege. Remove privilege from the world, and you remove everything in the picture except the cement block and the mind of the sufferer. Gone are the television, ball & chain, couch, ashtray, beer can, trash spread promiscuously about (pizza boxes & beer cans) & 200 lbs of blubber encasing 150 lbs of muscle & bone.

Transform the pcture in that way and the guy literally leaps into the air, liberated & set free. Keep everything the same and he dies in misery, enslaved by his own addictions, the first of which isn't shown -- the car in the garage.

100 Years of transportation whoopee & EVERY body would look like this.

It's our job at this point to think about what Francis has told us, for with our thoughts we make the world. But don't think 2 long; the need for action now is urgent.

preach, mf

o god...

I know we've been dreadful, and have not walked in your ways, Lord...

But haven't we been punished enough?

грубая, жесткая слоеного крем

The current hostility between the US & Russia 

It represents a new and unprecedented level of expansionism on the part of the US, in which (as usual) the perp accuses "the enemy" of the very things it is doing.

And actually, it should be called US hostility toward Russia, as Putin and the Russian military have done nothing (ø, zip, nada) in response to the US and NATO's deliberate provocations.

I really don't think this clumsy & transparent attept to create a new/old enemy will succeed because a) it's crazy, as in certifiable lunacy, and b) the Russians are too smart to blunder into the trap.

I would not B so quick to blame America first if Uncle Sam didn't have  his fingers in everybody's pie.

Actually it's not so much Nuncle Sam as that Aggressive Young Man, Joe Pentagon. Apparently we have some bright, shiny, new secretary of Offense (aka "defense dept").

Perhaps you or one of the furrin policy geniuses here can tell me what the czar Vlad has done that's so demonic that the US is planning to site nukes in his front door.

Up comes a different day, along with the SOS -- American aggression -- with the largest media, including the "liberal" NYT, deeply in the pocket of the weapons-and-war crowd, possibly the lartgest and most powerful of the mobs of which our oligarchy consists.

This is pretty big bcause we're in the middle of changing enemies now, and switching back to the Eurasians, not from the Eastasians , but the South Asians. For the lazt 25 years the Arabs have stood in as designated "enemy" and didn't look 2 bad if photographed at night wearng a white turban, w/ curved dagger betwwen the teeth in a face of concentrated ferocity, set with a huge hook nose.

In the end the Arabs gave what they could, but were never able 2 top 9/11, & so faded as the Eurasians, in the fevered and overheated minds of the American oligarchy & their pet possums at CNN, began acting aggressvely  with hostile intent. 

For his part, Vladimir Putin, Czar of all z Rooshas,  has ignored this  stream of aggressive JABBERING & baring of tooth, & nuke rattling coming from Joe Pentagon & his current spokesman, Mr Obama. & Obama is really 2 blame 4 none of it, but remains MERELY a frail & tender reed 2 lean upon.

Then Serphim barks up a loogie: "So in the present case the Left believes that the US has no interest in opposing Russian imperialism?"

So then i calmly tellim I knows not about what z Left b'lieves.

I know that I believe that the US (meaning Us, the people, la Raza or whatever) has a huge interest in opposing AMERICAN imperialism. For one thing, not being a citizen of a warrior state is a better & more sure way of staying alive & in one piece...

Frankly, I don't discern any Russian imperialism. At all. perhaps you can kindly point out 2 me what I missed.

Illustration: detail of Judith & Holofernes by Caravaggio, Italy,16th cent.

bronical bill the sailor

I chust vish some vun vood tells
 me hvat "diddy vah diddy" means.

friday cat blogging

Mello daze.

meeting 4 bernie

                     Sangre de Cristo Mts

I had misgivings about going back to New Mexico this past weekend, because I was a bit shy of having my preferred respiratory drugs, but, on the other hand, wasn't going empty-handed either. A nebulizer setup, while bulky and sometimes awkward 2 use, helps administer the 2 drugs my lungs most need -- albuterol and ipratropium bromide -- so figured I'd B OK, and I mostly was.

New Mexico is largely higher than I should go. And I remembered headaches & nausea from my last visit to Santa Fe, which, at 7000 feet, inflicts altitude sickness on large numbers of unwary travelers quite frequently.

We left Mesa on Friday & stayed in Holbrook AZ that nite, then pushed on past Albuquerque & Santa Fe the next day,  determined in 2 see the "Lourdes of the New World," the mission church of Chimayo, where you can feel peace emanating from the very adobes. At times too, there are fervid defenses of the Virginity of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who is actually a portemanteau god -- a combination of the Virgin Mary & Tonantzin, the Aztec Moon goddess -- all in a rarified atomosphere of  8,037 feet above sea level.

We were not done yet, however, and pushed on up highway NM 76 past the towns of Cordova and Truchas, to the village of Trampas, deep in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I was unable to come up with an accurate elevation figure for this tiny place, with its magnificent parish church of San Jose de a Gracia, but it's sufficient 2  say it's very high. 

That night we returned 2 Santa Fe & found lodgings; I was quite pleased with myself, as I showed no signs of altitude sickness or respiratory meltdown, despite having gone way past he 7000-ft altitude that sickened me in 2014.  

Pride goeth before the fall. The next morning we looked forward to attending the meeting which was the purpose of the trip, an organizational session for the local Bernie Sanders campaign, from which Kit & I hoped to learn how to do something similar in Mesa, with the difference being that Mesa is largely Mormon and Republican and Santa Fe, to put it mildly, isn't.

I don't remember when I realized that I was missing the nebulizer bulb that holds the medicine which is rendered breathable by an air compressor, but as we left town I knew my plans to post a blog account of our trip on Sunday evening, as I usually do, wasn't going to happen.

I ended up in a hospital ER in Grants, New Mexico, halfway between Albuquerque and Gallup, where after a very long wait, I was given an albuterol puffer and sent on my way.

As I left the ER I found my nebulizer, stuck in a small storage pocket on the passenger door of the car. So it goes.

We made it home a few hrs ago, bedraggled & fashed & fagged but otherwise OK. I want to go back to New Mexico again, but only if I've got the full arsenal of my preferred respiratory drugs, which make life doable for short periods at any elevation.

--30-- 

   

friday cat blog

                                                     Sammy.