sick puppies

Syphilis has always been somebody else's fault.

When Diego Rivera painted the conqueror of Mexico, Hernan Cortez, he portrayed him as a deformed syphilitic monster, the origin of the disease both in the New World and Europa. He conveniently leaves out that if Cortez had syphilis he got it from somebody else.

The English called it the French disease. The French called it the Spanish disease. The Russians called it the Polish disease.

Personally, I call it the blue dog Democrat disease.

trumpery:

Obsequeious Sycophants and Servile Subjects

1. Is Kindaloser Ricepuffs giving AIDS and Comfits to the enema? "I whish that we could of recive strong massages of sopport from the US so we don't give some boost to the terrist and mak dem feel zat dey might of achiv sockcess," said the Grand Poobah of Montenegro 2day, in the whake of Ricepuffs's camel-toad bizkit.

2. There is knew legilslation in Congerss witch would require Pres. Whatshisface to get Congerssional apporval before he goes to war with Iran. And good for Wally "Friddom Frys" Jones who is pushing it. He's gones from friddom frys to friddom of spitch.

3. Converzation herd in a Congerssional herring this weak: Senator Spectator sez: Now wait a minute, wait a minute, please, Mr. Postman.

The Contistution says you can't take it away. Except in the case. Of invasion or rebellion. Doesn't that minn you have the rite of habeas corpus?

And Abu Gsonxalez sez: I meant by that cement that the Contistution doesn't say that every individual in the United States or avery citizen has or is assured the rite of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says that the rite of habeas corpus shall not be supsended. Thass wot I ment by that remark, Senator Spectator.

Glad you cleered that up for us, Abu.

4. Ted Nugent Ted Nugent

The aging roker appeared on stage at Texass gobernor Rik Parry's second inuageral. Using machin gones a propos, Nugent, 58, appeared on stage as the finale act of the inuageral ball wharing a cut off "T" shirt embalzoned with the Confaderate flog and shouting in cohairant remarks about non-English speakers, according to people who were their.

violent souls

I walked out this morning on my way to the bank and the store. The street was quiet and peaceful. There was sunshine, a light breeze, and the occasional car going by. A young mother walked by with her two little kids in tow. 

What kind of world are those kids going to live in? Better than the one they're living in now, I hope, but I doubt it. 

I was thinking about the war. Not the Iraq War, although that's part of it. I thought of the bloodshed, the violence, the bombs, the desperate struggle of men to stay alive in a burning hell of bullets and 
explosions, and wondered why. 

When I think about the wars of the last 100 years, from World War I to Iraq, the primary feature of all of them is senselessness. There were excuses for all those wars and all that violent death, but no real reasons. 



The terrifying slaughter of World War I was deliberately set off by childish colonial and commercial rivalries among the ruling classes of Europe. Hitler ignited the worst war the world has ever seen using the fantastic pretext of a perceived need for Germany to expand her territory. His rage and thirst for blood were not  satisfied with a world-wide conflagration, and he compounded his crimes by murdering millions of innocents in death factories. 

In this country the last two generations have seen the pointless bloodletting and violent, deep-soul trauma of the imbecile Vietnam campaign, and most recently in Iraq, the muddled, violent attempt of a failing empire to secure supplies of a diminishing resource halfway around the world, in an ill-advised attempt to prop up a way of life scheduled for extinction. 

All these conflicts except the first saw the violent deaths of as many civilians as combatants, and the blood of the innocent, in the words of Genesis, cries up from the ground for retribution. 

Why did these things happen, and continue to happen? Those who started these wars always blamed the enemy -- if only he had been willing to listen to reason...if only they were less like themselves and more like us, pure, virtuous, and good -- and anyway He attacked Us first... 

But the real reason, the inescapable truth about these pointless convulsions of bloodshed and violence over the past century is that they were expressions of violent rage perpetrated by violent, fearful, and enraged men. Look at our highest-level politicians and our captains of industry. You can see the violence in their eyes. You can hear it in their words. Turn on the TV to any cable news channel, and you find yourself in direct confrontation with the pathology of violent souls. 

For the United States, which spends as much money on the means of violence, bloodshed, and destruction as the rest of the world combined, the responsibility for the level of violence in this beaten and traumatized world rests especially heavy. We have the world's biggest war machine, and that makes us the most violent. 

What we're dealing with here isn't really politics, but medicine. Sick minds and sick souls need treatment. Instead, the sickest among us are talking about the need to do violence to the Iranians. 

We don't need to worry about the Iranians. What we need to worry about is the state of our souls, and really, sincerely, to stop acting like we're out of our minds. 

Attacking Iran -- that's what I'd call a little hair of the dog that bit you.

капитан трусы

Lately I've been noticing how much Senator John McCain looks like CaptainUnderpants, or *Captain Briefs* as he's called in Russia, Probably B-cause he's one of our AZ senators & is on TV even more here than he is in the rest of the country.

Or maybe I've got that upside down. Maybe it's Captain Underpants who looks like John McCain. 

moonglow

la lune

What you think dear reader?

Sunrise or moonrise?What's happening here is the full wolf moon is rising in the east, while the sun still hangs in the west.

We took several shots of this phenom about 5:30 last evening.

you doesn't has to be Ph.D

Bring back the WPA. Bring back the CCC. 

Bring back the B&O and the AT&SF. 

Drop a depth charge on the GWOT. 

Downsize the FBI and the CIA. 

Try a little LSD. 

Kick out the SOB's. And let's get it done, PDQ, or we'll all be SOL.

yadda yadda again & again

8 years ago I wrote

Clinton went into Avenging Durga mode and attacked Obama (but only verbally) for misrepresenting her. She was in a very high dudgeon. I heard it on the telly. She's desperate.

Then this morning I rolled aut at 4 a.m. and ye 1st thing me eye fell on was ye very loud 24-pt headline at CNN: 

Clinton attacks as polls show Sanders winning in Iowa, New Hampshire

The story below the headline told how Mrs. Clinton, being 5 pts behind Sen Sanders in Iowa & double-digits behind in New Hampshire has  gone into avenging Durga mode, & in extremely high dudgeon, is attacking him continuously,  with proxies such as daughter Chelsea duplicating the effort.

Read it or watch it here.

War, Inc.

(From 2008 @ US NEWS & POLITICS, Beliefnet.)

catboxer Posts: 14,069

I've already referred to Bob Herbert's December 4 column in the New York Times, in which he discusses the true costs of the Iraq War. His analysis was so good that I believe it merits a second look. A DailyKos correspondent called "Forgiven" provides that second look, reminding us that "The truth is that the cost of a war is more than the money spent on men and material, as if it were some business venture that can be tallied with a nice spreadsheet and budget. In today’s world, war is packaged like a corporate enterprise complete with sanitized videos and reporting to make it more palatable to the disinterested masses." I'm sure everyone remembers the sophisticated advertising campaign that preceded the war and how it was carried gratis and enthusiastically by the broadcast networks and major newspapers, and the many appearances of Cheney and Rumsfeld and Kindaloser Ricepuffs on "Meet the Press" and the other bobblehead interview shows, softening up the wide-eyed, innocent masses with their well-calibrated propaganda about "mushroom clouds" and WMD. What we saw then was actually phase I of the Iraq War -- that preliminary campaign in which the public is manipulated and bullied into accepting the murderous plans of our biggest and most blatantly evil corporation: War, Inc., mostly through the efforts of our servile and sycophantic mass media. We've seen the nefarious operations of War, Inc. many times before, most notably in Vietnam and Central America during the '80's, but they've never marketed such a  blatantly destructive product as this Iraq War, involving as it does brazen violations of international law. In addition, as Herbert's column emphasized with a quote from Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, "Because the administration actually cut taxes as we went to war, when we were already running huge deficits, this war has, effectively, been entirely financed by deficits. The national debt has increased by some $2.5 trillion since the beginning of the war, and of this, almost $1 trillion is due directly to the war itself ... By 2017, we estimate that the national debt will have increased, just because of the war, by some $2 trillion." War, Inc. has now taken this country perilously close to insolvency, and transformed Iraq into a smoking, stinking ruin in the process. It has gutted the future of our  Social Security, formerly one of the most reliable bases of our prosperity, as well as sabotaging the possibility of rational, universal health care for all U.S. citizens. In doing so, War, Inc. has made war not just against "the terrorists," but against us as well. When it had barely begun oir plucky commander-in-chief strode the carrier deck with his codpiece leading the way and declared the "Mission Accomplished!". How many would still be willing to do so today, as we gaze on the shattered ruins of this war? most of us swallowed the Kool-Aid, internalized War, Inc.'s lies, and cheered on, just a few short years ago. our glittering prospects for the future. How many of us still think war is good?  As Forgiven explains, "Why is war good? It is good because it fuels the transfer of wealth from the middle-class to the wealthiest. It fuels the military-industrial complex and the war profiteers who in turn feed the lobbyists, who in turn purchase the politicians. You can’t spend all that money on war material and preparation and not use it."  Hence, Vietnam. Hence, Iraq. And I'm telling you, this is going to change. War, Inc. must die. It's economically non-negotiable, for starters. The money is gone, and our credit is blown. Have you ever seen a war foreclosed upon?  Obama says change is coming. He doesn't know the half of it.

worse every time

Charlie Pierce at Esquire dot com describes the 2012 Republican convention:

That night marked the entire convention as a lunatic burlesque put on to entertain and terrify elderly Caucasian shut-ins all across the nation.

BONUS LINK: THE REAL CURMUDGEON

alll the way fom sout kalina

The announcer said a few minootas ago that 

Clemson if she had the lead going into the 4th 

they didn’t lose it  — 51 timas in a row.

& now in the 4th they were ahead  24--21, & 

now they losing.

=30=

friday cat blogging, saturday edition

Took this shot a couple weeks ago when we still had  a little AZ sunshine occasionally. It shows that even felines have got to stop &  smell  the roses. Life gets boring in a hurry when you can't.

freedom was his fly pan

Some of the people on the right -- I don't really know what to call 'em any more -- say their movement really got going and got energized in the wake of Goldwater's disastrous defeat in the election of '64. I remember the night he was nominated and my friend and I drove up to the Mark Hopkins and just drove past wondering if we might see him. We didn't, but we saw David Brinkley instead. 

Goldwater wrote "Conscious of a Conservative," because he knew there was one somewhere, and also penned "Freedom is my Fly Pan," in which the candidate displayed his talent for entomology. He wanted to do away with Social Security and the whole New Deal for that matter, just like this scurvy crew that's been running  things since about 1980 up until now, but he was a decent enough old chelloveck. Certainly not a mean bastard like Reagan, or a crazy person like we've had ever since Reagan. You know, birds like Gingrich and Tom D. Lay and Mitch the Turdle. 

Everything was better in the old days. Even conservatives were better.

deflation hits the eekonomy

..."(D)eflation is a decrease in the general price level of goods and services," and "occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0%." (Wikipedia, s.v. Deflation.)

For all the hand wringing and gnashing of ye teeth since '08 by our overlords and masters over the dangers of inflation, ye chickens have come home and we find our eekonomy severely deflated, mainly because the floor holding up oil prices has fallen away. Fewer people are working & commuting now than in 2007, and demand for gasoline is way off and continuing to drop. But world production has not diminished. mainly due 2 jealousy & infighting among OPEC members, & The organization that was once the producers' great strength is now a liability.

Compared to inflation, deflation is simple and easy to understand. A year ago in Phoenix, $1.89 would buy us a half gallon of gas; today it gets a gallon. The money in our pockets is literally worth more than it used to be, because it buys more stuff. And the price of oil in this transport-dependent world affects the prices of all goods and services that need 2 B delivered, or nearly everything.

Deflation is good for savers, because your bank account grows even when you don't add funds. It's conversely bad for debtors, because they have to repay "cheap" money with the expensive stuff. In fact, deflation may seem like a net positive until we recall that a lot of stuff is being sold 4 less than it costs 2 produce. If deflation sets into an eekonomy with force, all productive activity eventually grinds to a halt, everyone gets laid off, and we all move to our new address on Tobacco Road.

This is the danger of deflation, and if it was here to stay I'd be worried. However I fully expect Sen. Sanders 2 take the Oval Office early next year, and thru a combination of threats and sweetness, convince Congress to raise taxes on the nation's fat cats sufficiently to enable him to hire a few million people to reconstruct our crumbling infrastructure.

Failing that, we'll have a rump Congress and lots more deflation, and I'll see you in a ditch that runs along Tobacco Road, where we'll fight over a 25# bag of turnips.

p.u.

This'll be a fond farewell 2 the administration of barack Obama, #44, who did something I don't think any bødy else could've done. He was the first black guy elected preznit. Reed it & weep, all U backasswards suckahs.  Other than that he spent 6 yrs tryng 2 B polite & accommodating 2 his worst enemies. Pretty inept really, but that's OK cause he got the big job done. Twice. He got elected. Twice. If U need 2 B reminded of this, that's one of my mssions in life   *What follows was penned by ©@†ßøX∑® in 2008. Long ago, in a universe far away, there was a website that had a political discussion board...but forget all that. What I wanted to tell you is, when anybody cites "The American Thinker" as a source, you should know that their logo is a picture of Uncle Sam sitting and thinking very deeply (or maybe taking a dump in an outhouse). The results of our uncle's exertions are displayed on the pages within, in articles such as Andrew Walden's "The Unitarian Church and Obama's Religious Upbringing." It reveals that Obama's "choice" for his recently-departed grandmother Madelyn's memorial service was a Unitarian Church, which may seem strange and somewhat subversive until we learn that she was a lifelong Unitarian who once worked at the Unitarian seminary in Berkeley. So it wasn't so much Barack Obama's "choice" as what she would have wanted. My mother, whom I assisted, along with my two sisters, in departing this earth on December 7, was also a Unitarian, and a born-again atheist. That was a decision and a choice she made, guaranteed to her by Uncle Sam's very own Constitution. Nonetheless, it indicates that I share with Obama what Walden characterizes as a "leftist religious upbringing," something of which the thoughtful or possibly defecating Uncle Sam apparently disapproves. Mom made us promise that there would be no prayers at her memorial, and no mention of Jesus, although I did secure her permission to read from the opening lines of chapter three of Ecclesiastes. As an atheist, she had no use for such concepts as "intelligent design," the idea that God deliberately, neatly, and quickly made all things the way they are, including us. Like mom, I'm a lifelong Unitarian, but unlike her I have no problem with the notion that all life on earth was deliberately engineered by a power greater that us. As the novelist JM Coetzee explains, "I continue to find evolution by random mutation and natural selection not just unconvincing but preposterous as an account of how complex organisms come into being. As long as there is not one of us who has the faintest idea of how to go about constructing a housefly from scratch, how can we disparage as intellectually naive the conclusion that a housefly must have been put together by an intelligence of a higher order than our own? (snip) "It does not seem to me philosophically retrograde to attribute intelligence to the universe as a whole, rather than just to a subset of mammals on planet Earth. An intelligent universe evolves purposively over time, even if the purpose in question may for ever be beyond the grasp of the human intellect and indeed beyond the range of our idea of what might constitute purpose." Now that guy is a real writer. I admire real writers, and maybe I'll get to be one when I grow up. Or maybe I'll be a rock star, chased by pretty girls. But I digress...(I knew I would). The American Thinker is a website for simple and straightforward fascist ideology, which is not necessarily a bad thing. When I use the word "fascist," here or elsewhere, I'm not calling people a nasty name. Fascism is a legitimate philosophy with a rationale and a worldview. Its adherents believe that those in authority know best (some even believe those in authority are divinely sanctioned), that legitimate governments revere and honor a people's traditions, that race and ethnicity are part of a person's identity and not to be taken lightly, that war presents an opportunity for a citizen to "fight gloriously and honorably for one's country" (in the words of John Birch Society founder Robert Welch), and that above all a citizen's first duty is to obey authority. For to oppose authority is to invite anarchy, or possibly even to oppose the will of the authoritarian and paternal God all fascists instinctively believe in. Barack Obama, as a centrist seeking national reconciliation, is attempting to make peace with the fascist elements of American society, whose strength lies partly in their strong religious convictions. This is what motivated him to invite Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inaugural, but the intellects of The American Thinker are having none of it. As Andrew Walden's above-cited article concludes, "Obama's political needs as President have led him to invite Rick Warren, Pastor of Orange County California's Saddleback mega-church, (and a favorite of Oprah Winfrey) to deliver the inaugural invocation... Many on both left and right wonder who is co-opting whom? Given Obama's life history, there really should be little doubt."

4 months ago  ::  Sep 24, 2015 - 2:02PM

революция: what, & when?

A couple of people have advised me that if I'm really committed to revolution, I ought to organize my own Che Guevara brigade. Or something. 

It's not like that. It's not that I'm committed. It's more like, I've studied history (a lot) and I know it's inevitable. 

So the first question is, "What will it be like." To answer that, you need to look at the successful revolutions that have occurred since the end of WWII: The Indian independence movement; the black liberation movement in the U.S.; the so-called "Velvet Revolution" that brought down the old Soviet Union, the Soviet Empire, and all the large and small countries of the Eastern Bloc ("Iron Curtain" countries).

 

The first thing you'll notice is that they were all non-violent. If they had been violent, they would not have succeeded. Revolutionary violence against physically superior force is suicidal. 

Secondly, they were all mass movements involving hundreds of thousands of people who contributed large, medium, and small revolutionary acts, mostly acts of non-cooperation or nonviolent defiance (civil disobedience). For the revolution to succeed, thousands of ordinary people have to be willing to take an ass kicking and some time in jail, or worse. 

So forget the cliche involving small cadres of dedicated, violent, heavily-armed revolutionaries with their camouflage gear and boring rhetoric. Those people are mostly just criminals looking for some cred anyway. 

Next question: When? Answer: Soon. 

The economic meltdown this country is experienced in 2007-08 was worse than they're telling us, and worse than you think. Even now, 8 years on, the meltdown of the late zeroes is still unwinding. If you want to know just how bad it is, read Jim Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation blog any Monday morning.  

For those of you whose nervous systems are a bit too delicate to handle Kunstler -- and there are a few like that here -- I'll give you a thumbnail: Americans are going to go apeshit the moment they're unable to get in their cars and drive.

sam's ruff nite (friday cat blogging)

 Sammy awakens @ dusk 2 the sound of fireworks. We had a party 2 go 2, so went & returned 3 hrs later 2 find catface behind the washing machine. Feel sorry 4 all traumatized pets on 4th July & New Year, but what can ya do?