putting on airs

A late-sixties group called Procul Harum sang this:

We skipped the light fandango
turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
but the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of pale

I don't know what that means but I like it. Even better I like the Hammond B-3 organ repeatedly laying down an instrumental interlude said to be based on Johann Sebastian Bach's "Sleepers Awake" from Cantata 140, but which sounds closer to Air on a G String to me.

"One of 16 vestal virgins who was leaving for the coast; and though my eyes were open, they might've well been closed."

democracy and same-sex marriage

Here in the Enchanted Forest of Wet Wash we are proud webfoots. Or maybe it's webfeet. The leaders of society around here wear coveralls and rubber boots, and it's sometimes hard to tell what gender they are.

Things are different here in Chimlockdale. We don't worry too much about what our neighbors are up to, or if they enjoy themselves in their own way, without harming others.

gold fever

I'm still flabbergasted by Rick Santorum's declaration at CPAC that "climate change is a leftist scientific conspiracy to destroy America."

One of the peculiarities of the white race's presence in this hemisphere is its overwhelmingly exploitive nature. The first permanent European toehold in this half of the world was established by an Italian who was looking for Japan. Nearly all who immediately followed him were afflicted with gold fever, and after the initial luck of Cortez and Francisco Pizzaro, this orgy of gold seeking has continued without letup down to the present.

The stock speculation bubble of the 1920's which led to the Great Depression, and the real-estate-and-derivatives frenzy of the double-zeros which caused the Lesser Depression, still ongoing, were a manifestation of this same exploitive hysteria.

And it's not done yet. As long as there are any resources to be plundered and the possibility of getting something for nothing, bankster brigands and capitalist buccaneers will be on it, employing ideologues like Little Ricky Santorum to demonize anyone who calls for a little sanity. It never seems to occur to such people that there are some who would prefer just to make a life here, without setting up a fort and buying the place with beads.

Maybe Senator Santorum is not worried about life here on earth, and he might possibly be planning a trip to heaven soon. I certainly hope so. However, some of us are planning to live here, and this is the only planet we've got.

as nukes go by

As I was in transit late Thursday morning, and at the entrance to the innermost domains of the Enchanted Forest, I found myself stuck on the Hood Canal Bridge.

This is by no means an unusual occurrence, and when it happens one always hopes that the drawbridge is opening for some little one-masted fishing vessel or some such, rather than for one of the nuclear submarines which travel in and out of the pod at Bangor. The bridge opens when these fearsome weapons of mass destruction are still far to the north of the draw span, and it won't close again until the vessel is several miles or knots or sea furlongs or whatever the aquatic measurement is to the south, and this necessitates a travel delay of at least half an hour.

At first I thought it was going to be a quick stop as only one little vessel, less than twenty feet long, was in view, but it turned out to merely be one of the pilot fishes that inevitably accompanies the nuke. And eventually the long, vaguely shark-like shape of the silent monster hove into view, its tower and tail fin the only parts visible above the surface, with the rest of its dark mass riding just below the water. I walked to the south side of the bridge with my cell phone to snap a picture of the sub as it headed down the canal accompanied by its small retinue, framed by a backdrop of the cloud-enshrouded Olympic Mountain range.

I don't know, but if I had to guess I'd say we were witnessing the passage of an Ohio-class nuclear submarine, which is nuclear because it is both powered by a nuclear reactor, enabling it to remain submerged and at sea for months at a time, and also because it carries nuclear weapons -- up to 24 Trident II missiles, each missile equipped with up to four MIRV's (multiple independent re-entry vehicles). Each MIRV costs $31 million and is tipped with a nuclear warhead. Submarines like this one carry about half of the total American active inventory of strategic thermonuclear warheads, according to the article on Ohio-class nuclear submarines in Wikipedia.

"Our world," said the famous World War II American general Omar Bradley after hostilities had ended, "has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”

Photo ©Dave B; click on the picture for a larger view.

this is just adios and not good-bye

Ron Paul waved and said good-bye to hundreds of supporters and well-wishers as he stepped aboard an extraterrestrial vehicle piloted by aliens in Nye County, Nevada Saturday night. The libertarian candidate, who runs as a Republican, promised to return within a fortnight, to unveil "dramatic new plans and directions" for the campaign.

It's not exactly clear what Ron Paul is hoping to achieve with his candidacy which is radically different from anything else out there. He's having an impact, but it's hard to gauge how much.

When asked on CNBC Monday night if he would accept a speaking role at the convention, Paul said he'll wait to see what the circumstances are.

"They are not going to give you a primetime spot if you talk about bringing back the gold standard and bringing the troops home," said Paul.

A reporter embedded with the Paul campaign, the AP's Etaoin Shrdlu, said "I don't know about this flying saucer gambit. It looks like the strangest thing he's done since he decided to concentrate on the states that have caucuses rather than primaries, and reach out to Hispanic voters."

really truly sweartagod conservative

My girlfriend, Catboxette, unlike yours truly owns a TV, so I'm sitting here watching it this morning, re-acquainting myself with the reasons I generally avoid it.

There's something going on in D.C. right now called the Conserative Political Action Conference, which provides one more opportunity for Republican candidates to make nebulous, totally unsubstantiated claims about who and what they are.

"I'm really, really actually very conservative" says Mitt Romney.

"Shut your cake hole, Willard," groans Newt while cracking his knuckles and rolling his eyes. "I'm the real conservative here."

Then Mrs. Santorum's favorite son Little Ricky chirps up: "But I was tea party before tea party was cool."

As their voices echo deeply from within history's garbage can, it seems that this kind of clueless posturing has become a competition and a performance art. It also seems to me that there's a very fine line sometimes between comedy and tragedy, as these guys compete for the votes of cross-eyed, foaming, fanatical lunatics wearing three-cornered hats with teabags dangling off them.

Boy, whatever happened to Joe Sikspak?

Meanwhile, Obama has confused everyone this morning by muddying the water around the contraception issue, and saying the new rule will be modified to "accommodate" employers who are also religious institutions. Nobody knows what that means, exactly, but that's OK, because the object of the exercise is to confuse everybody so we can't focus clearly on the issue. This is classic Obama, and one of the reasons I really can't stand him.

We desperately need some real leadership in this country, and instead we've got a bunch of goddam politicians. I guess we're going to have have to just forget them, lead ourselves, and make our own damn future. Without TV.

social immobility

Nicholas Kristof, bless his heart, since he's one of the few actual liberal columnists at the NY Times who survived 2011, today wrote about Charles Murray's new book, "Coming Apart; the State of White America, 1960-2010."

Murray is the reactionary sociologist who wrote "The Bell Curve" a few years ago, and Kristof agrees with his conclusion in the new book: that white, working-class Americans now suffer from the same types of crippling social malaise that have troubled minority communities for generations, primarily a drug plague and devaluation of marriage, with a corresponding erosion of values which characterize a society whose structure is based on the nuclear family.

Kristof concludes, "Today, I fear we’re facing a crisis in which a chunk of working-class America risks being calcified into an underclass, marked by drugs, despair, family decline, high incarceration rates and a diminishing role of jobs and education as escalators of upward mobility. We need a national conversation about these dimensions of poverty, and maybe Murray can help trigger it. I fear that liberals are too quick to think of inequality as basically about taxes. Yes, our tax system is a disgrace, but poverty is so much deeper and more complex than that."

Of course Murray reflexively blames "liberal social policies" -- the orthodox fascist response -- which describes the details of social dysfunction but misdiagnoses the causes and oigins. Because when people start living just for whatever gratification or pleasure they can get in this moment, and give up any thought of making efforts or sacrifices for future rewards, the society they live in has already collapsed.

The drug plagues that have rolled through Americans generations from the bottom up -- heroin, crack cocaine, and methamphetamine -- are cries of despair from people who have no future. Why invest the commitment and sacrifice maintaining a family requires when the future is a blank?

toenails for president

Suppose they held an election and nobody came?

Suppose a majority of voters refused to endorse our binary political system with its false dichotomies, by refusing to vote for either a Republicrat or a Demolican.

Suppose they went beyond politics and expanded their activities to embrace all aspects of culture, refusing to choose between Coke and Pepsi, not listening to either rock or country, driving neither Fords nor Chevies nor Toyotas nor Nissans. The very pillars of what passes for civilization these days would certainly collapse.

Vote for your cat! Drink green tea! Connect with the wisdom of the ancestors by opening your ears to antique music! Drive a hard bargain!

There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in the most hideous nightmares of a dying world order, and more fascinating and educational objects of interest in my one-bedroom apartment than in all of the hollowed out void which calls itself our political system. What can you learn from elephants and donkeys except how to be a beast of burden? Better we should look to the example of our Dear Leader, Chairman Meow.

the antidote

William Broad, a New York Times science reporter and Pulitzer winner, is making the rounds of the interview shows to promote his new book, The Science of Yoga: the Risks and the Rewards. Last night he was the guest on Terry Gross's "Fresh Air" on NPR.

Broad, a yoga practitioner himself for over 40 years, is singularly well equipped to address the subject, which he successfully de-mystifies by describing both the mechanics of asana (yoga movements) and the psychology of its contemplative aspects in modern scientific language. He avoids jargon, however, and the interview, transcribed alongside the MP3 file here, is as entertaining as it is informative, at least until towards the end Gross veers off into a conversation about Iran's potential nuclear weapons capability, or lack of it. But that's another story.

In the last decade, yoga has metamorphosed from a popular exercise activity (and, for some, a spiritual path) into a mass movement, and shows no signs of slowing down. The risks of practicing asana -- and they are significant -- needed to be better publicized, along with the profound benefits of a prudent asana regimen. The good news Broad delivers is that modern science shows yoga to be an effective antidote to "civilization and its discontents," and a counter-activity to the busy, restless, obsessive nature of an industrialized and regimented society.

I think of it as the Anti-Super Bowl, in which organized gangs of highly specialized professional gladiators engage in a dangerous and desperate competition for money, status, and fame. Yoga, neither a competition nor a performance art if it's pursued in the intended spirit, is an amateur activity whose sole purpose is to improve the quality of life of those who practice.

Photo, "Sweep," ©Whole Life Yoga, 2010.

a person who is nice

A person who is nice to you but is not nice to the waiter is not a nice person.

halftime

Now that the weekend dust has settled and we're back in the work week, the most significant take-away from Super Bowl XLVI seems to have been the commercial Chrysler ran at halftime.

With an obvious bow to the shrine of St. Ronald, the two-minute, politically-charged "Halftime in America" semi-documentary is narrated by a grizzled, grandfatherly Clint Eastwood, who at 81 is still photogenic enough to appear on camera, but curmudgeonly enough to do the voiceover. It's a tired cliché, this analogy of "the football game of life," but in this case it works well enough to rouse Republicans from their dreams of grinding down peasants and workers to object strenuously to what they see as Chrysler's "pro-Obama" stance, a quid-pro-quo for the auto industry bailouts of 2009-2010.

See more at the Christian Science Monitor site.

Personally, I don't find the bounce-back rhetoric as reassuring as Clint Eastwood apparently does, and the "roar of American engines" just reminds me of the amount of oxides of nitrogen and unburnt hydrocarbons those engines will release into the atmosphere. I don't know if the Democrats put Chrysler up to this, but the news both of them still need to find out is that the future isn't going to look anything like the past, and life is not a game.

I still like better the proles in flannel shirts who survived the Mayan apocalypse in their tuff Chevy trucks. I must be cycnical.

Speaking of the past and speaking of halftime, Sunday's halftime show took us back 30 years to the sights and sounds of the early 1980's, as a bottle blonde cougar hoofed through a highly vigorous and entirely meaningless frenzy of movement, accompanied by a platoon of dancers and acrobats, to the busy, staccato audible-wallpaper sounds of synthesizers and chattering drum machines. It was a puzzling, incoherent performance, like the national consciousness at the moment.

sotru

It's the state of the real unyan -- "sotru" -- as opposed to the SOTU cartoon the president draws every year, a week or so before, and it's called Super Bowl.

In the entrails and commercial emissions of the game, we can read the pulse and gauge the mental state of our beloved country, and the news isn't too encouraging. In one commercial, three guys -- Jim Kunstler calls them "plucky American male lumpen 'worker'" dudes -- realize they have survived the Mayan apocalypse of 2012, solely due to the rugged superiority of their Chevrolet Silverado™ pickup trucks.

Of course, the first thought that naturally occurs to anyone watching this very short (but not short enough) drama is to wonder where these plucky survivors are going to gas up in a landscape in which all technological capacity looks to have been utterly erased. It may not, however, have occurred in the minds of the creators of this terse message from a corporatocracy losing its hegemony while unconsciously prophesying its own doom.

Judged strictly as a show put on by gangs of professional gladiators-for-hire, who nominally represent one or another of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, it was skillfully rendered this year, with a cliffhanger ending and a fairly low but very close score. As a day to measure the psychological temperature of the American people through an advertising analysis, this year's super bowl was chilly. And finally, as one of those rare days I use as an excuse to eat ordinarily-forbidden foods like potato chips and hamburgers, I enjoyed pigging out, but not nearly as much as in the past.

The final score was New York 21, Boston 17, visitors 12, others 9, with Krebbs and Vronsky subbing for Horner and Johnson who were disabled by hostile proofreading.

lost in the woods

A family of mushroom pickers who were lost for six days has been rescued from the coastal Oregon forest. The couple, both 47, and their 25-year old son had no warm clothing, food, or water, and sheltered some of the time in a hollow tree. Rescuers said the family didn't realize they were lost.

In North Carolina, police used a stun gun on a woman who blocked a McDonald's drive-through window for 20 minutes after apparently suffering a Big Mac™ attack.

terrorist shmerrorist

If there's a "terrorist threat" it's in two places: al Qaida which is spiritually and materially a Saudi Wahabbist thing, and Pakistan's nuclear capability.

Neither one of those countries is on an axis of weevils list or anything. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran (the one now in the crosshairs), none of them was ever any part of this terrorist threat.

The threat is only in those countries that are our noble allies.

Watch your close friends, baby,
Then your enemies can't do you no harm.

--Robert Johnson, "When You Got a Good Friend."

sunshine deh yeah

Sittin here in starbutt's waitin for my honey to come back from her phrenology appointment.

The sun is shining bright. Actually, that's supposed to be the sun is shining brightly. But I've become a believer in the idea that it's OK to break any rule in that very large book as long as you know what rule you're breaking, and why. And anyway, proper grammar is no good in certain kinds of songs:

Alberta, Alberta, where'd you stay last night?
Alberta, Alberta, where'd you stay last night?
You never come home, dear, until the sun is shining brightly.

The bright sunshine reminded me of this very short song, which, if you haven't heard it before, it's time you did.

how it spoze 2 b

Newt Gingrich believes everybody should eat steak and mashed potatoes, as God intended. They should live in detached houses which they own (actually, are paying for) and drive to work in cars.

At the National Association of Home Builders, “Rally for Homeownership” in South Carolina, Gingrich said, “Those who, you know, live in high-rise apartment buildings writing for fancy newspapers in the middle of town after they ride the metro, who don’t understand that for most Americans the ability to buy a home, to have their own property, to have a sense of belonging is one of the greatest achievements of their life, and it makes them feel like they are good solid citizens.”

Ah, yes, those coastal elites, who just don't understand, in their coffee-drinking, arugula-eating snobbery, the agonies and ecstasies of the real Americans who live out in the burbs. How could they, insulated from Real Life as they are in their little high-rise apartments, and riding tax-subsidized subways to their jobs as overeducated propagandists for Euro-style newspapers?

I'll bet most of them never even go to the mall or watch "American Idle." They are not solid citizens. Porous is what they are.

donkey dance

Obama and the Democrats, just as corrupt although less exotically delusional than the other party, are dancing that old two-step coverup of the MF Global scandal. The most scandalous thing about it is not that Jon Corzine, the former Democratic governor of New Jersey and his associates stole a billion dollars or so from their customers, but that Obama's Justice Dept. is going to let them get away with it.

The first step in this elaborate dance, as Atrios points out, is to throw a blanket of complicated double-talk over a very stark and simple situation -- blatant theft. The second step is to publicly conclude that justice can't be done because the situation is so complex.

The reason Corzine is not going to be indicted or tried for stealing all that money? He's a bagman for Obama.

Once enough people accurately perceive that Democrats and Republicans are outdoing each other to skin us alive, the day of the "legacy parties" will be over. There's no going back.

the lion

This song has been done and overdone, but I still like the original one the best: Mbube by Solomon Linda and his Evening Birds, South Africa, 1939.

manifesto #5

At the Adbusters site, a short essay at which bears the style if not the signature of Kalle Lasn, the godfather of the #Occupy/99% movement, lays out our prospects for the near and the long run precisely and unemotionally.

we awoke one morning to the dark realization that humanity is being dragged into a black hole of ecological, financial and spiritual catastrophe … that our democracy has been seized by a corporatocracy … that every day two hundred species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become forever extinct … that a deluge of advertising is sleepwalking our civilization to the brink of insanity … and that unless we fight back in the most visceral and creative way possible all will be lost.

And yet, what sets our struggle apart in 2012 is that we are not fighting to save a distant future. We are not trying to prevent some terrible event that is still to come. This is not about our unborn grandchildren. Instead, many of us sense that the threshold has already been crossed; the tipping point has already happened and what we are fighting for is our present. We are living in that tragic moment of eerie stillness where the fatal damage has been done, widening cracks can be seen, yet the edifice still stands and business as usual continues … but for how much longer?

If you see this analysis as accurate in any degree -- and I do -- then it's apparent that the most potent creative tool in our arsenal at this moment is the wrecking ball, and that we need to identify demolition sites. Several come easily to mind.

1. The mega-banks -- Bank of America, Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Wells-Fargo -- all will be gone by the end of this decade, since these are the very institutions whose reckless greed crashed the economy, then proceeded to vacuum up more in tax monies than there was money in existence before 2008. They no longer serve the needs of the communities where they do business, so what good are they? These gigantic institutions, along with their illegitimate cousin, the trading house Goldman-Sachs, are parasites who have corrupted our political system beyond redemption, in order to promote a permanent, institutionalized parasitism.

2. Satan's bracelet, the Pentagon, which over the past 70 years has unleashed perpetual war on the wretched of the earth, has been with us much too long. The pentagram, that ancient symbol of evil, has the shape of a pentagon at its heart, and the infernal aura of the place is amplified by its short history, bookended by the building's dedication on September 11, 1941, and the message delivered there by a raggedy band of radical and violent Saudi Wahabbists exactly 60 years later. Since then the bureaucrats inside this unnatural pile have tried to carry on as if nothing has changed. They're soon to discover that the world has changed, and no longer has room for a tribe of predator-parasites in a five-sided building, whose only purpose is to inflict pain, misery, and death on the planet's voiceless and helpless populations.

3. The oil giants, Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco, British Petroleum and Royal Dutch shell appear to have no interest in facilitating a transition away from the sunset industries of oil and gas, and toward a future in which forms of energy we presently call "alternative" predominate. These dinosaurs continue dominating and cumbering the landscape, but if they persist in their folly, will, in the phraseology of Ambrose Bierce, "cease to cumber; they fertilize." (s.v. "aboriginies")

Our days may be shadowed by this dark realization, but there is reason to be deeply optimistic for “where danger is, grows the saving power also.” Never before has the tantalizing possibility of a Global Spring, a worldwide people’s insurgency for democracy, seemed as close. For perhaps the first time in human history, we just might be on the edge of an everywhere-at-once revolution against the financial fraudsters, corporate lackeys and the ideology of consumerism that has brought the Earth to the precipice of collapse.

In this, the era of the total and transcendent indignato swarm, we look to each other, not to the masters above, to find out what it will take to pull off the ultimate culture jam: spiritual insurrection.

As the demolition proceeds, we need to take care not to disturb the rubble too much. We're going to need a lot of what's in it for salvage, for building the new structures of the world to come.

Photo and colored pencil drawing: the Five of Diamonds, by Dave B and ©Dave B, 2012.

adios pink stuff

Hamburger eaters who recognize that all politics is ultimately about food will rejoice at the news that McDonald's will no longer be using the infamous pink slime (ammonium hydroxide) to treat the beef that goes into their burgers.

"At the beginning of 2011, we made a decision to discontinue the use of ammonia-treated beef in our hamburgers. This product has been out of our supply chain since August of last year," says a company spokesperson.

The ammonia was probably intended to double as a preservative and disinfectant, the way I understand such things. It's strictly business -- McDonald's trying to stay on top of the public's preferences -- and "The bidness of this nation is bidness,"* as we all know.

I consider it a good move even though I never eat at McDonald's. But of course, I realize there are probably people out there who actually like pink slime -- you know, the ones whose palates prefer the zing of ammonium hydroxide, so tingly compared to boring old sodium chloride.

*Quote: Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States.

here comes tha train

In the not-too-distant future, railroads in the US will move more freight and passengers than diesel semis and commercial airplanes do now. It's just a matter of time.

Our established one-party politicians, ever resistant to change, are in major denial about this. But the hardiest US investors, people who will make or lose fortunes depending on how effectively they respond to history's unfolding, are more realistic.

Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. will invest $3.9 billion in upgrading its Burlington-Northern-Santa Fe Railroad this year. BNSF is the road that services this part of the world.

About half the money will go into upgrading the road itself, and a lot of the rest will buy new rolling stock. The upgrade is strictly for freight service, as Amtrak still has the government monopoly on passenger traffic.

The future is coming down the track whether the politicians like it or not, and when the train pulls into the station, they'd better be ready to ride, if they don't want to be left behind standing in the depot.

How long, how long has that evenin train been gone?

--Leadbelly, "How Long Blues"

rombot wins fla but nutes won't quit

Right. Willard "Mitt" Rom-Ney has defeated wheezy, mean old mr. Newit Gingrich, who now looks like a soft round faded puff ball lying on the beach at Miasmi, but he says he'll fight on.

Well, of course he does.

Still, one can't help but think this is the end of America's moon base.

forget the sideshow

Over at Buzzflash.com, David Swanson has a list of 15 items more important than the Republican horse race the corporate media are running 24/7 to distract us from focusing on real news and our real problems.

And since the horse race will be over after today anyhow, ending the way most of us thought it would all along, there's no excuse for not paying attention.

Here are the three things out of the 15 I think are the most important.

War with Iran: Obama says, "America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible . . . if Iran changes course." Meanwhile his Defense Secretary, Panetta, says Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program. Stay tuned for more garbled messages and consonant dissonance, and watch for an Israeli first strike.

The justifications are wearing real thin and not selling well, but the warmongers are still in charge.

Independent Republic of California: Swanson says, "California has until Tuesday and is two senators away from enacting single-payer healthcare. This is far more significant that anything that has been done at the national level for healthcare." And it's being done in the most populous and arguably the most important of the 50 states. California could conceivably exercise a limited autonomy in this and environmental matters.

General Electric is not a person and therefore not a citizen: (From Buzzflash) The Montana Supreme Court has refused to comply with Citizens United. Cities and states are taking action. Stronger bills are being introduced in Congress all the time. The latest is HJRes 100. Rallies were just held in over 100 towns and cities. Join this movement: http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5236

Don't be taken in by trivialities like the Republican horse race. The world is changing fast, and things are moving ahead.

the oceanic sense

Jack Johnson knows about the ocean, having spent his life as a surfer-musician on the north shore of Oahu. There isn't space or time here to recount the many facets of JJohnson, a complex artist who has directed films in addition to writing and performing hit songs, mostly in the soft rock and acoustic genres. (Wikipedia)

This one is deep, and that's no pun. I haven't heard too many pop songs about eternity.

craisins

I've been thinking about the history of past presidential elections, and one stands out as possibly telling us where we are, in light of our present political meltdown and systemic dysfunction. The Wikipedia article on the election of 1852 says in part:

(The Democrats) went on to win what was at the time one of the nation's largest electoral victories, trouncing (the Whigs) 254 electoral votes to 42. After the 1852 election the Whig Party quickly collapsed, and the members of the declining party failed to nominate a candidate for the next presidential race; it was soon replaced as the Democratic Party's primary opposition by the new Republican Party.

After Obama and the Democrats make barbecued pork chops out of whatever candidate the Republicans finally pick to haul their road apples in the fall election, the Greens might not be a third party for much longer. And if not the Greens, then some other entity will need to step forward to fill the power vacuum created by the collapse of the GOP.

The Whigs never really stood for anything, and so fell apart under the pressure of the country's need to deal with slavery. The Democrats split into two regional factions under the pressure, and the new party, the Republicans, opposed to the spread of slavery and slavocracy, quickly ascended to the majority.

The Republicans still stand for something, but unfortunately for them, what they stand for has degenerated into a mess of heavy bullshit, and in their choice of standard-bearers they've become self-destructive, so much so they may not answer the bell for 2016.

The American political configuration was re-made in the 1850's due to the political establishment's inability to deal with slavery, and the country's and society's need to deal with it. Today we need to deal with misallocation of resources and maldistribution of wealth. The Democrats, like their 1850's ancestors, are split by the issue, and the Republicans have nothing constructive to offer. They're going out on the tide.

Drawing: "lunacy of insomniacs" by neogothic-jam.

the gilded age

Wealth inequality in the US is at its highest level since the tail end of the Gilded Age, which unsurprisingly was characterized by the most outrageous spectacle of political corruption ever seen until the present day.

Now that the owner of enormous hotel-casinos the world over, Sheldon Adelson, has purchased the campaign of Newt Gingrich for $10 million, we can draw exact paralells with the sort of payoffs that greased the rails of the Crédit-Mobilier scandal, and the drilling contracts sold for the oil of the Teapot Dome by the Secretary of the Interior.

And in the earlier case, we at least got a railroad and some oil out of the deals. All we could hope for from a presidency owned by Mr. Adelson would be a war with Iran, since the multi-billionaire is an extreme Zionist and one of the US's most enthusiastic cheerleaders for attacking Iran.

the candidate

Dr. Jill Stein is a Boston physician now running for president as the nominee of the Green Party.

She recently gave the Greens' answer to Obama's State of the Union speech. It's as long as the original and quite detailed. Here are some pertinent out-takes.

To be clear: the greed for record profits is what got us into this mess in the first place. Of course it wasn’t greed alone. It was the capture of both political parties by Wall Street and other powerful corporations that buy influence with campaign contributions and lobbyists. Using this routine currency of American policy making, Democrats and Republicans alike dismantled protections against waste, fraud and abuse by Wall Street.* This bipartisan cooperation enabled greed to crash the economy.

… That not only killed jobs, it also depressed tax revenues – which has been one of the biggest drivers of the federal deficit. That deficit has also been made worse by unconscionable spending choices: notably the 4 trillion dollars spent on the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and trillions more spent on the bloated Pentagon budget, tax giveaways for the wealthy, and bailouts for Wall Street.

All of this adds up to the ongoing crisis we face – the cumulative result of many years – decades – of policies under both Democratic and Republican presidents that enrich the few while exploiting the many.

The political establishment is telling us there’s little we can do to change our direction. I don’t believe it and I suspect you don’t either.

It's time for those who have eyes to see with to turn away from the Demolicans and Republicrats, and unite behind a candidate who a) isn't insane, b) is uncorrupted, and c) doesn't double-talk. Jill Stein satisfies those criteria and has my vote.

what is it?

"What is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?" is a very early pop-art image made by Philip Hamilton (London, 1956). He clipped most of the images in the picture from American magazines. It was the first pop work to achieve the status we call "iconic" today, due to its wide circulation.

To see a larger version of this wonderful image, go here.

stormy weather

Went for a walk for the first time in a long time today -- no drops, no freezing temps, even a little weak sunshine.

But the weather here is still not at all settled, turbulence is always threatening even when it's not storming, and I'm sure we'll be getting a lot more of the wet stuff, but hopefully not the white stuff.

Which all makes for a natural if somewhat obvious intro to this wonderful old song; Lena Horne is beautiful, theatrical, and dynamic in a classic performance.

evil nasty sinister george soros

Soros is a billionaire investor with uncharacteristically leftist political leanings. He funds a lot of causes like the ACLU, and it's probably no exaggeration to say that some leftish landmarks, such as San Francisco's Tides Foundation and the website Media Matters, wouldn't exist without him.

This, of course, makes him the Devil incarnate among the wingnuteratti, periodically stirred into major Soros hissies, the most recent detonated by a Newsweek interview in which Soros calls attention to the depth of the global economic crisis now under way, and the social unrest and violence that would result from a collapse of the Euro.

These somewhat-less-than Luciferian predictions are the source of the current spasm of Sorosphobia in the noise machine. Echoing the miniskirt Mussolinis at the Foxist News Network, one correspondent at BNet (PC users: be cautious opening the link) maintains "that GC is a truly evil, sociopathic person...that his life story and his current glee at the thought of the world in ruins, which he can make a buck on, is a testament to what I say."

And Dr. Evil himself, the geriatric boogeyman mothers scare their daughters with ("George Soros will get you!") has now committed what for right-wingers is the ultimate political blasphemy, saying there's not much difference between Obama and Romney.

That sounds an awful lot like what I and others among the leftish blogs have been saying. Crumbs! Does this mean we're evil, nasty people, like Satan incarnate Geo. Soros?

Now the evil Mr. Soros is apprehensive about what he calls "extremist conservative" types like Cardinal Senator Sanatorium, you know, that sweater-vest guy who thinks nobody should ever use Trojans, but then he says, "If it’s between Obama and Romney, there isn’t all that much difference except for the crowd that they bring with them.”

In reality, if I can broach that delicate subject, the evil Dr. Soros is a quite aged guy who doesn't look very well. Knowing that his time is drawing near, I believe he'd really like to see some substantial changes in the way the world runs, and is doing what he can to see that it happens. He's not a lot different from the occupiers who rattled Wall Street, got pepper sprayed, and got arrested at the Brooklyn Bridge. Just a hell of a lot richer.

He's sort of like Rupert Murdoch would be if he had human DNA.

spaaace ghooost

Gingrich is saying that under his presidency the US will establish some sort of base on the moon.

That's all I know or want to know about it, but if you want more you can go here.

portrait

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Schnorred from TPM.

california blues

About this time each year, when the Northwest is oppressed by the incessant late-winter gloom, I start reminiscing about my SoCal days, and memories of people running around Palm Springs in shorts and tank tops on Christmas Eve.

The high today in Palm Springs was 81, and tomorrow they're expecting 85.

Got the California blues, and I'm sure gonna leave you here;
Got the California blues, and I'm sure gonna leave you here;
I may ride the blinds; I ain't got no railroad fare.

Hear it warbled sweetly by the singing brakeman, the late, great Jimmie Rodgers.

poster boys

All the Republican candidates are poster boys for something.

Senator Sanatorium is the poster boy for birth control, for example. Use Trojans or this could happen to you. Do you want a grown son wearing a sweater vest?

And Romney, thanks to his worst-of-all-possible way to release his tax information, is now the poster boy for wealth inequality and the unbridled greed of the .01%.

By stalling for so long, he drew more and more attention to the issue. By the time he released the thing it had become major news. Having put himself in the spotlight, he became the image people have in mind when they talk about systemic abuses.

There are several ways a person can handle being filthy rich. One would be the way Warren Buffet has called attention to the basic injustice of wealth distrubution via the inequities of the tax code. Romney chose not to go that route.

Paul Krugman wrote of Romney's taxes today:

...(T)he point here is not that Romney did something wrong by paying the low rates current tax law lavishes on people like him. It is, instead, that in an election campaign that will be in part about issues of inequality, the likely GOP candidate is a living, breathing, coupon-clipping example of how favorable our system is to the very rich; and he also happens to be advocating policies that would greatly benefit people like him, while hurting the poor and the middle class.

PS: Yes, my tax rate is a lot higher than Romney's. And I support policies that would raise it further.

The whole piece here.

nada

It's a midweek morning, and I have nothing.

A good friend has survived a 10-day stomach flu. Congratulations.

The best reaction I've seen to the State of the Unyon speech is here.

communique from an outpost

Garkon! Fresh burgers and fries and corn syrup mixed with soda water for my men, s'il voo plate, and ¿have you any vehicles for sale at this place?

It was a cold, crisp day when we rolled into Attu, the land of the origins of the sperm of the grandfathers of antiquity.

We haven't seen home since can't remember when,
Lookout, you rounders, we're on the road again.

pax hoax

Obama's massive, aggressive slashing of the "defense" budget may be seen by the Islamofascists as an invitation to attack us. We're down to only 11 aircraft carriers!

The United States will not cut America's fleet of 11 aircraft carriers to help trim the budget deficit, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Saturday, citing tensions with Iran as an example of why the massive ships are so critical to national security.

I couldn't help but notice that Secretary Panetta neglected to mention how many aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines those terrorist Iranians have. But why confuse the issue with statistics, or for that matter, reality? We've got a script to read, and it says right here that Iran is an Islamofascist terrorist country and that they also don't like us or Israel. And they're going to pay for it!

And also, because they may threaten us someday with bombs they don't have yet.

flat foot

It's a chestnut of a tune about a flat-foot floogie, done here by Thomas "Fats" Waller and an enthusiastic mob of horn blowers.

fixation

I'm sure that by now everybody knows the Democrats want to force us all to watch black and white TV...and "use sandpaper for toilet paper," says Atrios, "and bring back New Coke!"

Then he adds for emphasis, Of all of the recent mostly pointless wingnuttery, the lightbulb fixation has been the most amusing/bemusing. Boy, ain't that the truth?

He also includes linkage to the Media Matters story whence this is derived.

...the efficiency standards...have been met with outrage from conservative media who spent the last year claiming that they infringe on consumer "freedom of choice." Led by Fox News, right-wing media outlets have repeatedly told consumers that the standards would "ban" incandescent bulbs and force us all to purchase "mercury-laden, ugly and smelly compact fluorescent light bulbs," to the chagrin of electrical manufacturers. Fox has even gone so far as to encourage consumers to "hoard" the old, inefficient bulbs.

So, you didn't know that compact fluorescent bulbs are a socialist plot? Well now you know.

your tax dollars at work

Even though the soldiers, sailors, and Marines are gone from Iraq, Uncle Sam still has a lot people of various kinds there. A reliable source informs me:

The 15,000 workers include private contractors rebuilding some of the damage done by the war. Some are under contract with the US and some with the Iraq government . [That number includes, The US Agency for International Development (USAID), Corps of Engineers, Depart. Of Agriculture (USDA), Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) ,Private companies include KBR, Bechtel, General Electric, ITT Corp and several companies middle Eastern countries companies employing foreign nationals (3rd counties).

That's quite a rogues gallery of the usual suspects.

What are the narcs over there for? Are they afraid someone might smoke a joint in the ruins?

not this year

Barack Obama is not an acceptable candidate, and I won't vote for him because he hasn't done anything to address or even acknowledge the ongoing crises that prevent the US government and American society from functioning in a civilized way.

These include the regime of corruption and payoffs under which the political system operates. Corruption is both a result and a cause of the massive wealth inequality under which the majority of us suffers grevously.

Likewise, he has done nothing to loosen the grip of the war machine on our public treasury, our culture, or our reputation abroad. He has increased levels of spying and the potential for the security state's illegal mischief against citizens to levels unknown even under the fascist regime of Bush and Cheney.

I can't vote for Obama because the continuation of his presidency is incompatible with government and society. So Obama must go.

But the thought of replacing him with any of the grotesques the Republicans are attempting to sell is inconceivable, whether you consider the semi-human, semi-conscious "corporations are people too" stance of the billionaire Romney, the sexual phobias verging on true insanity of Santorum, or the calculated rage of Gingrich, a person who became an animal living entirely by instinct. If we had opposed King George III with material like this we'd still be living under Queen Elizabeth today.

Obama is not the "lesser of two evils;" he's just another part of the problem. "Lesser of two evils" thinking perpetuates the problems, and do we want to perpetuate this mess, or solve it?

hail caesar

This is unbelieveable! Newtonianus Flatus Gingrichus wins South Kalina with 40% of votes cast.

Nero and Gaius Caligula would be so proud that someone is carrying on the tradition of enthused sexual deviants carving and cutting their way into the highest orofice in the land.

mittens 4 eva

Is there nothing else happening in this world? Do we have to be subjected ad infinitum to this un-story, this tale of a robot-oaf and his ham-handed attempts to get people to like him?

How "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable" must seem all the events of this economically depressed world, if the Times and the Post and the Wall Street Yurnal and all this great republic's cable news networks from sea to shining sea can find nothing more interesting to jabber about than Mittens's ordeal, his agonies, and his ecstasies.

The story right now is that the anticipated Mittens victory in South Carolina and his subsequent wrap-up of the nomination is being re-evaluated, and that our media friends will be able to extract even more horse-race hysteria and more of the torture of incessant monotony out of their reality TV show, "The Great Republican Clusterschnazzle," now at 17 debates and counting.

And now it's Mitt...and now, it's NotMitt again this morning...Oh, Jeeziz, the Rehooliganz are all going to plotz!

Ah, the drama. The DRAMA of it all arouses emotions in me I've never felt before he said as he barfed copiously up his sleeve.

Really, this is about the third time Mittens has come close to putting it away, then there's a glitch in the polls or he gets PMS or something and then falls apart like the Seahawks in the fourth quarter.

Whatever gave a guy as tentative and unsure of himself as Mittens the idea that he's qualified to be preznit? His current stumble seems largely due to his blowing a simple tax-return release -- something that's standard operating procedure, but Mittens has managed to dick around and screw around with it, calling attention to it until his taxes and his disproportionate wealth become a .45-calibre issue pointed at his head and about to discharge.

Do we really even want to consider putting somebody able to blow a simple move like that one in the White House? He's even less qualified than the present current occupant, old What'shisname.

swallowing hard in florida

Now that giant Burmese pythons are breeding and growing more numerous in the Everglades, the US has gotten around to banning importation of these fearsome serpents, which are known to eat native species as large as adult deer and even alligators.

Noting that years of efforts to eradicate the snakes from the Everglades have failed, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the ban this past Tuesday, along with prohibitions on African pythons and the South American anaconda.

The one documented case in which a python was known to have swallowed a full-grown, six-foot alligator ended with the snake dying of indigestion.

Other foreign-originated species infesting the subtropical parts of Florida include a small dragon, the Nile monitor lizard, and African rats the size of raccoons.

Reuters has the whole story.

joke time

Some might say Mittens's finances are nobody's bizness but his, but as long as he's paying like 15% when there are working people paying higher rates, it's everybody's bidness.

Paul Krugman says he's "actually enjoying the spectacle of Mitt Romney doing the Dance of the Seven Veils —... it’s about time that we had this discussion."


The theme of his dance ... is taxes — his own taxes. Although disclosure of tax returns is standard practice for political candidates, Mr. Romney has never done so, and, at first, he tried to stonewall the issue... Then he said that he probably pays only about 15 percent..., and he hinted that he might release his 2011 return. ...


If Mr. Romney is telling the truth about his taxes, he’s actually more or less typical of the very wealthy. ... The main reason the rich pay so little is that most of their income takes the form of capital gains, which are taxed at a maximum rate of 15 percent, far below the maximum on wages and salaries.

So, what gives with these capital gains? They're income, right? Then they should be subject to...Oh, yeah, I forgot, "job creators."

ROFL

armchair quarterbacks

The Los Angeles Times calling Seattle residents "snow wimps" makes one wish that the City of Angels could be lucky enough to get half an inch or so. That way Angelinos could show us how it's done.

Idiots.

So far the only negative outcome of the storm Catboxette and I have experienced is cabin fever. Yesterday our favorite cafe, Farm's Reach, was closed due to frozen pipes.

However, it's going to get tougher when the rain comes and the branches of all the trees in the Enchanted Forest begin to bend and break under the weight of the wet snow. Power outages will become a near-certainty then. It'll be a miracle if we escape unscathed.

It's still snowing here, but Seattle is having an ice storm right now and the governor has declared a state of emergency. This isn't going to go away as soon as we thought.

hugee pipilini (updated)

The word as reported by Politico.com is that the Obama administration will announce at 3 pm today that it will not allow the permit for the controversial XL pipeline.

But Republicans were unsparing in concluding that Obama had chosen to assuage his environmental base instead of creating U.S. jobs. They also said the responsibility for the decision rests with the president, not anyone else in his administration.

Read more.

This is a big, big deal. Those of us who have been highly critical of Obama are behind him on this one, says the environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben:

"Assuming that what we're hearing is true, this isn't just the right call, it's the brave call. The knock on Barack Obama from many quarters has been that he's too conciliatory. But here, in the face of a naked political threat from Big Oil to exact 'huge political consequences,' he's stood up strong."

McKibben's blog.

UPDATE: The thing is, you have to really parse the stuff Obama says, and read between the lines.

"This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people," Obama said in a statement.

What I'm getting from this is that he's going to approve the pipeline, but not until after he's re-elected. That's called "politics." He's simply refusing to play the stupid games the Republicans are trying to run. That's politics too.

Bill McKibben's celebration is premature.

No stars.

Previews

If and when domestic unrest becomes too much for local police forces to handle, the central government will need to be able to call in the military.

With the passage of the National Defense Appropriation Act (NDAA) (takes effect March 3), the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. "And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until 'the end of hostilities,'” according to former NY Times reporter Chris Hedges.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is hard at work preparing for such an eventuality, and we can be sure that Big Brother's big eye is watching us closely now. With their mystical mantra, "Darpa," and the Latin motto which means "Knowledge is power," the agency s ready to move against individual outbreaks of wilfull or unconscious terrorism.

For mass outbreaks of disobedience, DARPA has other plans and is currently developing terrestrial drones in the desert near Las Vegas.

See more here

snowed in

I'm snowed in at Catboxette's house on the Peninsula. Driving would probably be possible this morning, but not worth the risk.

Tomorrow is going to be worse -- or better, depending on how one feels about heavy snowfalls. So it looks like I'm here for the week -- a minor inconvenience. I'll call my apartment manager in Seattle this morning, and if he can empty my mailbox, I'll have no problems that money can't solve.

Snow muffles all sound, and this kind of silence is ideal for meditation and reflection, but other than my own concerns I've got very little to think about at the moment. The state of the (dis)-Union offers no cause for alarm. With the remains of a dying capitalistic economic system based on predatory exploitation and a collapsing empire contested this election year by Republican fascist reactionaries on the one hand and the corrupted "Me Too" party of Democrats ("I believe in 'free' enterprise too; "We're on board with a strong 'defense' too), there's not much for it but to say "Good-Bye to All That."

Over here on the Peninsula the future is to some extent already here, and it's cold, frequently difficult to negotiate, and vastly superior to the past, with its theme parks, its cholesterol-laden dreams of endless hot dogs, and its obscene, chest-thumping ideological posturing, all of which now take a back seat to fresh pears and parsnips in the root cellar.

greenman in winter

The forest has crystallized. No significant precipitation yet, but condensed moisture has turned into a thin film of ice coating everything, especially the less-traveled roadways.

We're told that now comes the snow, which will be like a fluffy frosting on hard ice cream. The man of the evergreens doesn't mind this in the least; he actually enjoys it.

866

The world is being run from this room, where the conclave of high priests of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), the technocratic College of Cardinals, makes the decisions which inform the writing of the software programs that the main network, housed deep in the bowels of Fort Knox, Kentucky, uses to run all television programming, the political Punch-and-Judy show, the cash registers of all retail activity, etc.

This is the heart of Area Code 866. I know the Book of Revelation says the Number of the Beast is 666, but St. John the Divine got it wrong.

Simultaneously with controlling all activities in the public sphere, the computer system at Fort Knox eavesdrops and keeps an eye on everything everybody is doing, all the time.

The only way to get away from it is to load up a backback and tent and hike up to a higher elevation in the heavily forested Olympic range, and survive by living off the land. But even there, a spy satellite or Department of Homeland Security helicopter might spot you in a clearing.

I can't cite any sources for this information, which I learned from transmissions received via my tinfoil hat.

far away nearby

Left Seattle humming along in the cold sunshine this morning, caught a boat, and crossed over to the other side.

As soon as I get over here there's a feeling that I've left "It" behind -- the machine, or more properly the machines -- the war machine, the automatic teller machine, and all those other clanking things that sustain us and kill us.

It's colder over here, because it's in the deep forest, but bracing if you bundle up for it. Word wars get frozen fast, and stop. I'm gone for the weekend, will return maybe Monday.

Photo: "Spirit of the Forest" by Ramone Monegal.

a whiter shade of pail

Rounding out my bucket list, Rick Santorum, rumored to be campaigning for his party's nomination for president, said today the Republicans can win back the White House only by offering a "clear contrast" to Obama.

Seemingly directing his remarks toward his chief rival, the Mittens man, Santorum added, “We need contrasts, not just a paler shade of what we have.”

I was hoping to hear some Republican say something like that before I die.

Found this item at Atrios's place, eschatonblog.com.

poor, but empowered

Americans are steadily becoming more aware of the conflict between rich and poor, as the income gap between the wealthiest citizens and the rest of us widens, and as political power becomes the sole possession of those with enough money to buy access to politicians, and is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

This is the conclusion of a Pew Research Center study, detailed in today's Washington Post.

The 99% movement has had a lot to do with raising people's awareness of these issues, but mostly the growing popular hostility toward America's plutocratic oligarchy stems from the our collective awakening to the fact that we've been robbed and our political power usurped. Knowledge is power, and this is just the beginning.

foop-ball

Free-radical quarterback Tim Tebow and his merry band of totally convinced Denver Broncos play in New England on Sunday, but he is not afraid.

That's OK, Tim, don't listen to what they say, just keep on thowin that foop-ball.

Believing in Tebow requires a person able to believe the impossible. Sometimes it works.

on top of old smoky

One of the more interesting flecks of debris from the New Hampshire primary is a blast leveled at a female heckler by New Jersey's Governor Chris Christie, as he spoke this past weekend on behalf of Mitt Romney. As she berated him for the employment rate "going down" in his state recently, Christie shot back, "You know something may go down tonight, but it ain’t gonna be jobs sweetheart"

Fans of the governor have been falling all over themselves since then, trying to sell the notion that Christie was saying that Rick Santorum was "going down," or something, but I'm sure they know as well as the rest of us that big Chris was telling this gal that before the rooster crowed, she might conceivably penetrate the deepest recesses of his voluminous trousers and, moving aside the folds of his pendulous abdominal tissue, be subjected to a close encounter with Smoky the Log, or whatever Mrs. Christie calls it.