back in the cccp

A couple days ago we bought a house in Mesa, Arizona, a double wide mobile in a gated 55 and older park with pools, an exercise room, and lots of other amenities.

Mesa is a satellite of the enormous urban sprawl of Phoenix, in Maricopa County. In the neo feudal society the US has become, the county is the most important organizational unit, and this one is presided over by the American mini Stalin Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and his Beria, a Rehooligan opportunist named Bill Montgomery.

Kremlin Joe ran an archipelago of lethal slave labor prisons, called "gulags." The vast, frozen wastes of Siberia absorbed the millions sentenced to "tenners" (ten year sentences), for everything from espionage and sabotage to "dishonoring our Beloved Leader" by wiping their butts on pictures of Stalin, which were on every page of every newspaper published in the USSR at that time. (Newspaper was also toilet paper, the only practical use for the national propaganda organs, Pravda and Izvestia). The "zeks" of the gulag archipelago slaved, froze, starved and died as human sacrifices to Beloved Leader's wrath, brutality, and galloping paranoia. 

Likewise, Maricopa Joe's domains include broad stretches of the burning sands of the Sonoma Desert, where he erects tent cities in which the thousands sentenced in Maricopa County, mostly for marijuana possession or illegal immigration, are sent to swelter, work, and sometimes die. The county jails here are for profit operations, and Sheriff Joe is reputed to gain handsomely from his American gulags.

Unsurprisingly, the Sheriff's  Department casts  a very wide net in the Phoenix area, and the County Prosecutor has proved himself an able deputy in  promoting the interests of the Duke of Maricopa. In 2010, Arizonans voted to allow possession and cultivation of cannabis for medical purposes, but Bill Montgomery's interpretation of the law continues to produce new "units" for Maricopa Joe's slave labor camps

In an article in the most recent issue of  the Phoenix New Times, reporter Ray Stern details the arrest last year of a resident cited for impaired driving, after he tested .056 blood alcohol (he'd consuming a 22 ounce wine cocktail), Police also seized a small piece of cannabis infused soft candy from the car's console, and it is for this the young man is now facing the threat of three years in the Maricopa archipelago, plus a large fine.

Overthrowing the US government is a tall order, but undermining the feudal dictatorship of the Duke of Maricopa would be a simple matter of convincing the tens of thousands of Chicanos and Mexican American US citizens who are most endangered by this boodler and his Rehooligan Sancho Panza to vote. Once they realize the USA is not the same as Mexico, where popular elections are regularly and routinely neutered by a feudal ruling class, I'm certain these Rehooligan swindlers will be run out of town,

For Bill Montgomery, a self described "social conservative," that won't be a big deal, as he's a simple opportunist who can go to Texas or South Carolina, or anywhere local voters are more in line with his interpretations of state law and the Word of God. Maricopa Joe is another matter, though. For his various crimes, he needs to do a tenner in one of his own tent camps in the desert. Now in his seventies, he will be the last of the Maricopa zeks. 

the pertinence of pertinax

Toward the end of today's string of posts over at Professor Pierce's wingnut reeducation camp, Charlie put up an item concerning a certain Noam Scheiber, a  pundit I've never read, who is apparently is trying to light a fire under the notion of a Hillary C. v. Liz Warren catfight for the Democratic nomination in 2016.

Besides the fundamentally distasteful nature of  attempting to foment war among feminists (fighting women!! Ho, ho), Scheiber's scenario, if it ever came to fruition, would spell disaster for the Democrats, tearing the party in two and splitting the progressives away from the rest. 

Now personally, I can't stand Mrs. Clinton, a hypocritical establishment politician if ever there was one. But she's as good as we're going to get right now. She'll have to win without my help (note to self: remind yourself that you have vowed never to vote for anyone who in 2002 helped Congress authorize the Iraq disaster).

And she may move in the direction of mild reform, scaling back the wars without defunding the weapons procurement boondoggle, demanding better gas mileage immediately from Detroit but not tackling more critical electrical generation issues, &c. &c.

Meanwhile, it would be best for now if Ms. Warren stays in the Senate, which clearly needs more radical reformers as well as radical reform. As the professor points out, she "plainly is developing a powerful sphere of influence among her colleagues without harshing too many delicate mellows there. If she can be a power in the Senate, then she should stay in the Senate, where she can do the most good on the issues she most cares about."

I can hardly believe what I'm about to type here, but I've come to believe that much reform undertaken too quickly is perilous, and can be destructive. I know that's the mantra of every closet fascist who ever dressed up in a sheepskin. So what? That doesn't make it untrue.

Consider the example of Pertinax, Emperor of the Romans for about six months in 193. He was a poor choice, for he was known to be a "my way or the highway" type of disciplinarian in a licentious age. Humbly born, working his way up through the ranks of the army through conspicuous merit, he faced a mutiny among the British legions, and was beaten and left for dead. By this time he had gained a wide reputation as an incorruptible but inflexible asshole.

After the emperor Commodus was murdered by a group of plotters led by the commander of the home guards (the Praetorian Prefect) and including his mistress and a wrestler named Narcissus, Pertinax was acclaimed Emperor by the Senate and by the power that really mattered, the Praetorian Guard.

He immediately launched a thoroughgoing reform program, zeroing in on the alimenta (wheat dole), revaluing silver coins from 74 to 87 percent, and most dangerously, refusing to give the army the (by then) customary "donative," or bribe. When the home guard became so agitated they became obviously  dangerous, Pertinax finally coughed up about half of what they demanded by selling off Commodus's possessions, including his hundreds of sex slaves of both genders.

The Praetorian Guard was not placated, however, for the incorruptible and severe emperor's rush to reform had destabilized Roman society's customary relationships of bribes and patronage. When a mob of 300 Praetorians headed for the palace, Pertinax, fearless to a fault went out to meet them.

After they murdered Pertinax, the Praetorians openly and blatantly sold the emperorship to the highest bidder, an overweight plutocrat with the wonderful name Didius Julianus. The year of five emporors, 193, was on, and would end with a corrupt but competent ruler in charge, who ushered in a stable but short interlude before the deluge.

   

Hillary will make a much better president than the current occupant, who stands "dangling his bonnet and plume" as the nation falls to pieces around him. She'll skewer her political enemies with a sharp tongue, easily beat whatever loogie the other guys cough up and call a candidate, and possibly lead in a mildly reformist mode, which she'll trumpet as radical change as her political opposition accuses her of everything they can think of it.

Real reform will originate in other spheres of government, outside the White House. And let's face it, Hillary "ain't today's special, she's what we got."

In Zion

In Hebrew Scripture, Zion is simply another name for Jerusalem. The Kabbalah addditionally identifies it as the source of all spirituality, and the psychic location of temples 1,2, and 3.

It's also arguably the name of this country's most photogenic national park, which is saying a lot, since I've seen a number of others, including Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Mt. Rainier. However, "photogenic" means little when applied to Zion, because no photograph could convey the immensity of this place, whose sandstone walls are so high they're dreadful.

A person feels small and insignificant passing through this southern Utah canyon, which is set among other wonders nearly as impressive.

In the past couple weeks, my partner and I have seen some of the most beautiful places on earth, right here in the good old U.S. of A. The Oregon coast, a marvel both of nature and public foresight (the entire coast is publicly owned and accessible to all), and the Redwoods of northern California belong to everybody.

As we travel through this fantastic land, I can't help contrasting its natural beauty to the artificial, grotesque, corrupted, and intrinsically evil political and economic systems, which have saddled us and ride us like fat men on burros.

If we hope to preserve our birthright, we must purge ourselves of those who have stolen the dream. Only when they're off our backs can we truly arrive in Zion, to finally lay our burdens down.

Photo: Kit Wood

singular state

I saw my first genuine Utah polygamists the other day when we went to the pharmacy in Hurricane to get my prescriptions transferred down here, a mother and daughter, both wearing floor-length, long-sleeved gowns, homemade out of plain, monochrome fabric.

The girl, about 10 or 11 years old, stared at me uncontrollably, as if I was a unicorn who had wandered into a drugstore. There was no hostility in her gaze, but her mouth fell open and her blue eyes were enormous with fright and fascination. 

"This is very curious," I thought to myself. I was feeling good that day, and most likely it showed. I guess this little offspring of plural marriage had never seen an old man looking happy and healthy out in public.

She and her mother were both nice looking -- impressively so. The little one was blonde and pale; and her brown-haired mother young, slender, and tall. I have no idea why the girl reacted to your humble narrator so strongly, but I suspect the polygamy cult's kids are told all sorts of scary stories about men on "the outside."

"Watch out for older men with long hair and Fu Manchu mustaches, for they will spirit you away from here, and you'll never see us again."

Or something to that effect.

Actually, it wouldn't be a bad idea. I've heard (and should probably research the issue so as to confirm or impeach the assertion), that polygamists run most of their  boy children out of their closed and ingrown society once they're old enough to fend for themselves, and assign the girls to the patriarchs of the community. If this is true, my fearful little child is probably already staked out by some middle aged fart with a gray beard and two or three "sister wives" under his roof, and she'll be introduced to the joys of marriage by the time she's 14 or 15. 

I don't want to judge people whose lives I'm ignorant of. On the other hand, I'm somewhat sickened by this sort of unapologetic patriarchy. Girls of 14, 15, and 16 ought to be with boys their own age. If nature runs her course, they'll pair up and grope their way toward adult sexuality without any help whatsoever.

Sympathetic and mature advice is what older kids need from the adults in their lives, and with help and guidance, they'll find their way.

I've seen a number of "sister wives" in town since then, for the cult is thickest in this corner of Utah, and spills over into Arizona and Nevada. Their numbers are unknown, but thought by knowledgeable people to be fewer than 10,000.

I know there are Americans who would like to root out and exorcise this last remnant of Mormon polygamy, but at this point, these unreconstructed followers of the "prophet" Joe Smith are mostly left alone. However, some see the lifestyle as unavoidably   abusive to women and girls, and the future of polygamy in Utah is always in play.

peace

The geniuses, hacks, and waffle asses who run the Pentagon appear in the grip of invisible and sinister forces when it comes to recognizing when we've had enough.

Congress is engaged at the moment in cutting money for food stamps and numerous other social programs. That's the background against which the Pentagon brass and War Department officials (sometimes known as the "Department of Defense") are planning to ask for up to $400 billion to "upgrade" US nuclear capability, which already is many times greater than the rest of the world's put together.

Madelyn R. Creedon, the assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs, insisted to lawmakers that the US is obligated to move forward with plans to invest a tremendous amount of time and money into the program, because the repercussions of not doing so would be not worth risking.

The non-partisan Stimson Center think-tank estimated last year estimated that the cost of upgrading the nation’s entire nuclear arsenal over the course of a decade, including weapons, infrastructure and delivery systems, could come at a price-tag as high as $400 billion. At the same time, the sequestration deal signed earlier this year calls for the Pentagon to slash spending by roughly $1 trillion during that same time-span.

Sequestration be damned; full speed ahead. This is about a lot more than dollars, however, as  it involves the complex psychological gymnastics thieves and con men have to perform to justify their criminal acts in their own minds.

The US war machine is the biggest boondoggle in the history of the world, and one that takes food out of the mouths of elderly and infants. Pentagon brass and "Defense" Departent bureaucratsmay be gimlet eyed baby starvers as well as (on occasion) baby killers, but they surely are unaware that five years from now we're going to exorcise their five sided symbol of evil, on the 50th anniversary of the first such ceremony in 1968.

This time, it'll work.

And then, after the devl is banished from Virginia (for the second time; the first was in 1865), we'll demolish the buildng, plow the site, and sow the furrows with salt.

And, as the Song of Solomon says, "The voice of the turtle will be heard in our land."

primitive medicine

Wingnut apologists for our buccaneering health care establishment are now telling us that government health care won't work because people will have "no incentive" to take care of themselves.

Incentive? This is our fkng lives we're talkin about.

For most normal people, the "incentive" to take better care of one's self is that you feel a whole lot better. As opposed to feeling like shit all the time.

Then there's me. The "incentive" for me to take better care of my self was that I got to stay alive, as opposed to, you know, dying.

Even when life sucks, it's better than being dead. At least I assume so, and have never spoken with anyone who's been dead, and then came back to tell us about it.

I got to say I'm totally sick of all the discussions of health care we're hearing today, and that's without even reading any of em. I assume they're full of weary wingnutisms about "incentives" and "value added" and all that happy horseshit.

But here's how health care in the USA actually works right now:

You show up at the doctor's office with a pain of some sort and are diagnosed with a horrifying disease, which is treatable, but only at a price that nobody except David Koch or the WalMart heirs could ever afford. The rule is that because you got sick, you must now be bankrupted. The only alternative is death.

And if you think bankruptcy is worse than death, I must ask, have you ever been dead? So in this country today, we're at the mercy of thieving insurance comanies working with grifting physicans who are connected to and sometimes in the pay of swindling drug companies. The amounts they charge are as much of a mockery as the insurance "settlements," determined by policies written for the sole purpose of confusing people.

Will Romnobamacare be better than this? Anything would be!

But of course, the apologists for the plutocrats and robbers who own USA, Co Inc. are screeching and crying that it's the end of the world. I can't debate with them any more, because I've only one thing to say to them, re: health care:

We've been fkng screwed blue;

I'm sick of it, and sick of you.

scarey day blues

It's Halloween again, and also the beginning of the closely related El Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

The Wikipedia article on the subject tells us both celebrations grew out of the triduum (three day observance) of Hallowmas, the time designated in the liturgical calendar when the faithful who have passed on before us are honored along with all saints and martyrs.

Whether the holiday descends from earlier, pagan celebrations  is of little matter, for halloween in the USA has evolved into a children's holiday. In Mexico and other parts of Latin America, where tradition looms much larger than it does here, El Dia de los Muertos remains closer to the intentions of medieval clerics.

As for me this October 31st, I'll paraphrase the words of the late, great Blind Willie McTell:

I done got reckless and broke my baby's rules;
You know I done got reckless and I broke my mama's rules;
Now I'm here wanderin round Utah with these doggone scarey day blues.

beehiving in utah

I'm in St George, Utah, affectionately known to residents as "The Beehive State."

They call it that because a large majority here beehives all the time, i.e., they do eggzackly what the ecclesiastical authorities tell them to do, and think what they're told to think.

I've long been fascinated by the Mormons, because they're the first very large group of humans I ever encountered who strongly believe things that are obviously not true.

But now the disease has spread to the entire Republican Party, with an especially virulent strain infecting the subset of Republicans identified as Tea Party.

Now, what do I mean by "obviously not true." I'm talking about statements which are unsupported by any factual evidence. Examples are: the president was born in Kenya, not Hawaii (all the evidence supports the contention he was born in Hawaii), or that the Affordable Care Act includes provisions for "death panels," a belief for which the only relevant evidence is the wording of the act itself, which, in fact includes no such provision, even under the most twisted interpretation.

Early on in my long (11 years) BNet career, I encountered people saying "I've got a right to my own opinion," which is true. However, nobody on God's green earth has a "right" to his or her own facts.

And the facts are these: Obama was born in Hawaii, and is an American citizen. There are no death panels. A fetus may or may not be a human being (because that's a matter of opinion), but an embryo is not. Human beings and the great apes, which is to say gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, and chimpanzees all have a common ancestor.

Besides their own politics and science, those afflicted with this  disease also have their own history, based on desire. Do you wish something that happened had gone down differently. All you have to do is believe, and that makes it true. So if you want to believe, as I've often heard said, that "the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery," the desire to believe trumps the evidence, which in this case consists of volumes of transcribed debates and speeches in the Congressional Record, the subject of 90 percent of which was slavery, in the years leading up to the war.

This is not about intelligence, but honesty, for if we disagree about what these facts mean, that's one thing, but if we disagree about what the facts are, somebody is being weak minded and extremely dishonest.

Get it? Got it? Good! Now go read this.

six days on the road & i'm gonna see my baby 2 nite

Actually, we were seven days, a solid week, traveling from Port Ludlow, Washington to St. George, Utah. And now we're here, and are planning to rest our weary bones tomorrow and get ready for a new direction.

It was what you'd call a slow, meandering trip. The most incredible sight of the entire journey was this piano, sitting on a ridge overlooking the ocean just south of Half Moon Bay, CA. We had parked so Kit could snap a photo of the surf, and climbing a small rise to get her picture, she stumbled on it, and got this singular photo of a badly out of tune upright, with a few keys missing, but still quite playable.

Our six stops along the way:

Portland, OR

Newport, OR

Crescent City, CA

Santa Rosa, CA

Paso Robles, CA

Barstow, CA

So here we are back in the desert, where I more or less started from five years ago. The first thing I noticed being back here: it's much easier to breathe in a dry climate.

oh, nuts

This trip has been an education. The hours in the car are hard sometimes, in my condition, but the wonders we've seen along the Oregon coast and today, meandering through the Redwood forest, have made it worth the effort.

The drive thru redwood tree was the highlight of the day of course. Kit is one of the world's better drivers, but wasn't too sure about this. However, I guided  her through, and it was a very tight fit indeed for her small Jeep SUV. No damage, but the passenger side rear view mirror was brushed back. Slightly.

Earlier in the day we stopped at the famous tourist destination Trees of Mystery. It was too chilly to stay outside, but we did stop long enough to take pictures with the famous giant woodsman Paul B. Unyan and his blue ox, Babe. Here I am with the latter, listening for noisettes.

here we b in portland

Vacated the premises today & traveled to Portland a short, overnite visit with the joven muchacha, who isn't actually all that young any more, except compared 2 us.

We're currently hunkered down with a cat in a motel where animals are prohibited. However, we expect no trouble.

conservative catboxer

I'm the real conservative here!

That's what Mittens used to say in the Republican debates (or so I heard), along with Guvna Perry, Herman Caine, and the rest of the mental midgets contending for the nomination that year. 

Except it's true of me. I really AM the real conservative here. 

How many people do you know who would like to repeal the entire 20th century, and quite a bit of the one preceding? You know me, so you know at least one.

I despise liberal technocracy, and the bland academics and bureaucrats who claim to have things under control. Remember "shock therapy" and lobotomy? 

Industrial production, at the start, was guaranteed to bring great wealth to everyone, but crushing poverty is more widespread in the industrialized world than it ever has been before. Industrialism has indeed produced enormous wealth, but it seems to have all become concentrated in the hands of the producers,

About 100 years after the advent of industrial production, World War I came on, and modern modes of production were immediately recognized to be the source of unprecedented and unbelievable destructiveness, just as they gave rise to incredible creativity. The millions of WWI dead were the harvest of industrial methods applied to warfare.Both World Wars were spasms of industrial grade carnage, and Hitler even applied railroads, state of the art incinerators, and Zyklon B crystals to the science of murder.

But today's scientists and researchers are still assuring us that a better world is coming, with genetic engineering, with new breakthroughs in medicine, with computer technology which delivers 100 lbs of information per second. 

We're drowning in information, and starving for knowledge.

We're promised food enough to feed the whole world, but will it be edible? If it's not fit for human consumption, it's not food. However, in this century, household food and crop production will return with intensity and surprising results.

And while it's not earth shattering, music has been amplified and technified and tweaked to the point where it sounds dreadful (Do Justin Bieber and Richard Marx have backup bands, or backup machines?) Like home grown tomatoes, the wonderful subtleties and warm tones of acoustic guitar and piano, real instruments, have made a comeback lately, and appreciation of acoustic music generally, often used to  revist great music of the past, is growing.

I should mention the advent of television also, although the less said about the uses that platform for advertising and political propaganda has been put to, the better.

What is conservatism, if not the desire to return to older ways? Industrial capitalism swept over first European societies, then was disseminated to the rest of the world, badly compromising the old authorities of church and family, demolishing older and in many cases finer, more detailed, and much more costly  methods of production, ending the old, slow pace of banking and exchange. Many of these prostrate technologies, methods and attitudes now deserve another look. What good does it do to produce tons of stuff cheaply if none of it is worth having?

Worst of all are the scientific technocrats, so sure of their own superiority and flawless characters that they don't hesitate to play God, tampering with genetic structure, cloning animals, monocropping unto dustbowls, and telling of the wonders they can do. Mary W. Shelley wrote a wonderful examination of the danger of playing God, which always turns out badly.

I look for things to start shaking hard next year, as the excesses, cronyism, and blatant criminality of the latter stages of industrial capitalism come to a head. Think of it this way: 1814, 1914, 2014.

whatcha listenin to?

For me, it's the same stuff I been listenin to for 30 years. I graze around on different kinds of music, but never found anything I like as well.

At the moment, I've got Casey Bill knockin the eyes out of an old tune of his called "You just as well Let Her Go"

"You'll start talkin,
She'll start walkin,
She won't pay you no mind;
She'll start to leavin,
You'll start grievin,
No use to follow behind.

"Wellll...how you gonna keep her if she don't wanna stay?
You can't keep her 'cause she's goin away,
She done said she's gonna stay no mo',
You just as well let her go, I mean,
You just as well let her go."

Listen!

Last man standing

 

The history of politics, being a process and not a thing, has arrived at a junction where universal consensus is the rule, and since we're all comin from the same place, it looks to me and a lot of others that Charlie Pierce is the blog champ. Read him at esquire.com/blogs/politics.

Blogging is still a lot of fun, and I'll keep it up as kind of a personal and localized thing. The locale will be changing soon, and as fall gives way to winter we"ll be migrating south. We shall bid "adieu" to ye olde convenience store gnomes standing sentry at the entry, Port Gamble  & beyond.

unkown woman appears out of nowhere, then vanishes

Last week the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department got a call telling them than an unknown woman, obviously distraught and possibly disoriented, had appeared out of nowhere and was walking along Irondale Road near the Jesus is Lord gas station.

The Sherrifs dispatched a cruiser, but by the time they reached the scene the unknown woman had vanished.

Source: Port Townsend Leader.

still there

Spite of ye gummint shut down and all, we're still fighting "the good war" over there.

Helmand Province, in far away Afghani Stan, 9/22/2013

We will free the shit out of them.

Photo from "Still at War" at Mother Jones.

a crazy making world

True insanity has no redeeming qualities. There are several distinct kinds of madness, all of them ugly and heartbreaking.

The worst thing about it is the lunatic more often than not regards the lunacy as virtue.

The late Allen Ginsberg began his celebrated poem "Howl" with the words, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness." So have I, Allen, and so have all of us survivors.

The best minds, along with the worst, have broken under the pressure and despair of modern life. A very bright guy I've known forever has become gradually over the years so obsessed with shining and polishing already immaculate porcelains and stainless steel fixtures that thieves can rummage around in his house taking whatever they want, and a couple have already done so.

I haven't known the brilliant and exceptionally articulate Jewish  man from Philadelphia as long as I have the sink polisher, but we go back 30 years, so I've witnessed the entire Odyssey of his descent  into belief in bizarre forms of fascist fanatacism and fundamentalist Christianity, the diseased twins of contemporary American culture. In his case, I think it was mostly the heartbreak of divorce and family dissolution that drove him around the bend.

I also have a long time friend and associate who has made himself  a prisoner of Beckistan, and subscribes to all the craziness and paranoia the prophet Beck barfs out in daily radio spasms. There's a real potential for violence among them, and I don't get too close.

When I was very young, I had egotistical ambition, and hoped to do great things. Events of the past few days ought to have convinced even the most skeptical among us that the world has become unpredictably dangerous, in ways that can drive people nuts. I've reached the point where I believe that maintaining one's sanity in this environment is a great accomplishment. But who am I to claim to be sane?

killing people si, feeding people no!

Despite the government shutdown and default, there's always money enough to keep the war going.

After all, we have our priorities. 

We can live without the Women's, Infants', and Children's program  (WIC) for a while. Food for 9 million moms and their kids necessarily takes  a back seat to whacking the scary brown people.

Of course, we're talking mostly single mothers here, so that makes it their fault.

This will be a short post today. I really need to go vomit.

Photo: Mother Jones, part of their daily series "Still at War."

...and now, the olds...

53

The great Way is easy,
yet people prefer the side paths.
Be aware when things are out of balance.
Stay centered within the Tao.

When rich speculators prosper
While farmers lose their land;
when government officials spend money
on weapons instead of cures;
when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible
while the poor have nowhere to turn-
all this is robbery and chaos.
It is not in keeping with the Tao.

Lao Tzu
Tao Te Ching
Translated by Stephen Mitchell