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?

Cruzin in Ioweigh

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

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

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

Happy Trails to You, Until We Meet Again.

a fine family fortune

'

     Surname    $ (in bllions)

1, WALTON -- 127.6

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

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

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

4. MARS -- 70.2

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

5. BUFFET, Warren -- 62

6. ELLISON,  Larry -- 47.5

7. BEZOS, Jeff -- 47

8.  ZUCKERBERG, Mark -- 40.3

9. BLOOMBERG, Michael -- 38.6

10. PAGE, Larry -- 33.3

11.  BRIN, Sergey -- 32.6

12. ADELSON, Sheldon -- 26

13. SOROS, George --24..5

14, KNIGHT, Phil -- 24.4

15. BALLMER. Steve -- 21.6

16. ICAHN, Carl -- 20.5

17. DELL, Michael  19.1

18. JOBS, Laurene -- 19.1

19. CHAMBERS, Anne Cox -- 18

20. ALLEN, Paul -- 17.8

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

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

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

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

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

             

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

christmas friday cat blogging

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

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

furrills?

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

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

eye witless 2 histy

Dear Angry,

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

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

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

wedding day -- 10/9/2015

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

eating one's words

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

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

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

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

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

friday cat blogging

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

BesT place 4 sleepin & best 4 being awake.

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

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

comme back, redd (huh)

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

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

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

snart snoerk -- vasectomies @ 7/11

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

خوب، مغز آمریکایی تمیز

 Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Obama's Iran Deal

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

so what?

Over half of Americans disbelieve in Darwinism.

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

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

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

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

above it all

\

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

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

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

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

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

**Want spontaneity? See this!

President Sanders

health care in amerika?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

.

alive!

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

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

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

eggs 4 breakfast

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