Eighteen months countdown
President Obama unequivocablly declared an end to OUR involvement in the Iraq mess. In issuing a withdrawal timetable the President declared:
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America rise...from downright ignorance of the nature of the coin, credit and circulation."
---John Adams
As separate as the five fingers
Atty General Eric Holder set off bells and sirens with his recent remarks concerning Americans' cowardice on race relations. Striking an astute balance between the trite NAACPesque unreachable brass ring---"we've achieved much but there's still a long road to haul"---Cornel West intellectual antagonism and the un-threatening house negro---Clarence Thomas---Mr Holder voiced what many not well-to-do blacks know as a reality and non-blacks relegate to yesteryear: social racism persists in America.
And why shouldn't the man speak thus? Because he's the first black U.S. Attorney General...because he's serving under the first black President...because he is obviously successful and articulate and, therefore, "not like the others"? If our Secretary of State can toss back beer and whiskey in Indiana---go Wabash!---and unequivocably propose to shoot down enemy aircraft then certainly Mr Holder has no cause to hold his tongue.
The racism he specifically pointed to concerns our willful segregation on social matters. While we work together and go to school together and pray together we still do not tend to play together, suggesting, perhaps, a preference to, as Booker T Washington lectured, remain as separate as the five fingers on a hand on all things social id est personal time, down time, recreation, weekends.
To use a contemporary term, Americans are `clustering´ which is to say citizens are, if not visibly, unapologetically limiting their non-work hours to like-minded company. Last summer The Economist ("American Tribalism," June 21) wrote on the increasing clustering forming in the nation, referencing Bill Bishop's new book The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing us Apart.
To advance that people have the freedom to associate and live with whomever they choose is a moot point. It does not require a college course in sociology to know people like being close to people more like themselves. Usually they call each other friends. For Mr Bishop and The Economist, the silent and subtle adverse effects, rather, show themselves to be none too silent or subtle when it comes to social discourse meaning co-workers (outside of think tanks) of opposing politics or tastes mindfully limit their chit-chat to weather, children's fevers, parking fees, weather---maybe this is why I find most people boring as handsoap---lest they butt heads and resort to shouting at each other like the overpaid, overexposed narrow-minded pundits they soak up from television.
Americans making conscious, pragmative decisions to relocate themselves away from those they do not particularly care to be around is nothing revelatory. Freedom is mobility. Those of alternative lifestyles cluster in San Francisco, West Hollywood, D.C. Some libertarians show a preference for rural, isolated mountainous regions while amoral, namby-pambies and wayward fashionistas find NYC fabulous. (NYC is not fabulous and I crave for the day it sinks to the bottom of the river.) It is hardly surprising, then, to observe conservatives segregating themselves with other conservatives and liberals with other liberals. But the groupthink clustering spawns is alarming, having kept half of the nation from remotely understanding how anyone could not vote for Bush while the rest of us, including other countries, fumed dumbfoundedly that anyone could vote for the Monkey---twice.
De facto segregation is less controversial when furthered by 'the people' than when it is maintained by a governmental body but, apparently, it is none the less detrimental.
And why shouldn't the man speak thus? Because he's the first black U.S. Attorney General...because he's serving under the first black President...because he is obviously successful and articulate and, therefore, "not like the others"? If our Secretary of State can toss back beer and whiskey in Indiana---go Wabash!---and unequivocably propose to shoot down enemy aircraft then certainly Mr Holder has no cause to hold his tongue.
The racism he specifically pointed to concerns our willful segregation on social matters. While we work together and go to school together and pray together we still do not tend to play together, suggesting, perhaps, a preference to, as Booker T Washington lectured, remain as separate as the five fingers on a hand on all things social id est personal time, down time, recreation, weekends.
Americans making decisions to relocate themselves away from those they do not particularly care to be around is nothing revelatory. Freedom is mobility
To advance that people have the freedom to associate and live with whomever they choose is a moot point. It does not require a college course in sociology to know people like being close to people more like themselves. Usually they call each other friends. For Mr Bishop and The Economist, the silent and subtle adverse effects, rather, show themselves to be none too silent or subtle when it comes to social discourse meaning co-workers (outside of think tanks) of opposing politics or tastes mindfully limit their chit-chat to weather, children's fevers, parking fees, weather---maybe this is why I find most people boring as handsoap---lest they butt heads and resort to shouting at each other like the overpaid, overexposed narrow-minded pundits they soak up from television.
the groupthink clustering spawns is alarming
Americans making conscious, pragmative decisions to relocate themselves away from those they do not particularly care to be around is nothing revelatory. Freedom is mobility. Those of alternative lifestyles cluster in San Francisco, West Hollywood, D.C. Some libertarians show a preference for rural, isolated mountainous regions while amoral, namby-pambies and wayward fashionistas find NYC fabulous. (NYC is not fabulous and I crave for the day it sinks to the bottom of the river.) It is hardly surprising, then, to observe conservatives segregating themselves with other conservatives and liberals with other liberals. But the groupthink clustering spawns is alarming, having kept half of the nation from remotely understanding how anyone could not vote for Bush while the rest of us, including other countries, fumed dumbfoundedly that anyone could vote for the Monkey---twice.
De facto segregation is less controversial when furthered by 'the people' than when it is maintained by a governmental body but, apparently, it is none the less detrimental.
Money makes the world go 'round
Money makes the world go 'round
but greed abounds to bring it down
thank goodness plenty of fools abound
to compel govt make it again sound
The greedy Caesars keep their loot
whilst the humble, faithful get the boot
eventually everything returns to right
and everyone forgets about the fright
Pass the wine, good times are here! How silly I was to have ever feared!
Everything up must come down but the inverse principle does not abound.
And It is conveniently unpopular with the Faithful lot
who invest their faith in rich men's stock
so that when avaricia jolts and sputters the world again
guess who will be left behind crying in vain.
by ScholarSpartan
but greed abounds to bring it down
thank goodness plenty of fools abound
to compel govt make it again sound
The greedy Caesars keep their loot
whilst the humble, faithful get the boot
eventually everything returns to right
and everyone forgets about the fright
Pass the wine, good times are here! How silly I was to have ever feared!
Everything up must come down but the inverse principle does not abound.
And It is conveniently unpopular with the Faithful lot
who invest their faith in rich men's stock
so that when avaricia jolts and sputters the world again
guess who will be left behind crying in vain.
by ScholarSpartan
When will Americans learn the value of a dollar?
Now that the Stimulus bill has nearly passed through Congress and soon to be passed into action it is worth knowing this is not the only other time since The New Deal that the U.S. government has intervened where the "money changers" have hit and run.
In 1974 the Federal Reserve loaned nearly $2 billion to Franklin National Bank whose hemmororaghe of $64 million within months of the new year made it the largest bank failure up until last year's crisis. Much earlier still, during WWI, the newly created Federal Reserve issued essentially worthless notes when the Treasury Secretary closed the New York Stock Exchange in 1914 to prevent foreign powers from converting their dollars to gold (and shipping it to Europe). And the Monkey, ever the poor student, didn't learn from even his father's history. In 1989 the Bush Administration stepped in when S&Ls, which had been deregulated, nose dived along with a depressed housing market that, in all, cost taxpayers $130 billion to right.
And I read President Obama's $800 billion was the conservative estimate.
Quote John Adams: All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America rise...from downright ignorance of the nature of the coin, credit and circulation.
In short, Americans--still!--don't know the value of a dollar.
In 1974 the Federal Reserve loaned nearly $2 billion to Franklin National Bank whose hemmororaghe of $64 million within months of the new year made it the largest bank failure up until last year's crisis. Much earlier still, during WWI, the newly created Federal Reserve issued essentially worthless notes when the Treasury Secretary closed the New York Stock Exchange in 1914 to prevent foreign powers from converting their dollars to gold (and shipping it to Europe). And the Monkey, ever the poor student, didn't learn from even his father's history. In 1989 the Bush Administration stepped in when S&Ls, which had been deregulated, nose dived along with a depressed housing market that, in all, cost taxpayers $130 billion to right.
And I read President Obama's $800 billion was the conservative estimate.
Quote John Adams: All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America rise...from downright ignorance of the nature of the coin, credit and circulation.
In short, Americans--still!--don't know the value of a dollar.
It's a reality: President Obama
What a glorious day this is! Finally I can write President with a capital letter again.
Read more about Barack Obama taking power of the United States presidency. (click here)
Read more about Barack Obama taking power of the United States presidency. (click here)
The hutzpah of McCain -Pt.9 (anti-science)
Below is a recent article by the ever seemingly soused Christopher Hitchens on the GOP's bold-faced contempt for science and reason. Enjoy!
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In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."
It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly. Scientists of various sorts continue to find it a very useful resource, since it can be easily and plentifully "cultured" in a laboratory, has a very short generation time, and displays a great variety of mutation. This makes it useful in studying disease, and since Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature "issue" of disability and special needs, she might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent. It's especially ridiculous and unfortunate that the governor chose to make such a fool of herself in Pittsburgh, a great city that remade itself after the decline of coal and steel into a center of high-tech medical research.
In this case, it could be argued, Palin was not just being a fool in her own right but was following a demagogic lead set by the man who appointed her as his running mate. Sen. John McCain has made repeated use of an anti-waste and anti-pork ad (several times repeated and elaborated in his increasingly witless speeches) in which the expenditure of $3 million to study the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana was derided as "unbelievable." As an excellent article in the Feb. 8, 2008, Scientific American pointed out, there is no way to enforce the Endangered Species Act without getting some sort of estimate of numbers, and the best way of tracking and tracing the elusive grizzly is by setting up barbed-wire hair-snagging stations that painlessly take samples from the bears as they lumber by and then running the DNA samples through a laboratory. The cost is almost trivial compared with the importance of understanding this species, and I dare say the project will yield results in the measurement of other animal populations as well, but all McCain could do was be flippant and say that he wondered whether it was a "paternity" or "criminal" issue that the Fish and Wildlife Service was investigating. (Perhaps those really are the only things that he associates in his mind with DNA.)
With Palin, however, the contempt for science may be something a little more sinister than the bluff, empty-headed plain-man's philistinism of McCain. [read more...]
=+=
In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."
It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly. Scientists of various sorts continue to find it a very useful resource, since it can be easily and plentifully "cultured" in a laboratory, has a very short generation time, and displays a great variety of mutation. This makes it useful in studying disease, and since Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature "issue" of disability and special needs, she might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent. It's especially ridiculous and unfortunate that the governor chose to make such a fool of herself in Pittsburgh, a great city that remade itself after the decline of coal and steel into a center of high-tech medical research.
In this case, it could be argued, Palin was not just being a fool in her own right but was following a demagogic lead set by the man who appointed her as his running mate. Sen. John McCain has made repeated use of an anti-waste and anti-pork ad (several times repeated and elaborated in his increasingly witless speeches) in which the expenditure of $3 million to study the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana was derided as "unbelievable." As an excellent article in the Feb. 8, 2008, Scientific American pointed out, there is no way to enforce the Endangered Species Act without getting some sort of estimate of numbers, and the best way of tracking and tracing the elusive grizzly is by setting up barbed-wire hair-snagging stations that painlessly take samples from the bears as they lumber by and then running the DNA samples through a laboratory. The cost is almost trivial compared with the importance of understanding this species, and I dare say the project will yield results in the measurement of other animal populations as well, but all McCain could do was be flippant and say that he wondered whether it was a "paternity" or "criminal" issue that the Fish and Wildlife Service was investigating. (Perhaps those really are the only things that he associates in his mind with DNA.)
With Palin, however, the contempt for science may be something a little more sinister than the bluff, empty-headed plain-man's philistinism of McCain. [read more...]
Mexicans arrest ruthless drug leader
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Months ago I cautioned readers to avoid more than the water in Tijuana referring, namely, to the brutal gangland drug wars between the Arellano-Felix cartel and rival cartels.
On Sunday, October 26, the federal authorities and soldiers captured the Tijuana drug leader, Eduardo Arellano-Felix after a shoot-out. The drug leader and killer was flown to Mexico City. What's even more amazing about this bust is that it was actually accomplished by MEXICAN soldiers and federal police. Who knew?!
Shown at right is Eduardo's nephew, Luis Ramirez, who was also captured and, as is custom in Mexico, showcased to the media en route to incarceration.
Months ago I cautioned readers to avoid more than the water in Tijuana referring, namely, to the brutal gangland drug wars between the Arellano-Felix cartel and rival cartels.
On Sunday, October 26, the federal authorities and soldiers captured the Tijuana drug leader, Eduardo Arellano-Felix after a shoot-out. The drug leader and killer was flown to Mexico City. What's even more amazing about this bust is that it was actually accomplished by MEXICAN soldiers and federal police. Who knew?!
Shown at right is Eduardo's nephew, Luis Ramirez, who was also captured and, as is custom in Mexico, showcased to the media en route to incarceration.Read all about the arrest here.
Lucky to be Obama -Pt.14 (Alaska approves)
As if being picked as a trophy running-mate or flumbing interview questions from Katy Couric weren't supercilious enough, Sarah Palin has to be smarting from the public diss of Alaska's LARGEST newspaper, The Anchorage Daily News, which "soberly" endorsed Mr Obama.
Booyah!
The newspaper described her and Mr McCain as too risky to lead the country:
Mrs Palin is a perfect example of the Peter Principle. She's apparently good in her present post but will be outside of her league outside of Alaska and is a disaster-in-waiting should the Republican ticket win the general election.
Lucky to be Obama -Pt.13 (Colin Powell)
In a move that is probably stunning to both black and white Americans, and democrats and republicans alike, Colin Powell has just publically endorsed the Democratic ticket over McCain-Palin for the White House race.
Once overhyped to become our first black president, a golden apple on which he characteristically and deftly passed, the shining black example of Repulican tolerance expressed during his "Meet the Press" interview dissatisfaction with the McCain camp and negative Sarah Palin in particular, saying she is not ready to be president if necessary.
General Powell's credentials are sterling and his words carry the weight of Greenspan's. Therefore when this career soldier, unassailable world diplomat, registered Republican, and cabinent member of Presidents Reagan's, Bush's and baby Bush's administrations it has got to smart when he explained
Booyah! Now where's Bob Johnson?
Old wrinkly white dude
Will somebody please put gramps back in his upstair room! ...or maybe he's just hunkering for change, too.The hutzpah of McCain -Pt.8 (Plumber Joe)
Mr McCain, longtime U.S. senator, was so eager to play up to blue-collar voters last night that he trumped out average "Joe the Plumber" as American Everyman. Only problem is, Mr McCain don't know Joe.
First starters, the man's name isn't even Joe. It's Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. For another thing, this ambushed posterboy for Middle American average lacks a plumber's license...and registration. And, as regards the spark that lit this dud M-80, Mr Wurzelbacher's annual income falls so far under the radar of Mr Obama's tax hike on $250,000 that he shouldn't have thought up the question let alone asked it.
First starters, the man's name isn't even Joe. It's Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. For another thing, this ambushed posterboy for Middle American average lacks a plumber's license...and registration. And, as regards the spark that lit this dud M-80, Mr Wurzelbacher's annual income falls so far under the radar of Mr Obama's tax hike on $250,000 that he shouldn't have thought up the question let alone asked it.
Jury slams O.J. Simpson
Mr Simpson was found guilty of his botched memorabilia take-back exactly thirteen years to the day of the famous murder trial. Damn! Talk about bad mother#%*! karma.
Brad Pitt wont marry woman until men can marry men
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A while back when the whole of their affair came to light and they took to appearing in public together, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie declared they would not marry until "everyone" who wanted to get married had the right to do so. By "everyone" Mr Pitt and Miss Jolie meant homosexuals. This euphemism became clearer with Mr Pitt's recent huge $100,000 donation towards the same-sex marriage cause.
This is a very glamorous way of avoiding tying the knot himself. What does it say of a man who vows never to wed his soulmate---not to mention, the mother of his children---unless and until every Tom, Dick, and Harry can legally marry Tom, Dick, and Harry? Where is Mr Pitt's indignation when polygamists are persecuted or when kissing cousins are prosecuted against for violating man's incest laws? These people also swear by love.
Somehow, though, liberals and gay activists, only merit the love argument when it champions homosexual causes. Mr Pitt hasn't made an honest woman of Miss Jolie but he invests $100,000 towards someone elses matrimony....
A while back when the whole of their affair came to light and they took to appearing in public together, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie declared they would not marry until "everyone" who wanted to get married had the right to do so. By "everyone" Mr Pitt and Miss Jolie meant homosexuals. This euphemism became clearer with Mr Pitt's recent huge $100,000 donation towards the same-sex marriage cause.
This is a very glamorous way of avoiding tying the knot himself. What does it say of a man who vows never to wed his soulmate---not to mention, the mother of his children---unless and until every Tom, Dick, and Harry can legally marry Tom, Dick, and Harry? Where is Mr Pitt's indignation when polygamists are persecuted or when kissing cousins are prosecuted against for violating man's incest laws? These people also swear by love.
Somehow, though, liberals and gay activists, only merit the love argument when it champions homosexual causes. Mr Pitt hasn't made an honest woman of Miss Jolie but he invests $100,000 towards someone elses matrimony....
Introducing the CHRONOPHAGE
This easily ranks as the coolest clock on the planet earth. Unveiled earlier today at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, the Chronophage ("time eater" because the grasshopper "eats" every lasping minute) was built by inventor John Taylor who, at 70, hopes to remind us that time is ever fleeting---and to refashion clocks from being boring objectss.
USA: United States Animal Farm
Homeland Security doesn't just take it's name from the Nazi regime but also implements the same Big Brother abuses to civil liberties and privacy. Travelling is more invasive than before...if you're an American citizen, that is.
According to a Washington Post article by Ellen Nakashima, citizens crossing the U.S. border by land will have their information reviewed and archived for fifteen years...just to be safe. While truckloads of illegals enter our country and, then, multiply and remain the Bush Administration along with powerful politicians like Senator McCain and NYC Mayor Bloomberg insist nothing can be done about it. In fact, these men---these rich, white men---argue the American economy depends on illegal and foreign labor. Meanwhile honest, legitimate American citizens are subject to terrorist scanning and privacy invasion.
With the Monkey in the White House why should we be surprised the nation has transformed into the United States of Animal Farm?
CNN: Weather and propaganda
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Now that Hurricane Ike has passed through Texas, CNN can report on other world news...like the aftermath of Ike. And Sarah Palin. CNN plays its viewers like fools. It's not "breaking news" if you report the same thing as you did in the last breaking news bit two minutes previous.
I don't like Wolf Blitzer. He looks like a corporate Santa's little helper. His introductions and questions essentially amount to fuzzy sentence run-ons. And what exactly is his post anyway: commentator, reporter, journalist, questionman?? Whatever it is it sure is a cushy one. Wonder whose leg he humped to get it.
Anderson Cooper is slightly better in that he kept attention on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina when all the other mainstream newsmen closed the book once the former FEMA director, Michael Brown, resigned. But even the suspiciously queer Mr Cooper keeps covering naturally occurring extreme weather with attention that hints of pornography or propaganda.
Ike was no surprise. The power of hurricanes and tornadoes is no surprise. The natural cons against living in coastal regions are not surprising. Hurricanes cause great damage to mortals and our mere mortal structures like automobiles, houses, bridges, airplanes, churches; they always have and they always will. So why did CNN proudly transform into a 24hr "Hurricane Headquarters" when the hurricane only passed through one or two states? Maybe because a "breaking news hurricane watch" is more fear and paranoia inducing than, say, Mrs Palin's lipstick...but not as much as, say, our unprotected borders and ports, uninsured Americans, or a deceptive White House.
With scores of illegal immigrants crossing the borders every month would it not be more sensible to report on "Homeland Security" round the clock? Ike blew through and left but millions of illegal immigrants are still here with more sneaking in every day.
Now that Hurricane Ike has passed through Texas, CNN can report on other world news...like the aftermath of Ike. And Sarah Palin. CNN plays its viewers like fools. It's not "breaking news" if you report the same thing as you did in the last breaking news bit two minutes previous.
I don't like Wolf Blitzer. He looks like a corporate Santa's little helper. His introductions and questions essentially amount to fuzzy sentence run-ons. And what exactly is his post anyway: commentator, reporter, journalist, questionman?? Whatever it is it sure is a cushy one. Wonder whose leg he humped to get it.
Anderson Cooper is slightly better in that he kept attention on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina when all the other mainstream newsmen closed the book once the former FEMA director, Michael Brown, resigned. But even the suspiciously queer Mr Cooper keeps covering naturally occurring extreme weather with attention that hints of pornography or propaganda.
Ike was no surprise. The power of hurricanes and tornadoes is no surprise. The natural cons against living in coastal regions are not surprising. Hurricanes cause great damage to mortals and our mere mortal structures like automobiles, houses, bridges, airplanes, churches; they always have and they always will. So why did CNN proudly transform into a 24hr "Hurricane Headquarters" when the hurricane only passed through one or two states? Maybe because a "breaking news hurricane watch" is more fear and paranoia inducing than, say, Mrs Palin's lipstick...but not as much as, say, our unprotected borders and ports, uninsured Americans, or a deceptive White House.
With scores of illegal immigrants crossing the borders every month would it not be more sensible to report on "Homeland Security" round the clock? Ike blew through and left but millions of illegal immigrants are still here with more sneaking in every day.
Stupid rich girl
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Mrs Rothschild has bitterly withdrawn her fundraising might from the failed Clinton campaign (and a Democratic win in the general election) and transferred it to McCain's candidacy.
Mirabile dictu. The Rothschilds have long favored and funded war mongers, anyway.
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