Hodgepodge #10

Healthcare reform: Will not be "reformed" until politicians and the public admit the problem is the fraud and waste perpetrated by patients and physicians simply because they can, especially on a public tab. Healthcare became all about big business in the 1980s, just ask Wall Street. Government intervention in healthcare has not helped the sick and needy; it has created them.

Palin criticized the "Family Guy" for mocking her son Trig's Down syndrome and called for the firing of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel over Emanuel's use of the phrase "fu----- retards": This is Palin expressing shallow-mindedness by demanding political correctness from a TV cartoon and foul-mouthed folk. Although if you believe Levi Johnston, the trailer park daddy of Palin's grandson, Palin herself has referred to her child as retarded. Affectionately I'm sure. In Sarah's next speech she will condemn liberals/democrats for demanding political correctness.

Tiger Woods apologizes to his family, his wife, his children, his friends, his fans, and his charitable foundation: He seemed sincere - until he emphasized that there was no domestic violence in his home, to put to rest the rumors that Elin chased him from the house with a golf club. I suppose she could have just had that golf club in her hand at 3 a.m. ... while I agree with Tiger that Elin has shown enormous grace in her handling of this situation, such grace does not always stop a woman from picking up the nearest cudgel to knock a man's brains out. Hell hath no fury ...

Left/liberal/democrats are linking Joe Stack, the Austin kamikaze pilot, to Tea Partyers and rightwingers, while the rightwingers want to connect Stack to the "left": But his manifesto, if it is his, reads more left than right. "The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed." --- As a small business person, I can identify with much of Joe's rant. Regardless of what the government is doing or not doing, the majority of Stack's problems were his to own - in the end he chose to blame everyone else, which is what sociopaths and democrats typically do. It has always been survival of the fittest, and if you cannot outsmart and out think a parasitic government and its incompetent bureaucrats and employees ...

The DOJ decided "... lawyers showed "poor judgment" but did not commit professional misconduct when they authorized CIA interrogators to use waterboarding and other harsh tactics at the height of the U.S. war on terrorism, an internal review released Friday found." --- Did you expect a different conclusion?

Buenos Aires, Feb 18 (Prensa Latina). "Argentinean association Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo demanded the Nobel Committee to take away the Prize granted in 2009 to North American President Barack Obama, who keeps sending troops to fight other countries." ---This complaint coming from a country where the politicians and police are some of the most corrupt in the world, laundering drug money in plain sight, illegal arms sales to their neighbors, using death squads to fight crime, where abandoned children roam the streets sniffing glue and prostituting. Pot/kettle, glass/house. But yes, Nobel can take back Obama's prize, and we can give Mark Sanford to Argentina.

New York, Feb 19 (Reuters) - "U.S. front-month crude oil futures shot up to more than $80 a barrel in post-settlement trading on Friday, a five-week high, as geopolitical worries about Iran's nuclear program and strikes at French refineries." --- Hugo smiles, anything less is an oligarchical plot by his capitalist opponents.

Huntsville: The Alabama university professor charged with fatally shooting three colleagues is remorseful but does not recall the shooting, her defense attorney said yesterday. Roy W. Miller said Amy Bishop, 44, is likely insane and does not remember pulling out a handgun and shooting six colleagues, three fatally, at a biology department faculty meeting a week ago at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. "She just doesn’t remember shooting these folks," he said. --- The beginning of more antisocial female mass murderers. Amy Bishop, self-proclaimed intellectual, had her insanity defense planned before she locked and loaded. You've come a long way baby. Not only has the women's movement achieved its goal of teaching men to be more in touch with their emotions (effete), women have become stronger (mannish), able to wield swords and pump a shotgun with one hand. No Bette Davis or Kate Hepburns. No sirree, you got Sara Conners, Lara Croft, Kill Bill, an endless supply of leathered-up weapon toting babes.

A new study shows those who are bullied more are likely to have problems in other parts of their lives, lacking nonverbal communication skills: Inability to read nonverbal cues, understanding their social meaning, and coming up with options to resolve social conflict. In other words, both bully and bullied are social retards.

'Miss me yet?' asks billboard, George W. Bush. Not really Dubya since Barry O is more or less continuing your reign.

Last but not least, the Misery Index for January 2010 is at 12.33. The index was in double digits (10, 11, 12) during much of the 1980s and '90s. The all time high in my lifetime was 21.98 in June of 1980, so our misery still has a way to go. Even during the 1930s Great Depression the index can be calculated at 21-23. So when yapping heads say today is as bad or nearly as bad as the depression, that everything is spinning out of control, or worse that the guvmint has rescued the economy - just remember it is not even as bad as 1980. Yet.

Bayh's Burning Love

Evan Bayh : "To put it in words most people can understand: I love working for the people of Indiana, I love helping our citizens make the most of their lives, but I do not love Congress. I will not, therefore, be a candidate for election to the Senate this November."

Ya gotta wonder - is there a massive corporate payday in Bayh's future, or a scandal? Have republicans pulled out the polaroids to convince a few Dems to retire? (Does his "put it in words most people can understand" sound condescending?)

Evan is the son of Senator Birch Bayh, who was a pol from 1954 to 1980, when he lost his reelection bid to Dan Quayle after having lost his bid for the democratic presidential nomination to Jimmy Carter. You really must be a loser to lose to Dan Quayle.

I remember Evan's daddy, Birch Bayh. He made news in the 1978-79 bribery scandal of rice dealer and lobbyist Tongsun Park. The "Koreagate" scandal likely cost Dad his senate seat; but the senate ethics committee dropped an investigation into daddy Bayh. Tongsun still in the news decades later in the "Oil for Food" scandal.

I think Evan Bayh may be prepping for higher office. No longer in love with congress, he's a man of the people, a populist come to represent the common folk. Wife Susan, as described in the Indiana Journal, is a "professional board member," having been a board member and/or attorney of a dozen plus different corporations over the years (Eli Lilly & Company, Wellpoint, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Curis, Dyax).

But Bayh assured the common folk "... his wife's ties have had no bearing on his Congressional actions." And Mrs. Bayh points out that her rapid rise in the corporate world had nothing to do with hubby's senator career. Both are not influenced at all by corporate money peddlers, but by a burning desire to serve the people.

Just thinking about how pols are serving the people, and particularly generational peddlers and pols, makes me want a long hot shower with a rough sponge and a lot of soap.

Joe the (Assistant) Plumber

He's back. Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, or Joe the Plumber, political activist, author, commentator, possible future pol, etc.

Joe now says about John McCain : "I don't owe him s—. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it."

Since the 2008 election:
Wurzelbacher has signed with a publicity management agent regarding media relationships, including "a possible record deal with a major label, personal appearances and corporate sponsorships."

In November 2008, Wurzelbacher was hired for a series of commercials reminding people to convert analog television to digital

In November 2008, Wurzelbacher began promoting his book Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream. Co-written with novelist Thomas ... the book addresses Wurzelbacher’s ideas concerning American values. In particular, Wurzelbacher criticizes John McCain and states that he did not want him as the Republican presidential nominee.

In January 2009, Wurzelbacher began work as a motivational speaker and commentator. His first assignment was to comment from Israel on the fighting between the Israeli Defence Forces and Hamas, focusing on the Israeli experience of the conflict. On February 26, Wurzelbacher spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he led a panel titled "conservatism 2.0". On February 27, he spoke at the Washington, D.C. American Tea Party protest in Lafayette Park. In March, Wurzelbacher attended two conferences in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, first speaking to the "Conservative Young Professionals of Milwaukee," and then at the “Defending the American Dream Summit." On April 15, he spoke at the Michigan Tax Day Tea Party in Lansing. On May 6, 2009, Wurzelbacher appeared at a campaign event on behalf of New Jersey Gubernatorial Candidate Steve Lonegan. In May 2009, Time magazine reported that Wurzelbacher was quitting the Republican Party. On September 19 he spoke at a Tea Party protest at Veteran's Park in Milwaukee.

---- Joe also considered running for public office but after talking to God about it he felt God said no. God wants him in the "grassroots" activist area.

I wonder sometimes if "grassroots organizer/activist " may be code for the old Socialist "central planner." Grassrooter being the entry level. (If Hayek is correct, that central planning robs people of their basic freedoms and ruins their economy, then we must be on schedule.)

But, I think Joe has all the qualities of an American flip-flop politician - self-absorbed, self-serving, self-important, wanting big income for little effort, and really full of b.s.

Innate Simpletons

Tea Partyers Are White Nationalists, Pure and Simple.

Proof please, or just BAR's opinion?

There was a local Tea Party a few months ago but the turnout was small. However, the Partyers "core values" are: Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets. I can agree with that.

White Nationalists, KKK, Stormfront, skinheads, etc. are small groups of antisocial misfits and losers seeking attention. They can make money preaching their b.s. Their "leaders" are similar, like it or not, to guys like Jeremiah Wright - blaming another race for the benefit of their personal coffers. Painting a target on the back of someone else. Shepherds, herds, dues, collection plates - and they all claim God is on their side.

The "left" would be lost if not for the bums and excons of White Nationalists to scare folks. White Nationalists have as much power as did the multiracial S.L.A., or the Black Liberation Army - self-styled militants who consider themselves a revolutionary vanguard army. The only thing such groups accomplish is making criminals of themselves. They all use the same rhetoric, same shooting range, same tactics, making everything a class or race struggle, appealing to the most incompetent and weak-minded among us.

I guess BAR would think Les Phillip is an Uncle Tom for defending the Tea Partyers? Or Angela McGlowan from Mississippi?

Someone on the "right" suggested a literacy test and to the "left" that equals racism. I know a lot of folks, black, white, and brown, who agree that voters should be literate. Every wonder if we are where we are because too many stupid have been voting for too long?

The "left" had an orgasm when Meghan McCain said Tea Parties represent "innate racism." But shucks, what can you expect from a political youngin' like Meg who gets more attention with her boobs than her brains.

Valentines

In Every Beat


Best Thing

Swashbucklers

After falling short of the supermajority needed last week under streamlined rules for noncontroversial bills, Delegate Donna Christensen's bill to make St. Croix's Estate Castle Nugent a National Historic Site passed the House of Representatives Wednesday, and will be heading on to the Senate.

Zero Republicans supported the bill both times. Five Democrats voted no initially and four voted no on the second vote. The final vote was 240-yes to 175-no.

Based on Park Service estimates, CBO figures the entire 2,900 acres of non-submerged land addressed by the bill has a value of about $45 million and would take 10 years to acquire. The submerged land belongs to the V.I. Government and would be donated or traded, perhaps for land within the V.I. National Park on St. John.

In addition, CBO estimates a cost of $1 million to develop a general management plan and $1 million a year to manage the new park.

---- Owners of the property, the Gasperi family of cattle ranchers, wanted to prevent the land from being raped and pillaged, or "developed." They must be delighted with $45,000,000+ million in their coffers with the US government "managing" this historic site (former sugar cane and cotton plantations).

Now you can really appreciate the US department of parks, the department of interior, and department of park barrel politics -- every time you book the luxury guesthouse at Estate Castle, go nature hiking, dine on a free range drug free T-bone, or drink Jump Up and Kiss Me's made from Cruzan rum ... argggh argggh me matey.

Murtha

Jack Murtha dead at 77. Nature's term limits at work.

Tragic Comedy

The AFL-CIO is calling on Congress and the Obama administration to take five steps now to care for the jobless and put America back to work.

Extend unemployment benefit, food assistance, cobra for another 12 months. "Extending benefits also will boost personal spending and create jobs throughout the economy."

Rebuild America’s schools, roads and energy systems. America still has at least $2.2 trillion in unmet infrastructure needs.

Increase aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services. State and local governments and school districts have a $178 billion budget shortfall this year alone—while the recession creates greater need for their services.

Put people to work doing work that needs to be done. If the private sector can't or won't provide the needed jobs, the government should step up to the plate, putting people who need jobs together with work that needs to be done. These should never be replacements for existing public jobs. They must pay competitive wages and should target distressed communities.

----- While the above "calling on" sounds well and good - it's the same liberal/left hype I have heard for decades. Decades I tell you.

The AFLCIO outlived its purpose long ago; now just another international fatcat political organization claiming "Our political system is awash with dirty money, corporate money and foreign money," while they spend millions on their preferred candidates. Laughably, many union members are government employees. Whatever happened to the ULLICO scandal where labor leaders were profiting on insider trading? There was some sort of money laundry scandal involving AFLCIO/Teamsters and a guy named Carey. Doesn't anyone watch the Sopranos to understand how labor groups function?

"... putting people who need jobs together with work that needs to be done." Sounds simple and easy doesn't it. These same old talking points are temporary band-aids - benefits and busy work - and have been in play for decades.

To "create programs" or extend current programs, minimally keeps folk afloat for a short while, but these "programs" are nonproductive, solve nothing, create debt. Over the last few decades trillions have been poured into hundreds of "departments" of education, health, housing, social programs, transportation ... and wasted (stolen) at every level of bureaucratic disbursement.

Question is - who is the tax base that will generate the revenue or "step up to the plate" to pay for extended benefits, job creation, for the eternal building of schools that require metal detectors, to pay Bubba for filling potholes when he's not in rehab?

Do we just print more money as we have done for the last few decades? Or, as some say, use the war chest for the extending, building, creating. Really? I know, I know, it sounds so feasible and reasonable and good. Make roads, not war. Make Bubba spread tar, not war.

And how many do we put out of work when cutting defense spending? A war chest covers not just guns and bullets - but textiles, agriculture, hi-tech, R&D, aviation, shipping, automotive, science, education, finance, manpower. Defense spending, like it or not, supports and employs millions. Are there enough potholes and middle schools to employ everyone?

Does the liberal/left know how the economy works? In simple terms: You make a product/service which creates a market. The product/market will pay for salaries and goods that in turn generate other salaries and goods. These dollars create wealth which brings a higher living standard for everyone who produces.

Folks who do not produce are burdens to someone else. When you have more burdens than producers - you collapse. Which slice of the production/burden/collapse pie chart are we eating?

People and nations who do not produce go bankrupt. You cannot allocate funds if you are not producing funds. Tax the "rich"? The rich only tolerate a certain level of taxation before they take their money and run. A good many have done so. If you think the economy is bad now, just wait until more of the wealth has moved to tax friendlier places. Will you pay enough taxes to cover your government created temp job?

The U.S. has the highest combined statutory corporate income tax rate among OECD countries. Current theme is a nation will not attract new and expanded business and its attendant job creation if its corporate income tax is significantly higher than it is in comparable nations.

While you've been busy begging to fill potholes at a competitive wage and eating on foodstamps, the liberal/left has been creating government ownership through the welfare state and the corrupt bureaucracy that comes with it.

Think the liberal/left worked to your benefit? Then why did the markets that produce disappear from the US. The "left" has campaigned for years that protectionism is bad, we're all the same yet diverse, we are the world, workers unite, it's a global village - what they didn't tell you is you're one of many village idiots and you live like one.

Much of the US population is on the receiving end of the current tax-revenue stream. Estimates are 56% of Americans, but I have read figures as high as 80% when including other segments of society dependent on government support (disability, prisons, government funded institutions, rebates, refunds, free lunch and breakfast, etc.).

Feel-good incompetent "empty-eyed" politicians have endorsed a new breed of American rich who build estates anywhere in the world and feel at home, and a new breed of lower classes who prefer to gripe, an organized gripe of course, and wait for the government promised rescue.

Fact is, if you're getting a handout from government in any way, shape, or form - then you can't bitch when government bails out Wall Street. You have signed on to the unspoken deal between pothole fillers and pinstripe killers.

Guvmint Jobs

If executive bonuses rub you the wrong way so should congressional staffer bonuses. Lawmakers Have Long Rewarded Their Aides With Bonuses. In 2008 "more than 200 House lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, awarded bonuses totaling $9.1 million to more than 2,000 staff members, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of office-disbursement forms. The money comes out of taxpayer-funded office budgets, and is surplus cash that would otherwise be forfeited if not spent."

In 2009, "The House program pays up to $10,000 a year, with a maximum lifetime benefit of $60,000. Staffers making any salary are now eligible, though their total compensation - including the loan repayment - cannot exceed the 2009 cap of $168,411. From 2008 through May of this year, the cap was $145,159."

The justification for bonuses is - similar to private corporate bonus excuses - to attract the best and brightest, talented staffers - who are underpaid for their long grueling hours of hard work, they could make more money in the private sector, etc. etc. etc.

What do these talented underpaid "staffers" do? Their tasks include : Developing legislation, managing the office, press relations, answering mail, casework, scheduling appearances and appointments, and other duties. Congressional committee staff assist members with committee hearings, markups, reports, and assist Members when necessary on the floor and in conference committees."

"Developing legislation?" Sounds like writing policy to me ... Scheduling ... like those Vegas or tropical get-togethers. Press relations, appearances - damage control and constant campaigning for the next election; photo-ops. Answering mail/casework ... assisting just enough voters back home with petty nonpolitical problems to boost reelection odds.

Thank goodness these staffers worked so hard to give us things like the Patriot Act, TARP, Obamacare, Pork R'Us proposals...

Typical House and Senate staffer incomes are shown here. Not shown are the perks - paid travel expenses, health insurance, paid holidays/vacations, etc., and best of all the contacts made in the halls of power and K Street. Many of the staff positions, such as mail opener and phone answerer are not high pay, but the top staffers usually go on to lucrative careers in business or public/private "institutes". Some staffers go on to become congress critters themselves.

Staffing can also serve to supplement income of the congress critter's friends and family. And there's always the prospect of working decades as the top office dog, such as Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's Chief of Staff, Arthur Estopinan.

Chief of staffers typically earn 6-figures. They also can work for more than one congress critter, can hold paid positions on other "committees." Example: Chief staffer for Glen Nye (D-VA) Angela Kouters. Or as with David McKean , chief of staff for John Kerry and staff director for Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for a lowly underpaid 2009 salary of about $168,000, and all that elbow rubbing of the rich.

Amazing huh that pols used to write pamphlets and declarations in short order that most men and women could understand - now we require thousands of overworked underpaid staffers to assemble a foot-high paper pile that no one can make any sense of, other than the industries the pile will benefit.

It's A Whitewing Conspiracy

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

Crow theory sampler: The white backlash against Black success in tearing down Jim Crow led to a new form of racial domination: mass Black incarceration. "A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments." The "war on drugs" was central to the new system of control. "Before 1988, one year was the maximum prison sentence for possession of any amount of drug." Bill Clinton was to become the president most responsible for creating "the current racial undercaste."

Oh my, Billy Jeff Clinton, the "first Black president," was most responsible for the current domination of a racial undercaste? Note: The US prison and jail population as of 2008 was 33.44% White, 40.21% Black, 20.29% Hispanic, and 6.06% Other. The reason there is 7% more Blacks than Whites is because many poor white grandmamas will get little Bubba a slicker attorney than the public defender, even if she has to take out a second mortgage on her dilapidated house.

I'm sure The New Jim Crow is an interesting read and I would mentally argue with a great deal of it. Alexander's book, to paraphrase Van Jones' review, "shows that mass incarceration of Black America is the American gulag ... that the prison industry is to the 21st Century what Jim Crow was to the 20th" ... etc.

Yep, jailing colored folks is just the latest way whitey has devised to control Black America. I wonder, does Ms. Alexander know the little details that shape most black convicts? Like feral childhoods without a daddy and/or a sometime mama? Like running the street from the time the kid is old enough to walk? Or thinking the world owe you something just because you're here (sing it Pops ). Carrying a chip on the shoulder that nothing and no one is big enough to knock off. And thinking work, sacrifice, and education are for fools, 'specially white fools.

Does the author know that the baggy pants thugwear began in prison? Not because of any "gay" thing behind bars but simply because inmates were issued poorly fitting pants without belts, and hip hop artists adopted the style to further their tough guy image. Although I fail to see how showing a butt crack enhances one's masculinity. And you think clothes don't make the man? How can ya be a man with your pants on the ground.

Does anyone but the most addicted kool-aid drinkers, and/or blame whitey profiteers, believe that Black incarceration is a grand planned white conspiracy that supposedly somehow ensures white superiority?

Don't you think the prison industry would be just as fat and happy locking up their own race - the trailer trash, the meth heads, and crackerbillies dealing? You really think the white ruling class conspired to jail black men so the dregs of their society won't feel inferior?

There is no "new Jim Crow" or "white backlash" against Black success.

There are only authors, publishers, and brother-hoods who strongly and profitably encourage the black "undercaste" to "sputano nel piatto che mangiano da," or more bluntly, to shit where they eat. And then blame someone else for the mess on their plate.

Obamaretic Tingle

Did Barak deliver a message for his followers with his SOTU speech? Yessirree, same old same old postracial political cowpies.

Obama's speech was like every other presidential pep talk - basically telling us the worst is over, the best is yet to come, stay the course, build a new foundation for prosperity, we can do it rah rah rah. Although I do believe Barry had more b.s. in this speech than previous. If I didn't know better I would think his speech writers were over-educated hippies from the '60s. To be honest, my first thought was Bill Ayers and his Chicago bunch are putting words in Obama's mouth because I know Obama knows better. Unfortunately, he and his handlers believe you are fool enough to believe their political cowpie checklist.

For instance, Obama's statement on the recent SCOTUS ruling : "The Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign companies -- to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities."

Can you say demagogue?

Isn't Barak's education in law? He knows better! Not to mention a dime or two in his political coffers came from "foreign" bagmen like Nadhmi Auchi and Tony Rezko and a host of unknown shady characters.

To begin with, foreign companies are still not allowed, the ruling did not change that. (The Court held that 2 U.S.C. Section 441a, which prohibits all corporate political spending, is unconstitutional. Foreign nationals, specifically defined to include foreign corporations, are prohibiting from making “a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State or local election” under 2 U.S.C. Section 441e, which was not at issue in the case. Foreign corporations are also prohibited, under 2 U.S.C. 441e, from making any contribution or donation to any committee of any political party, and they prohibited from making any "expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication.")

Secondly, special interests/corporations have always bought and sold congressmen, governors, mayors, etc. In the 1950s we had Scoop Jackson, the "Boeing senator," and today the Lockheed senators, Northrop senators, Merck, Babcock, GE, etc. Nothing changed, other than today the pols and media do not openly nickname senators with the corporation they're porking for.

Corporation includes all "businesses" that have a snout at the trough - public, private, for and not-for profit. What pols have changed somewhat is the route to the money - the roads now go through more departments, the "Department of " Labor, HUD, Education, Agriculture, Transportation, etc. Makes the skunks smell better. Every department needs congressmen proposing more funds for dumbass but expensive ideas that a corporation will profit from at some level, i.e. the big dig, the bridge to nowhere, military jets that don't fly, a train to serve Disney World.... also known as earmarks. Trough hogs, pork, earmarks - the double-speakers are coaxing us toward the day when we will call such corruption simply "worthy funds" and feel good about it.

I could not force myself to watch the entire speech. The man is nearly as phony as Bush the Boy. I think the last honest heartfelt speech I heard was MLK's I Have a Dream, and he did. That's the problem with today's speakers - they have no dream; they have image makers and hairdressers, and speech writers assigned to cover designated talking points on what out-of-touch pols think we want to hear. It's enough to drive me into the arms of Glenn Beck or crypt keeper Larry King. There's less b.s. in tawdry gossip, sob stories, or watching the vein pump in Beck's neck.

And then I heard that idiot pundit Chris Matthews say "I forgot he was black tonight for an hour." Isn't Matthews the guy during the campaign who said Obama gave him a tingle up his leg?

Chris suffers, as many whites do, from the "mighty white of you" Harry Reid "light-skinned no Negro dialect" syndrome. Those with this syndrome also say things like "She/he is pretty to be a Negro." "He/she is really smart to be a Negro." "He/she sure are clean to be a Negro." "He/she works 2 jobs and is a Negro."

Usually such folks put their feet in their mouth because they overreach when praising the Negro - Chris thought that by stating he forgot Obama was black was a compliment - because white folks think the highest praise they can give you is to say they "forgot" for a minute (or an hour) that you're a Negro.

Crocheting Dolls

A man and woman had been married for more than 50 years. They had shared everything. They had talked about everything. They had kept no secrets from each other except the little old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about.

For all of these years, he had never thought about the box, but one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would not recover. In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took down the shoe box and took it to his wife's bedside. She agreed that it was time that he should know what was in the box. When he opened it, he found two crocheted dolls and a stack of money totaling $95,000. He asked her about the contents.

"When we were to be married," she said, '"my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doll."

The little old man was so moved, he had to fight back tears. Only two precious dolls were in the box. She had only been angry with him twice in all those years of living and loving. He almost burst with happiness. "Honey," he said, "that explains the doll, but what about all of this money? Where did it come from?"

"Oh," she said, "that's the money I made from selling the dolls."

Harry Scarey

Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader and isolated white male from Nevada, apologizes for racial remarks.

Reid said he believed the nation was ready to "embrace a black presidential candidate such as Obama" because Obama was "light-skinned and had no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama's race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination.

Obama accepted Reid's apology stating he has known Reid for years, etc. etc. But pols claim to know one another for years simply because they rub elbows in the halls of D.C. and patronize the same clubs, restaurants, dinner parties, spas, brothels.

To put this another way, Reid was saying he feared most token-minded Democrats would vote for a light-skinneded darkie who can talk like a white person when he wants to. Ironic. Reid, a member of the political party that has worked long and hard to shackle us with political correctness - doesn't do it correctly.

Another Year

Whooo hooo, another year. Another year to watch the liberal left radicals, if we can call the anti-establishment that; probably should use a lot of quotation marks around words like "liberal" "left" "radicals" etc. to insinuate their phonihood. At any rate, another year to watch, listen, and read the "leftist" bash and hash of the same old pols, policies, and pundits.

Another year of pointless rants and writings about Meltdowns, Bailouts, and Bonuses - even though these events have been occurring since 1776 - you would think your generation is the first to experience them.

Another year for the "left" to tell us what each and every political speech really means: Basically, each speech given by any politician means "more of the same." Another year of ranting how the rich are getting richer. Another year to rage against the machine because it turns decent men into patsies and prisoners - yep, just standing around doing nothing minding your own business and you could be the next convict or casualty of America's social, political, or economic injustice.

Another year to read radical forums where the endless discussion is on the theories of dead leftists and what the "movement" needs. There's always a couple of folks who stand out as having great knowledge and understanding of all things political - as opposed to the others who paste and copy from their manifesto with a snarky comment to nonbelievers or tell the forum guru how right-on he/she is. You couldn't pay me to participate in chatter with these people let alone become a pay-pal member. I'd sooner sit down with Sarah Palin and listen to her bleat about core values while Bristol served us beer and peanuts with little Tripp saddled on her hip.

Another year to hear we are all victims of the capitalist system which lies and murders and tortures - we are all potential detainees with a black bag of underwear on our heads. Another year to hear the "war on terror" is phony hype to scare us dumb Americans into dying for oil, because Russia or India or China or the EU would be much kinder about getting all the oil and wealth. Yes, the rest of the world is a kinder thief - they let the US bleed and pass the oil to them so they can produce tons of junk we dummies don't need but buy anyway, out of our low-wage jobs and/or guvmint checks/EBT.

Another year to hear how the poor need mo' money; and to remind us of the poor in Latino countries who are experiencing the "leftist" dream under leftist presidents (Hugo, Evo, Castro, Ortego). If only the US would elect a president with a name ending in "o" we too might experience a social "revolution."

Another year of anniversaries to rub rancor in old wounds so they never heal, MLK, MX, Fred Hampton, Medgar, and every civil righter or radical who was ever murdered or martyred. Most young black adults can't tell you who Hampton and Medgar were but most white "leftists" can. Actually, even MLK and MX mean little to anyone anymore other than a few black old-schoolers and a lot of white leftists who write as if they know the hearts of all men.

Yessirree, make demands for mo' stuff from the same folks who, according to the "left", murdered those who demanded change. Those who survive making demands go on to become preachers and professors who basically teach and preach how to game the system; sometimes they trot out to make statements when CNN or Fox News call for a "left" opinion. Preachers and professors - the oldest form of prostitution.

Another year to listen to the "left" beg for more and better education - never mind that education has been getting more money year after year and yet the population is dumber than a century ago. But what can ya do with a public school system where disinterested parents want teachers to housebreak their children, and too many teachers use movies in the classroom as educational tools. The academy of Woody Woodpeckers and Willie Wonkers.

Remember "We Want Jobs." Even if we be uneducated, felonious, and lazier than an old Mississippi porch dog - we still want jobs that pay us enough to consume all the bling we can buy and deserve for bitterly putting up with this unfair shit.

Another year to rant about the system that impoverishes predominantly blacks and Latinos, because of racism - I guess the Natives are reluctant to join the "movement" now that they're raking in casino dollars. And I gotta wonder, why aren't all the poor white folks out there demanding an end to the capitalist system? Is the "left" nothing more than a colored underclass led predominantly by white snakeoil salesmen with a slick Van Jones or Cynthia McKinney thrown in for show?

Another year to read rants on the unfairness of life in general, written by guys and gals from their radical beach chairs or condo or ranch. Remember these folks made it in spite of the system, not because of it. They repeat their socialist mantras with every corporate paycheck directly deposited into their account, with every donation their followers pay a pal, because you know, they're paid to put "the truth" out there.

It all sort of gives new meaning to the phrase "death to America."

Bigger Hammers

America's White Underclass By JOE BAGEANT.

Not to pick on Joe in particular but some thoughts came to me when reading this piece of his mind. Joe talks about the usual "code" words and attempts to give definition to the words "underclass" and "middle class."

Joe: "For instance, for all practical purposes and to most Americans, regardless of race, the term "middle class" means "white." Plain and simple. We all know that, even members of the "black middle class."

Until now I personally had not thought of "middle class" as having a color, but just simply an income level, or the class of Mr. and Mrs. Keeping Up With The Jones. I missed that coding I guess and fell into the making assumptions people. According to the "left", I should have known middle class meant white folk.

According to Joe : "But this comes down to describing human beings solely in terms of their jobs in the capitalist labor marketplace, and assumptions about income and whether one takes their daily shower before they go to work or after they come home. By that definition, anyone of working age who doesn’t have a steady job of the right type, for whatever reason, is in some sort of “economic underclass.” In other words, they are the people that middle class folks feel should damned well be working, if they are over age 18 and have a pulse. (“If I gotta do time in this meaningless workhouse of a nation, you do too!”) This underclass includes any people of color seen on the street at midday during the week, single mothers, and paraplegics too, now that the middle class is paying taxes for handicap parking spaces and wheelchair access to the public shitters."

Again, personally I never gave much thought as to whether a person takes their shower before going to work or after coming home from work. However, husband and self have held jobs where we did the shower before and some after - never worried about the job being the "right type" as long as said job kept our boats afloat at the time.

I guess Joe's rant is about those pesky "bourgeois" folks who he thinks are looking down at everyone else as the "underclass." Does the "middle class" concern itself with why people of color are on the street midday? Single mothers, paraplegics? Although you know, most of those handicap spaces are not taken by paraplegics but by puffing 350+ pound younger people, usually in a new van or SUV, who manage to walk into the store to plop in one of those motorized carts at Wal-mart.

Joe goes on describing this hearty brand of "underclass": "Non-mainstreamers," in socio-demographic speak. Many of these are men who say, "Screw it, I ain’t gonna even bother to work my ass off and be treated like dirt for six bucks an hour. I’d rather shoot pool."

Yep, shoot pool and let the State support those 3 or 4 babies he's got. Maybe the guy can draw a check for that bad back sustained from leaning over the pool table so much. Is shooting pool now code for what real "men" do today?

And Joe goes on to rant about income disparity, his first-hand experience with being a member of the underclass, and the unfairness of the American system, blah blah blah. Boiling it down to his success came because he has real balls. Does that mean successful folks have real balls and the underclass has pool balls?

What struck me in this piece though is: "When it comes to the underclass, there is no arguing that some people are members because they are so damned uneducated they cannot count their toes or read well enough to fill out a job app, the causes of which are too deep and tangled to go into at the moment. Others just don’t care to do the smiling grammatically correct wimp assed customer service zombie thing. They prefer swinging a bigger hammer than that – doing real work, like America used to do."

A bigger hammer. Hmmm. Not too many years ago I remember when the so-called "left" or folks like Joe, were writing rants on that bigger hammer, those "real work" jobs. We were told by guys like Joe that those manufacturing jobs, mining jobs, shower-after-work jobs, although they paid well, were merely slave labor, physically destroying your mind and body, making zombies out of you with repetitive monotonous tedious and sometimes dangerous labor; sapping your soul and strength. They asked you, why should anyone have to put a widget in a widget on an assembly line all day? It's demeaning.

Well, the PTB heard the Joes and have rid the "underclass" or "middle class" of most of those big hammer jobs. And when men and women are offered "bigger hammer" jobs today, the jobs are too roughneck or too destructive to the green folks, or some group will complain and remind you that you should question why these jobs are of any use whatsoever - you could be playing pool or dealing drugs, getting a government check, or doing something easier all day.

And of course, Joe does the usual comparison to some foreign country that has it so much better. In this case Australia where he says a maid told him she makes $19/hour and was going to school with an assortment of public assistance programs. (I guess this means Aussie welfare is better than US welfare.)

According to Joe, if you're an old farty Wal-mart greeter or a Hooters waitress you are a member of the "humiliated and socially oppressed people." You might be a greeter for extra money to play bingo and that short hooter skirt doesn't compare to the sexting pics you send around - you're still mostly humiliated and oppressed by capitalism and the man.

I remember when it would have been humiliating to not work, regardless whether it was six dollars an hour or not. I remember when speaking good English didn't make you a "wimp assed" zombie but someone who was more employable. I remember when people were respected for working any job, period, not given excuses to hang around the pool hall and bitch about life instead of living it.

Guys like Joe, pretending to care while denigrating, and encouraging the ignorance and victimhood of all the "underclass" folks who should have everything and pay little to nothing for it instead of doing "time in this meaningless workhouse nation". Oh woe is us.

Dizzney World

There is really nothing of importance to write about.

Tiger Woods skirt-chasing to fill his emotional pit with plastic skanks when he has a good woman at home? Didn't mama warn you about guys like this? Few ever "settle down" and then only because they can't get it up, but now with Viagra ... the old guy in the bar picking up whatever is left at closing time.

How about reaming Obamabush a new one for his peace prizing Afghanistan surge? Or praising him for finally doing something with the issue other than deliberating it.

Could write about the old man Berlusconi's smack in the face with an overpriced religious souvenir.

How about the ever present global cooling, warming, no wait... it's climate change now. It's been proven - it's colder, it's warmer, yep, it's climate change.

How about Governor Patterson's cutting money to schools and municipal funding? It's described as a "fiscal bind" and "budget gaps." When regular folks are in the same situation it's called not having a pot to piss in or a window to throw it from.

There's always the WSWS to pick on. "US firms lose out in bidding for Iraq oil fields." In a clear signal of the declining influence of American capitalism, even in a country conquered and occupied by the US military, companies from China, Russia, Malaysia and Angola, along with several European oil giants, won most of the rights for exploration and development of Iraq’s oil fields. The most aggressive bidder was the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), while Lukoil and Gazprom of Russia, and European firms like Royal Dutch Shell, ENI (Italy), British Petroleum, Statoil (Norway) and Total (France) all won bids. Petronas, the state-owned Malaysian oil company, won the most bids, three, while the Angolan state oil company Sonangol won two.

Duh. I told you 5 years ago - the US is just the muscle, the brains are elsewhere, although apparently some Americans had enough sense to know a good deal for selling out the US when they saw it. It's a clear signal for sure - of the influence of global capitalism mixed with feel-good fuzzy socialism.

But what the hay, we can always sing:

It's a world of laughter,
A world of tears.
It's a world of hopes,
And a world of fears.
There's so much that we share,
That it's time we're aware,
It's a small world after all.

Chorus:
It's a small world after all.
It's a small world after all.
It's a small world after all.
It's a small, small world.
(Repeat ad nauseam until you have permanent white matter atrophy.)

Ho hum. I'm going to go out on a limb here and be politically incorrect: Merry Christmas, merry Christmas. Hohoho - for all the old guys, and gals, in the bar. May your pits be filled.

Tinfoil Rambling

Sometimes I shake my head at the ragbag of "folk heroes" that US liberals/radicals polish up for followers. Most recent I've read include Joe Hill and Lynne Stewart. I spent a few hours researching Hill and his brief IWW career, and court case, to conclude he was most likely guilty as accused, but made into a much needed martyr of the IWW. According to wiki: IWW today it is actively organizing and numbers about 2,000 members worldwide, of whom fewer than half (approximately 900) are in good standing that is, have paid their dues for the prior two months. Gotta wonder, when a club has been around 100 years and isn't doing any better than that ...

Supporters of Hill believe it was by coincidence that Joe was shot the same time as a local grocer and son were murdered in a robbery attempt, with another son wounding one of the 2 perps. Joe's friend and traveling buddy also coincidentally disappeared from sight the night of the attempted robbery and killings. Joe decided he would rather hang from the gallows than give up the name of his alleged alibi, a married lady he was in bed with at the time of the shooting. The insinuation is her hubby caught them and shot Joe. Joe refused to name her as in 1914 it would have ruined her reputation. Apparently, the feelings were not reciprocal as the lady never came forward to save his neck. If her hubby caught them I guess he too decided to protect his wife's reputation by keeping quiet. Or - maybe Joe was lying about his alibi, a good one - one that portrayed him as chivalrous. Then, as now, a famous politician and social celeb called for mercy on Joe, but he was hanged, or "murdered by the capitalist class" if you prefer it that way.

Lynne Stewart was the attorney for the blind Sheikh of the 1993 WTC bombing and convicted of, among other things, conspiracy to defraud the United States, providing and concealing material support, and making false statements; she was passing messages from her client terrorist to his terrorist friends. She could have received 20-30 years but was given 28 months. Stewart states she came to view the Sheikh as a "fighter for national liberation of oppressed people." Stewart is a self-proclaimed political radical who told the jury she has advocated a violent "revolution of the people that overthrows institutions." Unbeknownst to the people, the replacement institutions will be far worse than anything they have now - but don't let reality get in the way of rhetoric. And of course what "institutions" does she speak of ? The IRS? The institution of marriage? Or the prison she is heading to for a few months?

The liberal/radical seem to have various types of heroes and/or martyrs. One type, like Joe Hill, is lowborn, from the pool of the "oppressed and poor" folks - elevated to icon status. Their careers are usually short-lived as they meet an untimely end, never through any fault of their own but as a direct result of "standing up to the evil ruling class", or so it is told by the makers of common folk history.

Another type of "radical" or progressive hero is a member of the affluent/ruling class or so close to it they can taste it, e.g. Daniel Elsberg, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, or more recent Michael Moore, Sibel Edmunds, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader, even Obama for some. And the up and comings like Cindy Sheehan, etc. A few imported icons, Che, Chavez, Fidel.

(On a side note, the World Socialist Web Site last week published a verbose 2-part article in defense of pedophile Roman Polanski, more or less declaring the poor man is an artiste and victim of a vindictive witch hunt. Talk about polishing a turd... And people wonder why our children are prematurely adult and our adults permanently childish?)

Note that today's "radicals" do not come close to martyrdom. These folks are safe - whether their chatter is subtle or radical - they are window dressing, so common folk think they have a few higher-ups on their side. These progressive/radical icons work against the lower classes while appearing to advocate for them - some so dense they may not realize what they're doing. In reality, they exploit the lower classes by encouraging their impulsivity and anti-social behavior. Such folks advocate the belief that government should provide all things and solve all problems. From the other side of their mouth they rant about government oppression and "institutions."

And rather than inform their followers with truth, that the underclass in the US are not victims of oppression, they encourage them to become willing barbarians in destroying what they do have. I guess to make way for their new and improved government institutions.

If affluent/ruling class "heroes" are assassinated, they, like the poor folk hero Joe Hill - are victims of the ruling class, or so it seems as told by the tellers of folk history, e.g. JFK, RFK, or Wellstoned ... Remember, if you have the slightest political profile and/or lean a tad to the left - your death is conspiracy fodder - your car, train, plane, boat was sabotaged, your heart attack or cancer was injected via a CIA needle, you were "suicided," or that lone nut shooter was really backed up by several hundred or thousand agencies, departments, professionals, and lay people who at best were willing participants or coerced into keeping quiet, and/or at worst became part of the ruling class body count, a body count that mysteriously never has any proof - conjecture is not evidence. For instance, if you were anywhere near Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, and you eventually died - you were murdered because you knew or saw something.

As with JFK and RFK, the conspiracies surrounding MX and MLK assassination no longer work for me. Why would the American ruling class feel threatened by either of these men? What demands were these men making that the ruling class was not already in the process of doing? If any part of the ruling class backed these murders it was that faction who feared MX and MLK would have fought against the Handout & Dumbdown Slave Plantation that liberalism created.

Do I have heroes? Sure. My family and friends over the years. Decent, hardworking, honest, fun loving, fair-minded, self-sacrificing, loving and loyal people. And all the nameless who stood up to me or for me, to do or say the right thing when it needed to be said or done - the random acts of good people.

Heroes don't have to be perfect, they need to be genuine - not created by press releases and image handlers or self-serving organizations. Most of our "heroes" shine only because they've been wrapped in a lot of tinfoil.

Socialist Sandals

Former U.S. official, wife admit to 30 years of spying for Cuba. A former State Dept official and his wife admitted in federal court Friday that they spied for Cuba over the past three decades, receiving coded instructions over a shortwave radio and passing along information to intelligence operatives in "dead drops" and "hand-to-hand" passes.

Walter K. Myers, 72, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit espionage and wire fraud. His wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, pleaded guilty to conspiring to gather and transmit national defense information.

Assistant U.S. Attorney G. Michael Harvey said in court that Walter Myers was working in the State Department's Foreign Service Institute in 1978 when he went on a two-week trip to Cuba. He had been invited by a Cuban government official, an intelligence operative, who wanted to assess whether Myers would make a good spy, Harvey said. In a diary of the trip, court papers show, Myers called Cuban leader Fidel Castro "brilliant and charismatic."

Under the plea deal, the couple agreed to forfeit $1.7 million, the total of Myers's salary over the years, in cash and property to the U.S. government. That includes a prized 37-foot Malo sailboat. Sounds like a good plea deal for the Myers.

I guess none dare call it treason anymore, it's wire fraud.

According to court documents, Myers had been put on a watch list by his State Department boss in 1995, meaning he was under suspicion. The FBI investigation didn't start until 2006, after his boss raised fresh suspicions when he returned from a trip to China. ... One key question to be answered will be whether the Cubans were using Myers to produce information for other countries, such as Russia, Venezuela, Iran or China. I wonder how much Fidel received reselling the information ...

Prosecutors said in the year prior to his 2007 retirement, Myers downloaded the crown jewels on Cuba - 200 "sensitive or classified intelligence reports." "He had access to everything on the computers," the flabbergasted U.S. official told the Daily News, adding that the scope of what he passed to Cuba's spy service is unknown." ... Myers boasted to an FBI operative posing as a new Cuban handler that he had gotten "lots of medals" from the Communist regime."

Your tax dollars at work, and now federal pension dollars. Somewhere in Hollywood a wannabe artist must be scripting a sympathetic docudrama as we speak. Maybe Michael Moore can show how the Myers helped the "cause" of freedom and justice everywhere.

Some say the bulk of information Myers passed to Cuba was US classified economic data. Apparently someone somewhere made good use of that ...

The Myers spent a lifetime enjoying the benefits of American capitalism - money, luxuries, prestige - yet their loyalty is for "lots of medals" from a despotic island dictator where the majority are unemployed/underemployed and living in shanties. Those freedom and justice folks won't be satisified until the whole world is wearing their sandals ... although you know, with the right ribbon and a couple of grommets ... I might be able to make a buck ...

American Anthem

Sung by Norah Jones.

Another Unspun Hero

It's that time again, more book peddling on JFK tinfoil for the 46th anniversary.

This guy, Abraham Bolden, The Echo from Dealey Plaza, published 2008, is an account of Bolden's time as a member of the White House Secret Service. (All 3 months of his WH duty.) His name caught my eye today while prowling around at BAR. I guess Bolden falls into the usual "Mafia" and government did it theory.

But first let me get this silly comment out of the way - BAR : "The American Mafia owes its very existence to the CIA, which protected and promoted the illegal drug trafficking responsible for so much loss of life and destruction of entire communities."

Oh my, someone is spinning - blame the Italians. The Mafia, costa nostra, syndicate, outfit, the mob - was around and doing well looooong before the CIA was established in 1947. ... hahaha "its very existence" .... (Factoid: White folks at one time called Italians/Sicilians "spaghetti niggers.")

Isn't that in opposition to the "left" argument that the Mafia owes its very existence to bootlegging, which is also their argument for why we should legalize drugs? The same drugs that are responsible for loss of life and destruction of entire communities?

Bolden seemed like a decent fellow. He graduated cum laude from Lincoln University, spent a year working for Pinkerton, then became an Illinois State Trooper, a job he held for four years. His record was exemplary and Ike Eisenhower appointed Bolden to the Secret Service in 1959, where he was assigned to investigate Chicago counterfeiting rings.

In 1961, JFK offered Bolden a job in the White House security detail. He accepted, and became the first black Secret Service agent. After 3 months on the job Bolden became disillusioned because white agents used the "n" word and because he was housed separately when the agents traveled through southern states. He complained to his supervisor about those issues and about the unprofessional attitude of other agents who often drank heavily. He was transferred back to Chicago where he returned to counterfeiting cases, until he was convicted of soliciting a bribe from a counterfeiter in 1964.

(I know a retired SS agent who served from 1958 to 1978, protecting presidents, heads of state, foreign dignitaries, etc. He too had stories of the agents drinking and carousing, off duty of course, of the kinky appetites of the men they protected, and that most of them were definitely not worth taking a bullet for, but he convinced me it was an extreme stress job and taken seriously at all times.)

Here's where the tinfoil thickens: The left-wingers are pushing the scenario that Bolden "had heard" of a JFK assassination plot scheduled for November 2 by Cuban nationals in Chicago. But the files for this incident were "lost," conveniently, for Bolden. Famous book selling "investigative" journalist Edwin Black says 2 Cuban men were arrested but later released. Arrested but released, doesn't that sound like the dancing Israelis? Get some new material people. Famous journalists saying something doesn't make it fact, well ... unless your tin is too tight. When Bolden attempted to tell the Warren Commission about what he had "heard" - he was arrested, "framed." You really think the Warren Commission would have taken Bolden's hearsay assertions as a reason to declare anything differently about the JFK assassination?

Here's my favorite "spin" the Left has put on Bolden, which he too has adopted 45 years later: Joseph Spagnoli, the gangster who pointed the finger at Bolden .... drum roll ... "later confessed he lied to the jury to convict Bolden at the request, allegedly, of Prosecutor Richard Sikes."

Whew! And I thought the spin was going to be a new angle - not the same old "recanted" or confessed to lying mantra.

All you need do is read a few boringly official transcripts - isn't the internet great? This is just one, there are others.

First what was defendant Bolden accused of and later convicted of: "On the morning of May 11, the defendant went to the home of Frank Jones. Jones was then under indictment for counterfeiting and had twice been arrested by the defendant. Agent Bolden told Jones a number of facts about the Spagnoli case, including the whereabouts of Sandra Hafford. Hafford, an erstwhile friend of Spagnoli, she had testified against Spag before the grand jury, and was being held in protective custody by the Secret Service in a downtown Chicago hotel. The defendant (Bolden) produced several onionskin papers stapled together and a small, typewritten piece of paper containing an excerpt from the summary report of the Spagnoli investigation. He asked Jones to go to Spagnoli's home, give Spagnoli the piece of paper, and tell him that he could have the entire file for $50,000. The defendant said that the money would be split between Jones and him." ($50,000 is $344,000 in 2008 dollars, not bad for some onionskin.)

But, let's take a peek at this one and see what ol' Spagnoli's confessed lies were.

"At his own trial, Spagnoli testified that he had committed perjury in certain respects as a Government witness in the defendant's (Bolden) trial. He testified that his livelihood was gambling and that he had falsely testified during the defendant's trial that his mother supported him. He stated that this perjury was suborned by Government counsel in order to make him look better in the eyes of the jury. Spagnoli also testified that he had lied during the defendant's trial in reference to the date on which his call to Agent Martineau was placed, and possibly with reference to other dates. Spagnoli was thereafter found guilty and received a fifteen year sentence."

Oh, the liar, the liar. He preferred the jury think his mama supported him rather than his gambling, and on further reading, his dates may have been off by a day, the 12th instead of the 11th - what a liar. That's it folks. The tinfoil's spinning of "confessed he lied to the jury" is so you will assume he lied about Bolden soliciting a bribe.

My questions : Bolden claims the SS did not take guarding JFK seriously. You really believe Bobby and others didn't vet their men any better than that? After the Kennedy boys had just had Diem assassinated - you think they weren't worried about the loyalty of their own detail? As MX said, chickens come home to roost ... but the roosters were not Kennedy's secret service.

If there was a documented plot against JFK in Chicago that November, so what? We know there was supposedly one in Miami that year. There were and are numerous plots against presidents - most by misfits looking for a name, Squeaky Fromm, John Hinckley, or loudmouth barflies - sometimes they succeed.

Why would the government bother to frame a low level still "newbie" agent like Bolden? Because he was allegedly going to tell the Warren Commission about his hearsay of a Chicago plot for which there was no record? What threat did Bolden pose to the mob or the government? None.

Was Bolden just another corrupt petty official in Chi-town - or our latest unsung hero? There must be 344,000 ways to package that distraction.

Newsweak Squawk

Sarah Palin: Newsweek running shorts cover is sexist. Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential candidate, has denounced as "sexist " and "degrading" a Newsweek cover that depicts her in a coquettish pose in gym kit.

Mrs Palin, who is making front pages across the United States this week as she promotes her blockbuster memoir "Going Rogue", told more than one million supporters on Facebook that the image and the treatment of her were depressingly predictable.

David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network commented that the cover was "biased and sexist at the same time", contrasting Mrs Palin's treatment with the favourable Newsweek portrayal of Hillary Clinton when she was first lady. "Conservative women are portrayed as nuts and dopey," he concluded. "Liberal women are heroes for the next generation."

----- I really have to wonder about the mindset of those more concerned with image than substance. Michelle Obama has had a couple of not so flattering images on the front of Newsweek, as have many other folks. Who cares. But, when your reading audience is the checkout line at Wal-mart ...

Palin is so disappointing. She seems to be a 24/7 down-home folksy chirper who either cannot or does not know when to sound grownup. Is this Sarah or are her current advisers telling her to complain about the cover, and she thinks the complaint is a winner? Here's a clue Sarah - it's not about sexism - it's about sex. Sex sells everything, even pols, at least in the lower 48. You know you're sexy and trim on that cover (a MILF for those young republicans). You're like the pretty girl who laments how awful she looks, just so her friends will tell her how stunning she looks. High school.

All that energy, ability, and charisma and Palin can't come off as anything more than someone qualified to be a bubbly bright office receptionist, filing nails, chewing gum, checking the mirror. Here's another clue Sarah - don't pose in a coquettish gym kit, or make the cover contractually your choice.

Before the end of her short McCain campaign I had grown weary with her chirping chatter. She reminds me of a canary - tweet tweet tweet, even if she is squawking about serious subjects, she still tweets. Any good sense she has is lost in the tinnitus.

If we lived in an adults-in-charge world I'd say Palin has no political future but since we don't, the little coquette does.

The New Minority

The news is horrific these days, especially for women and children. Some cases more disturbing than others, for instance the little girl Shaniya sold for sex by her mother. It disturbs me more, some stories do, as she physically reminds me of my own granddaughters ages 5 and 7.

Of course, such depravity is not new to man, but when did America's current slide into depravity begin, and how? We know where the talking heads and experts point their fingers. Medical/pharma profession say it is depression/mental health, liberals claim it is poverty/capitalism, religion says it is the turning from God/tithing, educational system says it is education, family service departments claim it's lack of sufficient funds and resources. Throw more money, throw more money - into the abyss of going nowhere and correcting nothing. And the media - which creates celebrities from the dumbest among us, give a subtle okay nod for the weak-minded to be addicts, freaks, fools - it might bring fame and fortune, even your own series, a book, or a movie detailing another wasted life.

Tracking back to the beginning of the most recent cultural slide it began with removing individual responsibility while at the same time promoting individual hedonism. A bad philosophical mix; not the first time in history and probably not the last, but it always ends in collapse.

Enter the governments willing to contribute funds to sustain the hedonistic orgy, as they always have historically, under the mantle of compassion and fairness, etc., and the result is what we have today: A nation ruled for and by vultures, perverts, deadbeats, incompetents, cowards, and their powerful apologists and excuse-makers.

American society today gives new meaning to what used to be the 7 deadly sins. Sloth, envy, pride, gluttony, greed, wrath, lust - gussied up today as leisure time, self-love, self-esteem, righteous indignation, and the all-time favorite - sexual liberation. Aren't we modern?

Despite the effort of a few good people - most American women, children, and minorities today are emotionally, psychologically, and economically worse off than ever, save those few of us who escaped the 1960s unscathed by progressive ideology set in concrete. All the "movements" of the '60s have been twisted, quite easily, to convince the masses to enslave themselves to self-defeating ideals and choices. Remember, the best slave thinks he's free. And yes, I think it's been engineered by the PTB - but it would not have worked had the people not gotten onboard.

Descriptions and reasons for America's demise has been said better by others, and in lengthy detail, from both a liberal and conservative perspective. But basically, both "sides" have been taking the country in the same direction for 50 years. The PTB have diluted the culture with an overabundance of immigration that demands accommodation rather than assimilation, overcrowded the workplace with disposable labor; offshored and outsourced your future; polluted the American spirit with a mishmash of anything goes "diversity"; educated the nation's children with violence, sex, drugs, and sleaze - and made you accept it all like the meek sheep you are - convinced that tolerating it makes you generous, caring, a good person. A culture without real values, and loyalty to those values, is readily controlled - catering to a corrupt mind is easy.

Fifty years ago the lives of miserable people would only have been viewed in dusty textbooks on aberrant lifestyles, or sold under the counter in plain brown wrappers - today such lives are mainstream news and entertainment, emmy winning drama. Years ago, where folks would turn away in horror and guard their children from exposure - they now want every salacious detail, prime time, kids in the room or not. What used to be life in the gutter is now a potential money-maker, often prefaced with "only human" or "terrible childhood."

To a more or lesser degree, America has become a nation of Charlie Mansons. Crude, cruel, doped and dumbed, promiscuous, irresponsible, dysfunctional, murderous - walking dead pretending to be a "family." Some folks murder the body, some murder the mind.

The higher up the food chain you go the more respectable you can make your 7 sins appear. We've had more physician/pharma diagnosing designer "diseases" in the last 50 years than throughout history - for the sole purpose of putting lipstick on the personal failures of the middle and upper classes - as they stampeded to join the predominantly social dysfunction of the lower classes, who appeared to be having more fun and not paying the piper. The "redistribution" and egalitarian society my friends had nothing to do with uplifting the poor - it has everything to do with lowering the middle classes, who also willingly got onboard with the engineering.

The mother of Shaniya is pregnant with her 4th child. We know her lifestyle, her choices; we know who and what funds her leisure time and excesses. Her counterparts could be Susan Smith, Casey Anthony, Andrea Yates, or even Nadya Octomom. These are people whose feelings are about #1 and nothing else. And there are no familial or social boundaries to thwart them. Unfortunately, they are out breeding us. They are not mentally ill - they are sociopaths and psychopaths. They are not victims of society, they prey on society. They have no values and are of no value. Taxpayer funds should not have to sustain them for even a day. Cold, I know, but it's reality.

As much as I resist giving voice to it - there truly are a lot of useless feeders in the US. Whether they murder their children or not - their children are doomed 99% of the time, and we do not as a society intervene because the idea of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness has been perverted to the notion that people have "rights" to do whatever they feel like doing. What they often feel like doing is illegal and immoral. And when we must punish, for most of them, they are sent to the first "home" they have ever known, where there is a clean bed, regular meals, rules, discipline, structure, which is why so many, especially males, return "home" to prison, again and again.

Not long ago the maintenance of dysfunctional feeders who avoided legal problems, was left to the family, the church community - which kept their numbers few and far between. Today, with the new age politically correct view, no one has a say-so regarding anyone's lifestyle or choices - but we are all responsible for the outcome and cleanup. In the new age religion of Love & Other Free Stuff - I have no right to prevent you from destroying your mind, your body, your children, your community, or me - yet I am financially, morally, and physically obligated for the mess and/or horror your choices dump on the trail. And the trail is knee deep.

Nancy Grace referred to the mother and cohort of the Davis girl as "animals" on her newscast yesterday, but she's wrong. Animals have more reason and heart.

Our family pets are all "rescue" animals. Last year I rescued a pair of Quaker parrots, they squawk more than I like but it gets my attention. These birds, like so many others in the bird family, mate for life. If one dies the other grieves for months and may or may not eventually bond with another bird. They share in everything. They mate and raise their hatchlings, equally. They are diligent, caring, responsible, courageous, loyal, dutiful, faithful, brave, resilient, sharing, and dedicated. That's called a value system, a value system builds character. Many humans, especially pols, use the "values" phrase occasionally but can't seem to practice it because they don't understand the concept and/or they can't muster the energy to live it - values/character require hard work. America has become a nation where folks tweak their values to justify their efforts and vice versa, resulting as expected in few values and little effort.

The scope and growth and size of this segment of society is both intensely sad and so unnecessary, if we honestly cared about one another. The new minority in America is not based on color, creed, gender, or religion - the new minority are those folks who want a society with rules and values, and yes "personal responsibility." But they need to squawk louder, as the human vultures have overrun the nest - and time is running short.

Rather Be ...

Red sky at night - sailors delight.

Jockeying in Iraq

Romancing the Daddy

Eleven Americans were on their way to Colonel Mouammar Kadhafi’s “house,” actually a large walled military compound not far from the city center. Headed by former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, the U.S. delegates were among 400 guests of the Universal Association of Green Book Supporters, holding their First World Congress in late October. Colonel Khadafi, leader of Libya since the revolution of 1969 and chief promulgator of the Green Book, had agreed to speak to us.

McKinney had addressed the Green Book World Congress the night before. "Colonel Khadafi should be highly commended," said the Green Party’s 2008 presidential candidate, "for honoring our ancestors - the framers of true democracy - by reaching out from Africa to the entire world. We would like to thank him for this opportunity to discuss his thoughts as presented in the Green Book."

-------- My instinctual dislike and distrust of McKinney continues to hold true.

The Green Book (Arabic الكتاب الأخضر) is a book written by Muammar al-Khadafi (known as "the leader"), first published in 1975, outlining his views on democracy and his political philosophy. Socialism Khadafi style.

The green book is the usual rant about the evils of capitalism and white people, who of course own everything. Supposedly ... "Libyans who have been phased into the redistribution program begin with a "portfolio" worth about $20,000 and receive about $1,000 in revenue a month." Libya's wealth is mainly from oil revenues. I have found nothing that says this portfolio has occurred, but that "the leader" proposed the redistribution February 2009 to congress, who have yet to decide on it. In January of this year Khadafi mentioned nationalizing the oil companies. That's right folks, although the leader nationalized a few way back when, about one-half or more of oil production is still pretty much owned and operated by evil capitalist corporations.

In exchange for this redistribution portfolio, if it exists, you cannot criticize Islam or the government. Homosexuality is illegal. Most women are still second class citizens. Travel visas are restricted. Many Libyans seem to carry a big shoulder chip (40 years of listening to the leader's b.s.). There is no nightlife, a few restaurants with poor service, lots of pickpockets and thieves, filthy streets, few beaches worth visiting, no architecture, no theatre or musical exhibitions, no venturing out in the evening, no place for women or children - unless you join one of the expat circles (usually employees of an evil corporation working to upgrade the country). You may have to wait a year for high speed internet - but ... it's a "developing country" and Khadafi, with his little green book, is working on those problems. However, if you are a Westerner with a little money and the appropriate attitude, Libyan life can be more accommodating.

Khadafi, after 40 years of "democratic" rule, has appointed his son, heir-in-waiting Sayf al-Islam, as "General Coordinator" with expanded powers that give him the authority to oversee the government and the parliament - to modernize the country. Though the son denies there is any plan of succession. (But after 40 years of dad squandering the national wealth from his walled military compound, gotta keep squander in the family.)

Here is the transcript of McKinney's Libyan speech. "We hold that the Green Book principles of popular sovereignty are eminently suited to the task of halting and rolling back the impoverishment of the U.S. state ... In economics, we hold that the wage system is bondage that should be replaced by shared responsibilities and rewards - true partnership and equal distribution... We see and confirm that the "multi-party" systems instituted and spread by western governments have indeed become a means to plunder and usurp the people's autonomy and authority."

Correct me Bubba, but are they now saying a dictatorship is really a "popular sovereignty"? Oh America, welcome to the new world coming at you. I could write a book on why Western women have intellectual love affairs with dictators. Maybe, when I am out of US bondage and get my equal distribution portfolio, I'll have more leisure time to write ...

Motive Profile

"Experts" are yapping left and right trying to explain and/or find a "motive" or reason for Nidal Hasan's massacre at Ft. Hood, or the Florida shooting, and others. Stress, fatigue, mental illness, victim of racism, etc. etc.

The liberals/left rush to blame the usual suspects (after a cursory censure of the perp) - it's the military, the government, capitalism, the system, the war, etc.

And the oft heard excuse "they slipped through the cracks." Always of course the cracks in "the system." Family and friends never have a clue or any responsibility, never suspect they've spent years looking in the eyes of a sociopath. Family seems to be the first crack they slip through, but family is rarely accountable. Just once, I'd like to hear a family member state .. yea, he was always a creep and made the hair on my neck stand up.

A couple of weeks ago I was reading an article by the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters. I approached the piece trying to be sympathetic, she might offer some insight. It was a lengthy article that revealed nothing but her own self-pitying excuses. She said her son was depressed, angry, suicidal, but he gave no indications - disconnect much lady? Any clues she might have on the making of a sociopath she kept safely hidden within her own dysfunction.

On DU yesterday I read comments about Hasan stating that Hasan "may be a hero, and this is the first domestic act of armed aggression against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." I'm convinced beyond a doubt now that liberals are a scourge across the land, more dangerous than bible thumpers or rednecks could ever be.

There is no mystery here. Hasan, and those like him, are botched human beings. Self-centered, narcissistic, cowards without conscience, basically evil. Botched human beings have a sense of grandiosity, glibness, contempt, lack of empathy, and feel superior. They believe the world should cater to them. Anyone or anything which is not accommodating will be accused of racism, bigotry, harassment, bullying, persecution - and in our politically correct culture it works in their favor. The motive is simply the extreme results of a lifelong selfishness - the excessive and exclusive concern with self.

Botched beings do not "snap" - they just reach a point where twisting their environment to suit themselves is no longer working. The truly insane rarely harm others - botched people usually do, on a small or grand scale. Botched people are not born, they are made, and they are made from the cradle. Botched cannot be fixed, cannot be medicated or talked into a healthier state of mind.

Personally, I think Hasan's was an act of terrorism - when the government was no longer accommodative Hasan twisted religion to accommodate his narcissism and sense of superiority, and the coward did not want to die alone. He should face a military firing squad.

American Boobs

More than 3/4 of the nation’s 17-24 y/o couldn’t serve in the military, even if they wanted to. They’re too fat, too sickly, too dumb, have too many kids, or have copped to using illegal drugs.

The armed services are willing to grant waivers for some of those conditions - asthma, or a little bit of weed. But the military’s biggest concern is how big and how weak its potential recruits have become.

“The major component of this is obesity,” Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon’s director of accessions, tells Army Times‘ William McMichael. “Kids are just not able to do push-ups… And they can’t do pull-ups. And they can’t run.” Twenty-three percent of 18- to 34-year-old are now obese, up from just six percent in 1987.

---- Khrushchev clarified his "bury you" comment in 1963, "I once said we will bury you and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you."

Apparently, Nik meant buried under our own weight. Literally. And not particularly the working class, but the dependent class.

Public Punishment

BEDFORD, Pa. (AP) -- In exchange for no jail time, a woman and her adult daughter have agreed to stand outside a Pennsylvania courthouse holding signs saying they stole a gift card from a 9-year-old girl on her birthday.

Fifty-six-year-old Evelyn Border and 35-year-old Tina Griekspoor stood outside the court for 4 1/2 hours Tuesday. They held signs that read: "I stole from a 9-year-old girl on her birthday! Don't steal or this could happen to you!"

Because the women agreed to hold the signs, Bedford County District Attorney Bill Higgins says he'll ask for probation instead of jail when they plead guilty to the theft. Higgins says they swiped a gift card that the girl set on a shelf while a Walmart employee helped her.

---- My daughter and I were discussing public punishment recently. With jails overloaded and people who cannot or will not pay fines for petty crimes ... maybe embarrassment is a viable option. Probably won't make a difference ... as some folks have no shame. These ladies are likely laughing and cutting out the newspaper pics of themselves. Reminds me of the Puritan days, stocks and pillory. Part of that evolutionary regression maybe?

A Better Way Dumb

Someone posted this at PI, and over at Democratic Underground, a piece by Ms. Norberg-Hodge, or her book I believe, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, or humans are not greedy by nature.

Helena Norberg-Hodge, another one of those cultural gurus/ecovillagers who flit around the globe and report back to followers that there is a better way. "The Better Way" is typically a remote culture where half the citizens are illiterate and usually blood related - and often dependent on government subsidies and tourism. Affectionately known as cloth or basket weaving village folk, the go-to dark skin cultures where white gurus mingle at outdoor markets and let the natives touch their blond hair.

I stumble upon such pabulum every day, and don't have the heart or stomach to read all the comments anymore, they are maudlin reruns anyway, or inflammatory rhetoric, even if PI is more left/socialist and DU are Democrat party apologists, they all have fashionable warm fuzzies and rose eyeglasses. But here are a couple of comments, one from PI and one from DU:

Commenter: "Hurt and distressed people can be greedy. But I don't think that humans are inherently selfish and greedy. I believe that we are born to love and connect with each other in wonderful and caring ways." --Hmmm ... so, according to this logic, and the Left believes the super rich are greedy, then the rich are in a lot of pain and distress?

Commenter: "If anything, humans are cooperative and charitable by nature, or the human species would never have survived."

Born to love and connect, yes. But what the immediate village (family) teaches can be something else. Man is not cooperative and charitable by nature - it's nurture, example. Do progressive/socialists not have children? Of course they do, some of the most dangerously manipulative children I've met are parented by progressives. Some children are more easy going by nature - but all are greedy and self-centered to a degree.

Crediting the survival of the species on an innate cooperative, charitable nature is silliness. Does he/she not understand survival of the fittest? That one tribe survived over another by wit and strength? Or perhaps you're more comfortable calling it culture or community rather than tribal. The "community" or culture, establishes desired behavior for individuals and enforces it. Everyone has their role to benefit and ensure survival of the tribe/community/culture.

Some roles earn more respect and rewards, the best of food, animal hides, and spot by the fire, an early form of capitalism? Some roles require more self-sacrifice - an unworthy trait in certain scoffing circles today. Community members who fall outside established behavior rules are punished, usually severely - well, not so much today because we have been given a huge list of excuses to choose from when we behave badly. Divergent behavior from community norm is now called "diversity." Some bad behavior today, or divergence, is a "disease" and some is just "human nature." Depends on which community has it and which excuse you give preference, and since survival of the species is not threatened as a whole - you can diverge all you want.

For hundreds of thousands of years it has also been community against community for survival - for the best caves, hunting grounds, land, etc. Life was brutal, short, and not all that "loving." Not much different than it is for millions today - although today, ideologues are more eloquent in who or what to blame, i.e. capitalism. Personally, capitalism today seems more a socialist perversion of capital.

Millions of years of self-determination and honed survival instincts embedded in our DNA assured existence of the species - and now socialist dogma claims greed and self-preservation is not in our nature. We should all join hands in one big loving world commune, even if half the commune indulges in behavior you find abhorrent and ghastly - just cooperate, keep your eyes down and follow "The Better Way" herd.

What socialist dogma has accomplished in the last couple of hundred years is to replace the fleetest and smartest with the weakest and dumbest. The founding fathers, even with all their faults and wrongs they could think and reason, have now been replaced with the weakest and lamest links in the chain.

Socialism itself is a disease, replacing the behavioral rules of evolution where man learned to live within his culture to one of man destroying his culture. The irony is, had socialists left well enough alone, man would evolve to the community they envision. Trying to rush nature, they have only created weaker physical and mental mutants. We are witnessing the results - evolutionary degeneration. Survival of the dumbest. If you ask politely, I bet the better way leaders will let you touch their hair.